Gillian Tett: Trump’s Election Has Unleashed Astonishing Animal Spirits

GEIST: “What is your sense of what not just American CEOs, but the world is bracing for, is prepared for, is expecting from a second term?”
TETT: “Well, here is what we do know. We do know that Donald Trump’s election has unleashed astonishing animal spirits. By animal spirits, I’m referring to the economist John Maynard Keynes, also from King’s College Cambridge, who argued that when people start to feel widely optimistic and confident, that basically causes them to spend more, invest more, hire more, and you get this self-fulfilling cycle of growth. And right now everyone can sense there is an extraordinary explosion of animals for its American relations to the economy, and particularly relative to all the other major trading partners, like Europe or Asia right now. So the CEOs are acting like rational business people, saying, ‘We want to be part of that. We want to be part of this growth story.’ However, that’s what we do know. What we don’t know is what on earth is going to unfold in January, because the reality is, what Trump actually said about the economy is very contradictory. And the question right now is, how is anyone going to actually resolve those contradictions?”