Why has the stock market been so volatile? In part, it can be explained by the global trust deficit.

Few trust the economic numbers coming out of China or the statements of the Chinese leaders. The statements coming from the Federal Reserve have been vague and ambiguous, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust that its leaders know what they are doing. The Obama administration has an incoherent fiscal policy, which has undermined trust in its economic management. Bernard Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton have talked about increasing taxes on the successful and more government spending, leaving a trust deficit as to what their economic policies would do. Donald Trump says we need to increase tariffs, seeming oblivious to the fact that a tariff is a tax on consumers and would make Americans worse off rather than better off. Despite Mr. Trump’s other successes, such statements raise questions whether we can trust him when it comes to fiscal policy.

The reason I trust people in the private sector more than I trust people in government is that most often those in the private sector who lie, cheat and steal, or just make honest mistakes, can be held accountable, while those in the public sector who do the same often can get away with a simple, lame “I am sorry” at best.

When the folks at BP were involved in an unintentional oil spill, the company was fined $54 billion. When the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was involved in an unintentional spill, heavily polluting a river in Colorado with dangerous heavy metals a couple of weeks back, Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator, had nothing to say but “sorry.” Ms. McCarthy also tells us to trust her that she is doing the right thing ― by shutting down the coal industry, throwing tens of thousands of miners out of work and increasing electricity prices for most Americans in order to reduce global warming by three hundredths of a degree a century from now ― as if that could even be measured with certainty.

The politicians and the bureaucrats want us to trust them to spend our money more wisely than we will ourselves. Yet waste, fraud, theft, mismanagement, misallocation and bureaucratic abuse continue unabated. Polls show that the American people have record-low trust in their government. As we enter the political season, it will be interesting to see who in the political class provides concrete proposals for re-establishing trust rather than the typical verbal snake oil.