Senators get inside information
Oh did they now.
A review of public statements by Trump administration officials urging confidence in the markets as the coronavirus spread reveals a stark contrast with the private behaviour of some GOP lawmakers.
While the president and his top economic adviser late February were urging Americans to show confidence in the stock market and invest as the coronavirus spread, at least two GOP senators had already privately dumped stocks — after receiving classified briefings on the damage likely to be caused by the disease.
In other words Trump and Kudlow were telling people to buy stocks when they knew the market was going to tank. Meanwhile were they putting their own money at risk? Nah.
Deputy Labor Secretary in the Obama admin:
But we now know that lawmakers in Trump’s own party were taking a very different course of action. At least two had been briefed with information from government officials on the likely devastating impact of the disease which contrasted sharply with the White House’s optimistic messaging about the likely minimal impact of the virus.
They lie to us but not to each other.
That blurt about the “Stock Market” seemed, at the time, a random and transparent and childish ploy to try and keep people from panicking. In retrospect it seems like all that as well as something a bit more sinister.
It’s just as I said a couple of days ago*, they needed to keep the market bouyant to get a decent price for the shares they wanted to dump and a bargain price for those they wanted to buy.
The loss of a few thousand lives is sad, of course, but these poor devils might have lost a lot of money, and that would have been a real tragedy – to their greedy, unfeeling minds, anyway.
* http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/i-didnt-do-it-they-did-it/