I&I Editorial
Should President Donald Trump’s election challenges fail to keep Joe Biden out of the White House, it’s a certainty that bleak days will be ahead. We’re staring into the barrel of at least four years of sclerotic economic growth.
Six days after the election, Biden, employing the Democratic Party strategy of sowing fear whenever possible, warned that the country is facing a long night.
“Before the surge in COVID cases we predicted, many predicted, and the deaths rise that we’ve seen in December … we head into a very dark winter ahead,” he said.
He also lamented the “grim” jobs report, which showed “an economy that is stalling.” Employment grew by only 245,000 in November, “well below the 440,000 expected by economists and a sharp drop from the 610,000 reported in October,” CNBC reported.
“We remain in the midst of one of the worst economic and job crises in modern history,” said the man who as vice president oversaw one of the weakest economic recoveries in U.S. history.
Apparently it never occurred to Biden and his handlers that government intervention, not the virus, caused 2020’s downturn. Nor have they even begun to understand that Democrats’ economic policies, filled with steep, punitive taxes, and impossible-to-jump regulatory hurdles, are a slow-motion march of the economic lockdowns that almost instantly paralyzed the economy this year.
A lack of optimism in a Biden economy is not ours alone.
“Wall Street investors largely believe a Joe Biden presidency could mean lower stock-market returns,” says another CNBC report, this one highlighting the network’s survey of “more than 100 chief investment officers and portfolio managers.”
“Two-thirds said the first four years of Biden will be worse for stocks than Trump’s term,” according to the results.
Should we care about stock performance? Of course we should. Wall Street and Main Street USA meet at a large and busy intersection. More than half of the country – 55% – owns stock. That’s down from the two-thirds that owned stock in 2002. But still more than enough for stock performance to count.
The concerns cited by the CIOs and managers should be alarming even to those who aren’t shareholders. If Biden is able to reverse the Trump tax cut (and increase taxes by several trillion), as well as unwind the administration’s critical regulatory relief, the economy that was recovering strongly from the lethargic Obama years during Trump’s first three years will stagnate, likely even decline.
Other developments that would hurt the economy include:
- Biden’s New Green Deal Lite.
- A government-run banking system that would “would undermine private banks, moving the U.S. closer to the socialist ideal of a nationalized financial sector.”
- The possibility Biden will close the economy to the extent that he can, even though 2020’s lockdowns punished the economy and did nothing to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
An analysis of Biden’s economic agenda published by the Hoover Institution says it “reduces full-time equivalent employment per person by about 3%, the capital stock per person by about 15%, real GDP per capita by more than 8%, and real consumption per household by about 7%.”
Economist Stephen Moore, is convinced, as are we, that “Biden’s anti-biz agenda would wreck the economy,” while Tim Worstall, a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, believes, with reason, Biden’s proposals “will wreak havoc on the economy.”
We’ve said before but it needs to be said again (and again): ”Every major policy Biden campaigned on is anti-growth. … Biden boasts of an FDR-scale agenda without realizing that it was Franklin Roosevelt’s reckless interventions that extended and deepened the Great Depression.”
A dark winter. A dark spring. Darkness until the Democrats are stripped of their political power to choke the economy. Bidenomics are not a promise but a threat.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Hello, at least 70+ million people voted legitimately for Biden and his ilk, so, it’s not just about the politicians, but the public who are beyond clueless, indifferent, apathetic, and I think almost equally complicit as the Democrat sociopathic agenda
Hate is entrenched in America, and yes, people like me hate back, but, you can’t negotiate with this level of evil… but many will keep trying, so good luck, I’m sure it will take you wonderful places in 2021.
Jack, he “received” over 80 million pretend votes. And that is why this election is a disgrace. There is no way this walking dead man who doesn’t know where he is got that many legitimate votes. None. Period. End of story. A not so Happy New Year is coming, with a vengeance.
Its shades of jimmy carter all over again. Preach doom and gloom and you’re bound to get it. But let’s be crystal clear most every WS firm’s top echelon backed/funded joe b and company. While prohibiting employees from making political contributions, they opened their coffers and wallets big time. And if you just read the cnbc, BV, & barrons you could see their deep hatred for the donald in the biz LSM.. When the CFPB comes down on us we will only have ourselves to blame.
My side of the aisle has done an atrocious job past 10 years. From ignoring the tea party and laughing when O picked the IRS on them onward they have been MIA. Budgets? What budgets! Social discourse? Ignore it out of fear. Chinese trade threats? Embrace it. Impeachment charade? FBI malfeasance? Pretend its nonexistent. What the vast majority of the right has done is stay silent and hold on to back office deals. Absolute fail.
Explain to me this: if Wall Street sees lower returns with Biden, why did Wall Street support his bid for the presidency and not Trump? In fact, other than for certain 1%, a Biden presidency will be rough for everyone. Is it that the electorates love for race baiting and abortion trumps personal economic well-being?
QE or Quantitative Easing and liquidity injections of over $4 Trillion supercharged the stock market between 2010 and 2016. Wall Street or half of it, many leftists are hedge fund managers-like George Soros, benefit immensely from a real economy that is barely growing while financial assets inflate. Here is the paradox: securities or stocks are supposed to reflect main street economic conditions. The truth is not really because AI and automation continue to replace labor. So the stock market can surge while Main street stagnates because Trillions of dollars have no place to go but technology stocks that replace human capital. So you wonder why so many democrats are in finance and the stock market, its because America is uniquely positioned to gather the world’s savings and the less money that goes into plants, equipment, and hiring, the more goes into FAANG etc.