http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-to-gary-cohn-and-empirical-reality-html.html
The stock market is a terrible proxy for an economy’s well-being. Corporate America’s conventional wisdom is not the revealed truth of the market gods. Multinational corporations and the median American worker have very different interests — and the former’s support for “free trade” is no less fickle and contingent on narrow self-interest than the latter’s is: Apple may want to build its electronics from the cheapest possible commodities, but it will fight like hell to retain the protectionist patents that inflate its profit margins at the consumer’s expense.
All of which is to say: In some parallel universe, the news that the president has decided to disregard the stock market’s feedback, buck corporate America’s common sense on trade policy, and oust the White House’s most influential voice of Wall Street wisdom might be cause for celebration, not trepidation.
But in that universe, Donald Trump is not the president.
The stock market is a terrible proxy for an economy’s well-being. Corporate America’s conventional wisdom is not the revealed truth of the market gods. Multinational corporations and the median American worker have very different interests — and the former’s support for “free trade” is no less fickle and contingent on narrow self-interest than the latter’s is: Apple may want to build its electronics from the cheapest possible commodities, but it will fight like hell to retain the protectionist patents that inflate its profit margins at the consumer’s expense.
All of which is to say: In some parallel universe, the news that the president has decided to disregard the stock market’s feedback, buck corporate America’s common sense on trade policy, and oust the White House’s most influential voice of Wall Street wisdom might be cause for celebration, not trepidation.
But in that universe, Donald Trump is not the president.
