Before the stock market tanked last week, Trump bragged endlessly about how great the economy is. He had every right. After all, the stock market was at an all time high and so far, it still is.
But Trump’s economy hasn’t been great for me and millions of others like me. Let me explain.
My husband and I are seniors. Over the years, we have worked hard and saved what money we could.
At this stage of our lives, we can’t afford to gamble with our money so we’ve put our modest nest egg into what we’ve always believed are safe investments such as bank CDs.
We haven’t made a killing, but as careful savers and spenders, so far, we’ve been relatively happy with the way we’ve been able to navigate through life.
That is until now. Now bank CDs, safe, federally-insured investments, are as low as I can remember–around 1.5 % at most banks.
Our bills keep going up and up, but our income is way down. Will we be able to keep up with inflation? Who knows, but it doesn’t look good.
Starting September 2019, Trump started pushing for negative interest rates. You heard right, negative interest rates.
“In a topsy-turvy world of negative interest rates, borrowers win and get paid while savers are penalized,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, told NBC News.
Bank of America says negative interest rates are a real possibility. That means banks might have to charge people to keep their money in money market accounts and increase fees on checking accounts and mortgages.
While negative interest rates might be good for cat fat borrowers like Donald Trump, they’re horrible for seniors like me.
Trump recently bad mouthed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed, because Powell dismissed the possibility of the U.S. adopting negative interest rates anytime soon.
But who knows how long Powell will hold out? As we all know Trump likes to bully and even fire those who don’t line up with him.
And the feds just slashed interest rates by a half a percentage point this morning in response to the economic fallout from Coronavirus fears.
What does this mean for seniors and other people who can’t afford to gamble or are risk-adverse? It means middle class people like us are screwed.
As seniors, our top earning dollars are behind us. It would be highly unlikely that we could make up for losses incurred if we ventured into the stock market now.
It hardly seems fair that people who’ve done the right thing, who’ve played by the rules, who didn’t gamble, are now getting the shaft.
Are Trump’s senior supporters so rich they don’t care?
Bernie? Biden? Bloomberg? Warren? You all want to be the candidate to beat Trump. We’re listening. What do you have to say?
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