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What Are We Even Talking About?
I don't do emojis, nor memes and I'm almost illiterate when it comes to text abbreviations. For years, I thought "TL;DR" was shorthand for some kind of profanity, until I saw it in a quasi-professional e-mail dispatch, prompting me to seek out the definition.
I do know what "LOL" means though, and I laughed out loud when, on Saturday morning, while perusing a highlight reel of Donald Trump soundbites from this week, I ran across a short clip of 47 extolling the virtues of patience and delayed g
There is no plan. We have a mad king.
I agree with all your points; your Weekly is such a succinct summary of the narratives’ incoherence the financial press should print it, it’s much better than Gillian Tett’s ruminations. IMHO the risk is that Bessent (he’s a clone of his mentor), like most of his white shoe peers, is arrogant enough to believe he/they can easily resurrect what they’ve destroyed. I understand he considers himself a student of the Japanese market; he clearly missed the part where the policymakers “pushed on a string”. Basic behavioral prediction: confidence and trust, once destroyed, hard to rebuild.
I come here for the insights and analysis and stay for the snark.
Oops, I wasn’t trying to respond to your comment. I was simply trying to leave a comment of my own.
They didn’t put Elon Musk in charge of government efficiency because they think he’s a genius. They put him there because he’s willing to do what actual politicians can’t get away with. Gut the state, break labor protections and sell the pieces to the highest bidder.
This isn’t about making government work better, it’s about making sure it doesn’t work at all. If you starve something long enough, it dies. That is the real plan.
Strip away public services, dismantle worker protections, and when everything collapses, what is left? A state that exists only to enforce property rights and suppress descent.
Musk is not a rogue billionaire acting outside the system, he is the system. He’s proof the corporate aristocracy doesn’t just own the economy anymore, they now own governance itself.
Think about it. Why would Trump, a man who supposedly hates the “deep state” put a billionaire CEO in charge of running the government? Because this isn’t about efficiency, it’s about handing over public power to private hands.
This the Trump playbook for dismantling what’s left of public governance:
Step 1: Dismantle public services. They fire government workers, defund critical agencies and let the infrastructure rot. Then they say “government is inefficient. Let the private sector handle it.” But the private sector isn’t interested in making things better, they are interested in turning a profit.
Step 2: Suppress labor and worker protections. Musk has spent his entire career crushing unions and exploiting workers. Now he gets to do that on a national scale. Do you really think a man who fought tooth and nail to stop Tesla workers from organizing is going to protect your job?
Step 3: Consolidate power and control. Once the government is stripped down to nothing, what remains? Corporate feudalism, a system where you don’t get healthcare, housing, or even internet access unless you pay Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or some other Billionaire directly. And don’t think you can protest, because Musk’s “AI driven efficiency measures” and “policing” will shut that down.
This is bigger than Trump. This is bigger than Musk. This is the new model of control. No more traditional politicians, just billionaires openly ruling over you like corporate monarchs.
No more government services, just everything sold back to you – at a price. No more worker protections, just automation, surveillance, and AI deciding who gets to live comfortably and who gets discarded.
And the worst part? They are selling it as progress.
Musk is not here to fix anything, he’s here to burn it all down so billionaires can rule without any oversight.
If we allow this to continue, there won’t be a government left, just a corporate empire where every law, every right, every basic service is controlled by unelected tech lords who answer to no one, and once that happens, there won’t be any elections left to vote your way out of it.
What can you do? You can either build something to replace this system, or they will replace it with something far worse.
Please stop thinking of power as something you ask for. It is not. It is that something you build. Stop waiting for politicians to save you. Start organizing your workplaces, your neighborhoods, and your own systems of survival.
Because if we don’t create an alternative, if we don’t take power into our own hands, then we are just waiting to be ruled.
Every society and government at some point gets to the existential question of survival. It’s hard to see the big picture when you’re in the moment, but this sure feels like our time to act if we believe enough in American democracy to want to keep it.
Dana
Well said. Sadly, most of it will fall on deaf ears. Our nation isn’t divided down the middle, as many think. Rather,it falls into three pieces, like most of Europe. A third of us fall on the right, a clear minority. A slightly smaller number, still close to a third, are “left leaning” and becoming trivialized and also form a clear minority. The final third just don’t care about politics, or our country. They, too, form a clear minority and though they could save us if they cared to, they don’t care and won’t contribute, even now. What a country.
TL;DR; Whatever he says is the plan his cult members will believe that’s the plan.
PS you can get a “copy” of the Goyard bag on TaoBao for about $50.???
Goyard’s funny. Once you’re in their little club, it’s a completely normal luxury shopping experience, and if you go to their physical stores (of which there are precious few), it’s just like any other store. But if you’re trying to buy for the first time, and you don’t go to one of their stores, you have get in touch with the “distance sales” team. You can’t buy online. The wait to get a callback from “distance sales” is weeks, and that’s if they call you back at all. It took me three tries submitting the form online. When you do finally get a callback, you have to give your guy or gal a list of products you want, and then they email you with availability and prices. You then have to e-mail them back and tell them which pieces you want, then they call you and the sale’s completed over the phone. On your first order, they won’t send it to your house. They’ll only send it to the nearest FedEx location to your house, and you then have to show up at FedEx, with a government ID, to get the package. Only after all of that are you a “client” who can buy regularly and have the packages sent to your home.
The other funny thing about Goyard is the way they do the pricing. So, once you get up into the medium-sized bags, the pricing’s pretty much comparable to Louis or Dior or any other top-tier luxury brand. But if you’re trying to get into the Goyard club with a small item — like, say, a wallet — they tax the hell out of you. You can get a great Louis pocket organizer for, say, $500, taxes and overnight shipping included. Goyard will charge you $800 for that same pocket organizer, and overnight shipping will run you another $150 give or take.
It’s a great strategy, because it keeps the club small, but the only problem is that no one cares when you’re out, because unless you’re in a global fashion hub, nobody knows what Goyard even is. So here you are, with your $1,000 wallet, and it may as well be from Belk for all anyone around you at the bar knows, whereas you could’ve turned some heads with your in-season Louis piece for half the price.
All of that said, I’m not gonna lie: It’s a cool little club, and in the impossibly far-fetched scenario where you run across someone who’s also in the club, they’ll be impressed.
Managing a large corporation (150k+ employees) is difficult. It’s even difficult (failure a very real outcome) with smart experienced leadership. Now imagine managing something at least 100 times larger lead by a group of idiots with little expertise and very inflated egos. What’s the emoji for royal f_up. Let’s hope the economy is so complex they can’t completely mess it up. In a month and a half they’ve already sowed so many rotten seeds that we’ll be managing the fallout long after they are gone.
“Nothing to do with the market, I’m not even looking at the market.” As unbecoming as this feels for me: LOL”
In all humility and deference to our dear leader, I humbly beg to differ. I’m afraid that you are partly accepting the Wall Street narrative that “Trump will not do anything that would tank the stock market because that is what he was focused on in his first term!” Translation = once elected, his #1 goal will be to will be to to drive up share prices. Thus, the famed “Trump put.”
I wonder if it is not a really low probablity that the president has a much loftier goal this time which is to be a truly tramsformational president: the president who restored America’s greatness. A president who rightfully deserves to be added to Mt Rushmore.
The president appears to have been won over with the dreams of greater glory. It reminds me of when some radio pranksters called Wisconsin Governor Scot tWalker disguised as David Koch and planted the seed in his mind that they had much bigger plans for him = the presidency. As the great Obi wan once said, “The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.”
My worry is that this is a FAT TAIL probablity.
Woe is us until the midterms.
As we’re told, the stock market is not the economy, and like so many things these days it’s also not even a reliable indicator since we can’t trust our lying eyes anymore. Am I the only one who remembers that the stock market went up under Biden in 2021 only because he was reaping the rewards of the fertile ground left to him by Trump? And what about when the stock market went up under Biden last year only because it was anticipating Trump’s return to office? So, it’s definitely not Trump who is making the market go down. I think it’s the damn Constitution. Those pesky term limits are now being discounted in the S&P, and sentiment is pinned in sadness as we realize we’re not going to have Trump around forever to drive the market higher. The only question is which pops first – the Trump put or the Constitution?
I’d argue consumer spending, the housing boom, and the stock market boom are all reflections of low unemployment and in some cases over-employment.
Even with the trillions in support housing received as a result of historic low mortgage rates and ramped up liquidity, if people aren’t working jobs that can sustain those mortgage payments, they aren’t buying houses. Stimmy payments aside, main street isn’t buying stocks unless they have extra money available to purchase them with, again the employment boom and rising wages comes to the rescue. And spending again goes back to having a job that affords you the capacity to buy a luxury car, watch, clothes, home; over entry level versions.
By killing the jobs market, Trump is going to prove that Bidenomics’ support of labor was the key to a strong and healthy economy. If only he hadn’t made eggs so expensive!