$4 Trillion Back and Gone, Just Like That

This morning, at precisely 10:13 a.m. Eastern, the U.S. stock market decided to do a triple backflip off a rickety carnival high-dive based on, checks notes, a tweet from a guy pretending to be Bloomberg News. Not Bloomberg the company, mind you. Just a guy with a username and a dream. And that dream? Apparently, to watch four trillion dollars in market value appear and vanish faster than you can say “art of the deal.”

The tweet, courtesy of one “Walter Bloomberg” (who, we must stress again, is not Bloomberg, has never been Bloomberg, and whose actual surname is presumably not even Bloomberg), claimed that National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett had announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for every country except China. Cue the champagne and dopamine: the market instantly surged like a toddler on pixie sticks.

This, of course, turned out to be, what’s the technical term?, a complete and utter fabrication. Or, more accurately, a case of “Walter” hearing a “yep” in a Fox & Friends interview and interpreting it as a full-blown policy reversal. Because apparently, a passing grunt on cable news is now how we conduct global trade policy.

For about ten minutes, it was a full-on bull stampede. Markets reversed their steep morning plunge and rocketed upward, as if Jerome Powell himself had descended from the heavens with a dove on each shoulder and a suitcase full of rate cuts. MAGA influencers started peacocking about “the art of the deal” while still wiping the tears from last week’s market nosebleed. Benny Johnson misread the whole thing and confidently posted a triumphalist tweet about the EU doing something it didn’t do, about a market move that had already reversed, based on news that was never real. So, par for the course.

Then, plot twist!, the White House stepped in, stage left, and issued a very stern, very clear “fake news” smackdown. Turns out Hassett wasn’t announcing a tariff pause at all. He was just momentarily caught off guard by a question and issued a non-committal "yep" before promptly throwing cold water on the whole thing. Which, in today’s logic, is more than enough to reprice global equities.

So down the markets went again, like a soufflé in a marching band.

And this all happened because we are now running a global economy that is apparently priced off of vibes, social media hallucinations, and morning talk show grunts. A guy named “Walter” can cause more economic volatility than the Federal Reserve, and no one seems especially bothered by that.

Meanwhile, Trump is out here inventing new terms like “Panakin Party” to mock everyone not giddily clapping for his tariffs, which, let’s be honest, have the economic logic of setting your own kitchen on fire to protest the cost of takeout. And just to complete the clown car, billionaire Bill Ackman, who practically begged for the tariff pause last night, has been publicly flailing through every stage of grief today, including accusing Trump’s Commerce Secretary of market sabotage before deleting it and offering a hasty “my bad.”

This is not a serious country. This is a financial sitcom starring Twitter, Fox News, and a sentient algorithm named Walter. And every time someone breathes the word “tariff,” Wall Street panics like it just found a spider in the bathtub.