This evening’s NYT article about Tre45on’s money-losing streak in the 1980s and 1990s contained three sentences that might, just might, indicate what might, just might, be going on today, right in front of our eyes:
The new information also suggests that Mr. Trump’s 1990 collapse might have struck several years earlier if not for his brief side career posing as a corporate raider. From 1986 through 1988, while his core businesses languished under increasingly unsupportable debt, Mr. Trump made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.
This passage, in conjunction with yesterday’s and today’s action in the financial markets, cannot but raise some interesting questions.
What if, instead of suggesting that he were about to take over a company, Tre45on is now suggesting that he is about to start a trade war with another country?
In other words, what if the President is playing the same “corporate raider” game he played in the 1980s, but on a worldwide scale? What if he’s still posing, but from a much higher position?
I have no facts to support these questions—in part because Tre45on is so very secretive about his financial affairs. We don’t know a thing about how he makes his money.
So I’m just asking.
But to judge whether these questions might be serious ones, let’s review what has just happened in the financial markets.
On Sunday Tre45on threatened to escalate tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods. Another “China trade tweet.” We’ve seen them before.
The markets’ reaction was predictable—in part.
Chinese stocks took a tumble.
But US stocks, after plunging at the Monday open, actually recovered. On Monday the S&P 500 finished down only about 12 points—less than half a percent.
This clearly was not enough damage for Tre45on. So he put the message out again overnight.
And this time, on Tuesday, the US markets listened. The S&P was down 48 points at the close today. Apparently we’re at the point when US markets still take his talk seriously, but only if he repeats the message.
All of this raises two questions.
First, if you were the president, and you wanted to manipulate stock and currency markets on a global scale, how would you go about it?
And second, how would the rest of us know?