Over the last 12 months Donald Trump has praised the US economy for its robust strength; lowest ever, highest ever blah blah blah. Then, the other night, the DOW fell over 1000 points equating with x amount of dollars. The explanation given is that as workers are paid more the profit levels are lessened.
Ok, let’s break this down.
In 2008 Barak Obama inherited an economy which was teetering on the edge of Great Depression era depression. Obama brought in his own equivalent of the Glass-Steagall act separating commercial and private banking meaning that banks cannot gamble with your life savings. America is still feeling the effects of 2008 ten years later and after having to bring in these laws (repealed by Clinton with policy copied by the British New Labour paving way to Boom and Bust) to save the economy and start to rebuild and improve with the minimum wage becoming nationalised at $10.10, health care and so on.
Obama’s first year did not show record highs as he inherited a mess and it was only in his second year that his work started to bear fruit. Obama left office with the US in very robust position. Along comes Mr Trump whose first year shows growth and yet as his first year becomes his second year his labour starts to bear fruit (cheeseburgers in his case) and the DOW plummets. Much of Trump’s success is a continuation of Obama’s success as he inherited Bush’s collapse and so on and so forth. Trump’s big campaign promise of The Wall (oooo!) was a continuation on a wall which was started by George W Bush and continued by Obama, in fact all that Trump can claim credit for in the first year is having the highest number of lies told in one year (lies which take 5 seconds to disprove) and the lowest approval rating plus an investigation which could tear apart the government branches as we know it.
Herodotus said ‘Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances’ and another example of this can be seen in the franchise Star Wars. The latest film took $1.3 billion and the one before it $2 billion. Yet, fans have come out to show their displeasure for the latest film. However, people point to the Box Office takings and say it was a success and so far two new trilogies have been planned, one by the people who made Game Of Thrones to make it more ‘adult’. With standalone films about Solo, Fett et al plus new novels, toys etc (George Lucas rather cleverly knew that the money would be in the toys so when the original films came out he took less pay and instead took the royalties for the toys) coming out Disney predict big things, based on the Box Office takings. However, the Box office is more to do with the brand than the quality of the films. In China the film took $7 million as, for some reason, China was never given the opportunity to embrace religious soldiers rebelling against an authoritative Empire meaning that on the strength of the film alone the Chinese public said no thanks with it closing after a couple of weeks.
The economic success of Trump and Disney’s Star Wars is built upon previous factors such as brand loyalty and now both have had their chance to make their own mark it will be interesting to see where their respective markets go from here as ‘be not deceived…for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’
‘till next time
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