Wednesday, March 5, 2025

QOTD: A Self-Inflicted Depression


Economist Robert Kuttner, writing today in The American Prospect about the Malignant Fascist's mindless engineering of a depression with his tariffs and decimating of Federal programs and employees agenda:

"A related key question is whether Trump has any master plan for the economy here, or whether he is just batshit crazy. The evidence is that Trump’s effort to destroy the government reflects a certain malign consistency, but that his effort to destroy the economy is based on sheer ignorance and impulsivity.

His economic policy is internally inconsistent, and totally at odds with his political need to tame inflation. He is on track to have the kind of stagflation that did in Jimmy Carter, only far worse—and self-inflicted.

Live by bullshit, perish by bullshit.

Trump has the power to issue commands in the domains that he controls, but he can’t command the stock market to levitate, or prices to moderate, or consumers to feel confident, or people who have just been laid off to go out and shop.

In a couple of weeks, the budget talks will reach the point of an increasingly likely government shutdown. Closing the government will be even more of a hit to total demand and consumer and investor confidence.

In agreeing to reopen the government, Democrats are in a good position to demand that Trump reopen the whole government, starting with the parts that Musk has illegally shut down. In the meantime, this engineered crisis is entirely Trump’s." (our emphasis) 

Whether play-by-Republican-rules Dems will seize the opportunity to have Musk's cuts restored in return for keeping the Government open is rather unlikely, and is even more unlikely to be accepted by nihilistic MAGAts who fear not only the MF, but his co-President and paymaster Musk. As long as the MF and his co-President are widely blamed and punished for a coming depression -- one which will hopefully impact his cult members the most severely -- we'll stand by with the popcorn.

 

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