If you claim credit when things are good, should you be blamed when things go bad?

Yes of course. Unless one is insane? Logic doesn’t seem to apply to Trump only winning. Unless in a slim chance that he was right from the start, and everyone in media and politics is corrupt except him, and most news is fake news? Playing devils advocate I would say that President Trump is taking creative visualization and positive thinking on everything to the extreme. He varies from optimistic to pessimistic extremes to whatever works. Maybe he read The Secret from Oprah’s book club.

I think Trump is in the wrong job and the sooner he hands over to someone who knows what he or she is doing the better. How the stock market performs and how Trump performs are two quite different things.

I guess it would depend on the causes. The stock market is an interesting animal. Let’s face it…Trump did nothing to directly cause stocks to rise. But there is rarely a direct driver of these things. The market responds in part to how people feel. If they are feeling secure, they will believe they can risk more in the market. If they are not feeling secure they will not risk their money. All Trump can possibly claim is that he restored confidence and a feeling of security. As for why it went down, there are a number of reason that could happen. First is that for some reason, investor confidence disappeared. If that is the case then Trump holds at a minimum a portion of that blame. However it might be all those that invested and saw the price of stocks skyrocketing realized they could sell and make a bundle. If enough start selling you will also see the reaction of the market that we are seeing now. Did Trump drive that? Probably not. It is a trait of the stock market….buy low, sell high. I guess you could say he is to blame since it would be the natural reaction to a skyrocketing stock market.

If the intention of this question is for honest discussion, I would like to share my thoughts. If it is merely for mindless ridicule of Trump, I’ll be short and then move along.

A market pull back such as we are seeing is typical after a long run of a Bull market rather than the result of any policies. If you want to judge Trump on the market performance you can do it on a single day. The market rose 25% last year and we’ve only given back the gains for this year. Pretty damned good performance if you ask me. Taken all together I would have no problem assigning blame or credit to any President. They usually get it regardless.

For most casual investors, the stock market is no more a valid investment than the craps table in Las Vegas.
People hope beyond hope that their investments in the stock market will increase, and perhaps they will, or maybe they won’t.
All modern presidents can’t wait to take credit for a stock market run. They pray they do not have to deal with a slide.
Any president who takes credit for a run up in the market is trying to make a sale.
Any president who gets blamed for a downturn is a victim of capricious timing.
No president, unless they are crazy and thus over reach their power, can affect the market in the immediate term.
Come on people.
Think for yourselves and stop making everything your opportunity to make a partisan speech.
The President really does not have that much power. Focus on your representatives.
And buy when the market drops.
Like day after tomorrow.
Didn’t you take gov’t classes in high school?
Did you show up in high school?

@josie @Jaxk @seawulf575 – all of you are spouting answers to a question I didn’t ask.

I know about the stock market and its ups and downs, I know about financial history, and I am well aware of the previous US booms and busts.

That’s not what I was asking, although that’s what you chose to answer.

My question had to do with ethics and honesty/integrity. If the fact that it was Trump that I was referring to hits too close to home, then I’ll give another example with ethical implications.

Suppose there is a drug company that has had marvelous success with some new drugs. Things are looking great for them; they advertise, they are the talk of the town. The company is the envy of drug manufacturers everywhere.

And then patients start to die. Likely from the new drugs, but not necessarily. Enough problems to be concerning. You can’t 100% blame the new drugs, but there is strong suspicion.

What does the drug company do? Most would take responsibility and begin to work on what the problem is. Some might blame other companies or other people.

So back to my question: if someone/something has been lauded and celebrated, and even bragged when the medication looked great, what’s the ethical thing to do when things go wrong?

@elbanditoroso
So sorry
Did my best.
Wait for a better answer.

@elbanditoroso Sorry, maybe you didn’t ask the question you think you asked. You asked if you can claim credit when things go good, should you also get blamed when things go bad. At least that is what I thought. You also specifically stated you were referring to the stock market. We answered your question. The fact that you didn’t get the answer you were hoping for doesn’t mean we didn’t answer the question you asked. In the situation you asked about, there are many more factors than the president can absolutely impact. And you make an invalid assumption in your question…that the stock market going down is a bad thing. It can be, but not necessarily. That’s what the stock market does…it goes up and down. When longer term trends are looked at, you can then start to look for broader reasons…unless there is something specific that happened to spark the sell off.
You are asking questions that you want the answer to be that Trump is guilty of something, but the questions don’t drive that way. The fact that you got three answers in a row should actually tell you that. No wait…@flutherother also told you Trump’s performance and the stock market performance are to different things. You didn’t call them out because their answer started with a hating Trump statement which is really all you were looking for.

Honestly, what’s the point in holding Trump responsible for anything he claims? From his own superpowers to the denigration of all and everyone who disagrees with him, he is a man thinking out loud (or rather thinking through his thumbs) minus the filters common to humanity in general. We are regrettably wired to fall back to the assumption that he is “normal”, because that is how we make sense of the world. But what reference points hold up when dealing with a mind incapable of an objective thought?

Given that Trump is a non-stop liar, I pay no attention to what he claims credit for. His latest big whopper of a lie was to claim that he drew a record television audience for his SOTU address. That is demonstrably false. Both Clinton and Obama did better. Your response may be, so what?, but the point is that if he lies about such small and easy to check items, why should we trust anything that he says? For example, he says the crime rate among immigrants is high. Not true. It is lower than the national average. Link

Just a couple of points You seem to want to assume that the reason the market went up is the same reason it went down. It isn’t. Even with the revised question you want the number of lives saved vs the number of lives lost would make a significant difference. If you want to blame Trump for everything that goes wrong. go ahead, you don’t need to be rational to do that. If you just want to ridicule and deride, all you need to do is mention his name in the form of a question. Any question.

@josie – You’re wrong. The stock market is the best investment tool ever created even for the casual investor. If you invest in the market long term, you will make money. Everyone has for the past 100 years. If you want a quick profit, you better know what you’re doing. And a business friendly economy can have a significant effect on the market.

^No. He’s right. It is absolutely gambling…

Trump has little to do with the stock market. If he wants to take credit when it goes up, what else is new? Will he take equal credit when it goes down? Doubtful. So, again, what else is new??

One could accept blame if he/she was at fault, but the same person, one who toots his/her own horn for good fortune, accepting blame doesn’t sound right. A person like that would probably place the failure fault with someone else.