Who Knew that the Next Economic Catastrophe Would be Trump Induced?
Who knew? We did. Normal people did. Many of us felt like we were standing in front of a train hurtling towards a cliff screaming, “STOP! STOP!” while it sped up as it reached the edge. Well, we’re reaching the edge, and it is virtually 100% Trump induced. When he got his gigantic tax cut rammed through, the business community cheered. When he started his trade war, the business community was concerned, but his base cheered. Then he pissed off our closest allies and estranged us from NATO while cozying up to Putin. He’s now pushing lifting sanctions against Russia. And worse? We’re now in our 32nd day of an unprecedented government shutdown, Trump holding a gun to the head of 800,000 workers and the entire US economy.
As this disaster drags on, adults in the room have gone from reluctant questioning to full fledged alarm. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan says a long shutdown could wipe out the entire first quarter of economic growth. Worse, some economists are worrying about a global slowdown, especially since China is also suffering from the trade war (even though their trade surplus with us has exploded since Trump started his idiotic trade war). The invertebrates in DC, led by Ol’ Scratch McConnell, do nothing but make fundraising calls for re-election.
And the American people are helpless to do anything. Representatives’ and Senators’ voicemail boxes are full, no one is taking calls, and emails get canned responses. Trumpists cheer as Rome burns.
And the real problem? You can’t negotiate with kidnappers. If the Dems cave to Trump’s demands, this will become his normal negotiating tactic. He’ll skip congress all together and just shut down the government every time he can’t get what he wants. The result is that, unfortunately, this is a game of chicken that the Dems can’t lose.
The only real Question was how soon, and how bad.
1Soon, very soon. Some weather event will knock out half the Gulf Coast and we won’t be able to recover fast enough.
But it will be “Pelosi’s fault.”
2We are living in interesting times.
@Charles R. Phillips,
Or some other catastrophic event, caused by an intentional human act of destruction or an act of mother nature.
3And the Dems will be blamed.
Somebody find Paul Ryan! Dig him out of a snowdrift somewhere in Southeastern Wisconsin. Ask him whether Ayn Rand saw this coming and what we should do when the leader of the country doesn’t appreciate the industrialists?
4El Jefe, for your parsing pleasure, we apologize for not having saved the idiotic response we received from Mark Amodei (R-NV). After slogging through the first two or three lines of his response to our e-mail, it was too painful. His response had zero to do with our question or reality.
Time to flood the media demanding they shove a mic where Old Scratch cannot ignore it. 67 votes in the Senate telling Donnie he can’t play hostage taker, Mitch.
5Right. You cant give in to a toddler’s tantrums or they’ll never stop.
6Thank you for this.
7People are getting canned responses? I email my Senators every Monday and even though I check reply requested, I don’t get anything!
8Canned responses? I just got one of those from Ben Sasse, one of my senators. I wrote him and Deb Fisher two weeks ago pleading with them to break ranks and end this thing. Today I got a reply.. a write up and a lot of pics of him attending the March for Life. I sent a reply asking when I might be hearing about the shutdown. This evening I got a reply that ‘his inbox is not being monitored.’ If I want to address a specific issue Ii need to fill out a forum. So there you are. The only constituents these people care about are Republicans.
Bunch of craven cowards.
9Someone, somewhere, someone with vast wealth to risk, has figured this all out. Maybe American, maybe Chinese, maybe Russian. Someone who has great financial and political resources, and no moral compass whatsoever.
Look for someone making odd and seemingly unrelated moves, like buying up debt of cities in particular regions only, or cornering the manufacture of certain drugs, or investing in relatively useless properties.
They will be “preppers” of a different kind, someone who wants to be king when the flood waters recede. Not content with waiting patiently for the cracks to form, they will drive in wedges to split the country in two for their benefit. When the moment is right, they will swoop down, waving their IOUs and land deeds, and claiming their prize.
Farfetched perhaps, but it has happened before on smaller scales. Vulture capitalism on a grand scale. And many will greet them as saviours, because they bring some sort of stability to the chaos.
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