As the coronavirus economic lockdown drags on, there seems to be a lot of delusional thinking out there. Many people seem to believe that at some point, President Trump will snap his fingers and the economy will roar back to life. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey looks at the numbers and makes the case that this is actually the early stages of an unprecedented economic meltdown. Everything is not going to be fine. He also takes on the myth of the non-essential worker.
November’s jobs numbers came out Friday weaker than expected.
Trump’s twitter feed was strangely silent on the jobs report. Generally, he likes to tout unemployment as an accomplishment, even though he poo-pooed the same numbers when he was campaigning against Obama.
As Peter Schiff pointed out in his most recent podcast, the official numbers significantly understate unemployment.
Jobs numbers came out Friday better than expected.
According to the Labor Department, the US economy added 313,000 jobs last month, the most since October 2015. Economists had anticipated a gain of about 200,000. Wage growth was less stellar, ticking up just 0.1%. Analysts projected a 0.2% increase after a pretty significant jump of 0.3% in January spooked markets with inflation fears.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said if he was a conspiratorial person – and he’s not – he would say, “Wait a minute, this looks too good to be true.”
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
President Trump has completely flip-flopped the way he looks at economic data. When he was on the campaign trail, he called the stock market a “big, fat, ugly bubble.” Now that he’s sitting in the Oval Office, he takes credit for the same bubble.
He’s done the same kind of 180 when it comes to employment data. On the campaign trail, he called 5% unemployment “the biggest hoax in American history.” But when the jobs report came out last week, Trump eagerly tweeted, “The unemployment rate remains at a 17-year low of 4.1%. The unemployment rate in manufacturing dropped to 2.6%, the lowest ever recorded. The unemployment rate among Hispanics dropped to 4.7%, the lowest ever recorded…”
Peter Schiff called Trump out on his flip-flop in his most recent podcast.
