Trump is #1 in yet another category. He beat out George W. Bush for the biggest quarterly destruction of wealth in our history. I expect that it is the biggest for any country ever.
The graph above is from a Federal Reserve analysis of the change in net worth of Americans since 1952. Here is a Google sheet with the raw data.
The $4.5 T drop in the stock market valuation in 2018 Q4 was 50% more than the next worst quarter, 2008 Q4. That was the nadir of the Bush Great Recession, if you have forgotten. However, this time real estate and other investments didn’t tank also, so the total drop was a bit more ($110 B, just pocket change) than ten years before. Of course neither one of them could match Herbert Hoover on a percentage basis.
There are about 330 million Americans, so the total $3.7 T drop in net worth averages out to more than a $10,000 loss for every man, woman, and child in the country. The good news is that only half of Americans won stocks, so that while Jeff Bezos got clobbered the typical Amazon fulfillment center worker was untouched.
So what is it about businessmen who become President? Maybe we should stick with politicians.
via Barry Ritholtz and @TBPInvictus.