We don’t put a lot of stock in the CNN/MSM running meme that the Donald is a fount of endless lies.
Most of what they call “lies” are debatable facts and factoids about propositions they don’t like—such as the truth that the Russia Collusion/Meddling story has not only been bogus from day one, but was actually an attempt by the Dems and their Deep State apparatchiks to unconstitutionally reverse the outcome of a presidential election.
But there can be no doubt that the Donald let loose a Whopper on Monday morning when he saw the futures market deep in the red, thereby continuing the 800-point carnage from his Friday exercise in Trade War lunacy.
So to stem the tide of red (and the near certainty that important chart points would have been violated), the Donald claimed from Biarritz, France, that “China called last night” and indicated a desire to resume trade talks, later elaborating that two “high-level” Chinese officials had reached out to the White House essentially begging to restart the stalled negotiations.
Not surprisingly, the Chinese immediately denied the claim, but by then the robo-machines had already hit their ignition keys and have spent the rest of the week attempting to erase Friday’s wounds.
That’s the Fake Market part of the story, which we will elaborate upon in Part 2.
But it is now also abundantly clear that the alleged Chinese calls never happened, and that the Donald had engaged in a grotesque level of market manipulation that any CEO or other corporate insider would have been indicted for in a heart beat.
As Zero Hedge noted this morning, even White House insiders have now confessed the ruse:
And now, according to a CNN report, White House aides “conceded the phone calls Trump described didn’t happen they way he said they did,” and “instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China’s vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese,” precisely as we said had likely happened on Monday morning.
Our point here, however, is not to pile on the Donald with the rest of the “gotcha” crowd.
The real sin here is not that the Donald employed some bright white lies to talk his book. The real problem is that his book (MAGA) is a crock and the stock market he is continually trying to levitate is a testament to decades of monetary madness at the central banks, not an endorsement of the Donald’s toxic mix of Trade Wars, Fiscal Debauch and ultra-Easy Money.
So it needs be said again: The Donald is an economic half-wit whose views on trade, debt and money are a clear and present danger to prosperity. And he is bullying them into the policy arena at an exceedingly fraught time when the rotten economic fruits of 30 years of debt eruption and egregious money printing at the Fed are coming home to roost.
As to the matter of our rogue Keynesian central bankers, Trump outdid himself recently, showing that the ship of fools domiciled in the Eccles Building can’t hold a candle to the Donald’s monetary mind-melt: