Trump in a Not-Even-a-Crisis

One of the biggest reasons I dreaded having Donald Trump as President (and one that liberals and conservatives should dread equally) was the thought of him in a crisis.  It was obvious that the best way to deal with Trump in a crisis would be to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth, and lock him in the closet until it blew over.

And just to be clear, the latest stock market slide is NOT a crisis.  September 2008 was a crisis -- Fannie and Freddie nationalized, Lehman Brothers failing, Merrill Lynch surviving only by merger, AIG being nationalized, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs becoming bank holding companies to survive, and Washington Mutual Bank failing all in one month -- now that was a crisis!  And naturally the stock tanked, but falling stocks were a symptom, rather than a cause, of the crisis.

What we are seeing now is nothing like that.  It is, at worst, some softening of the economy, a reminder that the business cycle is still with us.  And, if we are lucky, it might just turn  out to be a needless panic.  A normal President would either keep quiet or  give some vague platitude that so long as all is well on Main Street, Wall Street will calm down.

And yes, I will admit it is unsettling to watch the stock market fall by triple digits day after day after day.  To see the stock market fall by 500 points in one day is familiar enough.  But it is usually followed by 200-300 point rebound the next day.  Even a general slide usually has interruptions.  So to see it fall by triple digits day after day with no relief is genuinely disturbing.

But there is nothing in the overall economy, nothing at all, to justify such a drop.  If our Tweeter-in-Chief would just SHUT UP, I'm sure the market would settle down and figure out that its freakout was unnecessary. 

A crisis is, to a considerable extent, a choice.  Presidents can decide, to a considerably extent, whether to respond to a development, like missiles in Cuba, or not.  Some leaders create foreign crises on purpose to boost their sagging domestic popularity.  But creating an economic crisis is generally not recommended.

And, just for the record, I don't think you can tweet your way into a crisis.  If all is well on Main Street, then I really do expect Wall Street to figure it out sooner or later and calm down.  I expect the slide to stop soon and a recovery to begin.  It will probably take some time to get back to the old high.  Stocks were becoming irrationally exuberant and needed some sobering up.  We may slip into a recession, but there is no reason to believe it will be a bad one.  So I fully expect the slide to stop soon, despite Trump's best efforts.  But it would have stopped a lot sooner without them.

UPDATE:  And right on cue, our President and Secretary of the Treasury shut up for one day and, sure enough, the stock market promptly recovers.