Donald Dump's Economy

In 3rd Grade Economics, Donald Dump didn't do very well.

by Shawn K. Inlow I'd heard this week how Donald Trump fired Erica McEntarfer.

McEntarfer was a bureaucrat who you'd never likely hear about unless Donald Trump was pitching a fit. The fit, this time, was over what was called the "jobs numbers." And Ms. McEntarfer was the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports how many jobs are being filled by job fillers in America from month to month. These numbers are key economic indicators and tend to be non-controversial. That is, unless those numbers would show that a Trump economy is doing REALLY badly. And the one thing Donald Trump cannot stand for is a fact suggesting that his economoc plan is objectively stupid. When Donald meets such a fact as this, he quickly calls the fact "phony" and fires the person who reported that fact.

Here are the facts that Donald Trump doesn't think you should know. In March, there were 185,000 new jobs reported in the U.S. economy. That number was revised downard in May to 120,000 (-60,000). In April, there were 177,000 new jobs reported and that number was revised downward in May to 147,000 (-30,000). In May, there were 144,000 new jobs reported and that number was revised down in July to a staggeringly low 19,000 (-125,000). In June, there were 147,000 new jobs reported and that number was revised down in July to an even MORE staggeringly low 14,000 (-133,000). July's numbers were looking like shit again with the numbers at the outset only amounting to HALF of what they were in June. I don't know. Maybe if the Big Giant Orange Racist hadn't put Immigration and Customs on the case of chasing brown-skinned people out of Home Depot parking lots and imposing tariffs on most of the countries in the world, MAYBE the manufacturing sector might be doing better in America. Just spitballin' here. In truth, and in the REAL world, Trump's own immigration policies and capricious tariff wars have contrinbuted to an overall economic slowdown. And somebody, not him, clearly needed to be fired for that. And these numbers are a real embarrassments for the Great Orange Baboon. And so Trump did what he always does when his reality doesn't square with, you know, ACTUAL reality. He dumped the person who told him the fact. He's done it so many times now, he might as well change his legal name to Donald Dump because his reality grows stranger and stranger each day. Case in point, do NOT get me started on the whole EPSTEIN thing. All kidding (who's kidding?) aside, these numbers are kind of important and the American and indeed the world's business classes and markets rely on these numbers as an objective measure of the strength of the U.S. economy. Many decisions are made based on numbers just like this one. The move to fire McEntarfer sparked widespread bipartisan and expert criticism. Former BLS Commissioner William Beach (a Trump appointee from his first term) called the firing “totally groundless,” arguing that the agency’s jobs numbers are produced through rigorous, apolitical processes and routinely revised as part of normal operations. The Wall Street Journal reported the numbers as a "warning bell" for the U.S. economy, citing that hiring had slowed to levels not seen since 2010 (not counting the pandemic). The Journal further linked the economic downturn to three things... Let's see if you can guess them:

Tariffs

Immigration Enforcement

Government Workforce Cuts Gee. Who would have guessed that when you fire everyone you can, chase away everyone that WANTS to work, and charge more for everything coming into the country that your JOB NUMBERS MIGHT BE EFFECTED, YOU SIMPLE BASTARD! Further, the worsening labor market and the inflationary pressure that tariffs place on everything isn't helping. You know those lending rates that are sky high right now? Well, get used to them. Because Trump WANTS lower costs for borrowing, and is threatening to fire the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, over it, just like McEntarfer, but he has no understanding of what makes those rates tick. If you thought Trump was going to be good for the economy, you must be pretty surprised by now. All you have to do is LOOK at this number: 14,000. The number of new jobs... In America... In June... is 14,000. That's ... like ... 280 new hires per STATE. Man, if you thought Trump was going to be good for the economy, I got a golden, autographed bible to sell ya.

The way this dunce keeps throwing economic molotov cocktails around, he's going to disrupt the very stability that makes the U.S. dollar the world's benchmark currency. This stability is based on REAL numbers that the business class depends on so that they can run their businesses effectively. If you don't like the numbers your policies have created, you don't fire Erica McEntarfer. You fire your own economic advisors.

It would amount to leadership if you placed the blame where it belonged. But, of course, Donald Dump has never taken responsibility for anything. What WAS I thinking?