THE TRUMP ECONOMY – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:  Like him or loathe him, there's really no doubt that there's a "Trump effect" that's boosting the American economy dramatically.  Our quote of the day from American Greatness: 

It’s the economy, stupid. We’ve heard the phrase so many times over the past 25 years that it has descended into cliché if not outright parody. But it’s been repeated so often because it highlights a basic truth about politics: jobs matter. And since the election, the job growth has been extraordinary.

It’s been so strong that it prompted Jamie Dimon, president and CEO of Chase, the nation’s largest bank, a registered Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, to back President Trump’s economic agenda. Dimon declared it has “woken up the animal spirits” in the United States. His comments came in the midst of a spate of good economic news released this week.

Trump himself tweeted, “Great Again: +235,000” after the Labor Department reported a higher than expected 235,000 new jobs were created in February. This came on the heels of a report earlier in the week from ADP and Moody’s Analytics showing 298,000 new private sector jobs in the same month. Better yet, the Labor Department report showed strong wage growth and that 340,000 workers who sensed better prospects came off the sidelines and re-entered the workforce. This addresses a key critique of the weak Obama era recovery after the 2008 financial panic: namely, that the low reported unemployment rate was misleading because of the large number of working age Americans who stopped looking for work and were therefore not counted in official government unemployment statistics.

COMMENT:  If Trump can keep this going, add a needed tax cut, build our defenses and run a decent foreign policy, he can become, to use Henry Kissinger's term, a "substantial" president.  He could also force the modern Democratic Party deeper into the shadows and even drive it out of existence, to be replaced by a new, more responsible liberal party.

Pipe dreams?  I'm not so sure. 

March 12, 2017