President Joe Biden, the quintessential establishment politician, knows how to play the game. He takes credit for good things in which he had no hand and deflects responsibility for problems he has caused.
How satisfying, therefore, when reality delivers him a swift and unmistakable correction.
Saturday on the social media platform X, the president touted a positive economic indicator, only to learn on Tuesday that that precise indicator had taken a sudden nosedive.
Biden — or more likely the staffer/intern who controls his social media account — highlighted the stock market’s S&P 500.
“Good news for folks as we start the weekend. The stock market going strong is a sign of confidence in America’s economy,” the post read.
Good news for folks as we start the weekend. The stock market going strong is a sign of confidence in America’s economy. https://t.co/3nnSiVWOYP
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 10, 2024
In that case, what does a plummeting stock market signal?
According to Fox Business, a “hotter-than-expected inflation report” for January preceded a major stock selloff on Tuesday.
Has Biden improved the economy?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average — the index most often cited when measuring market performance over time — fell 524 points to erase nearly half of its 2024 gains.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 — the index Biden touted only three days earlier — lost 1.4 percent of its value on Tuesday. And that decline struck all 11 of the S&P’s major sectors, with financials, utilities and real estate hit hardest.
According to Yahoo, the January inflation report “showed prices cooling slower than forecasts anticipated.”
Indeed, the report revealed that “‘core’ prices” surged by 0.4 percent for “their largest monthly gain since April 2023.”
In other words, so much for the president’s “confidence.”
And what might this mean for Biden?
Well, on one hand, many Americans have enough sense and honesty to acknowledge that presidents do not control stock markets.
For instance, in 1920, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt made the following observation about a respected contemporary:
“He is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could not be a better one.”
That “wonder” was none other than Herbert Hoover, the future president who presided over both the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed. Roosevelt and many others regarded Hoover as both a transcendent humanitarian and one of the most capable public figures in American life. Ironically, of course, Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the 1932 presidential election.
Thus, if the admired and competent Hoover could not prevent a market collapse, then what president could have?
On the other hand, Hoover’s defeat in 1932 showed that when it comes to economic catastrophe, voters seldom exonerate presidents.
Biden, of course, has had nothing to do with the stock market’s performance. He has spent his life in government, where parasites enrich themselves on confiscatory and inflationary policies. And of course he cannot string together two intelligible sentences. Whatever “confidence” investors might feel on a given day comes not from the confused president.
Still, on Saturday he hoped that voters would associate his presidency with the stock market. He should be careful what he wishes for.
