Stockman’s Corner

Now that the giant Mueller Nothingburger (with a side of crow-flavored fries, per Jim Kunstler) has been officially delivered unto the mainstream media’s wailing and gnashing of teeth, the essence of the matter should be obvious: To wit, the RussiaGate Collusion story was always way above the pay grade of the legal sleuths and gunslingers who wasted $25 million on it—and […]

The Donald buried MAGA once and for all today. He did so by making the preposterous claim that the US economy would have grown at 4% if the Fed had not raised interest rates; and then added insult to injury by nominating a supply-side crackpot, Stephen Moore, to the Federal Reserve Board.

Now that the Fed has totally capitulated to the Wall Street day traders and gamblers, the next catalyst in rotation is supposed to be the China Trade Deal. The latter will purportedly usher in the “all clear” for another run at Peak Trump (2940 on the S&P 500).

The casino was ripping again this morning on still another Wall Street Journal headline about progress on the China Trade Deal, which story actually only said that more meetings were scheduled on both sides of the Pacific.

It really doesn’t get more pathetic than this. We are referring to the crawler on bubblevision this morning which read, “Will the Fed cut rates?”

There won’t be much dispute among future historians about the fact that intelligent life became extinct on Wall Street during the present era. The archived newsreels will have the eerie feel of an empty bar which the revilers had long since abandoned—where what remained was only a player piano still plinking out “buy, buy, buy-the-dip” over and over.

Another batch of recent “incoming data” amounted to still more evidence that the false sugar high of last summer has already petered out. This morning’s February industrial production index for manufacturing, for instance, continued to roll-over and is already back to its July 2018 interim high.

In the world of economics there are factoids and facts, headlines and baselines and cherry-picking and trend-exegesis. The first term of these couplets is what they do day in and day out on both ends of the Acela Corridor, thereby obfuscating the house of financial and fiscal cards on which the present fantasy rests. And that

The Donald was at it early this morning, tweeting his own horn at 6:50 AM. In case you weren’t paying attention to his manifold accomplishments, he left nothing to the imagination by describing himself as….. ….a man who is considered by many to be the President with the most successful first two years in history…

When we appeared on CNBC today, we were braced by the claim that the market’s up 20% for the year, inflation’s coming down and the Fed’s on hold—so what’s not to like?