How is the economy doing? Trump hasn't had much time in office, but he hasn't crashed the economy. Q2 GDP was growing at an adjusted rate of 3.1%. That's actually pretty good.
How about inflation? Trimmed mean PCE (yeah, I know, that's a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, but it is inflation) is sitting at 1.62%. That's below target. No signs of runaway inflation. For some reason, the Fed is talking about raising interest rates because OMG INFLATION!!!!, but that's another story. What does the president have to do with inflation? Not a fuckin' thing, but I'm throwing this in here.
Unemployment? The jobs data in the latest report were fucked up by hurricane shit, but the official unemployment rate is sitting at 4.2%. Pretty good.
Stocks? I'm writing this before the markets open today, but last week, the S&P closed above 2550. These days, checking my portfolio is fun!
For all of the bluster and bullshit, we aren't at war.
So, um, the President is a "fucking moron," in Rex Tillerson's terminology, or in mine, "the dumbest motherfucker in the history of politics." Does it matter?
1) We are less than a year in. The president has little direct control over the economy. Presidents are given credit or blame for the economy, but they generally deserve neither. The Fed matters a lot more. Let's watch what happens with Fed appointments. That will matter a lot.
2) I reference Thomas Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict rather frequently. International conflict is about the escalation of risk, and the increasing probability of conflict. Probabilities are increasing. Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis thinks that Trump has about a 10% chance of starting a nuclear war with North Korea and a 20-30% chance of starting a conventional war there. That is an escalation in probabilities. That's how we have to evaluate this.
3) Thinking probabilistically, we need to think about other increasing probabilities of disaster from incompetence. What happens if an economic challenge occurs within the realm of presidential authority? Can Trump respond? No, because he's a fucking moron. Again, this is about probabilities.
4) Trump's decision to cut off the cost-sharing subsidies to the health insurance companies in the individual markets will have negative consequences of unknown magnitudes. Again, we are in the realm of probabilities, but this is a prospective assessment. We don't actually know how much damage will be done.
Over-all: Trump has never actually faced a real presidential crisis. The question I like to pose is as follows. Imagine any person as President during October 1962. Would humanity still exist? With Trump, no. Just... no. He would have ended humanity. Nearly every president has faced crises, whether the global economic collapse that plagued both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, 9/11, Cold War flare-ups... getting through four years without a major crisis is highly unlikely. Some presidents handle these things well. See: Kennedy, JF. Some handle them surprisingly well. See: Bush, G.W. and the financial collapse of 2008 in which he deferred to economic experts and had his administration push the highly unpopular but necessary TARP through Congress (whether Bush deserved blame for the crisis itself is a separate question). Some... do phenomenally poorly. See: Buchanan, J., who is arguably as responsible for the Civil War as any one person could be. Trump his highly likely to face a serious crisis simply because the president usually will. Reckless morons are temperamentally and intellectually unlikely to behave the way that JFK did in October 1962.
Does it matter that Trump is an idiot? The answer is probabilistic. It probably will, even if it hasn't yet. Right now, things really are actually kind of OK. Let's be blunt about that. Let's also be blunt about the facts that Trump hasn't faced a real crisis, presidents usually do, and Trump is a reckless moron. These facts matter.
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