"It was a bit of a rough day on Wall Street — the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 800 points," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. "My condolences to the entire Jones family. Our economy will be missed." He used a Chumbawamba song to explain this week's especially volatile market, but he was as stumped as most people about the proximate cause of Wednesday's panic: the dreaded inverted yield curve. "Do you have any idea what that means?" Colbert asked. "If so, please tell me, because I have been watching TV all day long and I am still not getting it." He showed one chart that kind of made sense.
"Now one thing that is definitely not helping the world economy is Trump's trade war with China, but we may be getting some relief," thanks to Trump's delay of half of new tariffs until Dec. 15, giving retailers time to stock up on Christmas imports, Colbert said. "It's odd that Trump would back down to protect American consumers, because he's been clear about one thing all along," China is paying for the tariffs. He ran through some of the bizarre items you'll be able to import until Dec. 15, but "one product that has been dropped from Trump's tariff list permanently is Bibles," Colbert said, feigning shock. "Our Bibles come from China? No wonder Jesus is always talking about sharing everything with the poor: They're selling us commie Jesus!"
The Late Show also enlisted Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to explain Trump's tariff about-face.
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And if you want to actually understand the inverted yield curve, The Week's Jeff Spross has a helpful explainer, and so does The Wall Street Journal. Peter Weber
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