Even before Donald Trump won the election, the media were attacking his economic policies and saying he isn't qualified to be president.  As the good news on the economy pours in and he is winning on trade deals and other things, the attacks continue.  Instead of reporting the good news, the complicit media trot out Lanny Davis with fake news stories, Stormy Daniels, Omarosa (whom they couldn't stand before), and anyone else willing to trash Trump.  That is the only agenda.  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Apple are blocking opposing thought as fast as they can.  The night of the election in 2016, Paul Krugman, someone who is called an expert, predicted economic disaster and called Trump and the businessmen he surrounded himself with as ignorant.  Of course he supported Obama, who gave us the slowest economic recovery in seventy years.

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging.  When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty.  The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world's most important economy would be very bad news.  What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in, eight years after the great financial crisis.

So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.  I suppose we could get lucky somehow.  But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.

Here's Mark Zandi, who supported Hillary's and Obama's policies, projected weak growth under Trump:

Zandi is projecting that GDP growth under four years of President Trump will be less than 2% per year, below the 2.2% he had been forecasting before the election.  "That is not a big difference in any given year, but it is meaningful over a four-year period," writes Zandi.  We have heard that retail big box stores and manufacturing were dead – and every day we see the predictions of disaster were wrong.  We have also been told that Trump's policies basically help the rich but I doubt if it is the rich that are helping Target, Kohls, Walmart and TJ Maxx and others.

Oops!

It wasn't too long ago that analysts bemoaned the onset of the "retail apocalypse," but retail earnings reports coming out in the past two weeks have them singing a different tune.

On Wednesday, Target's earnings presented investors with hope for the future and probably granted them a sigh of relief – the retailer flew past Wall Street's expectations and saw its biggest sales growth in 13 years.  Target reported that comparable sales increased by 6.5 percent, buoyed by stronger foot traffic at physical stores, and e-commerce sales have grown by 41 percent since a year ago.

On the earnings call, Brian Cornell, chairman and executive officer of Target Corp., said the favorable results come from not only a booming economy, but the labors of Target's $7 billion plan it impacted in early 2017, which included improving delivery and pickup options, adding more private label brands, remodeling stores and introducing smaller store formats.

The company is the latest discount retailer to paint a picture of high sales returns and an increase in foot traffic in their earnings reports, stemming from more shoppers heading to stores and initiatives to clean up the retail environment.  Walmart, Nordstrom, Home Depot, Kohl's and TJ Maxx all reported anywhere from 3 to 8 percent growth in sales at their physical stores as well as double-digit percentages of a sales boost in e-commerce sales, all beating Wall Street expectations.

And this and this:

As 'soft' survey data continues to catch down to 'hard' real economic data's recent demise, Conference Board Confidence shuns the slump and explodes higher to 133.4 (exp 126.6) - the highest since Oct 2000.

Current Conditions spiked to 172.2 (18 year highs), Expectations rebounded to 107.6 (highest since Feb), driving the headline to Oct 2000 highs[.]

Most of the media tried to chase out Jared Kushner early on and certainly will not list his accomplishments, but the Washington Examiner has done just that:

President Trump's secret weapon and son-in-law has struck again.

Insiders say that Jared Kushner was key to nailing down the revision to the North American Free Trade Agreement announced Monday, working with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the Canadians, and especially Mexico's Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.

"This is one of his most significant accomplishments," said an administration official of Kushner.

Kushner, married to first daughter Ivanka Trump, has been a top domestic and foreign policy adviser to the president since the 2016 election.  He has been involved in several major agenda victories for the White House, among them the push for prison reform, bringing jobs to the U.S. from overseas, working up a Middle East peace timeline, nailing down the 2028 Summer Olympics, and securing soccer's World Cup in North America in 2026.

"He has a close relationship with Mexico. It is just natural that he was brought into the NAFTA and other talks," said the official, who added that Kushner has been working with U.S. officials on NAFTA reforms for a year and a half.

The media will continue to lose public support as long as they just regurgitate Democrat talking points instead of even attempting to report based on facts.

Photo credit: Mark Vadon.