O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[drillerpie]

This.
I wonder how many of his wealthy mates made a massive killing on the stock market? Selling before they crashed and then buying when they did crash, surely there wasn't any insider dealings?

Large spikes in trading volume shortly before Trump's post would suggest the Signal group was hot yesterday.

[slack_pie]

Large spikes in trading volume shortly before Trump's post would suggest the Signal group was hot yesterday.

Politicians have been insider trading since forever. There's even a Pelosi Stock Tracker that provides real-time updates on Nancy Pelosi's latest trades, which always seem to be timed perfectly. I'm not condoning it, but it's not something specific to Trump and his cronies.

[drillerpie]

So just to be clear what happened here. A couple of days ago a rumour came out that Trump was considering a 90 day pause. This was picked up and reported and the market went up dramatically. The White House then said the rumour was fake news and the market went back down.

This is how you do securities fraud on a gargantuan scale.

Step 1: You announce enormous tariffs to shake ordinary people out of the market because they can't afford to lose any more money

Step 2: You leak that you might relax tariffs to see how much it affects the market so you know what positions to take for the real thing

Step 3: You deny the rumours as fake news so the market goes back down

Step 4: You give your inner circle 20 minutes prior warning to place counter intuitive bets on a huge upswing during extreme market pessimism, then relax tariffs

Step 5: Collect >100x returns

Step 0 would actually be to make sure you've already decapitated/ installed loyalists in the regulatory bodies meant to stop this kind of thing

A victory for Main Street over Wall Street brought to you by Orange Jesus!

[slack_pie]

I don't buy the idea that he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US. Surely it would still be cheaper for Apple or Nike to make products in Vietnam or China with tariffs than to build factories in the US and employ Americans. Besides, I'd imagine most manufacturing will be automated in the coming years, so any move to onshore that kind of industry seems short-sighted.

The best explanation seems to be that he's using tariffs as a weapon to force other nations into new trade deals, or maybe to create a more free-trade environment. Maybe the stock market was a sort of controlled implosion to force the Federal Reserve to lower rates and load up on equities and crypto before they take off again. Whatever the reason, it's an opportunity for him to appear like the strongman and throw his weight around, which he loves to do.