Joe Biden’s tumultuous year and a half of pretending to be president has seen the fall and rise of many things in the United States: gas prices, of course, are rising through the roof, along with prices on pretty much everything else. But for the stock market, it’s a different story altogether. Yahoo Finance reported Friday that U.S. stocks have just endured their longest losing streak since 2001; in other words, Joe Biden’s presidency has had an effect on the U.S. economy that is equivalent to 9/11.
This is not in any way to diminish the untold suffering that resulted from the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were brutally murdered. There is no equivalent for that and no mitigation of its horror. The analogy between then and now is not in that but in the fact that the economy is suffering to a degree that we have not seen since the immediate aftermath of that terrible day.
According to Yahoo Finance, the major stock indexes were “heading for steep weekly losses as concerns over the resilience of corporate profits in the face of inflation resurged this week.” Luckily, Old Joe’s Commie pals threw us a lifeline: “the S&P 500 traded lower, erasing earlier gains after China’s central bank unexpectedly cut a benchmark interest rate to offer some relief to borrowers in the country still grappling with a widespread COVID-19 outbreak.”
Nonetheless, “the index dropped more than 1.5%, bringing it on intraday basis lower by more than 20% from its recent record close from Jan. 3. If the losses hold through market close, the S&P 500 will have entered a bear market.” Well, of course, we will. That is as certain as Joe’s next teleprompter gaffe.
Meanwhile, the news from the other indexes was no better: “the Dow shed more than 400 points, or 1.4%, and the Nasdaq dropped more than 2% during intraday trading. Treasury yields sank, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note sinking to just above 2.8%, and U.S. crude oil prices edged up to more than $112 per barrel.” And this has been going on for a while: “the losses Friday for the major U.S. stock indexes extended a slide seen earlier this week. As of Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 was on track for a weekly loss of 5.4% — its biggest since January. And the index was also on track to post a seventh straight weekly loss, or its longest losing streak since 2001. The Dow and Nasdaq paced toward weekly losses of 5% and 6.2%, respectively.”