Very Stable Business Genius sets a new record:
President
Trump took office at the crest of the longest economic expansion in
U.S. history. He leaves presiding over the worst labor market in modern
U.S. history, as an already-sputtering economic recovery has turned
negative.
Friday’s awful jobs report from
the Labor Department showed there were still 3 million fewer jobs in
the United States than there were on Inauguration Day 2017, when Trump
stood in front of the Capitol and vowed to reverse the American carnage.
Here's a graph showing the facts (click to enlarge):
Trump's response to the pandemic can be credited with making a terrible labor- market situation at the outset worse by his continuing failure to provide strong federal leadership. As a former member of his Council of Economic Advisors, Marianne Wanamaker, says:
“Everybody
knows that full recovery won’t come until the virus is under control.
And our path to getting the virus under control right now is either
people behaving in a different way or mass vaccination. And on both of
those fronts, it’s pretty clear that the administration has failed to
deliver.”
The
administration resisted simple behavioral changes, such as wearing
masks, that would have had no economic cost and have been shown to be
effective in containing the virus, Wanamaker said.
One of the myths his delusional, un- informed cult members cling to is that their hero is a smart businessman. Even after multiple bankruptcies, failed Trump- branded businesses, pending criminal fraud investigations, and a tanked economy with 3 million fewer jobs than there were when he took office, the fact that he's as much of a loser in that sphere as he is as a president will never penetrate their alternate reality. Instead, look for President- elect Biden to be blamed by right- wing media and their moron audience for the economic hole we're in, just as Republicans blamed President Obama even as he was pulling the country out of the Bush Great Recession and into a record 127 months of economic expansion. He'll be fighting the party of Trump in Congress every step of the way, but in the end, because it will be a competent administration that will address the pandemic forcefully, it will take us out of the hole dug by his incompetent predecessor.
