Since Covid ruptured supply chains and geopolitical tensions changed just-in-time supply chains to just-in-case supply chains, the West has been importing inflation.
This has caused price gouging by Price Makers and crushed the working classes with a cost of living crisis.
Trump’s election risks the beginning of an escalation that risks flocks of Black Swans.
To date we have been told by Trump’s defenders that his wild and mad proclamations are all the spin of a deal maker negotiating the best deal with the worst threats, and certainly the Art of the Deal is just a how to guide for Alpha Jock Dickheads doing Alpha Male Jock Dickhead stunts.
Taking offence at some unrelated issue and causing a Tantrum for emotional leverage to get the best deal you can isn’t Art or a Deal, it’s Alpha Male Jock Dickhead bully behaviour that has all the empathy of an average Andrew Tate bro culture tutorial.
This time around however Trump believes God saved him from an assassination attempt.
The difference between war crime and genocide tends to be believing God is on your side.
If Trump believes he’s the vessel for Christ’s retribution, he’s going to do shit for realzies.
I fear he absolutely intends to ram Tariffs on the world permanently from Canada to China.
It hurts China and destabilises their already weak economy.
It hurts Canada and gives fuel to the MAGA movement in Canada and sets a narrative they should become a de facto 51st State.
Why would Trump commit to such a staggeringly stupid move?
Because he believes God has saved him to do special God stuff to be the bestest American President ever!
This God delusion for a narcissist allows Trump to do things no other sane President would attempt so he will blunder into a Global economic meltdown because his decision making has become manifest fucking destiny.
If he implements eye watering Tariffs, they could cause enormous and immediate economic dislocation.
This seems fine according to JD Vance…
In the end, Trump may not care too much if the dollar becomes a source of global instability. Vice President-elect JD Vance argued last year that the dollar’s role as a global reserve currency has subsidized Americans’ ‘mass consumption of mostly useless imports.’
…the last time the American Dollar became this dangerously over priced was in 1985 when a negotiated series of interventions was agreed to bring the dollar down in a controlled manner…
This problem last occurred in early 1985, when the dollar was universally reckoned to be dangerously dear. At that time the US was able to call on trading partners who depended on the US security umbrella – the UK, Germany, France and Japan – to negotiate the ‘Plaza Accord’, which coordinated a series of interventions in the foreign exchange market that allowed the dollar to decline in a measured way.
…there is no way China would agree today to helping America devalue their dollar generated by Trump’s Tariffs.
That leaves a dangerously overvalued currency risking massive financial dislocation all because Trump thinks God loves him.
My speculation, purely based on Trump’s inane narcissism, is that he is incapable of backing down, especially now he thinks God has saved him to Make America Great Again and that he won’t be able to accept the Tariffs are a bad decision and the economic carnage he triggers by implementing them will drive him to double down rather than back down.
I can see his Billionaire Libertarian Crypto-Bros convincing him of removing the American Dollar and replacing it with an American Crypto-Currency as the solution the way taking America off the Gold Standard in 1933 helped expansionist growth…
Under Trump, cryptocurrency is set to go mainstream – but that won’t make it any safer for investors
As the United States prepares for Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, all eyes are on the cryptocurrency markets. After Bitcoin’s price reached $100,000 (£81,917) for the first time in history in December 2024, the cryptocurrency community is eagerly anticipating Trump’s fulfilment of his campaign promise to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”. Some analysts predict that Bitcoin’s price could range between $78,000 and $250,000 in 2025.
Blockchain technology has numerous applications beyond crypto payments – for example, in supply chain and logistics. But it is the price surges of Bitcoin, Ethereum and “meme coins” that capture the majority of public attention. Speculative demand and the potential for abnormal returns, which are rarely found in other financial markets, remain key drivers of their prices.
Investors are often motivated by the prospect of short-term profits rather than a belief in the asset’s true or fundamental value. In the case of meme coins, speculative demand is primarily driven by social media culture and community enthusiasm, with little focus on the utility of the underlying technology or long-term success of the project.
Fuelled by expectations of a more favourable regulatory environment under the Trump administration, there is now increased institutional interest in cryptocurrencies. Major players such as BlackRock are entering the crypto derivatives market, increasing liquidity and drawing even more investors. This industry and political support for cryptocurrency demonstrates higher adoption and greater acceptance of crypto assets. At the same time, the speculative nature of crypto assets raises concerns that political endorsements could inflate a bubble, similar to the dotcom bubble that lasted between 1998 and 2000.
Financial market bubbles occur when asset prices far exceed their fundamental values and no longer reflect actual risks. When these bubbles burst, they can trigger a contagion effect, causing the collapse of related securities – even in industries with no direct connection to the troubled assets.
In my research, alongside fellow authors, I analysed companies that had rebranded with crypto-related names to boost their stock prices, despite no changes to their business models. This superficial association made these companies susceptible to contagion from the broader crypto ecosystem. If investors did not investigate whether these companies genuinely adopted blockchain technology, they are likely to sell these stocks swiftly at the first sign of negative news or a crisis in the crypto market.
…Trump is dumb enough and will be desperate enough to find a disruptive new way to make money as the American Economy tanks because of his Tariffs.
For the first month after replacing the American dollar with a Crypto Currency, the new American Crypto Currency will make more money than any of them dreamed, and then on day 31, for reasons none of the Billionaire Libertarian Crypto-Bros will be able to explain to any of us, it will crash because the whole thing is one giant speculative bubble that will implode in a way that makes the Wall Street Crash look like a gentle trip.
Is that a bird?
Is it a plane?
Or is it flocks of Black Swans?
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And now Trump has been completely owned by Putin. Perhaps now Trump’s ardent follower Bob the first will understand that Trump like he is, is not very bright and both have Dunning Kruger Effect. Where Trump believes he is the greatest negotiator in the world, in fact he has very limited intellect, his use of the common language is appalling and not befitting a comedian let alone a president. Not surprisingly he and his 2ic are booed wherever they go, such is the damage they have done to America and the rest of the world.
@National are Squeaky Clean – you are spot on. Well said. Could I add, without being facetious, that what Trump doesn’t realise is that puke-in holds all the trump cards at the moment.
After the elephants.drunk on fermented fruit. have stamped on their way we just might come out and put a lock on the doors to the Treasury and polly cage and actually start running things in our own rude rudimentary way, Us peasants know stuff and one is to ensure that a new lot of smartie middle class denizens don’t get hold of all the money and expanders as now. There would be devaluations and debt jubilees every five years perhaps.
So nothing expensive could be done or bought. Oh what a shame, we might go back to making garden seats out of driftwood. We could plant mini gardens in hollows; the dirt would be only what was left for us, but we might still have some good times. I wonder.
I hope you’re wrong.
Mr Bradbury, credit where it’s due – I mostly agree with your comments. Although you lost me around the “Alpha Male Jock Dickhead” part. As for JD Vance, why would any thinking person place any value on what that man says? Only two years ago he was a nobody, completely unknown, a non-entity. Now he’s a hand picked acolyte who has sold his soul to a megalomaniac convicted felon, one who in a more rational time in his past he seriously criticised. His views on any subject are valueless.
All of those things, plus a best-selling author, plus likely to be the next US President from the Republican Party.
I saw a major excitement on the Oz Stock exchange. Poseidon shares went from under a $ each to about $86 at one time, then settled to a lesser price. The directors visited Brazil till things cooled down. But there seemed a future for humankind then, I was younger and it was an interesting blip in the financial markets. Now it is serious, a warning for dumbos. But maybe it is essential to allow the elephants or kangaroos to fight for mastery and in the meantime their harems and fellow travellers can go to space, outer or inner, and emerge with different personalities if at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_bubble
In early September [1969? ] its shares, which had been trading at $0.80, began rising on insider trading (which was not illegal at the time). On 1 October, Poseidon announced that drilling had struck 40 metres of ore averaging 3.56% nickel and the share price immediately rose until Poseidon shares were trading at $12.30. After that, very little further information came to light but the price continued to climb on speculation. At one point, a UK broker suggested a value of up to $382 a share.[4][3]…
Or he could be successful in rejuvenating Main Street, USA. Time will tell. A more nuanced view from Yanis Varoufakis https://youtu.be/f1CdbCsetpw
I prefer the nuanced views of the comments below the video clip where they completely disagree.
Excellent coverage. Cheers @ MB.
Trump is the great entertainer,the ‘ugly American’ in the magic show of…..Capitalism, and its voracious appetite for control of….labour.
Research? has shown that 70% of Dereck’s comments here contain coarse language (e&oe) which should be withheld for when a big hit in normal ways and thoughts is required. And especially ones that relate to sexual parts or services. If sprinkled all over they lose their impact, don’t please.
Capitalism is a finely tuned supercar that needs to be parked in neutral and the accelerator floored til it blows up…
Trump is the guy to do it!
Getting an ear job by an assassin would soup up the invincibility dimension in a bloke like Trump. I can’t believe the young fella missed. But then again JD Vance, President, OMG.
Not to throw a damper on the racey rhetoric but, after all the juvenile language, crypto-currency claptrap and other general navel gazing, it might be worth listening to what two highly qualified economists and students of history, Professors Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson, are saying. Each believes that what we are witnessing, fundamentally, is the inevitable collapse of the US empire. More specifically, they say, Trump’s tariffs and general trash talk will rebound on the US economy ten-fold and that, rather than advancing the appeal of crypto-currency, they say, with the BRICS affiliated nations now representing 67% of the world’s people, that is the system that economies threatened by Trump’s tactics will be drawn to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg-BLqEn0_g https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-richard-d-wolff-nima-alkhorshid-sovereignty-in-crisis-israel-palestine-and-americas-global-agenda
Hudson and Wolff on The Background Music of a Collapsing Empire; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3qLvgyRSKc