2 trillion, so far!
…and cancelling 500k work visas just few days ago, that should hit the economy too
And everyone being deported as well. Even most of the illegals paid into the economy. Now we’re taking that away and spending who knows what to create chaos.
It hits even harder then that, I know a family of truckers that never stops working, but they’re Lebanese and not natively born yet are all U.S. citizens, so for now they’ve all decided to finally take time off untill this blows over, leaving an even bigger hole in our economy to fill for natural born citizen.
But all the government institutions are being dismantled, so why have taxes at all?
Need to pave a road to your house? Pay it yourself! Need to drive on a road you haven’t paid for? Pay the toll to the owner.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Let’s cancel student loans too, that will own the libs!
It was worth a shot.
If the economy crashes, people won’t be able to pay their loans, which I sincerely hope will fuck up a billionaire or two.
No the government will bail them out with unlimited funds while we all lose our homes, jobs, healthcare and food security. Then the morbidly wealthy will come in and buy up the foreclosed houses, small businesses and force wages and benefits down.
At which point do we eat them? I’m hungry.
Hopefully soon
“…and right here is where I’m going to manufacture the worst economic crash since the literal Plague.”
Mr Miller told me this was a REALLY GOOD IDEA!!!
Plague massively increased economic situation of peasants in western Europe.
Only in the long run. A lot of them died and suffered horribly first.
Of course, first things need to hit rock bottom for regular people to demand fair treatment.
Looks like he’s working towards a fire sale.
It all makes sense when you look at it from the perspective that he’s doing all this at the direction of Putin to destroy American hegemony in the world.
As bad as the world thinks it’s been under Ametican leadership, its better than letting Russia or China run the show.
Putin ordered 0 tariffs for Russia. So sus.
Not the first time. Back in 2016, when he was first elected, it was quickly determined that Russia had onterfered with our election, and Congress voted to impose sanctions on Russia. When it came time to order the Congressionally-mandated sanctions, HitlerPig ignored it, saying the Russia wouldn’t do it again.
To Putin
I’m so glad that as a millennial I get to live through so many different historic times…/s
Didnt your hobo turned ccc worker turned GI great grandpa have the coolest life. Your gen Z sibling gets a similar experience.
How many once in a lifetime economic events is this now?
Stable genius working his special magic in advance of the Super Bigly Oligarchs’ Enormous Clearance Sale of resources & remnants of US governmental assets!!!
The National Parks sell off hits me in the gut.
Then occupy one of them.
Could you clarify your point?
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This is bad for us too. A cratering stock market slows down hiring which depresses wages and makes it harder to find work.
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A recession is basically only those jobs hiring. Its the opposite of a bubble where because nobody has spare money nobody is spending so nobody is hiring and everything is undervalued. That’s why the only solution to the great depression was to hire a ton of people to do something.
The stuff the ccc did was awesome, they preserved huge chunks of America’s cultural heritage, made beautiful things, and made lots of natural beauty available to the masses. Go to any national park that existed at the time and you’ll see it. But they existed to take the masses of itinerant labor and put them to work for reasonable wages. It kickstarted the economy, fed people and gave them money to send to their family, and ensured that skilled labor remained as such.
Straight up, that’s probably going to be what this takes to get out of. A green new deal. Not the bullshit one we had proposed. Not the infrastructure act. No, hiring a fuck ton of young people to lay high speed rail lines and build solar and wind farms and battery facilities at wages that will let them reproduce and restart their local economies.
Only a government can do that. A company would pay market rates and expect a reasonable profit. A government can tax hoarded wealth, seize assets, and generally compel the behavior that gets you out of that mess.
We live in a capitalist society (unfortunately). Rich people hoard their capital during recessions, which means fewer job openings. I graduated HS during the 2008 recession, and it took me 6 months of applying everywhere I could to get a temp job in a factory paying minimum wage (and no benefits or any job security at all, of course). It was literally hard to get a job at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. IIRC, it took nearly both of Obama’s two terms for the job market to recover to what it was. So yeah, you may be able to find a job after a lot of hunting, but everyone’s so desperate they’ll accept anything. The way things are going with deregulation and all that, I wouldn’t be surprised if company-towns make a comeback (which, incidentally, is kind of like the corporate city-states people like Peter Thiel, who worked with Musk and groomed JD Vance, openly talk about).
If jobs need to get done, you’ll be able to find positions to work in.
Yeah, agreed. No guarantees that they’ll pay a wage you can survive on though, or that they won’t cut corners on worker safety etc. There were lots of jobs during the industrial revolution but most were profoundly shit to the point they’d shorten workers’ lives.
I’d argue that’s reversing cause and effect. A cratering economy on Main Street often gets reflected as a crash on Wall Street.
Sometimes the outcomes diverge. One common analogy in finance circles is that the stock market is like a hyperactive puppy on a long leash being walked by a slow owner whose gradual movements trend in a particular direction while the puppy erratically moves back and forth near that owner. Maybe it’s some kind of hype or panic moving markets in a way that’s uncorrelated with the underlying economic activity. Or it’s a specific play on a specific type of financial instrument that has become untethered from a thing it used to be tightly wound up with. Many financial panics happen when correlations between things break down, and all the financial engineering in a particular type of product relied on a bad assumption so that it spreads to other financial products.
But in many cases, they move together because the people buying and selling stocks feel sentiment driven by actual economic fundamentals.
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Heya you are correct that the rest of the world is being dragged into it. The tarrifs for us (Australia) have a little sver lining though, our meat will be cheaper if what we exported to the US stays here and no alternative market is found so I am happy about that. The farmers will feel it but us Aussies are always happy to help bail the farmers out tbh, could be a good opportunity for us to create something similar to USAID and send some food where its needed. Who knows really, but its an opportunity for everyone except the US. So thanks for making every other nation (that was trading with the US) great again.
Oh it could definitely be beneficial to Americans, it could very well collapse the US which would probably spur on a post Imperial boom. Basically if the US collapses the inevitable economic reorganization could cause some areas to improve greatly.
Problem is that I suspect that you’d also have what would amount to a Crusader Khmer Rouge or two forming, upside is that’s what punitive campaigns are for. Also id prefer if the entire US didn’t turn into that.
I hope you call it AusAID, it’d be perfect
Well we did have AusAid, just got renamed to DFAT (Department Foreign Affairs and Trade), which do provide assistance to foreign nations but our scope is limited and as far as I could see we were not really buying any excess agricultural production to send off. I have to look into it because maybe we don’t or all of ours is absorbed into the Asian markets. But was thinking due to the US BS could be a good opportunity to still help our farmers while doing some good at the same time. Bang for our buck, when I saw the USAID doing it for their farmers before it was cut I thought its a great program that provides benefits across the board.
Yeah its a no brainer situation like paying farmers to fallow so your soil can heal
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Entire year of gains lol
He did as he promised, financial liberation.
From the poor
$2T so far
13 hours later and I had the arrogance to think I had an original comment.
And you italicized it! Well done!
Time to recycle some things…
Better quality version (I think)
“1,000,000 men out of employment”
Certainly showing it’s age there. You’d never see unemployment statistics announced that way today. Not even sure if this is because of how “men” used to be used to refer to people in a more general way, or because women didn’t make up a significant portion of the workforce (or because they didn’t care about that demographic…)
“Net loss of gold in exports” too… Usually we see GDP used for that kind of statistic now
As bad as this is, it can still get a lot worse. The market seems to be pricing in a high probability that Trump will reverse course. If the tariffs stay on for at least a few months, there will certainly be a recession, probably a depression, and possibly social unrest that will take decades to fully recover from.
When things really crash is when the rich will decide to pay their cash and start buying up shit, and then we will think the economy recovered but really all that happened is another wealth redistribution in the wrong direction
Maybe but it could crash anyways. JP Morgan tried to stabilize the stock market in 1929 by buying up stocks, but it collapsed anyways and led to the Great Depression.
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Oh, so my 401k losing money isn’t real? Damn, that’s a relief.
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You say it like I had a choice to get a pension.
Pension funds have invested in stocks and bonds for decades.
Neither are money, but we’re still not a communist society so we still consider it one.
If you want stocks to not be important, phase out public companies.
Tell that to the people living on automatic withdrawals from their IRA accounts 🙄
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It’s giving BTC/silver/gold investor, off-the-grid incel vibes
Some stock have value because the company is profitable, solid and is making money. I am no investor but Coca Cola I would imagine fit the description.
The same is true for fiat currency.
Anyone too dumb to know how stocks work probably thinks you’re talking about the car
The Powers That Be aren’t going to tolerate this for very long.
Trump is fucking with their money.
Nope. This is more like The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler or, in The Dark Knight Rises, the billionaire who finds that funding Bane’s rise to power doesn’t actually give him any power, or another business dude learning that working with Bane doesn’t even save him from the movement itself.
The billionaires thought they could buy influence and just get the things they want, while stopping Trump from getting what he wants. For whatever reason, Trump is a true believer in tariffs, so that’s what giving him power will result in.
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These tariffs are a tax on the working class, which they will gladly pay.
When taxes rise consumption falls. The wealthy live off the fat of consumption.
Nah. Rich people profit from recessions and other crisis. They have enough money to buy everything and then are even richer afterwards.
That is why everyone lets Trump do whatever he likes.
They have enough money
Their money is in shares and bonds, not cash.
See, that’s what you don’t understand.
They can never get enough. It’s a competition with their peers.
Like a children’s game.
I understand that perfectly, they like the crisis situation because they hope to acquire more, and maybe even loose a couple of aspirant mill- or billionaires on the way.
They do see it as a game, and thus big disruptions create great new chances for them to gain even more.
we’re in a recession right now. this is the beginning of one. people mass selling off their stocks to take money and that shakes all markets down the river is exactly a recession start. get ready folks.
He did that in theee month. Only 4 more years to go
O’Doyle rules!
