October 24, 2018

Trump: The Fed Chair Hates Me

The S&P 500 is now officially down for the year, ending today about 2 percent under its value at the beginning of January:

How big a deal is this? I don’t know, though I’m a little surprised that investors couldn’t stay excited about a big corporate tax cut for more than a few months. However, President Trump is pretty sure he knows what’s going on. As usual, it’s a personal attack, this time from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:

“Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. Powell “almost looks like he’s happy raising interest rates.”

….The president’s caustic comments about Mr. Powell came as Mr. Trump repeatedly described the economy in personal terms. He referred to economic gains during his time in office as “my numbers,” saying, “I have a hot economy going.” He described his push for growth as a competition with former President Obama’s record, saying that increases under his Democratic predecessor were skewed because of low-interest rates.

Poor Donald. Everyone has it out for him, even the conservative Republican millionaires that he’s personally appointed.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s odd that Trump’s normally excellent attack-dog instincts have failed him on this topic. The self-evident explanation for the stock market decline is that fake news has been excitedly reporting a “blue wave” for the upcoming election, which makes investors nervous that Democrats will take over and ruin the economy. I’m not sure how Trump has missed something so obvious.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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