to use when the economy does turn down. It is so funny to watch political reactions to data points like the job report below. When it's disappointing, and dems say "thanks Trump!", they get blasted by Trumpies for rooting for the economy to be bad. Which they all do as well when a dem is in charge, and they are all only too happy to over-represent both the importance of a single data point (especially taken alone) and the degree to which any president really impacts it.

Interest rates are plummeting and deficits are exploding more than a decade into the longest expansion in history (so if one must assign credit or blame for a single jobs report, they should say "Thanks Trump!; Thanks Obama!"). But a recession is a matter of when, not if. We don't have the fiscal or monetary bullets we might want to address it when it comes.

I couldn't imagine we wouldn't have at least a mild recession by 2020 when Trump was elected (not because of Trump, just because of cycles). Now, I think odds favor continued slow GDP growth through the election. And I really can't imagine we won't have one by 2024. Not that expansions have expiration dates, but the smart long term move might be to root to lose in 2020, just based on these silly assignments of blame and credit for every little data point that comes out, because I think whoever wins in 2020 will be saddled with a recession. With limits on what he will be able to do about it, because here we are with a great jobs report 10+ years into the longest expansion in history, and deficits and interest rates are acting like we're in the Great Recession.