Posted by After losing over $30,000 in the stock market last week, I sit here and wonder why I didn’t act on the clear warning signs. Trump basically told us what he was going to do well in advance of April 2nd. Investors who are smarter than me shorted the market on April 1st, just in case things went badly. Well, now we have the tariff numbers, and things don’t look good for the US economy. I didn’t think I would ever see a stock market drop as much as it did in 2020 during the early days of the Covid pandemic, but I was wrong. How one man is able to play with our economic future like this is shocking to say the least.
There are a lot of things happening that look similar to what happened in Germany back in 1933. Trump is using executive orders to bypass congress. Large numbers of people are being detained and deported. Anyone who does not comply with Trump’s executive orders are fired. Government agencies are being dismantled with little or no warning. False information is clouding any rational approach to government reform. Meanwhile, our president flees to his Mar-a-lago “Berghof” to avoid the protests on April 5th.
We all know that our national debt has increased to an alarming level. One could argue that it is going to take extreme actions to balance the budget. Some call it a financial reset. Two things that can result in a reset are a depression or a war. A war would be catastrophic. That kind of reset would probably take us back farther than we want to go. The Great Depression lasted ten years. Unemployment reached 25% at the peak in 1933. The unemployment rate has remained in a narrow 4.0 to 4.2 percent range since May 2024. If the trade war escalates, we will surely see unemployment numbers begin to increase. With all that is happening, if you feel helpless, you are not alone.