OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Whatever Americans thought about former President Trump at the end of his term, a majority were at least somewhat optimistic about their future.
As the country was emerging from the pandemic, the economic optimism index, according to an Investors Business Daily/TIPP survey, stood at 59.8, which was considerably higher than the 20-year average of 49.7, the latter of which was considered “slightly pessimistic.”
“The index high of 62.9 was reached in March of 2002, six months after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans rallied behind the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks and confidence grew that the post-9/11 economy would not go into recession as widely feared,” IBD reported. “The index bottomed in August 2011 at 35.8, as the economy struggled to emerge from the financial crisis and key initiatives to boost economic growth had yet to have an impact.”
Today, the index stands much closer to the bottom figure, which, perhaps coincidentally, also occurred when Joe Biden was atop the halls of power as vice president to President Barack Obama.
Issues & Insights reports:
Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech about the economy, saying that “as I go across the country, our economy has gone from being on the mend to on the move.” What country is Biden talking about, exactly? Because here in the U.S., the economy went from booming under President Donald Trump to disaster under Biden.
The latest evidence of Biden’s detachment from reality comes from the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, which plunged 9.5% in May, dropping down to 41.2 (anything under 50 signals pessimism).
That puts it below the Index’s worst reading during the height of the COVID pandemic, when it bottomed out at 44 in July 2020. By the time Biden took office, it had rebounded and was back above 50, where the Index had been during the entirety of the Trump administration.
The report noted further that the IBD/TIPP Financial Stress Index has skyrocketed along with inflation to 69.3, where any number above 50 indicated heightened stress levels. That’s roughly where the index was during the 2008 financial crisis; in all, this index has soared 22 percent under Biden’s presidency, I&I reported.
“For Biden to say the economy ‘is on the move’ is truly delirious. GDP was down 1.4% in the first quarter, and nearly half of adults think we are already in a recession, the IBD/TIPP poll found,” the report continued.
“Biden also bragged about how the economy created ‘8.3 million jobs in my first 15 months in office – a record.’ Big deal,” I&I added.
That’s because during Trump’s final nine months in office the economy added an astounding 12.5 million jobs, recovering well over half of those that had been lost “during the pointless COVID lockdowns,” I&I said.
Looking at it another way, the report continued, the jobs recovery that was underway during Trump’s final year has dramatically slowed under “Build-Back-Better Biden,” with the economy still around 1 million jobs short of the pre-pandemic peak.
“Biden also likes to boast about wage growth, without pointing out that inflation has climbed faster than wages, leaving workers worse off – real wages are down 3% since he took office. This, too, is a dramatic turnaround from the Trump years, when real wages climbed 10%,” I&I reported.
The report noted that the IBD/TIPP survey found that just 18 percent of respondents said that their wages were keeping pace with inflation.
Another favorite line Biden uses is: “The stock market has gone up exponentially since I’ve been president.”
“That was supposed to prove that he was a capitalist in good standing,” I&I notes.
“But notice how you don’t hear Biden talk about the stock market anymore. That’s because it’s swooning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,200 points Wednesday, its biggest decline since the pandemic panic set in in 2020. Overall, the market has lost almost all the ground it gained after he took office. Over the same stretch in Trump’s first term, the Dow climbed 23%,” the report said.
