President Donald Trump could not get enough of touting his roaring economy, even as midterm voters just didn’t feel it.
But over on the other side of the Atlantic, analysts and economists are wincing in anticipation of a large economic fireball that apparently will be big enough to be visible at the Thames.
“When you run money in fiscal policy this hot in this stage in the economic cycle, I can tell you it will end in tears,” said Andrew Neil, presenter of The Andrew Neil Report on The Times Radio Friday podcast.
While campaigning in 2024, President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate the entire national debt in just one term. And he insisted he’d do it without cutting “one penny” from Social Security or Medicare — with nothing more than manic economic growth, crypto, and tariffs. But critics are calling Trump’s “absurd” plans “fantasies,” while Neil says the bill is coming due with disastrous consequences.
“In the late stages of this economic cycle monetary policy and fiscal policy are both running hot hot, hot,” complained Neil to Gerard Baker, columnist at The Times and editor at large at The Wall Street Journal. “You don’t run hot on both [of these] at the end of an economic cycle. You’re supposed to run both after we’ve hit an economic recession, then you run things hot.”
Broad money is the sum of all liquid financial instruments held by money-holding sectors, and it makes a good unit of measurement for an economy’s money supply. But Neil said America’s broad money definition is “now rising by 7 percent, which he calls “a hell of a lot.”
“Plus, the deficit is at least 6.5 percent, probably headed for 7 percent of GDP,” said Neil.
But the recent election is not necessarily the economy’s salvation because Neil said a divided government will only make spending worse worse because of all the horse trading necessary to pass a budget.
“The Trumpies will say ‘give us more for defense and you can have more for health.’ Or ‘give us more for the border wall and you can have more for welfare.’ And then both get more as a result and the deficit will get even worse,” said Neil. “Either all the economics that I’ve been taught all my life since university has been wrong and a waste of time or something big is coming, regardless of AI. When you run money in fiscal policy this hot in this stage in the economic cycle, I can tell you it will end in tears.”
Worse, Neil said a “nightmare scenario” is brewing with AI if the boom goes bust—which seems more and more likely.
“The FED will only have limited room to maneuver [to save the economy], not only because its interest rates are already running high but because inflation is still running high and we have the terrible, terrible specter of stagflation [because] the fiscal situation is already completely out of control,” said Neil.
“If you thought last week’s election was a steady transition to the post-Trump world and that it would convey Trump peacefully to his retirement, you’re going to be in for a bit of a shock,” said Baker. “Fasten your seatbelts on the political front and on the economic front. It’s going to be wild.”
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