I have spent my entire adult life in the world of finance, so nothing surprises me anymore. I love to tell everyone, “I have seen it all.” But the 'shoot the messenger' drama on Friday was a new low in American politics. On Friday, Trump fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the weak jobs report numbers. What? I thought only corrupt dictators and fictional characters from old Woody Allen movies did stuff like that. American presidents are supposed to be held to a higher standard. Trump simply doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s lying about the economy and tariff policies, which are both failing miserably. How can anyone simply write this off as “don’t worry, he’s old and just doesn’t understand”?
The funny irony of it all? Trump wants Jay Powell to lower interest rates or be fired. However, bad job numbers will rally the bonds and cause interest rates to drop. That’s exactly what happened on Friday. However, for some reason Trump thinks Erika McEntarfer is a political puppet who manipulated the numbers to make him look bad.
Sadly, he doesn’t understand that if the numbers were good, bonds would have gone down, and interest rates would have shot up. Unfortunately, Trump simply does not understand how the debt markets work. I have thought about this a lot over the weekend, and I’m not mad at the people who don’t understand the relationship between interest rates and bond prices. I’m mad at all the people who do understand how dangerous and historically stupid this man’s irrational behavior is and yet give him a pass because they have no spine.
The Soz