One of the top economists on the planet rained all over Donald Trump’s insistence that the American economy is in full recovery and will somehow come back fast and be stronger than ever.
The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the economy as businesses shut down across the country in an effort to stop the spread. As a result, 40 million Americans were left jobless and the stock market took a massive tumble. Though the stock market seems to have recovered, the overall economy is still in shambles with 11 percent unemployment and the potential for a second economic shutdown being on the horizon due to several states reopening too early.
Trump thinks that the economy is just going to roar back — and even bragged about the 11 percent unemployment rate as if our country did not just have a 3.5 percent rate back in December.
Well, Trump’s fantasy of a swift economic recovery has been dashed by Market Securities chief economist Christophe Barraud, who has been hailed as the most accurate economist in the world for eight years in a row now.
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During an interview with Business Insider, Barraud delivered some bad news about Trump’s “recovery” that Americans should take seriously, especially as the 2020 Election in November approaches.
‘It will take a long time for life to return to normal,’ Barraud told Business Insider. Even if there is a vaccine by the end of the year, it likely wouldn’t be distributed until 2021, leaving a long time for the US to grapple with the virus.
Because of this, he said that the US won’t return to its fourth quarter 2019 GDP of 2.1% until at least 2022, and for some European countries, a recovery won’t happen until 2023.”
So, even if Trump is re-elected, the economy won’t recover until at least the second year of his second term, and he would have plenty of time to f*ck that up with more incompetent and reckless decisions.
Even the stock market is primed to take another dive before Trump’s first term ends.
As the US economy recovers, Barraud sees much uncertainty that could lead to a correction – meaning a drop of 10% or more – for stocks in the second quarter. This would thwart the market’s recent momentum – the S&P 500 just posted its best quarter since 1998 and the Dow Jones industrial average had its best quarter since 1987.
‘Markets are not pricing in a lot of risk,’ said Barraud, adding that this may be due to dovish fiscal policy, or the potential for another round of stimulus in the short term as countries deal with the virus.”
Trump is obviously lying when he claims the economy is back on track. It’s not, and the worst may be on the way. This pandemic is clearly not going anywhere. Our country squandered the three-month shutdown by reopening early and now explosions of the virus in various states threaten to cause another shutdown. We were warned that re-opening too soon could have devastating effects on the economy, but Trump and his Republican supporters refused to listen. And now we are not only dealing with skyrocketing cases and deaths, but we also have more economic strife to dread for at least another two years.
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