I'm no economist or businesswoman, but I fail to see how those who are can be surprised. Trump has always been a transparent liar and cheater out for vengeance and for himself, whose understanding of all issues, economic and otherwise, is subject to his limited capacity for insight.
Speaking of con men, my favorite line from that Bill Ackman post was him hilariously saying “business is a confidence game”. He needs to look up the definition of that term. It literally means a swindle.
He's also a chameleon who changes his policy positions based on the last person he's spoken to...and if that person just paid him a pile of money or not.
The CEO class only cared about the upcoming bigly big tax cuts; that would directly benefit them and their friends, and more importantly juice the stock market and thus pump the value of their stock options.
funny..he never changes colour ...... ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK show..... We have a lovely orange suit waiting for you mr. t....ya know .... karma works, in it time
I saw a response to one of his posts pointing out he was heavy into Nike and was only concerned because he went long and apparel is tanking, so he might not have the money to buy the dip. Hence his epiphany. If he had cashed out like Warren Buffet last year, he might be able to buy low.
BTW, he earned a new nickname on that thread from the old Bloom County cartoon. He’s now “Bill the Cat Ack”-man, after the socially incompetent character in that comic. It fits, and a good laugh at a whiny billionaire’s expense is a tonic nowadays.
I have been investing and following the stock market for over 65 years and am a retired financial advisor. Regarding the market one must understand that no stock is bought or sold, stocks are traded. There is always someone on the other side of your buy or sell. Do you think that you are smarter than the person on the other side of your buy or sell? One other factoid - markets are always priced based on *expectations*. One more thing the herd is almost always wrong.
Were you able to work the shorts after the tariff announcement? Are you unloading now and waiting to get short again at the peak of the likely "recovery"? It's a long, long way to the bottom, plenty of room down there.
Knowing what was going to be said, and when, at the right time would rake in a fortune in shorts. Do you think folks were in on the game? It was so predictable that if it didn't involve the gov't, the old SEC might have looked into it.
Here is one more fact about markets - they almost always overreact to todays news. And here is a nearly universal fact - Everything reverts to the mean. Especially when it comes to the markets and sports performances, etc.
Yes, Robin he just in a word is mean. On the golden escalator in June of 2015, he exuded mean. His American Carnage inaugural address was mean. His continual mocking and derision are a deeply personal style revealing a mean, dishonorable, malign, uncaring, low minded, disposition. A dreadful human being determined to make his mark on the world unconcerned what that mark is. A modern-day Nero.
When you are expected to be righteous, in the best sense of the word, departing from the path is notable. Trump doesn't ask anything of you and come to find out you'll get less in return.
There's power in being mean, but there's rarely any profit in it. So when politicians are mean (about things that are nobody's business like transgender athletes), then you have to assume that they're being mean to pick your pocket.
I'm thinking you're right Terry. I'm also thinking Trump was mean before becoming a politician. In the meanness category he has a distinct advantage politically.
Trump keeps saying these tariffs are going to make us richer than ever before. Undoubtedly this means it will make him richer than ever before. If someone can get to the bottom of how he is personally profiting from this and make it known perhaps we can get the scumbag impeached again, and maybe this time it would stick.
I would also add that he’s mentally very unhealthy. (I’m not a psychologist either.)
I have a family member who is disabled, including having low cognitive abilities. She chooses not to vote, as she does not feel qualified. She told me one time she could not believe people voted for Trump because he mean and crazy and a crook.
I told her she was more qualified to vote than most—she knew the basics!
I mentally consider the possibility of a Trump-worshipper choosing not to vote because they may not be qualified...and my brain goes into a laughing/crying jag. (As someone who is himself 100% permanently disabled, as well as being neurologically atypical, I have only love and GREAT RESPECT for your referenced family member. It must be wonderful to be close to someone with such rare insight and empathy.)
The ONLY WAY a Trump-cultist might EVER be conflicted is if THE KILLER WAIL ever did something that was not in his self-interest. They love him BECAUSE he's scum...and they see themselves in him. (Of course, you know all this as well as I.)
Yes. But during his first term, there were still sufficiently many sane people involved in the government to avert the kind of total disaster that is now unfolding. Now he’s surrounded by yes-men and those who would manipulate him for their own ends. Some of which even pursue an agenda of transforming the US into a fascist state with themselves as part of the ruling cabal. While it was totally predictable has his second presidential term would be worse than the first and in fact truly terrible and an enormous risk, now things have truly become still much worse than the degree of terrible that should have been expected.
Being surprised by this after the first 99% of his first term is possibly understandable, but being surprised by it after 1/6 is not understandable or excusable.
Yes-men is a good way to put it. First time around the sane people all left as you observe, most characterizing Trump in a somewhat negative light, usually, along the lines of quote fucking moron unquote. Those yes-men you mention are zombies. Surely you've noticed. The Barbies. The zealots. James Carville calls them buffoons.
And the agenda of transforming?
Slipped right past us now, didn't it. It's done. We're there. I can't wait to see Trump's birthday parade on TV.
I absolutely KNEW that Trump- would do ANYTHING that pleased his "bro", Vlad.
A few dozen American cities in flames? Sure, why not?! As long as they're all in BLUE STATES with large BLACK POPULATIONS.
Yes, Trump wants to rule America, just like Putin rules Russia. Where's the MYSTERY in that, America?
(Admittedly, selecting the "motivation of the day" is tricky, between Elon wanting money, Trump wanting power, and Putin wanting to sit in the White House...alone.)
Deep down, Trump envies and hates Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg. They are far richer. But the tariffs will be Trump's revenge. Trump expects these oligarchs to come crawling to him for relief from the tariffs that hurt their business empires. Trump will extract acts of humiliation and bribes from them. This has been his plan all along.
Just wait till the Europeans decide to tariff our real exports...services. That's Facebook, Google, Amazon...Musks enterprises. The Magnificent Seven won't feel so magnificent then.
And I don't expect any buyer's remorse effect. It should have happened after Reagan's first term 10x over. With all the psychological manipulation, absence of decent public media and now AI, manupulating opinion seems easier than ever.
Mr. Pinchpenny gives too much credit to trump having a brain. What about his 6 bankruptcies. He has no economic sense, understands little often, perhaps because he does not have the patience to read or listen.
I think an interesting discussion would be if Krugman and Pinchpenny did an interview. They could talk out some of where each sees the other being a bit lacking in understanding.
His six bankruptcies might mean, to an amoral person, being able to walk away from six big debts. Some people would call that clever. Trump may just be twisted and bad. He might well be intelligent in some ways, involving amorality. An idiot savant, so to speak.
Pinchbeck's essay is multifaceted and a lot of it might be the case. Or not.
Krugman does not think what is being done is for no reason. Of course there's a reason and goals. Krugman is saying that there is no rational thought involved. He might well be right. And you can't rule out the role of plain old-fashioned stupidity, if not actual malice. Maybe what's going on is exactly what was wanted. Maybe even it's a simple scam involving short positions in the market. The right shorts would have made a ton of money after the announcement.
The ultimate goal I read into Pinchbeck's essay was that Trump and Musk are at the head of a cabal (they are) that includes others of the ilk of Stephen Miller and the Loomer woman, who want America to become a serf-and-master economy. That's probably true. And not inconsistent with Krugman's insights regarding to rational thought and behavior.
It is powerful enough to convince ignorant people who either aren't capable of critical thinking or are simply too lazy to bother to vote for Donald Trump.
Professor Krugman is wrong, in my opinion, to give disengaged voters a pass for not paying attention. If the Constitution only offers rights, but no responsibilities, then we end up where we are now -- with the Constitution in shreds and the country being swallowed up by ignorance and stupidity.
Yes, but disinformation only works on people who are either disengaged or relying on sources that simply aren't credible. Trump has to be the most notorious liar in ? (I can't even think of a limited time frame.) Anyone who is unaware of that or dismisses it cannot possibly vote responsibly.
I can't even begin to imagine what made voters think that Trump would actually follow through on his campaign promise to cut prices on day one? Did they do what has been common and not take him literally -- i.e., no expectation of "day one" -- but assumed he'd do it soon enough? That stretches naivete beyond the breaking point. Anyone who was even moderately informed should have known that Trump does not really care about workers and that no president has the power to simply cut prices across the board. So, even if Trump had wanted to, he couldn't have kept that promise.
I saw and heard all the disinformation. Did you? If so, did you fall for it? I doubt it. We live in an age when "alternative facts" have become the lingua franca of the Republican Party. Only a complete fool believes what comes out of the mouths of Republicans. In the case of Trump, one has to apply prior knowledge concerning who and what Trump is -- a pathological liar who whines incessantly about being victimized and who is so stupid that he may actually believe that he's the smartest guy around. No one else should believe that because the evidence is both plentiful and overwhelming that Trump is quite stupid, exceptionally ignorant, and extraordinarily incompetent. Wishful thinking on the part of voters can overcome all that, but wishful thinking is a sign of profound unpreparedness to vote responsibly.
I apologize for going on so long, but I feel strongly that we have to offer no excuses for what voters did in November. As Professor Krugman pointed out in his discussion with Mehdi Hasan that voters don't have to be economists or even know an incredible amount in order to make good decisions. In 2024-25, any voter who doesn't understand that oil is a global market and that presidents don't lower it price by sheer will (or at all) should reconsider voting. However, I want as many people as possible to vote, because if they know what they are doing, Democrats will 1) hold permanent majorities in both houses, 2) have a lock on the presidency, 3) and ultimately, I hope (but I don't have illusions about this) become a better political party. Knowledgeable voters should nominate better candidates, weed out those who are too old to be effective (Note, I'm old, so I don't have an ageist bias against old politicians. Dick Durbin should resign. Chuck Schumer isn't inspiring anyone. Elizabeth Warren is still bright enough and energetic enough to do a fine job. Seniority should stop being a consideration at some point -- 65 might be a good age at which to abandon it as even a consideration for how to assign leadership positions. That doesn't mean someone 68 couldn't be member of the leadership, but it would based on performance, not longevity.
I've written to Patty Murray, my senior senator and told her that I won't support her if she runs again and, truthfully, I think she should have retired before this term. She's in her 70s and does not have the kind of persona and energy we need to effectively oppose Trump. I'm a strong believer in the value of experience, but only up to a point. Had Murray retired, her seat could have been filled with someone who might be able to match a 25-hour filibuster.
I guess I failed to heed my apology for going on too long. Sorry. And done.
It's a Frankenstein's monster situation. They surely knew he was a conman, ignoramus and pathological liar. They just viewed themselves as the puppet master. I imagine this has been the case throughout the history of Fascism - I think Dr. Krugman wrote a piece about this a few months ago. Eventually, everybody loses.
Didn’t the wealthy corporate elite think they were the puppet masters and could control Hitler? LOL, the hubris never ends but we are the ones paying the price. Lock them all up.
They think they can control Trump because he’s so easily flattered and manipulated. They forget he’s also mad as a hatter. Controlling crazy long term is not an option they have, no matter what they’ve told themselves.
Yes, they did. There's a book written by one of them: "I Paid Hitler", by Fritz Thyssen. He was one of the German industrialists who funded Hitler and the Nazis before the war. The book was his apologia. You can find it on archive.org.
"Trump has always been a transparent liar and cheater out for vengeance..."
That might be part of it. Trump was all hot air during his first term when it came to trade wars. So a lot of investors might have thought that he would essentially be full of it for Trump redux. Surprise! He isn't.
This talk about "zero tariffs" is just smoke and mirrors. Not only are the current EU tariffs very low, but in 2016 the EU and the US were actually on the verge of signing the TTIP agreement which would have eliminated all tariffs between them. This agreement was killed by Trump as soon as he took office.
They thought they could control him. But then the Supreme Court declared him a king and he won and all bets sre off. Giving the most narcissistic man on the planet the power to impact trade around the world was insane. He is a gangster holding the whole world hostage. If your country or business doesn't kiss the ring and bribe him, the tariffs won't go away. Theres a reason you aren't supposed to vote for corrupt criminals. They do shit like this.
I must disagree with your argument. Trump's tariff policies - if taken seriously - are disastrous for big business and big Republican donors. Also, inflationary policies as tariffs inherently are, will mandate increasing SS funding. Which, on the flipside will lessen the likelihood of a significant tax-cut for the rich even more substantially increasing the national debt. A no-no for many Republican lawmakers. So Trump is in a hard place from three sides: big Republican donors, his working class voter base, and his congressional majority. And I highly doubt he has the energy, mental acuity, and vision to figure out his way in between the Scylla and Charybdis (especially, if he's spending most of his time in the golf course while relying on total nitwits to keep the store open in his absence)
No. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He's not beholden to anyone, not even Musk. He got the job he wanted, and now he's causing as much pain as he can for anyone that ever crossed him, including the American public that didn't reelect him in 2020. He doesn't care about political power, and he doesn't even care about tearing down institutions - that's why he's leaving all that to others. All he wants is power and money, and to exert power to get money. He wants to be the biggest grifter of all time.
Trump is sitting on a three legged stool made up by his voting base, his big business donors, and his congressional support. Losing any single of these will make his presidency untenable.
I'm being realistic. Nothing threatens Trump because he knows that no one will impeach him and remove him from office. Other than that, he has no fucks to give. The only way to slow him down is via the courts and Congress, and the latter only if enough Republicans grow some balls to defend their constituents' rights and needs. Trump was a lame duck president the day he was inaugurated, but the GOP acts like he still holds sway. Congress faces elections again, and they need to made to believe that MAGA is going away soon, or they'll have more to worry about than getting primaried.
It won't bring him down, though. Unless you can convince a large number of Republican Congressmen to vote for conviction in an impeachment, or his cabinet to remove him, he will serve through to the end of his term no matter what he does. Assuming the 22nd amendment holds, he will serve for exactly this term and no more. He doesn't need his base. He doesn't need the donors, except to extort them. He doesn't need much congressional support. We should expect him to use his power to extort money from wealthy individuals for the next four years, and then try to subvert the 22nd amendment when the time comes to delay prosecution for his crimes.
Trump wants to be "important". However he does it.
It is probably easier to do it by ruining the economy, because that doesn't take any intelligence or serious thought, & despite his incessant boasting, he knows that he is weak in that respect.
I thought it was just because they do hate the same groups of people and our laws because they don’t agree with law being equal to all(as if this was ever so in our entire history!!)…..why would they need trump to be able to say things out loud?! First Amendment does it a lot better!
A lot of folks are so disengaged that they assume all the negative things they have ever heard about Trump are lies. They need to be forgiven and to see the light.
Why? Their complacency is legendary. That is worthy of scorn at a minimum.
Moreso, the incomprehensible foolishness of it all should seriously give pause to anyone thinking of going into business with them or marry them. You are asking for serious trouble down the road, if their cognition and allegiance to fact is so impaired.
They will not see “the light” and they are not asking to be forgiven— when our very own Il Duce has traincars going to concentration camps they, “the nice people who will see the light” will be guards with dogs and guns and I wonder if you think that they will be asking your forgiveness then— for I, my good friend, was born in a country like that and escaped to freedom and America after a while and have been citizen of this country after serving it and making sure I lived by the law unlike in my previous country where no one bothered living by the law cause you would be hungry! These people hate you and me because we try to live up and they live to tear down! Try to see it for what it really is because you will need it very soon!!!
Quite right. But some of them have to see the light, because we need their votes if we are to recover our democracy. And to forgive someone does not mean you do not understand they are still your enemy. You need a clear head to figure out what to do when they come for you. Hatred and anger create brain fog; one cannot see clearly.
The burden is on the one who does not forgive, not the evildoers who commit crimes against humanity. They're probably happy you hate them, because your hatred is a burden to you, not to them.
You are judged by the company you keep. If you hang out with white supremacists, I'm here to tell you, you might as well get your white hood pressed because you too belong in the KKK.
I could not believe my eyes when I read that Jamie Dimon projected Trump would win. I recall the titans were meeting in Switwerland, perhaps Davos. And I asked my sin, a banker, and he said they want the tax cuts extended. And I'm like - those tax cuts that are responsible for the huge deficits? Yes, it's about pure greed. And this has been the discussion in DC - will the tariffs pay for the tax cuts? It's like everyone imagined the flow of goods would continue the exact same way, and no one would make bets on the disruption. The titans definitely thought the tariffs were a game.
Scary thought that so many in positions of power are so thoroughly ignorant. The WSJ had some excellent articles on how the tariffs are effecting manufacturing sectors. Guess what? It takes a lot of tariffed materials to build new factories. Oil and gas are horrified as their prices plummet in the face of looming recession.
More like gotta have the cash to be able to afford a spot in the mega-rich bug-out bunkers they're building to survive the climate catastrophes they created.
Thanks, again, Dr. K. I'm glad you're not under the editorial yoke of the Times anymore. And you are correct - income inequity is the main problem today. I have always supported capitalism, the system I was born into here in the US, but the guardrails are gone. Crony capitalism, zero regulations on corporations, the GOP's assault on the tax structure - ALL TO MAKE THE RICH RICHER - are killing our country. They are trying to return us to the gilded again, when people feared growing old, the poor had no services, and there was no way for a middle class to form.
After FDR saved us - yes, he did and that is why the GOP then called him "a traitor to his class" - and then the war pulled our economy out of the Great Depression, we thrived like never before and a great middle class grew, people had some security - social security - and we boomed like never before. Want to know why? The tax structure. The rich paid a much higher portion all along through that time and up until Ronald Reagan began the slow destruction, the false narrative that all government is bad. And now we are at this point. It's time for the rich to either pay their share or to pay the consequences. It's not trite to say "a rising tide lifts all boats."
If this UNLIMITED greed continues, we may approach a moment such as just before FDR was inaugurated, when the rich finally realized that the civil unrest could harm them. Or we could be at a "let them eat cake" moment. The GOP enabling Trump must either stop him - for they can - or suffer the consequences of their abject fear and total submission to their king. Trump hates America. The GOP loves Trump. Add it up.
I think Saturday gave them a small taste of what's coming. Will they take the hint? They still seem to mostly have their heads jammed deep up "where the sun don't shine", but if we keep up the pressure, maybe, just maybe, it'll start to sink in. There's a reason they're avoiding town halls.
I was unable to participate in the events on Saturday but I fully expected front page reporting in the Times on Sunday and was stunned that I had to turn to page 19 in order to see a few cobbled together pictures and some rather sceptical offerings of attendance. Seems like the Times is going the way of WaPo.
A feature about Betty Boop got more coverage on the NYT. I noticed the lack of coverage, posted about it on FB, and even wrote the NYT. Lots of response on FB, but none from the NYT.
I'd like to make a plug for the coverage of the economic effects of the tariffs in the Wall Street Journal. There were many very interesting articles about the effects on different sectors. They didn't do much about the protests, but I felt I learned a lot from them yesterday.
I know that in my little red corner of the world there were 10 times the protesters out on Saturday than the previous protest.
Yes!! Totally noticed that!! One photo from Asheville, NC, below the fold. When one of the largest protests in the country was on their doorstep. Shameful!
Yeah, it's shameful how lamestream media is downplaying the magnitude of it. They won't be able to ignore us for too much longer though. The rage is palpable, and it's only going to grow.
Actually, they had a quite ingenious strategy. Trump's court at Mar a Lago, where the rich and powerful groveled at his feet and he won his golf championship on Sunday, was given top billing. BUT if you went down a little on the screen and clicked on the modest headline about protests, there were pages of photos of nationwide protests. It was a great contrast. I thought it was clever and subtle.
In my relatively small town county seat, we had an estimated 6,000 people turn out on Saturday. There are a lot of concerned people in this country right now and none of them are “paid protestors.”
Right now I don't think it's the protests. (that's to terrorize Congress) It's the crashing stock market and realization of how much Trump's tariffs are going to damage them personally. Now we'll see who on Wall Street is swimming naked.
I don't believe he can. Too many take their oath - and genuine patriotism - seriously. And remember, they have civilian friends and family too, most of whom are no doubt as appalled at the abuses of this administration as the rest of us.
JVL at The Bulwark suggests that it’s only a matter of time before a burgeoning protest movement (i.e. big rallies, like those last weekend) attracts bad apples, and just one person doing some criminally violent thing at one of them will be all the Trumpists need to declare martial law, or at least to send in troops to attack their fellow citizens.
I’ve been thinking hard about the PEOPLE behind the ninja outfits and masks in recent ICE raids, esp the kidnappings in broad daylight in the street. Who are they? How do they rationalize these actions to themselves? How many are all in on the brutality? and are there pockets of panicked and horrified officers who don’t want to participate, but feel it their duty?
We had no litter and no traffic jams. There were crossing guards at every intersection who kept protesters out of the street.
Oops! I see. It's the usual troll with a new name. Hi Troll. Are you real or are you a bot? I hope you're a bot, I'd hate to think you're a real person.
Where is it? I took the trolls bait. Oh well. My daughter heard from someone at her work that the protests kept an ambulance from getting into the hospital parking lot. Those kind of lame lies are going to come fast and furious.
The socialists were not fans of Franklin. Trump can be viewed as the antigen to creeping socialism. The message lost on the rabid capitalists and socialists is that they need one another.
"Creeping socialism". Where is this creeping socialism? I don't see it in the minimum wage, which hasn't been updated in 20 years. I don't see it in the ACA, which seems like a capitalists dream and a patient's nightmare. Certainly we don't have medicare for all. No one seems to feel like fixing the socialist programs we do have like medicare and social security so they remain insolvent. The Tax Cuts and Jobs act wasn't socialist. Nor were Clinton's reforms to welfare and NAFTA. I can't find any socialist policies implemented in decades.
The IRA was fairly green, but mostly ended up being subsidies for businesses. not people. What was passed was the green part of the green new deal.
I think the rich were afraid of Communism. They calculated it was better to pay high taxes than face having it all taken away. When Communism collapsed as an economic reality (China and Russia are capitalistic autocracies) the rich felt free to assert their superiority over the great unwashed.
Interestingly, the rich weren't any better judge of character than their low-class counterparts.
They were certainly afraid of communism, although I don't think they were truly any more worried that this country would become communist than Eugene McCarthy was actually worried about it. What they really feared was anarchy and a breakdown of the social and classist order. The Bonus Army was an affront to them and we did use our military on those veterans who only wanted to be taken care of after their hard service. The rich were scared of losing all to the mob, the rank and file - in other words, to regular people who were not so fortunate. The ONLY reason they allowed FDR that much power at first was that they were terrified of the masses, not so much any ideology.
After FDR had pushed through reforms that would have been unthinkable two years earlier and averted a serious crisis, they started to claw back those powers. Because he was a political ninja, he still managed to achieve an awful lot, which is why they later amended the Constitution so that no one person could be president for more than two terms. The treasonous GOP has been trying to undo FDR's legacy for 80 years now. Apparently, the greatest sin for these Christians is to help the poor.
I am related to John Kenneth Galbraith through my mother. I worked for three decades at Harvard, and regret never making the time to go visit my cousin before he died. Ah, the folly of thinking older relatives will always be there when you are young.
"I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount."
Having been reading PKs substack since Paul left NYT, it was totally foreseeable and we could be very confident that economic idiocy would be paramount.
I am neither a businessman nor an economist and I saw right after tRump announced upon his descent on his gilded escalator that the whole basis of his politics is greed and prejudice. I got good at spotting sociopaths/psychopaths while in medical practice and I surely saw that he had all the warning signs. I also saw how profoundly stupid he is... The only thing he has ever been good at is finding his next mark.
I was surprised at how fast Trump 2 has collapsed into chaos. But I'm feeling quite good about it right now. If Vance takes his place, he'll be much craftier. I bet he's hiding off stage right now hoping too much doggie doo doo doesn't land on him.
Maybe. But Vance has made serious political errors too. Vance is very unpopular, lacking the charisma of Trump, and polling at only 35% approval last I looked. (Not that I understand how Trump has charisma, because for me he has none, but obviously tens of millions of Americans are or were susceptible to it).
Vance is hiding off stage to spend some quality time with the couch in his office. His wife won't let him have one at home because she can't stand the competition.
He’s probably addressed this a million times. There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that we have a tax system that favors multimillionaires and billionaires at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Importantly, these wealthy super wealthy and ego driven C-Suite types are THE major source of funds for Republicans Congressional campaigns. They could stop this immediately with calls to their congressmen and senators to take back the Constitutional power for tariffs. They could single handedly flip the four votes needed to restore checks and balances.
Yes, taxes are part of it. However, we should also remember that salaries are set in the board room, and workers are not allowed there. Ever since the advent of shareholder primacy in the '70s, GDP and workers pay have diverged. Productivity improvements kept accruing to shareholders but they stopped sharing it with labor.
Lower top marginal tax brackets are why the rich are getting richer, but the poor should be getting richer too because of GDP growth. The fact that boardrooms have conspired (publicly! -- "We have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to hold down costs") to hold down salaries is why the poor are getting poorer. Far too little attention is being paid to that. Probably because politicians do not work in the boardroom.
But they could do something. They could assign the proxy rights of index funds and private equity, which currently can not fulfill their corporate governance duties, to workers. This would enfranchise workers to solve their own problems at a local level.
The ancient Greeks and Romans cancelled all debts. Cicero decried it as an attack on property. The practice has morphed into bankruptcy. There's a lyric "The rich get richer, and the poor get children". Are we having fun yet?
As someone who has watched and listened to Bernie Sanders (yep, I live in Vermont) since the beginning of his political career in the late 1980s, income inequality has been THE great unaddressed stinker in the barnyard in administration after administration.
I appreciated so many things about Obama but the one great mistake he made was not legally pursuing the wealthy crooks who caused the economic meltdown in 2008.
That was equivalent to Ford's pardon of Nixon. When there are no consequences for corruption and crime, it just encourages more of it.
I agree with you Winston. But that pardon is such a well-known example of the consequences of letting a crook "get away with it." Part of Nixon's legacy is Roger Stone who has mentored The Great Orange Menace. As Sonny and Cher used to sing: And the beat goes on…and on.
In "A Promised Land", he goes into why he didn't pursue the bankers, much as he would have liked to. He thought it would impact what remained of the economy, and therefore make more misery for ordinary people.
I wasn't a particularly good sociology student, but I do recall a deterrence study. It went to the data that swift and sure punishment was the most effective predictor of recidivism.
You don’t have to be an economist or banker to know he’s a huckster, a charlatan and a fraud. Shame on those smarter and wealthier than I. This has been a complete meltdown of ethics, integrity, incompetence and stupidity in our country.
For some strange reason, our society mistakenly associates wealth with intelligence. They are in fact, demonstrably, mutually exclusive characteristics. Ackman exemplifies this, as does Mike Lindell.
There have been psych experiments in which the experimental group was induced to temporarily have an enhanced feeling of power, and their capacity for empathy immediately and measureably declined.
"But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was."
In other words "I have a big wallet and I'm accustomed to using it to get people to bend to my will. Because of that I live in my own distorted reality."
Talk about getting a lousy ROI. Does ultra wealthy that contributed to Trump are probably looking at their fortunes crater right about now.
We need to build an economic system where a handful of ultra-rich morons or a state with zero regard for global responsibility can’t tank the world economy with a single idiotic decision.
Actually in New Republic that the New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed the suit. It's tied to the Koch alliance and Leo. Suit is filed in Florida. If Trump's lost Leonard Leo, can others be far behind?
Leo is extremely talented at playing games and making sure no matter how games end he is never a loser! He’s not doing bad now and never will and with this “law suit” I think he’s just hedging his bets as he knows better than most how really insane his “king” is and because he is less sure about musk he’s worried about his tax-free org that is his private piggy bank and he is simply looking after himself and his real estate holdings…. If we somehow manage to survive this shitshow aka special situation, we need to make sure that all the “think tanks” which are simple anti-Democratic America ideology training schools for traitors and every church that even once tell their members how to vote and why this party is better than that has their tax exempt status gone!!! Not warned, not have some toothless article written about the “political religious movement”, nothing like that — just pay taxes like you and I do!!
This is a strong counterpoint to the conspiracy theory that Trump and co want to tank the economy so they can buy assets on the cheap. The fact that Ackman and Musk want to get rid of the tariffs only points to a lack of coherent plan.
I'm no economist or businesswoman, but I fail to see how those who are can be surprised. Trump has always been a transparent liar and cheater out for vengeance and for himself, whose understanding of all issues, economic and otherwise, is subject to his limited capacity for insight.
I agree with you. He has been a con man from day one.
Speaking of con men, my favorite line from that Bill Ackman post was him hilariously saying “business is a confidence game”. He needs to look up the definition of that term. It literally means a swindle.
He knows that. These folks have been telling us the truth about what they are up to for many years. Folks just aren't listening.
He's also a chameleon who changes his policy positions based on the last person he's spoken to...and if that person just paid him a pile of money or not.
The CEO class only cared about the upcoming bigly big tax cuts; that would directly benefit them and their friends, and more importantly juice the stock market and thus pump the value of their stock options.
funny..he never changes colour ...... ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK show..... We have a lovely orange suit waiting for you mr. t....ya know .... karma works, in it time
Is anyone confident that this is “the bottom?” I see no reason to believe the markets will stop falling at this point. They have a long way to go.
I saw a response to one of his posts pointing out he was heavy into Nike and was only concerned because he went long and apparel is tanking, so he might not have the money to buy the dip. Hence his epiphany. If he had cashed out like Warren Buffet last year, he might be able to buy low.
BTW, he earned a new nickname on that thread from the old Bloom County cartoon. He’s now “Bill the Cat Ack”-man, after the socially incompetent character in that comic. It fits, and a good laugh at a whiny billionaire’s expense is a tonic nowadays.
I have been investing and following the stock market for over 65 years and am a retired financial advisor. Regarding the market one must understand that no stock is bought or sold, stocks are traded. There is always someone on the other side of your buy or sell. Do you think that you are smarter than the person on the other side of your buy or sell? One other factoid - markets are always priced based on *expectations*. One more thing the herd is almost always wrong.
Were you able to work the shorts after the tariff announcement? Are you unloading now and waiting to get short again at the peak of the likely "recovery"? It's a long, long way to the bottom, plenty of room down there.
Knowing what was going to be said, and when, at the right time would rake in a fortune in shorts. Do you think folks were in on the game? It was so predictable that if it didn't involve the gov't, the old SEC might have looked into it.
Here is one more fact about markets - they almost always overreact to todays news. And here is a nearly universal fact - Everything reverts to the mean. Especially when it comes to the markets and sports performances, etc.
Yes, Robin he just in a word is mean. On the golden escalator in June of 2015, he exuded mean. His American Carnage inaugural address was mean. His continual mocking and derision are a deeply personal style revealing a mean, dishonorable, malign, uncaring, low minded, disposition. A dreadful human being determined to make his mark on the world unconcerned what that mark is. A modern-day Nero.
He also regularly exudes ignorance, stupidity and crazy. If a Democrat said just one of the vicious or insane things Trump regularly spouts…..
When you are expected to be righteous, in the best sense of the word, departing from the path is notable. Trump doesn't ask anything of you and come to find out you'll get less in return.
There's power in being mean, but there's rarely any profit in it. So when politicians are mean (about things that are nobody's business like transgender athletes), then you have to assume that they're being mean to pick your pocket.
I'm thinking you're right Terry. I'm also thinking Trump was mean before becoming a politician. In the meanness category he has a distinct advantage politically.
Trump keeps saying these tariffs are going to make us richer than ever before. Undoubtedly this means it will make him richer than ever before. If someone can get to the bottom of how he is personally profiting from this and make it known perhaps we can get the scumbag impeached again, and maybe this time it would stick.
Nero, at least, could play a musical instrument.
A regular Felonious Punk.
I would also add that he’s mentally very unhealthy. (I’m not a psychologist either.)
I have a family member who is disabled, including having low cognitive abilities. She chooses not to vote, as she does not feel qualified. She told me one time she could not believe people voted for Trump because he mean and crazy and a crook.
I told her she was more qualified to vote than most—she knew the basics!
Cathy,
I mentally consider the possibility of a Trump-worshipper choosing not to vote because they may not be qualified...and my brain goes into a laughing/crying jag. (As someone who is himself 100% permanently disabled, as well as being neurologically atypical, I have only love and GREAT RESPECT for your referenced family member. It must be wonderful to be close to someone with such rare insight and empathy.)
The ONLY WAY a Trump-cultist might EVER be conflicted is if THE KILLER WAIL ever did something that was not in his self-interest. They love him BECAUSE he's scum...and they see themselves in him. (Of course, you know all this as well as I.)
Thank you, Cathy.
She's probably more qualified to run the country than he is too!
Yes. But during his first term, there were still sufficiently many sane people involved in the government to avert the kind of total disaster that is now unfolding. Now he’s surrounded by yes-men and those who would manipulate him for their own ends. Some of which even pursue an agenda of transforming the US into a fascist state with themselves as part of the ruling cabal. While it was totally predictable has his second presidential term would be worse than the first and in fact truly terrible and an enormous risk, now things have truly become still much worse than the degree of terrible that should have been expected.
Being surprised by this after the first 99% of his first term is possibly understandable, but being surprised by it after 1/6 is not understandable or excusable.
Yes-men is a good way to put it. First time around the sane people all left as you observe, most characterizing Trump in a somewhat negative light, usually, along the lines of quote fucking moron unquote. Those yes-men you mention are zombies. Surely you've noticed. The Barbies. The zealots. James Carville calls them buffoons.
And the agenda of transforming?
Slipped right past us now, didn't it. It's done. We're there. I can't wait to see Trump's birthday parade on TV.
I'm just baffled, to be blunt.
I absolutely KNEW that Trump- would do ANYTHING that pleased his "bro", Vlad.
A few dozen American cities in flames? Sure, why not?! As long as they're all in BLUE STATES with large BLACK POPULATIONS.
Yes, Trump wants to rule America, just like Putin rules Russia. Where's the MYSTERY in that, America?
(Admittedly, selecting the "motivation of the day" is tricky, between Elon wanting money, Trump wanting power, and Putin wanting to sit in the White House...alone.)
Trump is a Manchurian Candidate, most likely.
Yes.
For about 40 years, Russia claims...
"‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
I think you got it!!
That's unfortunate...
But thank you.
Deep down, Trump envies and hates Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg. They are far richer. But the tariffs will be Trump's revenge. Trump expects these oligarchs to come crawling to him for relief from the tariffs that hurt their business empires. Trump will extract acts of humiliation and bribes from them. This has been his plan all along.
Just wait till the Europeans decide to tariff our real exports...services. That's Facebook, Google, Amazon...Musks enterprises. The Magnificent Seven won't feel so magnificent then.
THAT is just his automatic natural "business" mode - he really does not know how to 'be' any other way !
"Part of his plan"seems to assume facts not in evidence. But if "plan" includes intentions in his head, indistinct but furiously held, then yes.
Totally agree, they are pretending to be surprised. I think Mr Pinchbeck has a convincing view on the subject (unfortunately): https://substack.com/@danielpinchbeck/note/c-105400503?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=55v9q6
And I don't expect any buyer's remorse effect. It should have happened after Reagan's first term 10x over. With all the psychological manipulation, absence of decent public media and now AI, manupulating opinion seems easier than ever.
“And I don't expect any buyer's remorse effect. It should have happened after Reagan's first term 10x over.”
Amen!💯
Mr. Pinchpenny gives too much credit to trump having a brain. What about his 6 bankruptcies. He has no economic sense, understands little often, perhaps because he does not have the patience to read or listen.
I think an interesting discussion would be if Krugman and Pinchpenny did an interview. They could talk out some of where each sees the other being a bit lacking in understanding.
His six bankruptcies might mean, to an amoral person, being able to walk away from six big debts. Some people would call that clever. Trump may just be twisted and bad. He might well be intelligent in some ways, involving amorality. An idiot savant, so to speak.
Pinchbeck's essay is multifaceted and a lot of it might be the case. Or not.
Krugman does not think what is being done is for no reason. Of course there's a reason and goals. Krugman is saying that there is no rational thought involved. He might well be right. And you can't rule out the role of plain old-fashioned stupidity, if not actual malice. Maybe what's going on is exactly what was wanted. Maybe even it's a simple scam involving short positions in the market. The right shorts would have made a ton of money after the announcement.
The ultimate goal I read into Pinchbeck's essay was that Trump and Musk are at the head of a cabal (they are) that includes others of the ilk of Stephen Miller and the Loomer woman, who want America to become a serf-and-master economy. That's probably true. And not inconsistent with Krugman's insights regarding to rational thought and behavior.
How powerful is wishful thinking!
It is powerful enough to convince ignorant people who either aren't capable of critical thinking or are simply too lazy to bother to vote for Donald Trump.
Professor Krugman is wrong, in my opinion, to give disengaged voters a pass for not paying attention. If the Constitution only offers rights, but no responsibilities, then we end up where we are now -- with the Constitution in shreds and the country being swallowed up by ignorance and stupidity.
dont forget the disinformation campaign... I believe it played a big part in motiivating low information voters to go to the polls
Yes, but disinformation only works on people who are either disengaged or relying on sources that simply aren't credible. Trump has to be the most notorious liar in ? (I can't even think of a limited time frame.) Anyone who is unaware of that or dismisses it cannot possibly vote responsibly.
I can't even begin to imagine what made voters think that Trump would actually follow through on his campaign promise to cut prices on day one? Did they do what has been common and not take him literally -- i.e., no expectation of "day one" -- but assumed he'd do it soon enough? That stretches naivete beyond the breaking point. Anyone who was even moderately informed should have known that Trump does not really care about workers and that no president has the power to simply cut prices across the board. So, even if Trump had wanted to, he couldn't have kept that promise.
I saw and heard all the disinformation. Did you? If so, did you fall for it? I doubt it. We live in an age when "alternative facts" have become the lingua franca of the Republican Party. Only a complete fool believes what comes out of the mouths of Republicans. In the case of Trump, one has to apply prior knowledge concerning who and what Trump is -- a pathological liar who whines incessantly about being victimized and who is so stupid that he may actually believe that he's the smartest guy around. No one else should believe that because the evidence is both plentiful and overwhelming that Trump is quite stupid, exceptionally ignorant, and extraordinarily incompetent. Wishful thinking on the part of voters can overcome all that, but wishful thinking is a sign of profound unpreparedness to vote responsibly.
I apologize for going on so long, but I feel strongly that we have to offer no excuses for what voters did in November. As Professor Krugman pointed out in his discussion with Mehdi Hasan that voters don't have to be economists or even know an incredible amount in order to make good decisions. In 2024-25, any voter who doesn't understand that oil is a global market and that presidents don't lower it price by sheer will (or at all) should reconsider voting. However, I want as many people as possible to vote, because if they know what they are doing, Democrats will 1) hold permanent majorities in both houses, 2) have a lock on the presidency, 3) and ultimately, I hope (but I don't have illusions about this) become a better political party. Knowledgeable voters should nominate better candidates, weed out those who are too old to be effective (Note, I'm old, so I don't have an ageist bias against old politicians. Dick Durbin should resign. Chuck Schumer isn't inspiring anyone. Elizabeth Warren is still bright enough and energetic enough to do a fine job. Seniority should stop being a consideration at some point -- 65 might be a good age at which to abandon it as even a consideration for how to assign leadership positions. That doesn't mean someone 68 couldn't be member of the leadership, but it would based on performance, not longevity.
I've written to Patty Murray, my senior senator and told her that I won't support her if she runs again and, truthfully, I think she should have retired before this term. She's in her 70s and does not have the kind of persona and energy we need to effectively oppose Trump. I'm a strong believer in the value of experience, but only up to a point. Had Murray retired, her seat could have been filled with someone who might be able to match a 25-hour filibuster.
I guess I failed to heed my apology for going on too long. Sorry. And done.
It's a Tower of Babel out there. A sea of lies. Paying attention just might make some people the mental equivalent of seasick. Truth is out of style.
It's a Frankenstein's monster situation. They surely knew he was a conman, ignoramus and pathological liar. They just viewed themselves as the puppet master. I imagine this has been the case throughout the history of Fascism - I think Dr. Krugman wrote a piece about this a few months ago. Eventually, everybody loses.
Didn’t the wealthy corporate elite think they were the puppet masters and could control Hitler? LOL, the hubris never ends but we are the ones paying the price. Lock them all up.
They think they can control Trump because he’s so easily flattered and manipulated. They forget he’s also mad as a hatter. Controlling crazy long term is not an option they have, no matter what they’ve told themselves.
Yes, they did. There's a book written by one of them: "I Paid Hitler", by Fritz Thyssen. He was one of the German industrialists who funded Hitler and the Nazis before the war. The book was his apologia. You can find it on archive.org.
Because they're mostly just like him.
Imagine feeling liberated by being able to say pussy. What a lutnick.
Robin, I agree.
Something is truly wrong in the country when a liar and cheater like this convicted felon can become president. What a nightmare.
Apparently, greed takes precedence over rational thinking.
.....his limited capacity for insight. Robin did you mean his capacity for consequences. He is intellectually incapable.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one. Émile Auguste Chartier
“The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it." Francis Crick
H.L. Mencken. He said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Looks like that first quote ("the dangerours man...") is attributed to Francis Crick, not H.L. Mencken.
Read it again.
I agree. And January 6th illustrated that he was completely lawless, ruthless and insanely ignorant and stubborn. Trump 1 disappeared after that.
"Trump has always been a transparent liar and cheater out for vengeance..."
That might be part of it. Trump was all hot air during his first term when it came to trade wars. So a lot of investors might have thought that he would essentially be full of it for Trump redux. Surprise! He isn't.
100%
This talk about "zero tariffs" is just smoke and mirrors. Not only are the current EU tariffs very low, but in 2016 the EU and the US were actually on the verge of signing the TTIP agreement which would have eliminated all tariffs between them. This agreement was killed by Trump as soon as he took office.
They thought they could control him. But then the Supreme Court declared him a king and he won and all bets sre off. Giving the most narcissistic man on the planet the power to impact trade around the world was insane. He is a gangster holding the whole world hostage. If your country or business doesn't kiss the ring and bribe him, the tariffs won't go away. Theres a reason you aren't supposed to vote for corrupt criminals. They do shit like this.
If it were another country doing this, he would label them as being “corrupt”!
He is so drunk with his perceived power and his perceived “mandate” that he can’t see the irony.
Surely there are enough of us that can stand up to him!
I must disagree with your argument. Trump's tariff policies - if taken seriously - are disastrous for big business and big Republican donors. Also, inflationary policies as tariffs inherently are, will mandate increasing SS funding. Which, on the flipside will lessen the likelihood of a significant tax-cut for the rich even more substantially increasing the national debt. A no-no for many Republican lawmakers. So Trump is in a hard place from three sides: big Republican donors, his working class voter base, and his congressional majority. And I highly doubt he has the energy, mental acuity, and vision to figure out his way in between the Scylla and Charybdis (especially, if he's spending most of his time in the golf course while relying on total nitwits to keep the store open in his absence)
"Trump is in a hard place"
No. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He's not beholden to anyone, not even Musk. He got the job he wanted, and now he's causing as much pain as he can for anyone that ever crossed him, including the American public that didn't reelect him in 2020. He doesn't care about political power, and he doesn't even care about tearing down institutions - that's why he's leaving all that to others. All he wants is power and money, and to exert power to get money. He wants to be the biggest grifter of all time.
You seem to be in a dark mood, my friend.
Trump is sitting on a three legged stool made up by his voting base, his big business donors, and his congressional support. Losing any single of these will make his presidency untenable.
I'm being realistic. Nothing threatens Trump because he knows that no one will impeach him and remove him from office. Other than that, he has no fucks to give. The only way to slow him down is via the courts and Congress, and the latter only if enough Republicans grow some balls to defend their constituents' rights and needs. Trump was a lame duck president the day he was inaugurated, but the GOP acts like he still holds sway. Congress faces elections again, and they need to made to believe that MAGA is going away soon, or they'll have more to worry about than getting primaried.
It won't bring him down, though. Unless you can convince a large number of Republican Congressmen to vote for conviction in an impeachment, or his cabinet to remove him, he will serve through to the end of his term no matter what he does. Assuming the 22nd amendment holds, he will serve for exactly this term and no more. He doesn't need his base. He doesn't need the donors, except to extort them. He doesn't need much congressional support. We should expect him to use his power to extort money from wealthy individuals for the next four years, and then try to subvert the 22nd amendment when the time comes to delay prosecution for his crimes.
SCOTUS said he can’t be prosecuted so that ain’t gonna happen. Especially with the current members of that court.
He can be prosecuted for activities outside the requirements of office. For example, extortion and grift.
Trump wants to be "important". However he does it.
It is probably easier to do it by ruining the economy, because that doesn't take any intelligence or serious thought, & despite his incessant boasting, he knows that he is weak in that respect.
Read Paul Krugman today. He describes the EU vs. US tariffs toward each other as near zero before the orange menace took over.
“ I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”
They could do that during Trump 1.0
I always said, people voted for him because he allowed them to say in public what they previously could only say in private.
I thought it was just because they do hate the same groups of people and our laws because they don’t agree with law being equal to all(as if this was ever so in our entire history!!)…..why would they need trump to be able to say things out loud?! First Amendment does it a lot better!
You nailed it perfectly.
They love him because conman Fascist Trump normalized their hatred. Now they can live it out openly, and unhindered by law and moral.
“Now they can live it out openly”. Indeed. The billionaire class has been outed for who they truly are.
Not only normalized it: celebrated it.
And paid BIG money for it to put him in office.
He has lowered or common discourse to the gutter.
A lot of folks are so disengaged that they assume all the negative things they have ever heard about Trump are lies. They need to be forgiven and to see the light.
Why? Their complacency is legendary. That is worthy of scorn at a minimum.
Moreso, the incomprehensible foolishness of it all should seriously give pause to anyone thinking of going into business with them or marry them. You are asking for serious trouble down the road, if their cognition and allegiance to fact is so impaired.
got the reply wrong. Scorn's ok but does not preclude forgiveness. Agreed, they are dangerous, though.
They will not see “the light” and they are not asking to be forgiven— when our very own Il Duce has traincars going to concentration camps they, “the nice people who will see the light” will be guards with dogs and guns and I wonder if you think that they will be asking your forgiveness then— for I, my good friend, was born in a country like that and escaped to freedom and America after a while and have been citizen of this country after serving it and making sure I lived by the law unlike in my previous country where no one bothered living by the law cause you would be hungry! These people hate you and me because we try to live up and they live to tear down! Try to see it for what it really is because you will need it very soon!!!
But this is only my opinion of course…
Quite right. But some of them have to see the light, because we need their votes if we are to recover our democracy. And to forgive someone does not mean you do not understand they are still your enemy. You need a clear head to figure out what to do when they come for you. Hatred and anger create brain fog; one cannot see clearly.
The burden is on the one who does not forgive, not the evildoers who commit crimes against humanity. They're probably happy you hate them, because your hatred is a burden to you, not to them.
You are judged by the company you keep. If you hang out with white supremacists, I'm here to tell you, you might as well get your white hood pressed because you too belong in the KKK.
I have no respect for “Get Over It” Jamie Dimon.
I could not believe my eyes when I read that Jamie Dimon projected Trump would win. I recall the titans were meeting in Switwerland, perhaps Davos. And I asked my sin, a banker, and he said they want the tax cuts extended. And I'm like - those tax cuts that are responsible for the huge deficits? Yes, it's about pure greed. And this has been the discussion in DC - will the tariffs pay for the tax cuts? It's like everyone imagined the flow of goods would continue the exact same way, and no one would make bets on the disruption. The titans definitely thought the tariffs were a game.
Scary thought that so many in positions of power are so thoroughly ignorant. The WSJ had some excellent articles on how the tariffs are effecting manufacturing sectors. Guess what? It takes a lot of tariffed materials to build new factories. Oil and gas are horrified as their prices plummet in the face of looming recession.
They don’t care what happens to the rest of us as long as they get their “propers.”
Gotta have that 3rd super yacht and 9th villa.
More like gotta have the cash to be able to afford a spot in the mega-rich bug-out bunkers they're building to survive the climate catastrophes they created.
Absolutely!
Thanks, again, Dr. K. I'm glad you're not under the editorial yoke of the Times anymore. And you are correct - income inequity is the main problem today. I have always supported capitalism, the system I was born into here in the US, but the guardrails are gone. Crony capitalism, zero regulations on corporations, the GOP's assault on the tax structure - ALL TO MAKE THE RICH RICHER - are killing our country. They are trying to return us to the gilded again, when people feared growing old, the poor had no services, and there was no way for a middle class to form.
After FDR saved us - yes, he did and that is why the GOP then called him "a traitor to his class" - and then the war pulled our economy out of the Great Depression, we thrived like never before and a great middle class grew, people had some security - social security - and we boomed like never before. Want to know why? The tax structure. The rich paid a much higher portion all along through that time and up until Ronald Reagan began the slow destruction, the false narrative that all government is bad. And now we are at this point. It's time for the rich to either pay their share or to pay the consequences. It's not trite to say "a rising tide lifts all boats."
If this UNLIMITED greed continues, we may approach a moment such as just before FDR was inaugurated, when the rich finally realized that the civil unrest could harm them. Or we could be at a "let them eat cake" moment. The GOP enabling Trump must either stop him - for they can - or suffer the consequences of their abject fear and total submission to their king. Trump hates America. The GOP loves Trump. Add it up.
I think Saturday gave them a small taste of what's coming. Will they take the hint? They still seem to mostly have their heads jammed deep up "where the sun don't shine", but if we keep up the pressure, maybe, just maybe, it'll start to sink in. There's a reason they're avoiding town halls.
Interesting how the Times, in their print edition, downplayed the marches on Saturday.
I was unable to participate in the events on Saturday but I fully expected front page reporting in the Times on Sunday and was stunned that I had to turn to page 19 in order to see a few cobbled together pictures and some rather sceptical offerings of attendance. Seems like the Times is going the way of WaPo.
So discouraging and the opposite of my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Skip over to Margaret Sullivan on Substack (American Crisis). She has a thorough writeup on the underreporting.
Thank you!
A feature about Betty Boop got more coverage on the NYT. I noticed the lack of coverage, posted about it on FB, and even wrote the NYT. Lots of response on FB, but none from the NYT.
I wrote to them too. Let's see if they print any of--likely--many letters on the subject.
yep
I'd like to make a plug for the coverage of the economic effects of the tariffs in the Wall Street Journal. There were many very interesting articles about the effects on different sectors. They didn't do much about the protests, but I felt I learned a lot from them yesterday.
I know that in my little red corner of the world there were 10 times the protesters out on Saturday than the previous protest.
Yes!! Totally noticed that!! One photo from Asheville, NC, below the fold. When one of the largest protests in the country was on their doorstep. Shameful!
Yeah, it's shameful how lamestream media is downplaying the magnitude of it. They won't be able to ignore us for too much longer though. The rage is palpable, and it's only going to grow.
They are firmly where they have always been, on the oligarch's side.
Actually, they had a quite ingenious strategy. Trump's court at Mar a Lago, where the rich and powerful groveled at his feet and he won his golf championship on Sunday, was given top billing. BUT if you went down a little on the screen and clicked on the modest headline about protests, there were pages of photos of nationwide protests. It was a great contrast. I thought it was clever and subtle.
In my relatively small town county seat, we had an estimated 6,000 people turn out on Saturday. There are a lot of concerned people in this country right now and none of them are “paid protestors.”
Yes! Us too. Local Maga said they bussed people in. The devastation is coming from so many directions.
Awesome. We all need to keep at it.
Right now I don't think it's the protests. (that's to terrorize Congress) It's the crashing stock market and realization of how much Trump's tariffs are going to damage them personally. Now we'll see who on Wall Street is swimming naked.
That's true. That's not to say we shouldn't keep demonstrating, but yes, the market crash will expose a lot of the cranks and charlatans.
YES! We need to keep showing up.
April 19 is our next protest outing.
I'm all in. Please post links.
WS ,
Do you think he can effectively take over enough of the military so he can just ignore peaceful protest
and remain “ Big Brother “ for life ?
Good perk for him to take a ride
on Air Force 1 to the golf course on the taxpayer’s dime.
I don't believe he can. Too many take their oath - and genuine patriotism - seriously. And remember, they have civilian friends and family too, most of whom are no doubt as appalled at the abuses of this administration as the rest of us.
JVL at The Bulwark suggests that it’s only a matter of time before a burgeoning protest movement (i.e. big rallies, like those last weekend) attracts bad apples, and just one person doing some criminally violent thing at one of them will be all the Trumpists need to declare martial law, or at least to send in troops to attack their fellow citizens.
I’ve been thinking hard about the PEOPLE behind the ninja outfits and masks in recent ICE raids, esp the kidnappings in broad daylight in the street. Who are they? How do they rationalize these actions to themselves? How many are all in on the brutality? and are there pockets of panicked and horrified officers who don’t want to participate, but feel it their duty?
We’ll find out when (not if) he orders troops to open fire on American civilians. The more successful the protests the sooner that sad day will come.
Yeah, litter and traffic jams are really effective. Already forgotten. Only pathetic morons would protest what the media tells them to.
We had no litter and no traffic jams. There were crossing guards at every intersection who kept protesters out of the street.
Oops! I see. It's the usual troll with a new name. Hi Troll. Are you real or are you a bot? I hope you're a bot, I'd hate to think you're a real person.
Substack has nice little feature called "trollBeGone". One click of the link and bye bye troll.
Where is it? I took the trolls bait. Oh well. My daughter heard from someone at her work that the protests kept an ambulance from getting into the hospital parking lot. Those kind of lame lies are going to come fast and furious.
Nicely put. A thought my socialist friends once told me about FDR. He saved capitalism.
He did save it, but it's apparently like a cancer and, left unchecked, will always morph to kill its host.
The socialists were not fans of Franklin. Trump can be viewed as the antigen to creeping socialism. The message lost on the rabid capitalists and socialists is that they need one another.
"Creeping socialism". Where is this creeping socialism? I don't see it in the minimum wage, which hasn't been updated in 20 years. I don't see it in the ACA, which seems like a capitalists dream and a patient's nightmare. Certainly we don't have medicare for all. No one seems to feel like fixing the socialist programs we do have like medicare and social security so they remain insolvent. The Tax Cuts and Jobs act wasn't socialist. Nor were Clinton's reforms to welfare and NAFTA. I can't find any socialist policies implemented in decades.
The IRA was fairly green, but mostly ended up being subsidies for businesses. not people. What was passed was the green part of the green new deal.
It's creeping toward decrepitude.
I think the rich were afraid of Communism. They calculated it was better to pay high taxes than face having it all taken away. When Communism collapsed as an economic reality (China and Russia are capitalistic autocracies) the rich felt free to assert their superiority over the great unwashed.
Interestingly, the rich weren't any better judge of character than their low-class counterparts.
They were certainly afraid of communism, although I don't think they were truly any more worried that this country would become communist than Eugene McCarthy was actually worried about it. What they really feared was anarchy and a breakdown of the social and classist order. The Bonus Army was an affront to them and we did use our military on those veterans who only wanted to be taken care of after their hard service. The rich were scared of losing all to the mob, the rank and file - in other words, to regular people who were not so fortunate. The ONLY reason they allowed FDR that much power at first was that they were terrified of the masses, not so much any ideology.
After FDR had pushed through reforms that would have been unthinkable two years earlier and averted a serious crisis, they started to claw back those powers. Because he was a political ninja, he still managed to achieve an awful lot, which is why they later amended the Constitution so that no one person could be president for more than two terms. The treasonous GOP has been trying to undo FDR's legacy for 80 years now. Apparently, the greatest sin for these Christians is to help the poor.
I don’t think Eugene McCarthy was very scared of communism maybe it’s the other one?!
Correctly, John Kenneth Galbraith once said that wealth is often mistakenly attributed to intelligence.
It's a major defect in our society.
I am related to John Kenneth Galbraith through my mother. I worked for three decades at Harvard, and regret never making the time to go visit my cousin before he died. Ah, the folly of thinking older relatives will always be there when you are young.
Like that box of chocolates momma was talking about.
Exactly.
"I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount."
Having been reading PKs substack since Paul left NYT, it was totally foreseeable and we could be very confident that economic idiocy would be paramount.
As I posted on Bluesky regarding Ackman's comments, us common folk could see a while ago.
I am neither a businessman nor an economist and I saw right after tRump announced upon his descent on his gilded escalator that the whole basis of his politics is greed and prejudice. I got good at spotting sociopaths/psychopaths while in medical practice and I surely saw that he had all the warning signs. I also saw how profoundly stupid he is... The only thing he has ever been good at is finding his next mark.
Ackman was just being disingenuous when he said that.
I don't think Ackman has the perspicacity he thinks he does.
Certainly not. He's really quite dim.
I was surprised at how fast Trump 2 has collapsed into chaos. But I'm feeling quite good about it right now. If Vance takes his place, he'll be much craftier. I bet he's hiding off stage right now hoping too much doggie doo doo doesn't land on him.
Maybe. But Vance has made serious political errors too. Vance is very unpopular, lacking the charisma of Trump, and polling at only 35% approval last I looked. (Not that I understand how Trump has charisma, because for me he has none, but obviously tens of millions of Americans are or were susceptible to it).
Vance is hiding off stage to spend some quality time with the couch in his office. His wife won't let him have one at home because she can't stand the competition.
Thank you, another good article.
Why does not Paul address the question Of how extreme inequality comes about?
He’s probably addressed this a million times. There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that we have a tax system that favors multimillionaires and billionaires at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Importantly, these wealthy super wealthy and ego driven C-Suite types are THE major source of funds for Republicans Congressional campaigns. They could stop this immediately with calls to their congressmen and senators to take back the Constitutional power for tariffs. They could single handedly flip the four votes needed to restore checks and balances.
Yes, taxes are part of it. However, we should also remember that salaries are set in the board room, and workers are not allowed there. Ever since the advent of shareholder primacy in the '70s, GDP and workers pay have diverged. Productivity improvements kept accruing to shareholders but they stopped sharing it with labor.
Lower top marginal tax brackets are why the rich are getting richer, but the poor should be getting richer too because of GDP growth. The fact that boardrooms have conspired (publicly! -- "We have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to hold down costs") to hold down salaries is why the poor are getting poorer. Far too little attention is being paid to that. Probably because politicians do not work in the boardroom.
But they could do something. They could assign the proxy rights of index funds and private equity, which currently can not fulfill their corporate governance duties, to workers. This would enfranchise workers to solve their own problems at a local level.
Two word answer: Ronald Reagan.
The ancient Greeks and Romans cancelled all debts. Cicero decried it as an attack on property. The practice has morphed into bankruptcy. There's a lyric "The rich get richer, and the poor get children". Are we having fun yet?
As someone who has watched and listened to Bernie Sanders (yep, I live in Vermont) since the beginning of his political career in the late 1980s, income inequality has been THE great unaddressed stinker in the barnyard in administration after administration.
I appreciated so many things about Obama but the one great mistake he made was not legally pursuing the wealthy crooks who caused the economic meltdown in 2008.
That was equivalent to Ford's pardon of Nixon. When there are no consequences for corruption and crime, it just encourages more of it.
IMHO, this is leaps and bounds worse than Ford pardoning Tricky Dickie.
I agree with you Winston. But that pardon is such a well-known example of the consequences of letting a crook "get away with it." Part of Nixon's legacy is Roger Stone who has mentored The Great Orange Menace. As Sonny and Cher used to sing: And the beat goes on…and on.
The slippery slope...
In "A Promised Land", he goes into why he didn't pursue the bankers, much as he would have liked to. He thought it would impact what remained of the economy, and therefore make more misery for ordinary people.
And I can understand that. It was a time of panic though in retrospect, that looks mild in comparison to what we're experiencing now.
That was the same reason Ford gave for pardoning Nixon, and when you have a whole country to look after, you can see the reasoning.
At the same time, the longterm consequences of not punishing criminals is what we are being subjected to now.
'Tis a conundrum.
I wasn't a particularly good sociology student, but I do recall a deterrence study. It went to the data that swift and sure punishment was the most effective predictor of recidivism.
You don’t have to be an economist or banker to know he’s a huckster, a charlatan and a fraud. Shame on those smarter and wealthier than I. This has been a complete meltdown of ethics, integrity, incompetence and stupidity in our country.
Too kind, Doris.
"I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount."
Ackman is just learning about the reality that Trump nullifies rationality in every act he performs or words he speaks or writes?
Was Ackman also feeling so liberated by saying inappropriate appellations about human beings not to notice what Trump really does?
Inconceivable.
For some strange reason, our society mistakenly associates wealth with intelligence. They are in fact, demonstrably, mutually exclusive characteristics. Ackman exemplifies this, as does Mike Lindell.
There have been psych experiments in which the experimental group was induced to temporarily have an enhanced feeling of power, and their capacity for empathy immediately and measureably declined.
And that was with relatively normal people to begin with. The effect is amplified if you begin with psychopaths - who start without any empathy.
"But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was."
In other words "I have a big wallet and I'm accustomed to using it to get people to bend to my will. Because of that I live in my own distorted reality."
Talk about getting a lousy ROI. Does ultra wealthy that contributed to Trump are probably looking at their fortunes crater right about now.
Exactly.
Play it again, Jim.
What we must learn from the current crisis:
We need to build an economic system where a handful of ultra-rich morons or a state with zero regard for global responsibility can’t tank the world economy with a single idiotic decision.
If you like, check out the long version here and maybe share:
https://open.substack.com/pub/hannes1001/p/an-economy-that-cant-be-hijacked?r=571mid&utm_medium=ios
Excellent essay Paul. Thank you.
Daily Kos is reporting that Leonard Leo and a Koch brother have filed suit against Trump over tariffs. Have not seen this elsewhere.
Actually in New Republic that the New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed the suit. It's tied to the Koch alliance and Leo. Suit is filed in Florida. If Trump's lost Leonard Leo, can others be far behind?
Leo is extremely talented at playing games and making sure no matter how games end he is never a loser! He’s not doing bad now and never will and with this “law suit” I think he’s just hedging his bets as he knows better than most how really insane his “king” is and because he is less sure about musk he’s worried about his tax-free org that is his private piggy bank and he is simply looking after himself and his real estate holdings…. If we somehow manage to survive this shitshow aka special situation, we need to make sure that all the “think tanks” which are simple anti-Democratic America ideology training schools for traitors and every church that even once tell their members how to vote and why this party is better than that has their tax exempt status gone!!! Not warned, not have some toothless article written about the “political religious movement”, nothing like that — just pay taxes like you and I do!!
Yes I read that as well-it is through an organization Leo backs.
I saw that somewhere besides DK
This is a strong counterpoint to the conspiracy theory that Trump and co want to tank the economy so they can buy assets on the cheap. The fact that Ackman and Musk want to get rid of the tariffs only points to a lack of coherent plan.
It is, but not entirely. It just really points up two different branches of opportunism.
Agreed. Just because it isn’t planned, doesn’t mean people won’t take advantage of it.