This post was originally published on this site
“ ‘I think it is, aside from perhaps James Buchanan’s lead into the Civil War, the worst presidency in American history.’ ”
That’s economist Jeffrey Sachs, former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, sharing his view on the Trump administration in a recent interview with CNBC in which he warned that the president’s rhetoric toward China will have dangerous consequences.
CNBC asked several economists about their thoughts on Trump’s presidency, and most offered up rather negative assessments, with Sachs’s take the most extreme.
However, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who once called Trump “a madman who insists on steering straight for the iceberg,” actually stepped up to give the president credit.
The Nobel laureate praised Trump for breaking Washington’s “obsession” with budget deficits, even if he did it for all the wrong reasons. Still, it “has been a positive,” Krugman said. If we’d elected Hillary Clinton, he added, calls for fiscal austerity “would have been a bad thing for the economy.”
Others sharing their thoughts include Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi and Nobel-Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, both of whom expressed concerns over Trump’s moves toward deglobalization.
Watch some of the highlights:
Meanwhile, the stock market just keeps churning out gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.35% , S&P 500 SPX, +1.00% and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.60% all starting the week on a positive note in Monday’s trading session.
