Earlier today, CNBC’s Steve Liesman made two very important, in fact “critical”, if about one year overdue, discoveries.
The first one was that Americans are angry.
According to the CNBC All-America Survey, a majority of Americans are angry about both the political and the economic system.
Perhaps if CNBC had discovered this sooner, it would have figured out that the reason it no longer reports its ratings to Nielsen has something to do with its underlying “rosy” slant on things, one which perhaps brings out people’s, well, anger. That and the occasional informercial for Ferrari and million dollar homes.
The second discovery is that angry Americans largely support Trump over Hillary, something we have discussed since last summer.
As Liesman puts it, nearly three-fourths of the public is angry or dissatisfied with the political system in Washington, compared with 56 percent who are angry or dissatisfied about the economy. This group favors Trump on the economy over Clinton 28 percent to 21 percent.
Of those dissatisfied or angry with the economic system, Trump leads on the economy 27 percent to 19 percent for Clinton.
All of these “surprises” should have been obvious. But then the survey revealed several findings which surprised even us.
First, and rather curiously, income isn’t correlated with anger, with angry respondents found both among the rich and the poor. 55% of people who earn $100,000 or more are dissatisfied or angry with the economic system, the same percentage as those who earn $30,000 or less.
Also surprising: the wealthiest Americans are more likely to be angry or dissatisfied with the political system than the lowest income Americans.
Another surprise: while conventional wisdom is that Clinton has more of a lock on the Democratic nomination than Trump has on the GOP nod, the CNBC survey shows that on key economic issues, Bernie Sanders is more of a challenge to Clinton than Kasich and Cruz are to Trump. For example, Sanders is virtually tied with Trump 25 percent to 26 percent on which candidate is judged to have the best policy for regulating Wall Street and the big banks. Clinton has the support of only 16 percent of the public on the issue. Clinton leads with support of 25 percent of the public on who has the best policies for the middle class, followed by 21 percent for Sanders and 16 percent for Trump.
And finally, since this is CNBC, the channel reported that Trump is seen as best for the stock market by a wide margin. Fully 31 percent say his policies would be best for the stock market’s performance, compared with just 17 percent for Clinton. As many Democrats as Republican’s think Trump would be best for stocks.
Which begs this question: since those who have the most invested in the stock market “run the system”, as they say, and ultimately decide who the next president is, why wouldn’t they “pick” Trump? And just how much of the most theatrical presidential election in history is, well, just theater?
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Liesman’s full interview below:
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1V5IUif Tyler Durden