The last time round with Donald Trump there was much talk about the Dunning-Kroger effect – a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.

It is named after David Dunning and Justin Kroger, the two psychologists who first identified it in their 1999 paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

This time around the whole concept needs to be revisited – but perhaps still with a specific reference to Donald Trump.  Trump supporters may have led the way in coining the phrase Trump Derangement Syndrome – a pejorative term they used to describe negative reactions to Trump – but it now seems far more apposite for Trump himself.

After all, the evidence is now overwhelming that the man is deranged – and worse – ignorant as well. The MAGA acolytes need to maintain the illusion that he is a great deal-maker, a rich man rather than the reality that he is just another grifter spewing out false statements, hyperbolic pronouncements and dreadful policy decisions. There are few Prime Ministers or Presidents who manage to tank their own economy (Liz Truss is one example) but even fewer who can tank the global economy as Trump has.

The Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch recently produced two graphs based on the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey. The first looked at what share of US adults had a negative opinion of the government’s economic policy. More than 60% had that view – the highest percentage in the past 40 years of the surveys.

Burn-Murdoch also looked at the US attitudes to economic policy as measured by a US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. It was the highest in 20 years and even higher than it was during the global pandemic. Once again one Donald Trump was a big part of that with scientific suggestions such as pondering whether bleach injections might combat the virus.

Ironically this self-styled genius has not only launched a tariff campaign which will reduce the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans but also made a big dent in the wealth of some of his biggest donors and supporters. A few days ago Elon Musk’s wealth had taken a $US31billion hit. Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth fell by 14% in two days. Jeff Bezos – he of the cowardly decision to not endorse anyone in the Washington Post lost $US23.5 billion while his $US  10 billion climate and biodiversity fund has stopped funding some of its critical work. LVMH luxury goods owner Bernard Arnault has lost about US$60 billion.

Meanwhile the sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, lost $US 2.57 billion in the two day meltdown but has seen his net wealth increase by $US12.7 billion this year. Most importantly Buffett has been heavily cashed up waiting for the opportunities which he saw inevitably coming up as shares tanked.

Trump had, by the way, claimed on Truth Social that Buffet has praised his economic policies. It was another Trump lie and Berkshire Hathway issued a statement saying the claim was false. Too few other billionaires had the same sort of courage.

Meanwhile, some Australian Cabinet Ministers who have been praised in the past have caused some significant wealth downturns themselves. Then Treasurer, Peter Costello (elected on the ticket of the allegedly superior economic managers party) set a loss record which matched those of the US billionaires.

William Bennett, a freelance business journalist writing in The Age (4/2) pointed out that Costello had approved the sale of the majority of the Reserve Bank’s 247 tonnes of gold in 1997 claiming “gold no longer plays a significant role in the international financial system.” Well, sadly to say, it does tend to play a role when crises hit.

Fortunately, we kept a bit which is now worth about $13 billion. But if we had kept the lot it would have been worth $36 billion today. With Trump induced chaos we could have expected it to increase yet more in value.

Bennett points out that the Reserve Bank now holds less gold than Romania, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. Romania is a great place to visit but it’s inadvisable to visit the other two – even to find some gold.