It’s wild how banana republic level corrupt the US is all of a sudden. Really went from 0 to 100 in months
Remember companies go bankrupt. Slowly then all of the sudden.
We're in a problem that was made by the Bushs, Clintons, Obama & Biden. And Trump. Those who went before them. And of course the voters who put them in power.
(Critical to the whole thing is unfortunately https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in... , where the judge inexplicably decided to waive sentencing for a felony conviction)
Because if this isn't the case, then people will be forced to compete by "slightly" violating the law, everyone a little bit more, until the law is a total joke. This has happened in history.
It’s wild how utterly predicable this was and yet it was the chosen path.
The problem is trying to untangle which are the economic indicators that matter and what the causality is. Despite everything, the stock market is at or near an all time high (mostly due to AI), and that grants Trump a lot of leeway from the money class.
It's also why this matters: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-stocks-us-strate...
Oil prices going up would probably also be extremely unfavourable for the Trump regime. So simply empty the US SPR onto the market to keep prices down and avoid the Iran war having any impact. Should last for the rest of his term.
It was all based on a purposefully designed system of lies. Which can work, until someone proves it's a lie to external parties.
In order for a democracy to function, you need people that are able to evaluate political promises as bullshit or not. If you believe nonsense from grifters, you get either what you described or the current US admin. Or Brexit.
I'm sure there are more examples of this in history.
Reply: "Congress or SCOTUS could restrict his powers but they don't want to."
Conclusion: the system is broken.
The weirdness here comes from the president owning a social media company. I think they're playing up how markets move on their posts for obvious reasons. But social media companies likely sell priority access. They're called enterprise licensing deals. Same with news media, like Bloomberg, Dow, Reuters.
This isn't "insider trading" its publicly available information. The idea that the "little guy" is somehow screwed over by this is just silly.
https://www.barrons.com/advisor/articles/insider-trading-fbi...
There were (then-)members of the Republican party who voted for Clinton, Biden, and Harris:
> Conservative author David Frum, a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, announced Wednesday that he cast an early vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
* https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/303984-david-fr...
> But she is a patriot. She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States. She will defend allies. She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality. She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage. She will not outright defy legality altogether. Above all, she can govern herself; the first indispensable qualification for governing others.
> So I will vote for the candidate who rejects my preferences and offends my opinions. (In fact, I already have voted for her.) Previous generations accepted infinitely heavier sacrifices and more dangerous duties to defend democracy. I’ll miss the tax cut I’d get from united Republican government. But there will be other elections, other chances to vote for what I regard as more sensible policies. My party will recover to counter her agenda in Congress, moderate her nominations to the courts, and defeat her bid for re-election in 2020. I look forward to supporting Republican recovery and renewal.
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arch...
That was in 2016.
The intellectual dishonesty is pretending that not calling out both sides will lead to any kind of long term solution.
> But hey! Kamala would've done the same.
Saying both sides are bad is not saying they're the same. They take on different forms but are both fundamentally broken and part of the same uniparty of capital interests. The blue/red parties offer an illusion of democracy, but really they just play good cop/bad cop while ultimately serving the wants of elites instead of needs/wants of the vast majority.
But elections appear close, so people think they still have a democracy while they argue about which flavor of shit to install in the control booth. Installing the subjectively "less bad" flavor only guarantees the other one will soon take over in a collective race to the bottom. Dems elevated Trump from meme tier gameshow host to serious contender thanks to their pied piper strategy, and all they could manage was to get mad at wikileaks for exposing them.
And here we are with perfect being the enemy of the good…
Maybe if you want to manufacture consent for the broken system which continues to make lives worse with each passing year instead of confront it.
If you're trying to find agreement, maybe say both sides are responsible for widespread misery, and corruption/exploitable systems and perpetual settling for lesser-evils among "voters" is what keeps us on this path.
And before anybody tries to blame the non-voters, abstaining from voting in a broken system is indeed a vote.
... Yes, I agree. Abstaining from voting is the same as voting for Trump.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
Treating a corrupt system as legitimate is what perpetuates it. Only one of the three options marks it as illegitimate.
Collectively admitting the problem is a prerequisite to fixing it.
A politician should do TWO things: get elected, and convince the electorate about a path forward, including any compromises needed. Obama is the last president that actually did that. As we all know. Trump just doesn't even bother. And before anyone else points this out: yes, I kind of agree, Biden didn't either. Democrats are their own worst enemy, just like republicans are.
I really miss Obama.
"Surely our first priority is to figure out a way to work with Congress"
Then the president joins and is caught up by the note taker and embarrasses the VP with
"Our first priority is to work with congress? Surely our first priority is to serve the American people"
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/24/politics/us-strikes-libya-tru...
The supply of mineral and energy resources is absolutely critical to an industrial economy, even if rivers are polluted to the point they catch fire ala the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969?
I suspect it's worth the effort to minimise and prosecute the corruption, waste, and harmful externalities.
Well, yes, you can't solve this problem by cutting off the supply of food and then declaring that you've ended waste.
by doing something I did not suggest. Agreed.
What I did suggest is not putting up with corruption, waste, and toxic externalities "just because".
Now that the entire justice system is broken, the American system is being dismantled and looted.
2024 was fatal. Enjoy the slide into the abyss.
As this president likes to say,”A disgrace”. And every accusation is a confession.
Elections have consequences.
The markets are very headline driven these days because Trump is a prolific poster and is highly unpredictable. This is basically him selling preferential access to market moves that he himself generates.
It's truly an unprecedented level of grifting happening.
The music on this sinking ship will keep playing till the very end. It's a decline. There is no observable way up from this point.
The mid terms?
1. The situation I imply is way broader: it includes corporate favoritism, epstein files people not getting cosequences, cricular investment of the hyperscalers, illusion of AI boom where the president is just a cherry on top. Swap the cherries, and next ones will keep doing what current ones showed is possible and brings no consequences. Add money-printing, war which can't be won, debt growth etc etc. So yes, I don't see good way up from this point. Even with completely midterms lost by trump supporters the major block of problems stays on the table.
2. The mid terms may not result in trump weakening. There are number of scenarios where trump's team/supportes keep major control or even expand it (emergency powers, military or federal interference, or good old intimidation).
I'm really sorry, but it really does look like we may have had our last actual election already.
He and his staff can plan out specific utterances that are substantial for moving the markets - endless feedback loop ?
...
> The company, which launched its social media app in 2022, said some firms have been copying its data for months without permission.
> McGurn warned that Trump Media will soon block these methods, forcing firms to buy the official feed instead.
This looks like it is monetizing and organizing scrapers. Isn't basically everyone doing this with data feeds these days?
At best this just gives a few milliseconds head start to subscribers and cracks down on automation. I would be shocked if NYSE, etc. don't already have premium tiers with faster market data and those feeds are certainly paid APIs. It's known that HFT shops will co-locate, for example, to have low latency.
This looks really bad, but if it were X and not Truth Social, there wouldn't be anything to see. It goes to the underlying issue of Trump owning and trying to profit from Truth Social generally.
So the US president has created a wrapper corporation that sells early access to official government communications. It doesn't matter if it's only milliseconds, that's enough for trading systems to make money.
How can any of this be legal in a democracy?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/b2icontent.irpass.cc/2660/rl168199....
(via CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/truth-api-trump-media/)
So it seems to be precisely as nefarious as BBC reported.
https://investingnews.com/trump-media-and-technology-group-l...