We often focus on the obvious about Trump: Thin-skinned narcissist, cheesy reality television star, criminal, schoolyard bully, prolific liar, lazy spray painted hair-weaved fake, skirt chasing philanderer, welsher, and pretty much all-round shitbag.  But that’s not all.  Except for disassembling our government and packing the courts with incompetent ideologues, Trump really doesn’t do anything.  His trade wars are circular and have only accomplished 3 things – bankrupting US farmers and businesses, costing the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, and finally, handing global trade dominance to the Chinese.

But there is something else he does that almost no one focuses on; he roils the markets with his sudden proclamations.  It goes something like this:

Trump runs a never ending cycle in almost everything he does while never really accomplishing anything.  Without warning, he slaps tariffs on selected imports, crashing the markets, then he starts making off the cuff comments about some kind of “deal” that increases with time.  The market rallies, nothing with trade changes, then he attacks China (or whatever country du jour), crashes the markets again.  Rinse and repeat.  He uses the same tactic with not only trade talks, but in negotiations with allies, foes, and actually dangerous countries like North Korea.  Part of his tactic includes spouting bullshit on national television while standing in front of his helicopter with turbine engines screaming in the background, called by Stephen Colbert “Chopper Talk”.

But it’s more nefarious than that.  Every time Trump shoots off his mouth and moves the markets, somebody makes a lot of money while somebody else loses a lot of money.  I have always believe he does this on purpose, especially when markets are sagging due to his trade wars or other idiocy.  In fact, one of his buddies, aging corporate raider Carl Icahn, saved millions when he dumped $31 million in shares of steel industry stocks just days before Trump announced steep China import tariffs.  But it gets worse – in October, Vanity Fair published an article documenting very suspicious trades in the S&P futures markets timed precisely to make hundreds of millions of dollars when a Trump proclamation moves the markets.  We know Trump intentionally manipulates markets with lies.   One well documented case was last August when Trump blatantly lied at the G7 summit that he was talking to top officials in China when there were no talks occurring.  The markets rallied at the lie, only to trade off when nothing happened – again.

Trump has always gotten away with questionable, if not outright illegal activity.  It’s engrained in his DNA.  He’s not constrained by rules and laws normal people follow, and it would not be in the slightest bit surprising that, in addition to his random lying, he (or someone close to him) was actually signaling to associates when he was going to make some big proclamation so they could get on the right side of a particular trade to rake in cash.  It certainly looks like it.  As one of Vanity Fair’s trading sources said, “There is definitely some hanky panky going on.”

It’s happening right before our eyes.  When His Orangeness was elected by the slimmest of electoral margins in 2016, normal people cringed, understanding that this chapter in our history was going to be a complete disaster.  Trump has certainly met that expectation; his erratic reality television show behavior has destroyed everything from 100 year-old international alliances to entire industries.  His tariff war has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in economic value; his withdrawal from the TPP handed international trade dominance to China and Australia; his idiotic rantings on twitter have roiled the markets and destabilized politics in the US.  The entire world is either laughing at us, or worse, preparing for the lunatic in the White House to declare World War III over some fabricated crisis.

Up until now, the markets have shrugged off Trump’s insanity, primarily because they’ve enjoyed the trillion dollars he’s pumped into the economy with unneeded tax cuts causing skyrocketing deficits.  The result was overheating the economy which caused inflation to raise its ugly head, forcing the Fed to act by raising bank rates.  His shutdown of the federal government over his idiotic wall is the last nail in the coffin of the 2018 economy.  The Dow has plummeted 4,000 points from its highs; this is the worst December since the Great Depression.  The market the last 2 years has now returned only 4% per year, barely beating inflation.

Instead of trying to understand what the hell he’s doing, Trump bumbles around, attacking everything that moves; he spent Christmas Eve savaging the Fed for the inflation HE PERSONALLY CAUSED.  Even worse, the Fed is now the only agency standing in the way of this hair-weaved moron from pushing the entire country into the abyss.  He has never grasped that the POTUS is supposed to CALM the markets, not burn them down; this narcissist is playing with matches while standing knee-deep in gasoline, complaining that he doesn’t have a blow torch.  On top of that, of course, the invertebrates in Congress have fled DC to celebrate the holidays in hiding while the economy burns down around our ears and almost a million federal employees go without paychecks at Christmastime.

This is the worst disaster I’ve witnessed, including the last disaster started by GWB ten years ago.  The difference?  GWB was just a dumbass who surrounded himself with evil neocons and Darth Cheney, but at least he wasn’t nuts.  Trump, a loose cannon, is singularly the most corrupt, narcissistic, and insane POTUS in the modern era, including Nixon.  He’s run off all the adults who tried to restrain his worst instincts.  And, as Mueller gets closer, he gets more dangerous and erratic; finally, after almost 2 years of complete chaos, the markets are now destabilized and plummeting.  This one won’t end well.

Merry Christmas.

It’s finally happening.  Trump’s policy pronouncements, probably tweeted while sitting on the toilet, have veered wildly from free trading to isolationist protectionism; from pro gun control to capitulating to the demands of the NRA; from attacking private businesses and the Post Office to insulting television personalities and petty feuds.  He’s threatened everything from nuclear war to global trade war.  He’s promised to eliminate the deficit while piling on an additional $1.5 trillion with the stroke of a pen.  He regularly threatens to jail political opponents.  He’s unstable, morally unfit for office, and basically living life in the White House as the cheesy reality television star he is.  In short, United States global policy has taken on the characteristics of a washing machine load of soiled towels, on high spin banging from side to side, only to be stopped by a power failure to make it all come to a halt before it floods the floor with filth.

In all of this chaos, Trump’s behavior has now become normalized.  The behavior of this shitbag infesting the White House has numbed our population to the most outrageous, totally corrupt conduct by any public official in US history.  His public speaking style is that of the ramblings of a moron.  He holds no standards of behavior; he has no foundation; he rambles incoherently about critical issues of national security; he has no grounding in true belief.  He’s a wind vane spinning wildly in the political winds.  He tweets a foundational principle – and within hours, he reverses himself.  He went after Amazon, claiming it was cheating the Postal Service out of billions of dollars and not paying sales tax.  Trump’s attack temporarily tanked the stock 15% or about $100 billion in market value.  His ranting about a trade war with China cost the Dow Jones 3,000 points.

The response of normal people? Depression. Fear.  Foreboding. The response of Trumpists who are just as goofy as he is?  Euphoria at the prospect of the second coming of the Man in the Sky caused by global chaos.  The response of the markets and other global powers?  Whipsawed.  Only, something changed after the on again off again threat of trade wars and attacks on Amazon.  After a year and a half of random idiocy, reversals, threats and nonsense, the markets have learned to ignore him.  He’s roiled the markets with wildly divergent tweets, numbing the influential with idiotic ramblings.  Those who pull the levers commerce have now learned to disregard his bullshit.  The market has learned that his random and wildly divergent tweets really have no basis except to garner attention for himself.  There is no basis in policy, no foundation, no ideology.  Our national policy has the same characteristics of that of a chimpanzee banging on a laptop keyboard.  He tweets simply for self gratification and attention.  Business leaders have learned that a random tweet doth not make policy – only when an adult (what few are left) speaks do they listen.  Otherwise they ignore His Orangeness.

For the first time, with the possible exception of the depths of the Watergate scandal, our country has no one at the helm.  The key lesson that I’ve learned is that the Founders so ingeniously designed our form of government that it can actually operate to some level with no leadership in the White House.  Its resiliency is further demonstrated by a hopeless deadlocked Congress which is also providing no direction, no responsible leadership, or even any common sense.

How long can we go like this?  Who knows, but my real fear is that as more and more people learn to ignore the rantings of the lunatic in the White House, his anger at being ignored will drive him to more and more outrageous conduct that will hopefully one day awake the Congress from its coma.  And that won’t be pretty.