Making Sense of Trump’s Financial Controversies | Fair Observer

Hmm.

All right.

And that's something to think about.

But as also something to think about is, um, these...

We're talking about billions of dollars and billions of dollars worth of deals, private contracts, all this sort of things.

Um, how is, uh, this, all this money being, uh, all this money moving in certain ways affecting the larger economy? Is Wall Street, uh, adapting to this sort of quid pro crow, quid pro quo, um, system, or is it kind of chafing-

[chuckles]

... uh, under the unfairness of it and demanding more increased, uh, accountability?

Well, uh, Wall Street was never really about accountability.

[laughs] I mean, and, and the Trump administration has done whatever it can to eliminate whatever mechanisms have been put in place, for instance, after the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, uh, to provide even a modicum of accountability, uh, in the financial world.

So no, I mean, Wall Street could care less about, um, what Trump is doing in the economic realm because it's engaged in a bout of irrational exuberance, which is the, what the, uh, Wall Street observers call, um, periods of escalating profit, um, and, uh, in which, you know, people basically treat Wall Street as a casino and they s- think that if they invest now, they will simply see all of their, um, investments double, triple, quadruple as a result of who knows what.

Um, and, and a permissive regulatory environment, um, uh, successful technological innovations, what have you.

Um, what Trump is doing corruption-wise, no.

I mean, it's, um, it's, as, as far as Wall Street is concerned, you know, the, the enormous rise in the, um, value, for instance, of a, of a Trump meme coin and then its precipitous decline, yeah, lots of people lost billions of dollars, but that's the way it goes.

And you know, they were essentially punished for their, um, uh, lack of foresight [chuckles] and, uh, the winners were rewarded for what frankly were, um, as far as I'm concerned, illegitimate, uh, economic actions.

I mean, releasing, for instance, a, a, a Trump coin, uh, and knowing that the value would go up and then down because that's the nature of these cryptocurrencies.

So, uh, people who were in the know invested early, pulled out early, made money.

Everybody else not in the know lost a lot of money.

Wall Street could care less about that.

Um, everything else, I think actually Wall Street is very enthusiastic about all the money that comes in as a result of influence peddling from the Middle East.

Saudi investments in the United States, uh, UAE investments in the United States, Wall Street reacts positively to that regardless of, of whether those investments are as a result of, I don't know, Saudi, um, analysis of the US economy or Saudi desire to curry favor with Donald Trump.

Again, it, it's neutral as far as, as Wall Street is concerned.

For the economy as a whole, that's another question.

I mean, because obviously, um, corruption of this nature, of this magnitude has a corrosive effect on the economy, um, more generally because, well, uh, essentially we have non-productive labor that is richly rewarded and productive labor which either declines in value in relative terms or is eliminated because, you know, that's what is happening in, in a Trump, uh, term where either manufacturing is leaving to go overseas or it's been priced out of the market or it's been punished by tariffs or whatever.

I mean, you know, American manufacturing has not necessarily done very well and certainly American agriculture has done very poorly, uh, in this second ter- term.