Tuesday night was fun watching Donald Trump’s “news conference” after winning Michigan and Mississippi.  While watching, I started to read that day’s Wall Street Journal and got engulfed in a few articles.  Then I looked up and saw The Donald hawking his water, wine and steaks.  For a second I was totally lost.  I thought I was watching QVC.  What an interesting primary season.

The first articles (read here) that captured my attention was called “Amid Global Slowdown, U.S. Gets Miscast as Savior.”  As I read about how bad the economies were around the world… and especially compared to ours… I couldn’t help but hear so many of the candidates talking on the trail about how horrible our economy is and how “little Marco” keeps saying the president has destroyed the country in the last seven years.  If that’s the case, he’s in good company with almost all the world leaders.

This article pretty much tells us how the rest of the world is looking for the good old USA to bail out the world since you and I, the American consumers, have money to spend and are actually spending it.  The idea is that this will help pull many other countries out of their financial funk.

Lots of luck with that.  There’s just not enough purchasing power here at home to support global sales around the rest of the world.

The second article I read (read here) talked about the junk-bond market and how the rebound in these bonds seems to be signaling that the U.S. economy is doing ok.  Maybe not great, but ok.  Junk bonds are very low rated, high risk bonds with a higher probability that these companies will go down the tubes.

For months, recession fears have rattled the markets in general but the junk bond market in particular.  Now these risky bonds are staging a comeback, possibly indicating that the economy is settling down and strengthening up.  Again… you’d never know it by listening to the candidates on the trail.

So what’s the bottom line?  Seems we’re limping along better than most countries around the globe, but we still have many problems at home with stagnant incomes, high underemployment and a student debt crisis getting worse by the year.  But not to worry… Bernie will give us free public college, Hillary will roll back trade agreements using email and the Donald will make America great again!