The Media's Piss Stain Starts To Dry

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Over the last few days, I’ve been part of an extraordinarily small contingency of people not freaking out and losing their minds over President Trump’s new tariff plan or the ensuing stock market pullback.

A couple of days ago, I argued that the media shrieking hysterically about how the world was ending as a result of this trade policy was nothing more than a visceral reaction to what was happening in the stock market. It had to be. With just hours having passed since the implementation of Trump’s tariff policy, there was no real way to judge its success based on the merits.

Said another way, these things take time.

In an article late last week, I criticized Wharton PhD Jeremy Siegel—whose actual title is probably some bullshit with the word “emeritus” next to it—for coming out and declaring Trump’s tariff policy to be the worst policy decision in 95 years.

My argument wasn’t that he was wrong—only that it was too soon to make such a declaration.

Siegel was on CNBC again Monday this week. He started his interview by alluding to the idea that the Federal Reserve has room to cut interest rates—similar to the way he lobbied for an emergency rate cut back in August of last year. As the interview progressed, the stock market started to spike upwards on what we now know was a discredited headline about a 90-day pause in tariffs—and on live television, within the course of the five-minute interview window, Siegel had changed his tone, backing off his rhetoric and calling the now-debunked headline “terrific.”

It was proof positive that everybody—even supposedly well-adjusted, intellectual, seasoned economists—reacts first to the stock market and asks questions later.

I argued the same when the Wall Street Journal editorial board came out just three days after the implementation of Trump’s tariff policy and declared Xi Jinping as the “emerging winner” of this policy decision. Whether the policy works or not is one thing. But declaring winners after just three days just doesn’t make sense to me.

Today, we are witnessing the opposite: the market opened the day green, and the VIX is lower because—even though we have uncertainty about the future of these trade deals—at least the market knows that the giant shock of announcing the tariff to begin with has now passed. Everybody has been able to regain some semblance of footing, everybody knows where we stand now with other countries, and market direction going forward will be more of a prolonged response to how negotiations with other countries go.

With China being the obvious main holdout, it appears as though negotiations with crucial countries—like Japan, for instance—are already moving forward.

And so now that people in the financial media and “analysts”—who appear to get their pulse on sentiment from reading nothing but social media—are officially done pissing themselves, and the market has at least temporarily found some sort of point to bounce off of (even if it continues to eventually move lower again) their respective piss stains can start to dry, and we can move past the large shock of discomfort into the still uncomfortable, but less shocking, choppy waters of trade negotiation.

President Trump was right during his interview a day or two ago when he told reporters that...(READ THIS FULL COLUMN, 100% FREE, HERE).