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The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at a historic high, recently flirting with 40,000.
The value of the full U.S. stock market comes in around $49 trillion. For my China-bashing readers, American equities are almost seven times that of Red China.
America really is great.
We welcome, but don’t need, thousands of red-bill caps to make us great again. America is already great.
OK, let’s Make America Greater!
America is, beyond doubt and by far, the most prosperous nation in the world — the greatest in history, long before (and since) President Donald Trump.
Think back to 2000. The tail end of the golden age of supply-side aka voodoo economics under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Way back then, supply-sider James K. Glassman, together with economist Kevin Hassett, wrote a book titled “Dow 36,000.”
It got enthusiastic blurbs from a few establishment figures. Yet for the most part the establishment treated the authors, as it did all supply-siders (like me), as raving lunatics.
Why the incredulity?
Because the Dow then was then around 10,000 (closer to 20,000 inflation adjusted, but … you get the point). Glassman and Hassett predicted a triple increase in the value of the top stocks.
Voodoo economics!
Except, of course, it happened.
Admittedly … almost 20 years after the authors’ prediction.
They could not have known that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama perversely would drift from the economic policies that Reagan implemented, driving the Dow from around 800 to around 2,300.
Or the orphaning of the policies of Clinton, who extended — and in consequential ways enhanced — the Reagan formula, driving the Dow from around 3,300 to around 10,000.
Not inflation adjusted, but … you get the idea.
Reagan and Clinton tripled the Dow. Twice.
Tripling again should not have sounded preposterous… except to an Establishment crippled by a failure of imagination. Establishments bitterly cling to the status quo.
Neither author of Dow 36,000 was injured by the ridicule. Glassman went on to become the head of a highly successful public relations firm. Hassett, chairman of the Trump White House Council of Economic Advisers, was recently touted in a Wall Street Journal report as a top pick for Federal Reserve chairman if Trump gets reelected president.
Pro wrestling has nothing on politics for kayfabe (covfefe?). Don’t fall for the hostile posturing!
Face facts. The Dow has been riding an up-and-to-the-right arrow since the end of the Obama administration, through both the Trump and Biden presidencies.
Admittedly, with a spike down on Trump’s watch from COVID-19 and a spike up as we bounced back from COVID-19 on President Joe Biden’s watch. (An Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch.)
Both Trump and Biden rode the Dow up. The Dow was around 25,000 when Trump took the oath of office. Around 30,000 when Biden was sworn in.
Trump’s 20% jump over four bumpy years?
Impressive.
As of this writing, the Dow closed just shy of 40,000. Biden’s 33% jump over nearly four shamrock-blessed years?
Impressive.
The Dow is only one measure of national prosperity. Yet it is a pretty good one.
Maybe, rather than bashing each other, Americans should be counting our lucky stars at our ongoing economic growth … and finding ways to accelerate it. Americans rightly love equitable prosperity. We are good at it.
Now, Donald Trump is a master braggart, second to none in declaring himself “the greatest.” So are The Donald’s claims factual?
As President Trump said in his farewell address, “We also built the greatest economy in the history of the world.”
Sounds to me like he’s here adhering to a principle they never actually taught in journalism school, to wit: “Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.”
As I wrote at Newsmax almost a year ago, something amply documented by countless authoritative sources: “Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton fomented sustained 4%-range growth. Their successors did much worse: George W. Bush, 2.25%; Barack Obama, 1.59%; Donald Trump, 1.03%. To be fair, pre-COVID President Donald Trump clocked in at 2.3%, 2.9%, and 2.3%. Not much better than Bush.”
What’s next? O.G. supply-side thought leader Charles Kadlec in 1999 published “Dow 100,000: Fact or Fiction.”
Whoever we elect in 2024, let’s demand another trebling of your stock market wealth under the resumption of a new voodoo.
Don’t fall for the political kayfabe, the feigned hostility. America under both Democrats and Republicans has prospered.
We are at core a “the business of America is business” kind of country. Despite the foibles of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, we seem poised to prosper.
What’s next?
Dow 100,000 anybody?
Ralph Benko, co-author of “The Capitalist Manifesto” and chairman and co-founder of “The Capitalist League,” is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko’s reports — More Here.
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