Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Donald Trump continues to go out of his way to tie his reelection chances to the stock market setting new highs by perpetually taking credit for its gains on his Twitter page. No other sitting U.S. president in history has done that because they have all been aware of how fast trends can change in the stock market. In fact, we recall a previous Republican President, George W. Bush, being dismissive of the stock market, saying “they run it up and they run it down,” or words to that effect. (On Wall Street that’s known as a bull raid and a bear raid.)
On January 9 President Trump delivered the message below on his Twitter page, mistakenly referring to a 401(K) as a 409K. The implication is that Trump has rallied the stock market by 70 to 90 percent and it’s your own dumb fault if your retirement portfolio is only up by 50 percent. Retirees could take this to mean that the sitting President of the United States is encouraging them to allocate more of their retirement assets to stocks and less to conservative bonds.
That’s not the role of a sitting President and it could very well lead to dangerous risk-taking and bad outcomes for retirees.
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