You Can’t Whine Your Way to Lower Rates
Nixon 2.0: Trump’s Tantrum Economics
If you woke up this morning hoping that monetary policy had become any more intelligible, you’ll be disappointed to learn that we’ve now officially crossed into what can only be described as economic satire masquerading as grievance posting.
President Donald J. Trump — Chief Executive of the Unified States of Complaint — posted this morning that Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, should cut interest rates immediately, citing that:
Energy costs are “way down”
Food prices are “substantially lower”
“Most other things” are “trending down”
And thus, there is “virtually no inflation”
It takes a special kind of detachment from reality to look at 2 weeks of ups and downs and a current 4.4% 10-year Treasury yields as of this writing, a rapidly rising CPI core services index, and a global investor revolt against U.S. fiscal policy and declare:
“Virtually no inflation.”
But here we are, parsing the Egg Index — Biden’s alleged “egg disaster” — as justification for preemptive rate cuts, all while Powell is trying to mop up the inflationary fire Trump’s own tariff threats helped ignite.
But if you think this was just a goofy tweet — wait until you see the monetary illiteracy driving it.
🥚 The Monetary Illiteracy of It All
Let me be absolutely clear: Trump’s demand for rate cuts has nothing to do with inflation data. It’s driven by: