'In search of historical context we miss what is most historically significant. We avoid facing the conclusion that the vision of a Mar-a-Lago Accord may have more in common with grift, a protection racket'
Please acquaint yourself with the Trump family's long-standing ties to organized crime, and their multi-generational business model built entirely on defrauding the government, banks, vendors and customers (and money laundering).
Also come to terms with the fact that Trump is Putin's tool, entirely under the direction of the boss of bosses of Russian organized crime, and has been for decades. Decades.
For all of the idiocy of the regime, led by the vile, deranged moron in chief (and which only the vile, the deranged and the moronic would align themselves with), their efforts always take the form of criminality, in the service of personal enrichment, and a core fascist worldview.
It really isn't all that complicated if we stop eliding over what's always been right on the surface.
SOme of the points are very cogent and wanted to make them myself: the heck, Trump failed to pay his lawyer, for Christ sake!
But Putin being the boss of bosses of Russian organized crime is a bit too much. While Putin has shaken down the Russian oligarchs, it is true he has not stripped them down of their ill goten assets, the deal being that they work for the Russian state's interests and while that is happening they can stay as owners/managers. The idea being that someone has to manage (definitely not a factory soviet, those were killed by Lenin and Stalin), and state managers were a proven failure in Soviet Russia.
John Helmer is never pulling punches when describing the corruption of Russian oligarchy and the links to Kremlin, he never goes this far, not because he's afraid, but because he thinks there is no evidence for what you are purporting.
'John Helmer is never pulling punches when describing the corruption of Russian oligarchy and the links to Kremlin, he never goes this far, not because he's afraid, but because he thinks there is no evidence for what you are purporting.'
Hence why the gqp loves him. Starting with Nixon, they have been about cruelty. I was going to say what the hell happened to the gop between Eisenhower and Nixon but we all know it was civil rights.
Thanks to Adam's fairness to sanewashers en route to a correct calling-out of same. POTUS is a classic marketing wizard: Convince people that they have a terrible problem, and it needs a big solution. Then announce your solution. (See "Professor Harold Hill" and the trouble in River City.) The sane-washing is terrible... even on NPR/PBS. POTUS is called "mercurial" instead of dangerously unpredictable, and "transactional" instead of a grifter. His plan to carve up Ukraine with Putin is portrayed mildly as a "division of assets." His meeting with Zelenskyy is described as "contentious" rather than as a blind-siding set-up, a pre-planned humiliation of a brave young man to create distance between the US and Ukraine.
Interesting that you mention Harold Hill. That took place in Iowa. When I moved to that state 30 years ago it was a firmly purple state. And they got grifted by Trump just like they got grifted by Harold Hill. Native Iowans think they’re much smarter than they are.
#3 The Grift is by far the most plausible. I am a former commodity and currency trader and I wrote a masters thesis thirty five years ago about the London Gold Pool, because that was the closest historical example of multilateral intervention in international currency/commodity markets to the Plaza Accords, much in the air at the time. As you correctly point out, there has been nothing overt like that since then. It's just too hard...too many moving parts, too much transparency in the markets in the digital age, etc. Not to mention that Plaza sort of worked because markets were poised to move that way anyway, the central banks just gave an extra nudge. Our gold stock at 42.22 is meant to be a non nuclear club in the closet to keep the world off the gold standard -- of course that was before bitcoin became the store of value (sic) du jour. The alchemical accounting possibilities afforded by the difference between $42.22 and $3,000 are too tempting to pass up. Not to mention the frontrunning possibilities in the markets this affords to insiders. We're still trying to get to the bottom of who pumped and dumped $Trump. btw I loved the plastic surgery analogy. This is by far the best thing I've read on the alleged Mar a Lago accords. Thank you!
I agree with you on the grift. In terms of understanding the BTC angle I recommend Michel De Cryptadamus who has done excellent work connecting the threads of grift here.
All of this analysis, either the sane-washing or the debunking of the sane-washing is missing the point. Trump's people are using the Steve Bannon strategy of "flooding the zone with shit" to get people to pay attention to the wrong things. This MALA back-and-forth nonsense is just another example.
Trump and his truly senior people (e.g., Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Musk) are executing a coup d'etat creating an authoritarian police state under which there will not be free and fair elections in 2026, in which even peaceful protests will result in the declaration of a state of emergency with troops in the streets and arbitrary arrests and detention, where anyone opposed to Trump will have their bank accounts frozen or emptied by the DOGEbags or trumped-up charges brought against them by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi landing them in jail and labeled as terrorists. They are already defying court orders while pretending not to claiming "national security" and "state secrets" if not outright lying to federal judges. They are testing out their new police powers on Venezuelans with TPS and Green Card holders whose speech they don't like in the absence of charging them with any crime. How long before the first US citizens are being arrested and held in secret or El Salvador (if they are not already!) or even shot for defiance?
Wake up people, this is not about economic policy, it is about unfettered dictatorship.
Thank you for this. I have spent the last week reading news articles, Substacks, blogs and listening to podcasts trying to figure out how much of this MAL Accords discussion was sane-washing, wish-casting, theory-washing, or an actual policy framework. This post captured my conclusions a lot more succinctly than I could have!
Thank you Shane - My extensive time living and working in communist and dictator-led countries helps me clarify the reality of Trump in our country. I look forward to hearing form you more.
This was a great piece. But at the end of the day, I don't think it will work. If China has any US bonds in its central bank, it will not go along with this, nor can the US provide security guarantees to it, unless the US helps China take Taiwan (!!!), or probably actively assist in an invasion. China is getting to the point now that if the US refuses to buy its products, well, what can you do. Just don't buy US products in response, and it will hurt the US more to stop trading with China, since it would cause shortages for at least a few years in a variety of products, cause at least a 20 percent decline in the US stock market, and result in higher US bond rates. China can get food from other sources. Europe is actually somewhat similar. Trump is not an honest stakeholder for security guarantees, so any promise is meaningless, and if Europe is denied access to the US market, it will just deny access for goods to Europe, stop buying defense equipment, and tank US asset markets and reinvest in Europe or elsewhere. I mean this looks sophisticated on paper but it is an ad hoc justification for Trump's madness and pretends to have more power over Europe and China than it really does.
I think civil fraud within a plausible deniable society with conflicts unreconciled in general, provides notification to everyone that a political system of republican government failed — to what time, districtually unknown.
And so it goes, the nihilism of Voltaire. I think for the love of wisdom, individuals may rationally choose to give the nurse a purpose from a lexicon of her Candidé.
I also think that stages of grief and stages of negligence are respected for both the nurse and her Candidé, and when the conversation becomes irrational for the conservators of the nurse, we see chivalrous behavior within the gardens to minimize periods of time for diffident conduct — typically, in my experience — by the doctors of the conjoint marital psychotherapy. And so it goes.
Donald James Trump was married well, however, it is possible that conflict remains. My honest suggestion is to observe Blue Man Group behaviors.
Ronald Reagan reportedly relocated to Lee County, Illinois within the year 1920. City of Dixon, County of Lee, State of Illinois is known as the Petunia Capital of Illinois.
Atropa bella-donna, commonly known as deadly nightshade or belladonna, is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant in the family Solanaceae. Petunia is a genus in the family Solanaceae.
Potatoes are underground tubers of the plant Solanum tuberosum, a perennial in the family Solanaceae. Source is Wikipedia.org.
Who was the doctor? Senator Paul Laxalt elected from the state of Nevada? Or congressman Eligio DE LA GARZA elected from the state of Texas? Both recorded statements within the United States Congressional Record for Monday, 26 July, 1982.
Actor Peter William Welch, reportedly deceased within the month of November, 1984? The record is as if a practice of honoring the Gregorian calendar date for ratification of the Bill of Rights by the legislature of the state of New Jersey is referenced.
November 20, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5574, designating the rose as the national floral emblem of the United States.
November 20, 1987, Frank Carlucci was confirmed by the United States Senate for employment as Secretary of the United States Department of Defense.
At least 50% of Americans are ignorant and or bad people. When a clownish, pervert and perverted leader appears this nightmare happens. Hitler used to be the main example. Now Trump seems to wants to be in his company.
Well if you "did" it must have seemed pretty feeble after 30 years of ever deepening commitment to neoliberalism (thanks, Clintons!), so maybe you were too late?
I would remind you that at least 40% of the country believes that a bearded old man in the sky created the world and the heavens in seven days. Evangelicals are taught from birth to refrain from critical thought or risk being de-raptured.
That is something I ask every person that is clear thinking. It is so terrifying that half of America don’t see this or it works in their favor. What does this say about the American culture and psyche. It’s the bottom line. HOW HOW HOW?
I think the overall thrust of this piece makes sense but I think you can add additional evidence in favor of irrationality. All of the plans for the "accord" whatever the justification hinge on forcing people to accept it because they *need* our trade and our security guarantees.
But Trump is in the process of destroying both.
He is isolating our trade relations with tariffs and basic abuse (e.g. Canada). Isolating our diplomatic connections with other nations, and indeed whole continents through pettiness (e.g. South Africa, and Panama). And he is rendering our security guarantees toxic by switching sides or just promising to use our soldiers to conquer territory from our "allies" (e.g. Ukraine, Greenland). At this point he is in fact reducing our credibility and leverage to rubble *and* eroding any interest other nations have in investing in us.
There is no coherent plan for an accord that starts from weakening our own partners' willingness to engage with us. All it becomes then is pointless abuse.
Seems simpler to me even than your last paragraph. Points:
1. Donald is about tearing down the old order. He doesn't have a coherent idea for a new one.
2. The Democratic Party is the party of the old order, and it's in a panic -- rightfully. it's out of here. It being both the Party and the order.
3. The net result is a big implosion of the US economy and social structure, probably not to be solved at a federal level for a very long time, if ever.
4. The USA will go on in theory. In practice, political power will devolve to states, multi-state regions, and substate entities.
5. This collapse will help bring down carbon emissions, thereby helping a bit the Chinese battle against climate and broad ecological crises that you rightfully envision.
Pettis is right. Triffin was right. And Keynes was right at Bretton Woods -- but the new US hegemon overruled the Brit, an error which directly led to 1971 and the end of Bretton Woods. The fundamental problem has never been resolved. At its core, it's a contradiction between empire and the domestic economy/polity.
If the study of human nature and history tells us anything, it's that power doesn't relinquish itself voluntarily. MALA is no different; in fact it is totally transparent about it. Indeed, it's just the latest rationalization/sanewashing of a fundamental contradiction. They still want the empire. They still want the coercive power of controlling the global monetary system; in fact they want to increase the weaponization of its core reserve asset (USTs). They also do not likely have the pain tolerance for the other side of the coin, dramatic foreign capital repatriation (~$30T estimated) and a reversal of the de facto 'wealth effect' policy in place since at least Greenspan in 1987. The reason for the cognitive dissonance is because contradictions are fundamentally dissonant.
Geopolitics and markets however, have not been playing along anymore. They are the reality that will force the contradiction to be eventually resolved, to one side or another, not to both and neither (MALA). Entropy is the change vector. The center cannot hold.
This is absolutely not true. I worked on government under both Democratic and Republican presidents and majorities in the Senate. George Bush and Bob Dole did not propose policies that were secretly grift.
(I am a lifelong Democrat; i worked for five Democratic Senators and not one was the least bit crooked)
Anyone who knows anything about Trump knows that "…a protection racket or a facelift pandering to the ignorant vanity of an old man..." is exactly what's happening in Washington. Not just with economic policy, but with everything else as well. The people who are sanewashing Mar-a-Lago’s orange demon circus clown are doing it as a grift or because they just can’t face up to the fact that American democracy has decayed to the point where a man this ridiculous is now for all intents and purposes the most powerful president the U.S. has ever had.
But all sanewashers have to do is listen to the man's press interviews and speeches or read the insane tweets he constantly posts on X, nee Twitter or Truth Social. Or, if they prefer, listen to what the people who actually know or have worked with the man, like Mary Trump, John Bolton or Tony Schwartz (the guy who ghost wrote "The Art of the Deal") and you know that with Trump you're dealing a very, very, very psychologically damaged old man who also happens to be about as bright as a 10-watt lightbulb. I see it. It's so obvious! Why can’t, or won’t, they?
The problem when it comes to diagnosing American history is that we frequently do so through a very whitewashed and friend-washed lens, with a strong hit of manifest destiny.
The first colonies grew partly due to trade and immigrants, but also due to driving out and killing native tribes that already lived here. We did purchase some swaths of territory from other countries; these swaths also included native tribes we drove off, killed and/or contained on reservations. Our character of growth as a country was rapacious. This character is still on full display at many corporations when you scratch the gold-plated veneer.
This is tempered somewhat by a drive toward more inclusion of more people, yet that tempering faces routine backlashes from social and economic — not fiscal! — conservatives who don’t want their place in the pecking order disturbed.
Our history is much more understandable if you actually keep in mind our rapacious nature, our groundswells for increased inclusion, and the conservative backlash against inclusion.
Josh Marshall minted Trump's razor during Trump 1.0: the stupidest explanation is always correct. The empirical evidence for Trump's razor is overwhelming. Applying Trump's razor here means tariffs for the case of tariffs, the most beautiful word in the English language.
Nice article. Evidently the US doesn't want to reduce its spending, especially the trillion dollars on "defence" and security. Allegedly this will provide security.
Nah, as a retired US admiral admited on War on the Rocks that the main role of the US Navy is to block access to the shipping lanes of "enemy" vessels, same the US Military and security machine is to be for coercing anyone to do what US wants. It is no different than a protection racket run by gangs around the world. The US calls it differently, but is the same thing.
Will it work? Who knows. But we know Trump in particular likes things for free: the Syrian oil, now he wants the Canadian heavy crude - alleging that is unfair trade that Canada has a positive balance with US. Grifter through and through, all his life.
There has never been anything such as "free trade" and the US has always known it (as did that previous "free trade" shilling hegemon, the British Empire) -- see Ha Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans" for more details.
Not absolute free trade, no. But the US has certainly supported free trade initiatives such as GATT and the WTO and helped decrease international tariffs significantly. Of course it has partook in protectionism on numerous occasions, notably with agriculture. But I think the point still stands.
'In search of historical context we miss what is most historically significant. We avoid facing the conclusion that the vision of a Mar-a-Lago Accord may have more in common with grift, a protection racket'
Please acquaint yourself with the Trump family's long-standing ties to organized crime, and their multi-generational business model built entirely on defrauding the government, banks, vendors and customers (and money laundering).
Also come to terms with the fact that Trump is Putin's tool, entirely under the direction of the boss of bosses of Russian organized crime, and has been for decades. Decades.
For all of the idiocy of the regime, led by the vile, deranged moron in chief (and which only the vile, the deranged and the moronic would align themselves with), their efforts always take the form of criminality, in the service of personal enrichment, and a core fascist worldview.
It really isn't all that complicated if we stop eliding over what's always been right on the surface.
SOme of the points are very cogent and wanted to make them myself: the heck, Trump failed to pay his lawyer, for Christ sake!
But Putin being the boss of bosses of Russian organized crime is a bit too much. While Putin has shaken down the Russian oligarchs, it is true he has not stripped them down of their ill goten assets, the deal being that they work for the Russian state's interests and while that is happening they can stay as owners/managers. The idea being that someone has to manage (definitely not a factory soviet, those were killed by Lenin and Stalin), and state managers were a proven failure in Soviet Russia.
John Helmer is never pulling punches when describing the corruption of Russian oligarchy and the links to Kremlin, he never goes this far, not because he's afraid, but because he thinks there is no evidence for what you are purporting.
'John Helmer is never pulling punches when describing the corruption of Russian oligarchy and the links to Kremlin, he never goes this far, not because he's afraid, but because he thinks there is no evidence for what you are purporting.'
We disagree.
Why are his mob connections never discussed? It's all about Roy Cohn.
Hence why the gqp loves him. Starting with Nixon, they have been about cruelty. I was going to say what the hell happened to the gop between Eisenhower and Nixon but we all know it was civil rights.
Lying in plain sight.
Great stuff, then the Putin insanity. America is done.
Go get help, you are lost in a delusional world inside your own mind.
Thanks to Adam's fairness to sanewashers en route to a correct calling-out of same. POTUS is a classic marketing wizard: Convince people that they have a terrible problem, and it needs a big solution. Then announce your solution. (See "Professor Harold Hill" and the trouble in River City.) The sane-washing is terrible... even on NPR/PBS. POTUS is called "mercurial" instead of dangerously unpredictable, and "transactional" instead of a grifter. His plan to carve up Ukraine with Putin is portrayed mildly as a "division of assets." His meeting with Zelenskyy is described as "contentious" rather than as a blind-siding set-up, a pre-planned humiliation of a brave young man to create distance between the US and Ukraine.
Interesting that you mention Harold Hill. That took place in Iowa. When I moved to that state 30 years ago it was a firmly purple state. And they got grifted by Trump just like they got grifted by Harold Hill. Native Iowans think they’re much smarter than they are.
#3 The Grift is by far the most plausible. I am a former commodity and currency trader and I wrote a masters thesis thirty five years ago about the London Gold Pool, because that was the closest historical example of multilateral intervention in international currency/commodity markets to the Plaza Accords, much in the air at the time. As you correctly point out, there has been nothing overt like that since then. It's just too hard...too many moving parts, too much transparency in the markets in the digital age, etc. Not to mention that Plaza sort of worked because markets were poised to move that way anyway, the central banks just gave an extra nudge. Our gold stock at 42.22 is meant to be a non nuclear club in the closet to keep the world off the gold standard -- of course that was before bitcoin became the store of value (sic) du jour. The alchemical accounting possibilities afforded by the difference between $42.22 and $3,000 are too tempting to pass up. Not to mention the frontrunning possibilities in the markets this affords to insiders. We're still trying to get to the bottom of who pumped and dumped $Trump. btw I loved the plastic surgery analogy. This is by far the best thing I've read on the alleged Mar a Lago accords. Thank you!
I agree with you on the grift. In terms of understanding the BTC angle I recommend Michel De Cryptadamus who has done excellent work connecting the threads of grift here.
https://substack.com/@cryptadamus/note/c-100280214
All of this analysis, either the sane-washing or the debunking of the sane-washing is missing the point. Trump's people are using the Steve Bannon strategy of "flooding the zone with shit" to get people to pay attention to the wrong things. This MALA back-and-forth nonsense is just another example.
Trump and his truly senior people (e.g., Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Musk) are executing a coup d'etat creating an authoritarian police state under which there will not be free and fair elections in 2026, in which even peaceful protests will result in the declaration of a state of emergency with troops in the streets and arbitrary arrests and detention, where anyone opposed to Trump will have their bank accounts frozen or emptied by the DOGEbags or trumped-up charges brought against them by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi landing them in jail and labeled as terrorists. They are already defying court orders while pretending not to claiming "national security" and "state secrets" if not outright lying to federal judges. They are testing out their new police powers on Venezuelans with TPS and Green Card holders whose speech they don't like in the absence of charging them with any crime. How long before the first US citizens are being arrested and held in secret or El Salvador (if they are not already!) or even shot for defiance?
Wake up people, this is not about economic policy, it is about unfettered dictatorship.
Thank you for this. I have spent the last week reading news articles, Substacks, blogs and listening to podcasts trying to figure out how much of this MAL Accords discussion was sane-washing, wish-casting, theory-washing, or an actual policy framework. This post captured my conclusions a lot more succinctly than I could have!
Thank you Shane - My extensive time living and working in communist and dictator-led countries helps me clarify the reality of Trump in our country. I look forward to hearing form you more.
This was a great piece. But at the end of the day, I don't think it will work. If China has any US bonds in its central bank, it will not go along with this, nor can the US provide security guarantees to it, unless the US helps China take Taiwan (!!!), or probably actively assist in an invasion. China is getting to the point now that if the US refuses to buy its products, well, what can you do. Just don't buy US products in response, and it will hurt the US more to stop trading with China, since it would cause shortages for at least a few years in a variety of products, cause at least a 20 percent decline in the US stock market, and result in higher US bond rates. China can get food from other sources. Europe is actually somewhat similar. Trump is not an honest stakeholder for security guarantees, so any promise is meaningless, and if Europe is denied access to the US market, it will just deny access for goods to Europe, stop buying defense equipment, and tank US asset markets and reinvest in Europe or elsewhere. I mean this looks sophisticated on paper but it is an ad hoc justification for Trump's madness and pretends to have more power over Europe and China than it really does.
Borrowing liberally from the above, is it fair to say: “Fraud is not a glitch of American capitalism. It’s a feature.”?
I think civil fraud within a plausible deniable society with conflicts unreconciled in general, provides notification to everyone that a political system of republican government failed — to what time, districtually unknown.
And so it goes, the nihilism of Voltaire. I think for the love of wisdom, individuals may rationally choose to give the nurse a purpose from a lexicon of her Candidé.
I also think that stages of grief and stages of negligence are respected for both the nurse and her Candidé, and when the conversation becomes irrational for the conservators of the nurse, we see chivalrous behavior within the gardens to minimize periods of time for diffident conduct — typically, in my experience — by the doctors of the conjoint marital psychotherapy. And so it goes.
Donald James Trump was married well, however, it is possible that conflict remains. My honest suggestion is to observe Blue Man Group behaviors.
For example:
Ronald Reagan reportedly relocated to Lee County, Illinois within the year 1920. City of Dixon, County of Lee, State of Illinois is known as the Petunia Capital of Illinois.
Atropa bella-donna, commonly known as deadly nightshade or belladonna, is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant in the family Solanaceae. Petunia is a genus in the family Solanaceae.
Potatoes are underground tubers of the plant Solanum tuberosum, a perennial in the family Solanaceae. Source is Wikipedia.org.
Who was the doctor? Senator Paul Laxalt elected from the state of Nevada? Or congressman Eligio DE LA GARZA elected from the state of Texas? Both recorded statements within the United States Congressional Record for Monday, 26 July, 1982.
Actor Peter William Welch, reportedly deceased within the month of November, 1984? The record is as if a practice of honoring the Gregorian calendar date for ratification of the Bill of Rights by the legislature of the state of New Jersey is referenced.
November 20, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5574, designating the rose as the national floral emblem of the United States.
November 20, 1987, Frank Carlucci was confirmed by the United States Senate for employment as Secretary of the United States Department of Defense.
The only hard-to-understand fact is why a developed democracy chose to elect a mentaly challenged person for president.
At least 50% of Americans are ignorant and or bad people. When a clownish, pervert and perverted leader appears this nightmare happens. Hitler used to be the main example. Now Trump seems to wants to be in his company.
Blaming the voters is a recipe for serial electoral failure. How about offering concrete material benefits for a change?
We did. The Right lied; the 'liberal media' lied, etc.
Well if you "did" it must have seemed pretty feeble after 30 years of ever deepening commitment to neoliberalism (thanks, Clintons!), so maybe you were too late?
I would remind you that at least 40% of the country believes that a bearded old man in the sky created the world and the heavens in seven days. Evangelicals are taught from birth to refrain from critical thought or risk being de-raptured.
in short, it's because US Democratic party leadership screwed up *that* bad, and the US political system doesn't admit any new options
That is something I ask every person that is clear thinking. It is so terrifying that half of America don’t see this or it works in their favor. What does this say about the American culture and psyche. It’s the bottom line. HOW HOW HOW?
I think the overall thrust of this piece makes sense but I think you can add additional evidence in favor of irrationality. All of the plans for the "accord" whatever the justification hinge on forcing people to accept it because they *need* our trade and our security guarantees.
But Trump is in the process of destroying both.
He is isolating our trade relations with tariffs and basic abuse (e.g. Canada). Isolating our diplomatic connections with other nations, and indeed whole continents through pettiness (e.g. South Africa, and Panama). And he is rendering our security guarantees toxic by switching sides or just promising to use our soldiers to conquer territory from our "allies" (e.g. Ukraine, Greenland). At this point he is in fact reducing our credibility and leverage to rubble *and* eroding any interest other nations have in investing in us.
There is no coherent plan for an accord that starts from weakening our own partners' willingness to engage with us. All it becomes then is pointless abuse.
Seems simpler to me even than your last paragraph. Points:
1. Donald is about tearing down the old order. He doesn't have a coherent idea for a new one.
2. The Democratic Party is the party of the old order, and it's in a panic -- rightfully. it's out of here. It being both the Party and the order.
3. The net result is a big implosion of the US economy and social structure, probably not to be solved at a federal level for a very long time, if ever.
4. The USA will go on in theory. In practice, political power will devolve to states, multi-state regions, and substate entities.
5. This collapse will help bring down carbon emissions, thereby helping a bit the Chinese battle against climate and broad ecological crises that you rightfully envision.
Pettis is right. Triffin was right. And Keynes was right at Bretton Woods -- but the new US hegemon overruled the Brit, an error which directly led to 1971 and the end of Bretton Woods. The fundamental problem has never been resolved. At its core, it's a contradiction between empire and the domestic economy/polity.
If the study of human nature and history tells us anything, it's that power doesn't relinquish itself voluntarily. MALA is no different; in fact it is totally transparent about it. Indeed, it's just the latest rationalization/sanewashing of a fundamental contradiction. They still want the empire. They still want the coercive power of controlling the global monetary system; in fact they want to increase the weaponization of its core reserve asset (USTs). They also do not likely have the pain tolerance for the other side of the coin, dramatic foreign capital repatriation (~$30T estimated) and a reversal of the de facto 'wealth effect' policy in place since at least Greenspan in 1987. The reason for the cognitive dissonance is because contradictions are fundamentally dissonant.
Geopolitics and markets however, have not been playing along anymore. They are the reality that will force the contradiction to be eventually resolved, to one side or another, not to both and neither (MALA). Entropy is the change vector. The center cannot hold.
Yes, grift is never far from what passes for policy.
This is absolutely not true. I worked on government under both Democratic and Republican presidents and majorities in the Senate. George Bush and Bob Dole did not propose policies that were secretly grift.
(I am a lifelong Democrat; i worked for five Democratic Senators and not one was the least bit crooked)
Sorry, Liz, I meant in a Trump Admin. Should have made clearer.
I would say that the carried interest benefit for hedge funds is pretty grifty.
They never bended to the demands of lobbyists? I find that hard to believe
Anyone who knows anything about Trump knows that "…a protection racket or a facelift pandering to the ignorant vanity of an old man..." is exactly what's happening in Washington. Not just with economic policy, but with everything else as well. The people who are sanewashing Mar-a-Lago’s orange demon circus clown are doing it as a grift or because they just can’t face up to the fact that American democracy has decayed to the point where a man this ridiculous is now for all intents and purposes the most powerful president the U.S. has ever had.
But all sanewashers have to do is listen to the man's press interviews and speeches or read the insane tweets he constantly posts on X, nee Twitter or Truth Social. Or, if they prefer, listen to what the people who actually know or have worked with the man, like Mary Trump, John Bolton or Tony Schwartz (the guy who ghost wrote "The Art of the Deal") and you know that with Trump you're dealing a very, very, very psychologically damaged old man who also happens to be about as bright as a 10-watt lightbulb. I see it. It's so obvious! Why can’t, or won’t, they?
The problem when it comes to diagnosing American history is that we frequently do so through a very whitewashed and friend-washed lens, with a strong hit of manifest destiny.
The first colonies grew partly due to trade and immigrants, but also due to driving out and killing native tribes that already lived here. We did purchase some swaths of territory from other countries; these swaths also included native tribes we drove off, killed and/or contained on reservations. Our character of growth as a country was rapacious. This character is still on full display at many corporations when you scratch the gold-plated veneer.
This is tempered somewhat by a drive toward more inclusion of more people, yet that tempering faces routine backlashes from social and economic — not fiscal! — conservatives who don’t want their place in the pecking order disturbed.
Our history is much more understandable if you actually keep in mind our rapacious nature, our groundswells for increased inclusion, and the conservative backlash against inclusion.
You might like Ronald Wright's "What is America?: A Short History of the New World Order" -- it was written in 2008, but is evergreen ...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3779848-what-is-america
Josh Marshall minted Trump's razor during Trump 1.0: the stupidest explanation is always correct. The empirical evidence for Trump's razor is overwhelming. Applying Trump's razor here means tariffs for the case of tariffs, the most beautiful word in the English language.
Nice article. Evidently the US doesn't want to reduce its spending, especially the trillion dollars on "defence" and security. Allegedly this will provide security.
Nah, as a retired US admiral admited on War on the Rocks that the main role of the US Navy is to block access to the shipping lanes of "enemy" vessels, same the US Military and security machine is to be for coercing anyone to do what US wants. It is no different than a protection racket run by gangs around the world. The US calls it differently, but is the same thing.
Will it work? Who knows. But we know Trump in particular likes things for free: the Syrian oil, now he wants the Canadian heavy crude - alleging that is unfair trade that Canada has a positive balance with US. Grifter through and through, all his life.
What the US wants includes things like free trade and not having partner countries annexed. At least it used to.
There has never been anything such as "free trade" and the US has always known it (as did that previous "free trade" shilling hegemon, the British Empire) -- see Ha Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans" for more details.
Not absolute free trade, no. But the US has certainly supported free trade initiatives such as GATT and the WTO and helped decrease international tariffs significantly. Of course it has partook in protectionism on numerous occasions, notably with agriculture. But I think the point still stands.