Day 67: The Market Crashes...Again

 

I've been struggling to get a handle on my recent effort to maintain a journal of the dark days we now find ourselves in as a country. My usual preference is to do a "deep dive" on one particular topic, but I realize that, at least for now, that will not be a viable method as I lack the energy and, frankly, enthusiasm for such a frequent task. So, instead, I have decided to do something easier, which is to say just a daily log of stories that catch my eye (and believe me, we are in a time where "when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions"). 

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Today's story is the ongoing market meltdown as a direct result of the Trump regime's destructive command economy dictates. As the New Zork Times reports:

The S&P 500 tumbled 2 percent, marking one of its worst days since Mr. Trump’s election. The drop extended modest declines from earlier in the day, after the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure came in hotter than economists had expected, intensifying worries about price pressures.

The downturn on Friday pulled the S&P 500 to its fifth weekly loss in the past six weeks. March is on track to be the stock market’s worst month since September 2022; waves of selling in recent weeks at one point left the S&P 500 more than 10 percent below its Feb. 19 peak, a downturn considered a market “correction.” Wall Street sentiment has been dampened by concerns that President Trump’s tariffs and a trade war could push prices sharply higher, discourage consumers and force the economy toward a recession.

This is just today's bad economic news, of course. It is a supreme irony that an administration elected on its promises of a robust economy has inflicted a loss of nearly 4 trillion dollars since taking office 67 days ago. It is a remarkable accomplishment in all the wrong ways.  

This economic destruction,  like much of MAGA policies, cannot merely be attributed to Trump's ignorant obsession with reviving the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (the legislation that was key in triggering the Great Depression). There is also a cynical strategy here on the part of his political minions. They are leaning into an unnecessary but demanded (by Trump) economic crisis to push an extremist agenda. This is a classic tactic of despots the world over. When people panic, they are too busy saving themselves to get worked up about policies that don't immediately threaten to worsen their condition.  What is more, an economic crisis presents a unique opportunity to further enlarge a voting base via dependency.  After all, a drowning man will be grateful for any scrap of wood he can cling to, the splinters be damned. When Rahm Emanuel said that one must never let a crisis go to waste, the MAGA right took note...

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Of course, the nation's capital is still abuzz over the dipstick of stupidity that is the Signal app security breach scandal (what do you expect when you fill an administration with FOX News posers?) It is a supreme irony that the queen of needless security breaches, Hillary Clinton, has now passed the crown to King Trump and his clown show: 

Clinton wrote: “Top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”

She went on: “This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security.”

As I have often observed, Trump and his MAGA rubes are so loathsome that they make villains of years past seem like decent folks by comparison. So here I am, a pre-Trump conservative saying that, yeah, Hillary is right!

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While the "Signal" scandal is bad, what is somewhat worse is that the commander-in-chief, Donald 'Mario Kart' Trump, when asked about missing soldiers in Lithuania admitted he was clueless:

Asked Wednesday evening by reporters if he had been briefed about the missing soldiers, President Donald Trump said, “No, I haven’t.”

Incredibly, when you watch the video, you can tell he isn't curious about their fate. A responsible commander-in-chief would have demanded that hapless SecDef Hegseth get on Signal and give him a briefing posthaste. But he doesn't do that. He just stares blankly into the distance. There are only two conclusions here: first, as a malignant narcissist, he is merely dismissing the missing servicemen as just a few more "suckers and losers" lost from the rolls or, second, his observed mental deterioration has progressed to the point that he is completely checked-out from his duties. I am not sure which it is, to be honest. Neither is good, obviously. 

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Lastly, for today, Trump's imperialist ambitions continue with his and Wormtongue Vance's obsession with conquering Greenland. Make no mistake: Greenland will be Trump's Anschluss; a push to see if Denmark and the EU are willing to do more than grumble about American imperialism. In 1938, Europe just grumbled about Hitler and Austria. The problem Europe finds itself in is that if it gives in, as 20th Century Europe did with Hitler, Trump's appetite will merely grow with Mexico or Canada being next.  But if it fights, whether economically or otherwise, then they hand a pretext to Trump for him to pull out of NATO and give Putin a victory that even the old Soviets never dared dream could become reality. 

These are grim times indeed. 

Hey! I did it! I wrote my second entry! More tomorrow?