Shooting the messenger

[John Clark]

There is no question that Trump's tariffs are going to slow the growth of the US economy, the only question is by how much. And we may never know the answer to that question because yesterday, just hours after a very bad jobs report came out, Trump fired Erika L. McEntarfer, she's the labor department official responsible for generating monthly economic statistics. Talk about shooting the messenger!

McEntarfer had been nominated by Biden but she had been confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 86 to 8, an astonishingly large consensus vote in today's hyper-political Senate. Trump claimed McEntarfer was cooking the books to make him look bad, but he was unable to provide any proof or even a trace of evidence of that. As a replacement I'm sure Trump will nominate a sycophant who has little or no knowledge of economics but promises to churn out any statistics that Trump wants churned out. And I'm sure the Senate will confirm Trump's yes-man whoever it is, but the vote will be a lot closer than 86 to 8.

So this is our present situation, Trump is trying his damnedest to put the US economy into a tailspin, and now he's turned off all the instruments in the cockpit so we don't know which way we're going or even which way is up. I really shouldn't be surprised by this because he's done this sort of thing before, when the Covid infection rate was growing at a terrifying speed Trump said the solution to that problem was to simply stop testing for Covid infection. Problem solved. 

It reminds me of a quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: 

"The Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses are designed to help the wearer develop a relaxed attitude to danger. The lenses turn completely black at the first hint of trouble, thus preventing the wearer from seeing anything that might alarm him or her."

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

ast