Thursday, April 03, 2025

"Wall Street Executives" vs. Trump Tariffs

In July of 2010, Angelo Codevilla fired a shot heard 'round the world, as it were.  Let's review the first couple of grafs:

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class....

That is NOT "ancient history."

We are told, by "Wall Street Executives" and their lapdog (camp-follower?) "experts" and press, that Trump's Tariffs will 1)  increase inflation, 2)  collapse the US economy,  and 3) create enemies worldwide.  You should be frightened, or at least skeptical, of the Trump Tariffs!!  DOOM  DOOM DOOM DOOM!!!!

Now re-read the Codevilla excerpt above.

"Wall Street Executives" have extended large loans--and/or underwritten stock and bond issues--of overseas companies and countries, mutatis mutandis.  Trump's Tariffs will negatively affect both; the countries which have to devalue their currencies and the companies which will reduce their prices.  This means that the Wall Street Executives' overseas assets are in danger.  At the very least, the assets are devalued.  At the worst, those assets will go *poof* into bankruptcy.

Now do you understand why "Wall Street Executives" are crapping all over the Trump Tariffs?

Their bonuses are threatened!  How the Hell can they keep up the payments on the yacht, the third home in the Hamptons, and the matching Mercedes convertibles?  Not to mention the maids, servants, chauffeurs, groundskeepers, and club memberships in the city and the country?

Still think those "Executives" and "experts" have your interests at heart?

 P.S.:  You could also hear what the Administration has to say, rather than reading the filtered/adjusted/partial commentary fed to you by "experts" and "executives."

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