Vicious propaganda on “murderous” immigrants, promises of privileged (white) jobs, or transgender sideshows, fueled by rancid masculinity, may ensnare self-declared have-nots. But ambushing oligarchic profiteering and greed—that’s an unpardonable sin.
As the business of America, more than ever, is business, Wall Street luminaries forever rail against the quicksand Nightmare of Uncertainty. Well, comrades, here’s something even scarier (and far more costly) to bottom lines: the endless chaos circus run by regressive barn-burners who slander trade deficits (positive when foreigners use dollars to buy high demand goods and services, let alone Treasury bonds), who distort the necessity of global trade (to keep the peace if nothing else), and moderate our interest rates (now rising as foreigners resist buying our uncertain debt).
Trump’s trade deficit mania ignores trade income from goods and services, like software, expertise, and university tuitions, that foreigners pay with the dollars they secure. That’s why Trumponomics wants to crush the value of the dollar to make Yankee products cheaper overseas. Paul Krugman writes the Brits mock this needlessly inflationary loss of faith in U.S. credit as the “moron premium” that bond markets are imposing on Trump.
Tariff mayhem is only the transient iceberg in this self-generated cascade of disasters, extending to irreparably lost credibility (worsened by abusive isolationism) that now afflicts critical allies and trade partners. Immediate consequences are the tens of billions lost in AWOL tourist spending as insulted foreigners vacation elsewhere. Added in great loss of confidence, shocked to see the president treat the Rule of Law (plus judicial and Federal Reserve independence) as dish rags. Who seeks our national debt when justice bows to the whims of a cartoon villain president desperate to show off his cajones? Biden stability will be looked back upon as a golden age after the Trump trash the economy brigade.
Thus, if you credit reports of mass buyers’ remorse by hoodwinked MAGA voters (dreading cuts to once predictable Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP food stamp programs), that goes double for flabbergasted tycoons once open to disruption (and donor payoffs) but now bullied by the allegedly pro-business browbeater. We’re talking super-rich, Wall Street investors, frustrated CEOs dependent on imports and trade, hundreds of industries enraged about trade boycotts—plus stunned conservatives aghast at being dictated to by a scofflaw, reality TV demagogue infamous for backing down. Their bargain with the devil (transparent for a decade to Never Trumpers) jeopardizes their own dynastic, world-ruling self-entitlement.
Pricey partnering with the Trump circus
Item: the horrendous, PR-driven Musk rampage cut federal salaries perhaps reaching a few hundred million (vs. trillions promised), with consequential, mandated repairs that should wipe out minuscule “savings from fraud and abuse” (none proved). But in no time Musk losses from the cratering Tesla stock (50 percent down) near $135 Billion, a whopping $540 LOST for every payola dollar paid to become a Trump partner in crime ($250 million). That dwarfs even the $20+ billion lost after a reckless Twitter takeover. Talk about wholly unforced business blunders—looming, permanent Tesla brand damage is intensifying.
Big box retailers (Target, Costco, Home Depot) and manufacturers reliant on foreign parts face mind-boggling market challenges—fewer supplies and customers facing highly volatile prices—thanks solely to the Shockjock-in-chief daily shooting his wad. Despite loads of campaign bribes, our fattest cats are paralyzed—unable to plan or assess supply chains and thus profits and growth, stuck in a COVID-like no-man’s land, even a recession. Only a strong (Biden) economy, moderate inflation and low unemployment shore up stock market prices while restraining so far mass, deserved rejection of the WH clown shows.
While Musk is the ultimate example, super-rich investors (private credit, hedge funds, takeover marauders), plus distressed bond traders, “free market” libertarians, and virtual monopoly brands (Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Tesla, Google, etc.)—once all-in for Trumpism—now hope that DOGE deregulations and agency demolition, plus tax giveaways (in the works), will cover losses. I suspect monumental Musk losses make oligarchs shake in their boots, unable to assess their own future downsides.
That’s why, echoing the provocative movie Network (more below), here’s my thought experiment: for how long will besieged “primal, global forces of nature” put up with compounding losses and shattered expectations. Let’s outline the magnitude of unexpected reversals to so much of late-stage capitalism:
1) Illegal tariffs are only one kind of global economic mayhem, worsened by drastic weekly lurches. Where’s any upside to needlessly maligning, then punishing innocent, necessary allies like Canada, Mexico and the EU? All have valuable tourists and visitors. Despite baseless Trump fantasies, the U.S. needs foreign world traders, even China, more than they need us. Indeed, terrorized ex-partners now flee to alleged enemies, reinforced by bashing life-saving USAID commitments, a tiny sum whose elimination produces mass fatalities and devastates our prestige. Further, does anyone think the $40 billion thus collected in illegal tariffs (likely overturned) won’t cost us and the world ten or 50 times that amount in lost trade, supply chain chaos and business productivity?
2) DOGE attempts to shred democratically-approved federal programs, agencies and regulatory platforms leave a long, negative shadow, certainly wildly greater than alleged “business-logic” savings. Even treating government, with many opposite, more humane goals than profit-driven companies, like a business is a travesty—combining perverse mental derangement with negative outcomes. Not only does the ravaging of legitimate government bedevil domestic citizens with unknowable, idiotic takeaways, this reign of terror amps up overseas shock and awe that U.S. stability is so easily rendered obsolete by nincompoops.
3) Deportation of immigrants, whether undocumented or just targets of abuse, not only removes hard-working, low paid labor (key to profitable ag, hotel, construction, factory, landscape, and food monoliths) but further lowers U.S. productivity, options and, ironically, exports. Who profits and who pays? What company welcomes a shrunken labor pool, especially for jobs repugnant to MAGA whites? Deporting working tax payers reduces government (FICA, disability) revenues, amplifying the deficit while driving away foreign students and scientists. Will fewer low-paid field workers not devastate harvesting, adding inflation and subtracting food stuffs available here and abroad? Talk about a no-win policy, all the more ironic since immigration has slacked off, thus nixing the need to spend another dime on border walls and expensive controls. The negative reward-ratio, as with tariff nonsense, is indefensible, a model of slow-motion suicide.
4) Mass, indiscriminate firings across critical federal agencies impair health, safety and national productivity, iconic examples of cutting off our nose to spite our face. National security, policing, weather oversight, scrutiny of banks, drug research and safety oversights are must-haves for a civilized society. How many huge, disliked corporations depend not only on curbing terrorist attacks, but computer hacking (producing huge business security costs)? How many key delivery and shipping companies, food production and harvesting entities, absolutely need accurate weather forecasting? Even companies, let alone consumers, need to know, in advance, when harmful bacteria invades. How many drug, vaccine and therapy companies don’t damp down rule-breaking because of the CDC and the FDA? In short, however compromised by special interest lobbying, regulations check and balance the worst crony capitalist excesses? Since the 2008 financial debacle, stricter rules strengthen both big banks and brokerage houses.
5) Horrendous, indiscriminate punishment of our most esteemed universities, like Harvard the scapegoat, are indisputably counterproductive. Downsides not only harm MAGA voters when independent research, from computation to medical advances to environmental gains, is stopped cold. Basic research spawns invaluable innovations to come, the frequency of unexpected breakthroughs legion: the early internet (designed to protect military communications) spawned earth-shaking changes. In fact, our most prestigious universities serve the commercial powers-that-be more than they do Joe Sixpack. I expect primal corporate forces to defy spitefully cutting contracted research because Trumpian ignorance feels threatened.
6) Respect for the Rule of Law benefits everyone but dictators. Because big business has undue influence on what laws are proposed and get passed, how long will crony capitalists, whose power and profit-making depend on the rule of law (for both intimidation litigation and market/product protection) remain quiet? How long will corporations profiting from law and order tolerate Trumpist abuse towards judges and courts who defy self-serving, corrupt rampages? Nothing guarantees democratic integrity more than a passably independent judiciary to adjudicate differences, conflicts, and disagreements. Nothing is more important to foreign investors and bond buyers than unshakeable confidence our system rejects capricious, erratic lurches. Every time Trump the cry baby impugns a judge, even those he appointed, or indicts a legitimate law, he poisons the foundation and prosperity of all Americans. Every time he indulges in crazy mode, justice and rules be damned, Trump commits political treason against the Constitution, damaging every one of us.
7) RFK, Jr. is Trump’s equal in economic disruption by willful ignorance. His unilateral decisions have already corrupted vaccine research and delivery, fluoride usage (critical for young teeth), important drug research and oversight of healthcare. While some objections on food additives make sense, his radically unscientific, nutcase perspective must offend huge swaths of the best (corporate) investigators, blunting their well-defended findings and drug delivery channels. How long before the largest food, health and drug companies go public, fed up with Trumpian gut instinct that exiles scientific truths?
8) Crypto emergence is no great plus for big banks, investment houses and corporations, all fearful of losing control over payment methods and sensitive to ever-insidious criminal usage. The default dollar model is fairly transparent while crypto is nearly opposite—dependent on private, unsecured, non-monitored computer platforms, making it highly volatile, and illiquid. Crypto undermines any prudent basis as a global currency system (except for the underworld). If it weren’t so well marketed, it would go the way of all scams. Par for the course, criminal Trump and family enterprises use variants (sometimes just junk coins), thus setting the crypto world against the world of legitimate banking and currency exchanges. Crony capitalists demand control and predictability and crypto, in its diverse forms, provides neither.
Excerpts of the messianic, primal, corporate Network message:
In the movie Network, super-globalist and corporatist Arthur Jensen intones with his voice of God his view of reality, namely Cosmic Capitalistic, Economic Determinism. This messianic sermon addresses a befuddled news anchor, Howard Beale, who dares criticize the sale of his TV company. Jensen’s is a sophisticated, scary model, both Trumpist in its absolutist convictions (only the rich power elite understands truth, if not reality) and most unTrumpian—in that the omnipotent economic belief system posits a super-capitalism unanswerable to any one part or player, in short, an implacable system of systems.
Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immanent, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality—one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Beale: But why me?
Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
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