Presidential candidate Tim Ryan is not impressed with Trump’s ongoing stock market brag. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, the Democratic hopeful for 2020 slammed the sitting president for continuing to blow his own horn on social media.
The leaders of virtually every country that I met at the G-20 congratulated me on our great economy. Many countries are having difficulties on that score. We have the best economy anywhere in the world, with GREAT & UNLIMITED potential looking into the future!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2019
As the president touts “unlimited potential” for the world’s largest economy, most non-market participants probably won’t share his optimism. Indeed, it’s estimated that the top 10 percent of wealthy Americans own 90 percent of all publicly-traded stocks.
Ryan used that hammer to drive his point home.
“To me, where I come from, it says that certain people in the economy today are doing really well, but 75 percent of the American people are still living paycheck to paycheck. I just don’t think that these metrics today of unemployment and stock markets are reflective of the vast majority of people in the United States.”
Stock Market Metrics Not a Reflection of Economic Health
Ryan went on to identify several areas of the economy where Americans, particularly millennials, are really struggling. Healthcare, education, and housing are all in dire shape, he said. Californians, for example, are leaving the golden state in record numbers as rent costs continue to balloon.
Labeling all three at crisis levels, he further pointed to the average man on the street who isn’t doing well. This despite official inflation figures holding at relative lows. The disconnect between these figures and the average man’s pocket raises questions about the reliability of government statistics.
President Trump recently returned from the G-20 summit in Tokyo after a notable stopover with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Ryan criticized Trump’s publicity stunt as a ploy for dominating the news cycle instead of focusing on long-term plans for the US.
S&P 500 Continues Its Upward March
Meanwhile, those who’ve been riding this latest market wave will no doubt be celebrating along with the president. The S&P 500 continues its upward march to all-time highs even as sentiment remains bearish.
This is now the longest economic expansion in American history as the US records a whopping 121 months of consecutive GDP growth. Thus Trump’s stock market brag isn’t his first, and it probably won’t be the last either.
But critics warn that what goes up must surely also come down… At some point. Consequently, Ryan believes the president may have backed himself into an economic corner:
“So, I think the president is digging his own grave when he goes around saying how great the economy is going.”
Indices are up, and yet catastrophic Q2 earnings await investors. In an investing climate not seen for more than a decade, they too may soon feel the pinch.