Trumpflation

[batmagadanleadoff]

If we had a functioning SEC, I'd love to see what Trump insiders were doing just before those tariffs were announced. Because I bet there was a lot of selling going on.

They're too greedy to have simply sold. They went short. To make money, rather than to just avoid lossea. This market collapse was about as sure a thing as could be what with the tariffs he imposed.

[MFS62]

President Hitler is the ultimate insider: rich, corrupt to the core, and who can influence the world's economy.

His advisor and secretary of commerce Howard Lutnik* comes from a financial company (Cantor Fitzgerald) that specializes in long term bonds, so they are getting rich when stocks tank.

I also think he's doing this at the behest of Putin, who wants to bring the world down to the level of his failing economy.

Later

* = the same entitled billionaire who said his 94 year old grandmother won't miss her social security check.

[batmagadanleadoff]

President Hitler is the ultimate insider: rich, corrupt to the core, and who can influence the world's economy.

His advisor and secretary of commerce Howard Lutnik* comes from a financial company (Cantor Fitzgerald) that specializes in long term bonds, so they are getting rich when stocks tank.

I also think he's doing this at the behest of Putin, who wants to bring the world down to the level of his failing economy.

Later

* = the same entitled billionaire who said his 94 year old grandmother won't miss her social security check.

There are myriad reasons, all of them no doubt to advance President Hitler's personal interests rather than those of the country at large.

[batmagadanleadoff]

If we had a functioning SEC, I'd love to see what Trump insiders were doing just before those tariffs were announced. Because I bet there was a lot of selling going on.

And if they're caught, and ... gosh ... even convicted of a financial crime, they'll get pardoned. Probably pardoned per-emptively to avoid criminal litigation in the first place.

The Real Problem With Monday Morning’s Stocks Mishap
Trump boosters have never felt the need to behave. And the stock market is opening a whole new area of financial crime possibility.

Excerpt:

... we are in the easiest moment in modern history to commit enormous financial crimes and get away with them. That has been true for months and will be true for years, but it has been extra true of the past few days of stock turmoil. If you are an aspiring financial criminal, these are the halcyon days.

[***]

The vast majority of, if not all, cases of market manipulation and insider trading center around individual stocks, but we currently exist in a moment when the world stock market depends on one elderly man expressing a certain view of trade protectionism on a certain day. If you can convince enough traders that Trump had the right thought cross his mind, you can move not just one stock, but the entire market, and you can profit from a nicely timed purchase of the least suspect equity of all: a broad-market index fund.

[***]

... there’s mounting evidence that financial crimes are no longer going to be treated as crimes, as long as the people who have committed them are in the president’s good graces. The whole stock market resting on Trump’s whims creates a shockingly good opportunity for anyone with access to Trump to make a veritable killing. Why shouldn’t someone like Howard Lutnick, the billionaire commerce secretary, add a low-cost index fund to his portfolio just before an eventual Trump announcement claiming victory and rolling back some tariffs? Lutnick’s latest financial disclosure is very long. What would the addition of an S&P 500 index fund do? Are we going to penalize a Cabinet member for believing in the U.S. stock market? How unpatriotic.

https://slate.com/business/2025/04/stoc ... crime.html

Howard Lutnick? Gimme a break. Let's check Ivanka's portfolio, for starters.