Trump Ban, Farage Stupidity, Market Crash

Not for nothing do those out on the right like to portray left-wingers as out of touch with the reality of modern business and finance: there is also the mildly inconvenient fact that, truth be told, all too many right-wingers know even less about it, as today’s events have shown.

Donald, where's yer braincells?

The pundit need not be a man of intellectual substance

The news overnight was that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump had had another of those great, really great, the greatest ideas: he was imposing a travel ban between Schengen Zone countries and the USA. With a straight face, he “accused the EU of failing to take ‘the same precautions’ as the US in fighting the [Corona]virus”, according to the BBC.

The USA has been a total shambles in fighting Covid-19, and in large part it is down to the crashing ineptitude of Trump, a cheap New York real estate huckster who is now totally out of his depth. Some warned what would happen. But the right didn’t want to know.

Peter Jukes observed “Trump shutting down travel to all countries except the UK is one of the more disastrous consequences of the Trump, Brexit, Putin axis. Its consequences are economically incalculable”. But Trump’s pal Nigel “Thirsty” Farage gurgled “Drastic but necessary measures. The UK is now treated as an independent country”.

Farage was backed up by the equally stupid Martin Daubney: "Ironic that it’s taken the [Coronavirus Pandemic] & Trump’s Schengen travel ban to underline fact that the EU’s sacred freedom of movement principle has long been a disaster waiting to happen. Without control you always have a greater propensity for chaos. Disease, terror, crime”.

No mention that the US has not, for instance, banned travel to and from China, from where the Covid-19 virus first came. Nor that Trump’s proclamation exempted countries like the UK and Ireland where his empire just happens to have golf resorts.

In any case, as in October 1929, the day of reckoning was soon with us: earlier today, the FTSE100 plunged around 6%, with European indices suffering similar falls. Then, as so many had already predicted, as the NYSE opened, as on Black Thursday, there was once more a rush to sell. The market fell precipitously - by over 7%. Trading was suspended.

Trading on Wall Street has now resumed: as I type, the Dow is down over 8.5%. The FTSE is over 2,000 points below its January peak. The Dow has dropped almost 2,000 points today already. As Shaun Lawson, summing up today’s market falls, concluded “The reason for most of this? This historic day of calamity? Trump's European ban. He's very likely destroyed his own chances of re-election just like that”. Quite.

Yet there was Mr Thirsty, back on Monday, being once again feted by the BBC and gifted an appearance on Newsnight, although he has never been an MP and is no longer an MEP. To pontificate on Covid-19. A subject on which he knows not unadjacent to zero.

As the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr put it, “There are so many amazing aspects to this, starting with fact that Nigel Farage was with Ted Cruz 3 days ago. Who has now self-isolated. It might not be only disinformation he’s spreading there”.

Right-wing stupidity has just met reality. And, as it was in Vietnam, it has been smashed.

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