How did he do?

Yesterday morning the President met with major financial executives to talk about ways he could help stem what is definitely not a panic in the global economy triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said Wednesday that the current turmoil caused by the coronavirus isn’t stemming from the financial system.

“This is not a financial crisis,” Corbat said during a White House meeting. “The banks and the financial system are in strong shape and we are here to help.”

Leaders of the biggest U.S. banks were summoned to Washington by President Donald Trump to discuss ways to support small businesses and markets. Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Charles Scharf of Wells Fargo, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs and Stephen Schwarzman of alternative investments giant Blackstone were among the CEOs present at the meeting.

Nothing to worry about. We're from Wall Street. We're here to help. Well, okay, here is the helpful thing they told the President. They told him he was doing a great job and that they also believed the media was overstating the severity of the problem. But it would be helpful if he could do something to "change the psychology of the public."

At meeting with finance executives at the White House today, according to person familiar w it, the execs played to the president's ego - told him the fundamentals of the economy are strong and that he made it that way - but that the psychology of the public needs to change.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 11, 2020

Soooo last night the President went on TV where he called for 1) An arbitrary and confusing ban on travel into the country from Europe. 2) Tax breaks for "certain individuals and businesses negatively impacted."  He didn't say what that means specifically but we did read Tuesday that Republicans were considering tax relief for hotels and oil companies. 3) A reckless "payroll tax holiday" that would endanger the stability and future of Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, basically the very social safety net programs we need to be beefing up at a moment like this.

One thing we should do right away is implore liberals to hold off on their go-to declaration that "This is not normal!"  In fact, Trump's proposals are very much in line with the Republican response to every disaster.  They immediately look for ways to turn it to the advantage of the wealthy. The PATRIOT Act with its sweeping expansion of state surveillance and police powers went into effect a month after 9/11. The neocon imperialists who populated the Bush Administration then pressed us into a world-destroying war in Iraq.  The Katrina flood, itself a result of federal neglect, unleashed a torrent of corruption and failure at all levels of government enriching landlords, developers, and other schemers of great wealth while displacing thousands of New Orleanians. The 2008 financial crisis saw an immediate unprecedented bailout of the major banks while leaving most Americans to struggle with greater and greater states of precarity, underemployment, and debt. 

After the President's speech people began making lists of better ideas than his, some of which... sick leave and food aid, in particular..  made their way into an emergency relief bill, that will now have to be watered down because Mitch McConnell rejected it out of hand.  Meanwhile nobody objected to an immediate injection of $1.5 trillion into the bond markets in order so save all those bankers Trump met with yesterday.  This isn't to say some monetary stimulus is an entirely bad idea at this point. It is one of those things where a trillion dollars can suddenly materialize without anyone asking, "How are you gonna pay for that?"

But maybe it wouldn't have been  necessary if Trump had only managed to help out that that "psychology of the public" thing he was supposed to be working on.  How did that go? Not so great.

The stock market has suffered a relentless, breathtaking drop — moving deeper into bear territory. Stocks fell so fast Thursday morning that it triggered a 15-minute halt in trading for the second time this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,352 points, or nearly 10% — the biggest one-day drop since 1987. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were each down more than 9%.

Those indexes are now down at least 27% from record highs set just last month. The Dow is now down nearly 8,400 points from its peak on Feb. 12.

Thursday's stock market drop followed a nearly 6% plunge in the Dow on Wednesday, when the blue chip index entered a bear market, defined as falling 20% from its peak. The S&P 500 is now also in a bear market, ending an 11-year winning streak

Anyway here we are muddling through another shock where the only possible policy response is we give the ruling class whatever it wants in an instant and the rest of us have to scrap and fight to justify our very existence.  It's the same story with any 21st Century crisis. Why should this be any different?