Off by One Error

That graph is out of date. A more up-to-date graph shows the uncertainty index is now literally off the charts:

Even that one is more than a week old, so who knows where it is now.

Just think about it. In 2020 people were in lockdown. In many places people couldn't go out except to go grocery shopping. Every other kind of shop was shut down. Many factories in China were also shut down so things weren't being shipped. Ships were filling up the ports but couldn't be unloaded because the places to unload containers weren't available. Basically, utter chaos.

On his own, Trump has wrecked people's confidence in the stability of the market to such an extent that it's now twice as uncertain as during peak COVID. It's amazing.

If this shit keeps up probably a similar mortality rate too.

And it's going to be a lot worse this time, especially for the stock market. Even early in the pandemic, we had a decent understanding of the fatality rate of covid. Even in the worst case, if we never got a vaccine, and everyone got it, we would have been looking at losing 1-2% of the population. Absolutely horrific, but that's the kind of pandemic that humanity has gotten over many, many times before. We would grieve, bury the dead, and move on. But economically speaking, we would be back to normal within a few years. Even early on, we knew we weren't facing like, Black Death levels of mortality. This is why the stock market did pretty well during covid, especially once the stimulus started rolling out. Pandemics by their nature are temporary. In the long term, unless you're looking at a massive chunk of your population dropping dead, they don't do permanent damage to an economy.

But Trump? He's unraveling the entire post-WW2 economic and political order. And he doesn't have any rational or coherent vision he's trying to replace it with. He's not starting some 20 year campaign to return to mercantilism. He's not some Marxist revolutionary trying to implement international communism. He's not trying to rationally and gradually transition the US economy to autarky. He's just blindly lashing out like the senile old man he is. His brain is jelly, and he's just throwing random bombs at the foundations of the global economy.

If he was just trying to shift things to a new system, if he had some coherent vision he was aiming for, the economy could adapt. Businesses could adapt to the new normal, shift the priorities for their investments, and the world would move on. But the way he is doing things? What company wants to spend millions to move production back to the US? Sure, the tariffs of today may make that idea viable. But all it takes is the right bribery or flattery of Trump by a foreign leader today, and that tariff can disappear tomorrow. Companies can't afford the risk of spending the millions it takes to return to domestic manufacturing, as there is no guarantee these tariffs will remain in place. Businesses need certainty. And certainty is the last thing you have in a nation ruled by a mad king.

Honestly, Trump openly campaigned on the question "Were you in a better place in 2020 than now?" so…

Can we also acknowledge the only reason the global pandemic was as bad as it was, was the Trump response of spreading uncertainty, misinformation and using it as a political tool. Also I am convinced if Trump wasn't around it would have been half as devastating as it was.

Easter is a good time to ponder the sins of our forebears, like the fact that the Gregorian Calendar is not 0-based. We all pay a high price for such failures to adhere to common standards.

Except it's so, so, so much worse this time for America, and only just a normal amount worse for the rest of the world.

Trump is a plauge

"But the line is going up so it must be good!, hail Trump!"

MAGAts probably.

*so far

If you can, it's time to be investing.