The currency getting stronger really is a huge problem for the world economy. There’s a lot of loans denominated in dollars right now. People bought some really stupid shit with dollar denominated debt. Making it worth more when the economy is slowing and the bad stuff is getting exposed is how the bond market bubble bursts.
What’s amazing is that Trump is mostly responsible for that. This guy really doesn’t understand the first thing about economics and he’s been busy sabotaging the economy since he got into office. I generally don’t believe that presidents deserve anywhere near as much credit for the economy as they get, but this is absolutely the first real exception of my lifetime. This dude is setting fires all over the place and I’m starting to smell smoke. This is going to be a LOT worse than it had to be.
I mean it pretty much seems like he’s hoping to be able to run out the clock on this first term without the bubble bursting, to give himself the best chances of reelection. Try to bully the fed into reducing interest rates to ~0%, maybe have a fake 5-minute meeting with Xi the month before the election and walking out saying everything’s been worked out and the tariffs are being lifted, etc.
If/when he buys himself another four years I have a feeling you’re gonna see him do literally nothing, other than buy a vault full of gold or something and then watch the world burn while he watches Fox & Friends and eats KFC. As much as people talk about this dystopian future where he declares himself king and keeps himself in office until he dies, that’s way too much work for him.
What I think is crazy is that my industry (trucking) had a major, very stupid, Obama era regulation get pushed through in December 2017. The E-log mandate was created by large trucking company lobbyists to remove the only real advantage smaller operators had (that they could cheat on their hours of service). It’s caused huge amounts of havoc and is a textbook example of the kind of regulatory action that makes regulation unpopular.
I mean this guy is supposed to be all about deregulation, but somehow despite TONS of screaming and crying by actual truckers in the lead up to the rule going into effect it just sailed through.
The end result is that the whole market got whip lashed super hard with record high rates last year and record low rates this year. The way this played out was just comically bad for the typical small trucking company. This isn’t a small segment of the economy they completely screwed either. It’s a 255B a year market segment.
This guy is actually stupid enough to lower capital gains taxes. I can’t think of anything more absolutely certain to tank the financial markets lol. Still super random whether he does it or not, but he for sure doesn’t grasp the second order consequences of giving people a very likely one time opportunity to cash out with a lower tax bill.
Egged on by Grover fucking Norquist who afaik has had exactly zero to say about the fucking tariffs he used to rail against whenever a lefty proposed them. The entire conservative movement is a lie.