Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

The long awaited Mueller report is out and we got a summary from AG Barr today.  There was not much surprise in Barr's summary and it opened more questions.  Most of these questions may be answered by a full disclosure of Mueller's report.  Whether we get to read the whole thing is unknown at this time.  I will give my take on this and what it means to Trump.

1.  There is no collusion between Trump and the Russians according to the Mueller report summarized by Barr.  I don't doubt that finding and is not a surprise.  I am not sure Trump initially wanted to win the presidency that badly that he would commit treason to get that job.  So this finding is a vindication for Trump for saying no collusion all along.  The question I want answered from the Mueller report is if there was no collusion, why Trump always defended Putin.  Was there something else that Trump owed Putin.  Did Mueller looked closely at his finances?  If so, will that be made public?

2.  Mueller did not decide whether Trump should be tried for obstruction of justice.  He left that up to Barr and Rosenstein.  According to Barr, both he and Rosenstein decided that there was not enough evidence to go forward to charge Trump.  But Barr also noted that Mueller did not exonerate Trump.  If there was no evidence of obstruction of justice, Mueller would have say so and exonerated Trump.  The fact that he did not, it means that to most people, Trump was trying to obstruct justice.  It is just that the man he appointed as AG feels that there is not enough evidence to convict him.  If this occur in another country, would anyone believe that the leader of that country was not trying to obstruct an investigation on himself?

3.  Lot more questions.  As mentioned above, why all the coziness toward Putin?  Why did Trump disagree with the intelligence community about the Russian meddling?  Who did Putin want to win with all the meddling?  How do we prevent this from happening again?  Did Trump violated campaign finance laws by paying off Stormy Daniels?

The GOP and Trump will gloat with what was disclosed today.  The Democrats will keeping digging.  I don't think it changed many minds about Trump.  Maybe he picks up a few percent of the Independents after today.  He may have more problems coming out of Southern District of New York.  I would say that unless the full Mueller report contained some real damage, this was a good day for Trump.

But Friday was a bad day for Trump.  Not because anything with investigation but with the stock market.  It is not just the 460 points loss but because the loss was based on an indicator called yield inversion.  This is where a long term bond yield drops below that of a short term counterpart.  As usually the case, this involves long and short term Treasury investments.  This yield inverse is usually an indication of a coming recession in about a year.  This last occurred in 2007 and we know what happened in 2008.  If this holds true again, then before the 2020 election we will have a recession.  Trump has been exaggerating the success of the economy under him.  If the recession comes, it will be a disaster for him and his backers.