Remember when your retirement wasn’t in the toilet and that other money you threw in the stock market wasn’t slowly being sucked into nothingness? Yeah, those were good times, and those times are no more.
On Friday, stocks closed sharply down again, with the DOW Jones coming to rest at 28,725. The S&P and Nasdaq fared even worse, with the latter being over 31 percent off its high since Joe Biden took office.
What makes all this especially stupid, though, is that less than a year ago, the White House took a victory lap over the stock market. Biden’s Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, went on social media to slap Donald Trump around over the former president’s prediction of a “crash.”
To put it lightly, Klain’s take did not age well.
Klain provides a good example of why government officials would probably do best staying off of Twitter. That’s especially true when it comes to spiking the football not even one year into a four-year term.
Anyone with a brain could see that a sell-off was going to come sometime in the near future. When Klain made that comment, inflation had already hit 6.2 percent with no signs of slowing. There was no “soft landing” possible at that point, and that always meant an economic slowdown was imminent. Sure enough, two straight quarters of GDP decline (i.e. a recession) have followed.
Lest I focus too much on Klain, though, Biden himself made the same mistake. In January of 2022, he decided it’d be a good idea to brag about the stock market even as inflation rose to 7.5 percent at the time.
Here’s what the current situation looks like for comparison, and for the love of all that is holy, do not go check your portfolio after seeing this. I value your mental health too much for that.
Those numbers are tough to digest. Speaking on a personal level, I’ve had to push off big plans I had because the money that I have tied up in the stock market is now stuck there. I’m certainly not going to sell low, so that means having to wait around until probably 2025 in hopes Republicans retake the White House.
That I’m in my 30s is the only solace there because I know it’s much worse for people at or nearing retirement age. I’ve heard plenty of dreadful tales, both broadly and from family members, about having to pause retirement plans due to the drop under Biden. We are talking about 20-30% of people’s retirements being wiped out in just a few months. Things are really bad, and not enough attention is paid to the harm being caused.
So while I’m here for making fun of Klain and Biden being stupid, I also recognize this isn’t actually a joking matter. The wealth of tens of millions of middle-class Americans is being destroyed by horrific economic policy. A message must be sent in November that causes some kind of course correction. If Democrats remain in power, they will double down on the pain.