Today’s stock market activity looks like the work of three men: Larry, Curly and Moe.

This morning news reporters breathlessly claimed that President Trump has put a hold on his promised tariffs against imported goods. Then the markets went crazy as nobody could decide if the reports were accurate (no, he didn’t – yes, he did – wait, is this fake news or not?). Financial advisors and political pundits flip-flopped like catfish in the bottom of a boat. I saw the DOW and NASDAQ drop 3% and then bounce back to 2% gains inside of 15 minutes.

All of this gyration makes clear that the stock market is not a real economic indicator. And that the news and political folks play on our emotions constantly. And that our level of economic sophistication, not to mention our attention spans, have atrophied to something like the third-grade level.

In reality, nothing in the economy is different today than last month. But the mere mention of any Trump initiative is sure to send everybody into a tizzy. Those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome believe that he is hell-bent on destroying our country (and the world), because he is a Nazi Fascist Orange Man who wants revenge for being treated so badly by so many for so long.

The fact is, our stock market has been wildly over-valued for a long time, and the recent downturn is no different from any correction before. Remember that nasty inflation during the Biden years that caused prices to go crazy? During all of that inflation, the stock market continued to float higher and higher. Analysts touted greater sales and profits by our domestic businesses. But sales were up only because of inflated prices, not because more units were being produced and sold – each dollar in the system was worth less. And profits were higher because sales were higher.

This disconnect between production and prices caused the stock market to blow up artificially, and sooner or later it had to pop.

Maybe the threat of tariffs scared some people into a doom-and-gloom selloff. But folks, it was going to happen anyway, just like it has many times before. And the market has always recovered before, usually in a matter of a few months.

Trump is just shaking things up and trying to drag the world economy back to some semblance of sanity where our debt doesn’t increase by a trillion bucks every couple of months, 20% of working-age men aren’t home on disability, and we don’t send checks to people who died 50 years ago.

Watching all this chaos, I can’t help but chuckle a little bit. Nyuk, nyuk nyuk.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side