by Tom Ozimek vai The Epoch Times,
Former President Donald Trump predicted Friday that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, America will suffer the biggest stock market crash in history - followed by another Great Depression-style event.
President Trump made the remark in a post on social media, in which he said the economy under President Joe Biden is in “terrible” shape as high inflation has hammered American households and eroded their buying power.
“The only thing that is keeping the economy ‘alive’ is the fumes of what we accomplished during the Trump administration,” the former president wrote, adding that, by some measures, the cumulative level of inflation since he left office is over 30 percent.
Official government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that prices have risen by around 17 percent since President Biden took office. However, an alternative measure of inflation that uses the same methodology that the government used to measure inflation in the 1980s puts this figure at roughly twice that figure, so over 30 percent.
Even though President Biden’s economic advisers have pointed to cooling inflation and a robust job market as signs that his “Bidenomics” policies are working, there’s been a chorus of economic indicators suggesting otherwise.
“The inflation has calmed down a little bit now, but that’s because the economy is not good. The jobs numbers are fake because millions of people are not looking for jobs,” Trump said.
Some of those indicators include job openings falling to their lowest level since March 2021, new orders for U.S.-made goods suffering their sharpest drop in more than three years, and a closely watched factory activity gauge showing that U.S. manufacturing activity contracted in November for the 13th consecutive month.
Stock Market Crash?
Still, with markets expecting the Fed to hit the brakes on more interest hikes as inflation has eased in recent months, stock markets have risen and consumer sentiment saw an uptick in December.
The benchmark S&P 500 is up around 24 percent in 2023 and hovering near its all-time high, while the Dow Jones recently rose to a record high.
It’s a development President Trump attributed to expectations around next year’s election.
“The stock market is only high because people & institutions believe & expect me to win the presidential election of 2024,” he wrote, before adding:
“If I don’t win, it is my prediction that we will have a stock market ‘crash’ worse than that of 1929 - a Great Depression.”
The Wall Street crashes of late October 1929 - known as Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday - were the worst in U.S. history.
Not only did it produce the largest stock market decline ever (the Dow Jones fell 89 percent from top to bottom), it also contributed to the Great Depression; an economic crisis of epic proportions that gripped America for nearly a whole decade in the 1930s.
President Trump’s grim prediction for an economic meltdown if he fails to win the race for the White House comes amid recent polling showing that he leads President Biden by 18 points on who is the most trusted with the economy—the single most important issue for voters.
“There’s a new narrative; I’m telling you the reason the stock market is up is only because people think I’m going to win the election,” Trump asserted.
Biden Approval Rating Hits Record Low on Economic Worries
President Joe Biden’s approval rating hit an all-time low, a recent survey showed, with voters giving the president especially poor marks on immigration and the economy.
Just 34 percent of voters in the latest Monmouth University Poll approve of President Biden’s performance, which is down sharply from 54 percent shortly after he assumed office in 2021 and the lowest level in the history of the survey.
More than two-thirds disapprove of his performance in the areas of immigration and inflation.
Even though inflation has come down from a recent 40-plus-year high of 9.1 percent in annualized terms in June 2022, many months of elevated price pressures have taken a toll on American families.
The Heritage Foundation recently estimated that inflation is costing the typical American family around $7,400 in lost annual income. And while official government data shows inflation up 17 percent since President Biden took office, an alternative measure developed by economist John Williams estimates that it’s around twice as high.
On immigration, since President Biden took office, there have been around 8 million illegal immigrant encounters nationwide, including a record 3.2 million in fiscal year 2023 alone.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) logged the busiest November on record last month, with encounters at the southern border totaling 242,418, according to its monthly report. This figure is higher than even the highest month seen under President Trump.
December is on track to set a record for the highest number of illegal alien encounters for a single month ever, according to shocking preliminary data obtained by Fox News on Dec. 29, indicating that there have already been over 276,000 apprehensions, even excluding the final three days of the month. The current record of 269,735 was set in September.
At the same time, a mere 3 in 10 Americans said President Biden is giving enough attention to issues that are most important to them, per the Monmouth poll.
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