PEAK TRUMP: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA
Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA By David A. Stockman
Hear it Here - https://adbl.co/3StQlTL
00:00:00 Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA
00:05:36 The Reagan Formula Ignored.
00:08:03 No Trumpian Boom.
00:12:42 Flyover America Betrayed.
00:15:22 Trump's Mission Accomplished.- Disruption, Not Remediation.
00:20:28 Why The M. A. G. A. Fantasy Will Come A Cropper.
00:28:27 No Cigar For C. N. N.
00:32:45 The RussiaGate Hoax-A Form Of Washington Bereavement Ritual
00:35:25 The War Party's Phony Case Against Alleged Russian Aggression.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578451107
New York Times bestselling author David A. Stockman is the ultimate
Washington insider turned iconoclast. He sounded the alarm on U.S.
deficit spending and special interest domination of both parties in the
Triumph of Politics (1986); warned in The Great Deformation (2013) about
massive public and private debt and the Fed's unhinged money printing
and bailouts; and exposed the imperiled American economic dream in
TRUMPED! (2016).
Now in PEAK TRUMP: The Undrainable Swamp and The Fantasy of MAGA, he
debunks Trump-O-Nomics and the perils of Washington's addiction to
perpetual wars.
Transcript
Peak Trump:
Speaker:The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA By David A. Stockman, narrated by russell newton.
Speaker:Prologue.
Speaker:Peak Trump happened on September 20,
Speaker:2018,
Speaker:when the S&P 500's giant bubble topped out at 2941.
Speaker:It has been downhill for the market ever since then;
Speaker:and with much more meltdown to go,
Speaker:it means that the Donald,
Speaker:too,
Speaker:is heading for a great big fall.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:we think the odds that he will be accorded the Dick Nixon Memorial Helicopter
Speaker:ride to Gonesville before the end of his term are,
Speaker:once again,
Speaker:not inconsiderable and are rising ineluctably.
Speaker:That's because at the end of the day the Donald is not,
Speaker:remotely the force of nature he's been made to seem by the Trump-obsessed media.
Speaker:To the contrary,
Speaker:he's actually a political flyweight,
Speaker:megalomaniacal incompetent and bileridden bully who stumbled into the Oval
Speaker:Office against all odds;
Speaker:and then lucked-out a second time by riding high on the final two-year crest of
Speaker:a deeply impaired and unsustainable economic recovery cycle and monumental
Speaker:stock market bubble.
Speaker:So doing,
Speaker:however,
Speaker:the Donald committed the most,
Speaker:egregious rookie mistake in the history of the American presidency.
Speaker:That is,
Speaker:he insouciantly embraced a financial bubble that was destined to crash and took
Speaker:ownership of a struggling,
Speaker:geriatric business cycle expansion that had "recession ahead" written all over
Speaker:its forehead.
Speaker:Even on purely mechanical calendarized basis,
Speaker:Trump's,
Speaker:embrace of the current economy was sheer folly.
Speaker:By January 2017,
Speaker:the weakest and most artificial business expansion in American history was
Speaker:already 90 months old.
Speaker:It thereby stood barely a year shy of the legendary 1960's "guns and butter"
Speaker:expansion (105 months),
Speaker:and it was also just 29 months from the all-time record expansion of the 1990s
Speaker:tech boom (119 months).
Speaker:But unlike today,
Speaker:the late stages of the 1990s cycle had,
Speaker:benefited from immense tailwinds which implied there was plenty of juice to
Speaker:keep the expansion going.
Speaker:For instance,
Speaker:Uncle Sam was running a 2% of G. D. P. budget surplus by the year 2000,
Speaker:which obviated any upward pressure on interest rates or tendency for U. S.
Speaker:Treasury borrowing to squeeze-out private investment.
Speaker:Likewise,
Speaker:the Fed's,
Speaker:balance sheet stood at only $500 billion versus $4.5 trillion at the recent
Speaker:peak.
Speaker:Accordingly,
Speaker:there was no urgent need back then to throw-on the monetary brakes,
Speaker:and,
Speaker:in fact,
Speaker:there still existed immense headroom to "stimulate" demand if needs be.
Speaker:Overseas,
Speaker:the,
Speaker:tailwinds were equally,
Speaker:strong.
Speaker:The Red Ponzi was just then bursting out of the starting blocks and had not yet
Speaker:buried itself in debt,
Speaker:malinvestment and fevered speculation.
Speaker:Also at the turn of the century a newly energized single-currency Europe was
Speaker:fixing to (temporarily)
Speaker:borrow and spend like there was no tomorrow.
Speaker:Notwithstanding these powerful tailwinds,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:the,
Speaker:hideously inflated dotcom and tech bubbles splattered during the course of 2000
Speaker:and after,
Speaker:eventually sending the main street economy into recession in the spring of 2001.
Speaker:Nor was that abrupt end to the longest business cycle,
Speaker:expansion in history a one-off aberration.
Speaker:As we elaborate below,
Speaker:the 83% crash of the Nasdaq 100 during 2000-2002 (and lesser but still severe
Speaker:declines in the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 small cap index)
Speaker:marked a wholly new trigger sequence for recessions in the age of Fed-driven
Speaker:Bubble Finance.
Speaker:To wit,
Speaker:recessions now originate in crashing Wall Street,
Speaker:bubbles-not in the retrenchment of household and business credit on main
Speaker:street,
Speaker:as was historically the case.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:by the lights of his own (correct)
Speaker:campaign,
Speaker:rhetoric,
Speaker:Trump inherited a dotcom-scale financial bubble,
Speaker:but no macroeconomic tailwinds whatsoever.
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:the main street economy was struggling in the midst of an aging,
Speaker:artificial recovery that had been kept alive after the September 2008 financial
Speaker:meltdown only by means of $10 trillion of public borrowing and a spree of Fed
Speaker:money printing and negative real interest rates that had no parallel in prior
Speaker:history or even a reference in any known economic textbook.
Speaker:In that context,
Speaker:nobody with an ounce of economic,
Speaker:comprehension or even in possession of a well-crafted "shovelready" economic
Speaker:recovery program would have dreamed that the wheezing,
Speaker:structurally incapacitated American economy of January 2017 could be
Speaker:successfully repaired on the short remaining cyclical runway available.
Speaker:The apt metaphor about the great distance required to reverse the direction of
Speaker:an aircraft carrier on the open seas hardly captured the extent of the
Speaker:challenge.
Speaker:The Reagan Formula Ignored.
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:under the far less daunting circumstances of January 1981,
Speaker:Ronald Reagan had long ago set the proper template - He never stopped blaming
Speaker:Jimmy Carter and the Democrats for the colossal mess he had inherited until
Speaker:after the ship of state had finally turned-with no inconsiderable help from
Speaker:Paul Volcker-in a sustainably positive direction and he had been reelected by a
Speaker:landslide in 1984.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:unlike the Gipper,
Speaker:the Donald had no time,
Speaker:left,
Speaker:no plan,
Speaker:no economic comprehension and no humility whatsoever.
Speaker:Within months of the inauguration,
Speaker:he pivoted from running against Obama's failed economy to celebrating an
Speaker:ostensible Trumpian boom that was nothing of the kind,
Speaker:and still isn't as we document below.
Speaker:And that's why the Donald's fabulous two-year ride on the,
Speaker:cresting phase of the greatest financial bubble ever inflated by rogue central
Speaker:bankers and reckless Wall Street momo chasers is coming to an abrupt end.
Speaker:The fact is,
Speaker:now that the support levels and safety ledges of the stock market's chart
Speaker:monkeys have all been taken out,
Speaker:its vulnerability to the next crash and the main street economy's exposure to
Speaker:the next recession is coming into sharp relief.
Speaker:As to the latter,
Speaker:the history books will record that,
Speaker:the Donald never saw it coming.
Speaker:Owing to his impulsive,
Speaker:immense and incorrigible ego,
Speaker:he,
Speaker:has remained utterly blind to the fact that the unemployment rate always falls
Speaker:below 4% during the final months of a long economic expansion cycle.
Speaker:So those monthly prints from the B. L. S. weren't any kind of vindication at
Speaker:all of his Tax Cut/Fiscal Debauch or his Trade and Border Wars-or even his
Speaker:ballyhooed regulatory reforms,
Speaker:which mainly amounted to cancelling prospective Obama regulatory schemes in the
Speaker:energy and environment areas that had not yet even taken effect.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:taking credit for the falling headline U-3 rate at,
Speaker:the tail-end of a business cycle is equivalent to claiming credit for the daily
Speaker:sunset.
Speaker:Likewise,
Speaker:a few random quarters of 3%+ economic growth had exactly nothing to do with M.
Speaker:A. G. A. .
Speaker:No Trumpian Boom.
Speaker:Thus,
Speaker:the unemployment rate at month #90 of the,
Speaker:aforementioned business expansions-the two longest ones in modern history- was
Speaker:3.7% and 4.5%,
Speaker:respectively,
Speaker:compared to 4.8% when Trump took office.
Speaker:Moreover,
Speaker:during the remaining months of the 1960s and 1990s expansions,
Speaker:the headline unemployment rate dipped slightly lower to 3.5% and 3.9%,
Speaker:respectively,
Speaker:but that's all she wrote.
Speaker:Both times the U. S. economy succumbed to recession within months of hitting
Speaker:the U-3 lows.
Speaker:Historically,
Speaker:therefore,
Speaker:sub-4% unemployment rates have,
Speaker:actually been flashing red warnings signs of trouble just around the bend.
Speaker:And this time there was absolutely no reason to think otherwise and every
Speaker:reason to expect the worst.
Speaker:Nevertheless,
Speaker:the Donald heedlessly and incessantly,
Speaker:embraced the transient 3.7% unemployment rate as if it were all his doing-when
Speaker:it was actually a clanging warning bell to pull out the stops blaming the swamp
Speaker:creatures of the Imperial City for a Fake Boom that couldn't last.
Speaker:As we indicated,
Speaker:nowadays under the Fed's baleful regime,
Speaker:of deep financial repression and cowardly coddling of the stock market,
Speaker:recessions are triggered by imploding financial bubbles,
Speaker:not the traditional catalyst of main street credit and economic retrenchment.
Speaker:For example,
Speaker:on the eve of the 2001 recession the,
Speaker:annualized real G. D. P. growth rate had exceeded 4.0% for 16 successive
Speaker:quarters.
Speaker:Yet that didn't preclude an end to the business expansion shortly thereafter
Speaker:owing to the thundering collapse of the dotcom and tech bubbles.
Speaker:Likewise,
Speaker:in the new world of central bank driven,
Speaker:financialization,
Speaker:a few random quarters of 3.0%+ real G. D. P. growth is nothing to write home
Speaker:about,
Speaker:either.
Speaker:The failed Obama economy,
Speaker:in fact,
Speaker:had posted 11 quarters,
Speaker:of greater than 3.0% annualized real G. D. P. growth.
Speaker:But they didn't last and owing to periodic reversals and stall-outs,
Speaker:they averaged into the weakest recovery cycle growth rate by far in prior
Speaker:history.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:by month #90 of the present so-called recovery,
Speaker:the evidence of fundamental economic impairment was palpable.
Speaker:Donald Trump was inheriting an anemic U. S. economy where real G. D. P. was
Speaker:still only 13% above its prior peak way back in Q4 2007.
Speaker:By contrast,
Speaker:at the same point in the 1990s recovery cycle real G. D. P. was up by 37% and
Speaker:had risen by 48% by the like point of the 1960s cycle.
Speaker:Beyond that,
Speaker:all the other post-war business cycles had,
Speaker:already ended much earlier than month #90.
Speaker:As the blue line in the chart dramatically underscores,
Speaker:the U. S. business cycle was living on borrowed time and faltering momentum
Speaker:the very hour that the Donald was sworn to office.
Speaker:In the context of that astonishing shortfall from,
Speaker:all prior cycles,
Speaker:the Donald had no silver bullet at all;
Speaker:just an overweening ego that could not resist taking credit for the residual
Speaker:momentum of what was actually an unsustainably imbalanced economy.
Speaker:Even then,
Speaker:he embraced a great big economic nothingburger,
Speaker:without a hint of awareness.
Speaker:The ballyhooed Trumpian boom,
Speaker:in fact,
Speaker:was never comprised of much more than talking point spin and statistical
Speaker:cherry-picking.
Speaker:During the first seven quarters on the Donald's watch,
Speaker:real,
Speaker:final sales (G. D. P. less inventory swings)
Speaker:have actually grown at just 2.69% per annum,
Speaker:and that's no material acceleration at all from Obama's final 11 quarters when
Speaker:the growth rate had been 2.53%.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:if there was ever a measure of the Trumpian,
Speaker:delusion,
Speaker:the above referenced 0.16% of statisticaly meaningless incremental growth is
Speaker:surely it.
Speaker:So loudly taking ownership of what candidate Trump,
Speaker:had correctly called a "big,
Speaker:fat,
Speaker:ugly bubble" was not merely short-sighted and outright dumb;
Speaker:it was actually profoundly insulting to the left-behind voters of Flyover
Speaker:America who elected him.
Speaker:Flyover America Betrayed.
Speaker:After all,
Speaker:they were the victims of today's rotten regime,
Speaker:of mountainous public and private debt,
Speaker:relentless Fed money pumping,
Speaker:hideous Wall Street windfalls to the 1% and the job and growth-destroying
Speaker:plunder of cash flows by the stockoption obsessed C-suites of corporate America.
Speaker:The Donald wouldn't have gotten within a country mile of,
Speaker:the Oval Office had it not been for the desperation of those leftbehind voters
Speaker:in the rust belt precincts of western Pennsylvania,
Speaker:Ohio,
Speaker:Michigan,
Speaker:Wisconsin and Iowa where he squeaked through in the Electoral College.
Speaker:To redeem his M. A. G. A. promises,
Speaker:therefore,
Speaker:Trump needed,
Speaker:to attack the fundamental causes of a failed Main Street economy,
Speaker:and failed was the word for it.
Speaker:Despite Wall Street's endless ballyhoo about tiny and often,
Speaker:revised or reversible gains in the monthly in-coming data,
Speaker:the big picture trends told the true,
Speaker:dismal story.
Speaker:To wit - there has been zero growth in real median household income since the
Speaker:year 2000;
Speaker:the U. S. economy has generated virtually no new full-pay,
Speaker:full-time Breadwinner jobs for 18 years;
Speaker:the so-called "recovery" from the Great Recession which was so anemic that
Speaker:there still has been no net gain in manufacturing output since November 2007;
Speaker:and,
Speaker:most crucially,
Speaker:a gargantuan $800 billion trade deficit has consigned vast stretches of Flyover
Speaker:America to be off-shored,
Speaker:hollowed-out and left to flounder.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:the common cause of main street's,
Speaker:economic malaise wasn't a sudden failing of capitalism at home or an onslaught
Speaker:of imports,
Speaker:immigrants and nefarious trade machinations by governments aboard.
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:it was the handiwork of Imperial Washington,
Speaker:and the self-serving consensus of its bipartisan ruling class in favor of
Speaker:permanent war,
Speaker:unchained welfare entitlements,
Speaker:fiscal incontinence,
Speaker:unsustainable debt-fueled household spending,
Speaker:rampant corporate financial engineering and Keynesian monetary repression and
Speaker:"wealth effects" central planning at the Fed.
Speaker:So with the markets now retreating from the final,,
Speaker:spasmodic swelling of the giant bubble he inherited,
Speaker:the question recurs as to whether the Donald has begun to fix anything at all
Speaker:or has even laid a glove on any of the fundamental causes of America's baleful
Speaker:economic predicament?
Speaker:Trump's Mission Accomplished.- Disruption,
Speaker:Not Remediation.
Speaker:As we shall demonstrate in the chapters which follow,,
Speaker:the answer is not even a close call.
Speaker:He has done neither-and,
Speaker:in accordance with his real mission as the Great Disrupter,
Speaker:has actually made matters inestimably worse with his misbegotten Trade Wars,
Speaker:Border Wars,
Speaker:Fed-bashing and Fiscal Debauch.
Speaker:Even his much welcome but furtive tilt toward a primitive version of "America
Speaker:First" foreign policy has mostly been been stymied,
Speaker:smothered and sabotaged by the Deep State incumbents who continue to run the
Speaker:government.
Speaker:And that's been abetted in no small measure by the phalanx of failed generals
Speaker:and neocon interventionists that Trump has unaccountably installed in key
Speaker:offices.
Speaker:On that score,
Speaker:in fact,
Speaker:the Donald has essentially deep- sixed his own parade.
Speaker:His promise to march from the far-flung follies of Empire First to a more
Speaker:modest and inward looking notion of America First has already been largely
Speaker:derailed at his own hand.
Speaker:That's because the desperately needed pivot to fiscal,
Speaker:and national security sanity was stopped cold by the Donald's mindless $100
Speaker:billion per year boost of an already vastly excessive and waste-ridden national
Speaker:defense budget.
Speaker:And now that crucial pivot has been further blocked by a reckless economic and
Speaker:political war against Iran that will do exactly nothing to further the security
Speaker:and safety of the American homeland.
Speaker:Moreover,
Speaker:by feeding the massive Warfare State budget,,
Speaker:which already totals over $1 trillion per year when you addin the cost of
Speaker:foreign operations,
Speaker:military and economic aid,
Speaker:homeland security and the due bills for past wars represented by interest on
Speaker:war bonds and Veterans benefits ($200 billion year year),
Speaker:Trump has precluded any possibility of fiscal discipline.
Speaker:Here we are referring to the twin fiscal menace of the Warfare State and the
Speaker:Welfare State,
Speaker:and the iron law of their expansion.
Speaker:To wit,
Speaker:whenever the former is being ramped upwards at full tilt,
Speaker:the war hawk and neocon dominated G. O. P. is put out of business on the
Speaker:fiscal retrenchment front,
Speaker:meaning there is no legislative coalition that can possibly arrest the drift of
Speaker:what amounts to a fiscal doomsday machine.
Speaker:Moreover,
Speaker:in the current instance that iron law of fiscal,
Speaker:expansion was never in doubt because the Donald himself took entitlements off
Speaker:the table by foolishly pledging to never touch the $2 trillion per year Social
Speaker:Security/Medicare monster that lies at the heart of the Federal budget.
Speaker:Trump then added insult to injury via his unfunded $1.7,
Speaker:trillion tax cut and massive defense and domestic spending increases.
Speaker:All told,
Speaker:the result was a guaranteed $20 trillion explosion of the Federal debt over he
Speaker:coming decade.
Speaker:Moreover,
Speaker:this Trumpian Fiscal Debauch could not have,
Speaker:occurred at a worse time - To wit,
Speaker:it came at the tail end of the business cycle when fiscal retrenchment is
Speaker:supposed to occur and also at the point when the Fed had belatedly begun to
Speaker:extract itself from the impossible corner into which it had painted itself.
Speaker:Notwithstanding the barbs from the Oval Office and the,
Speaker:lame pleadings of the Wall Street brats who believe they are entitled to an
Speaker:endlessly rising stock market,
Speaker:the Fed has actually reached a point of desperation where replenishing its dry
Speaker:powder has become a matter of institutional self-preservation.
Speaker:What we mean is that the Keynesian apparatchiks who,
Speaker:inhabit the Eccles Building recognize their untrammeled power to dominate the
Speaker:entire financial system directly and the U. S. economy indirectly is now at
Speaker:stake.
Speaker:That's because its open-ended remit depends upon the Fed's ability to function
Speaker:as a recession-fighting savior after economic downturns- even when such main
Speaker:street setbacks are invariably caused by its own misbegotten policies.
Speaker:Accordingly,
Speaker:having dithered and delayed the process of,
Speaker:normalization for years,
Speaker:it now must restore interest rates to a level which affords the F. O. M. C.
Speaker:something to "cut" in the next crisis;
Speaker:and it must likewise shrink its balance sheet substantially in order to recoup
Speaker:head room to "expand" once the next recession inevitably hits.
Speaker:So regardless of whether the Fed "pauses" on the,
Speaker:previously scheduled 2 or 3 interest rate increases in 2019,
Speaker:we believe it will continue to shrink its balance sheet at an unprecedented
Speaker:$600 billion annual rate.
Speaker:And that's where the Trumpian fantasy of M. A. G. A. will come a cropper.
Speaker:Why The M. A. G. A. Fantasy Will Come A Cropper.
Speaker:The bond pits will need to absorb $1.2 trillion of new Federal borrowing and
Speaker:$600 billion of existing bonds being dumped by the Fed during the current
Speaker:fiscal year,
Speaker:and far,
Speaker:far larger amounts in the years thereafter and as far as the eye can see.
Speaker:But that's not going to happen at a sub-3.00% yield on the,
Speaker:ten-year Treasury.
Speaker:Not in a million years.
Speaker:Stated differently,
Speaker:crunch time is coming to the casino and,
Speaker:that's what is sure to bring the Donald down.
Speaker:The stock market is heading not only for another 50% correction (1500 on the
Speaker:S&P),
Speaker:but also toward a long L-shaped bottom rather than the quick V-shaped rebound
Speaker:which occurred after 2009.
Speaker:That's because the Fed and other central banks are so far,
Speaker:behind the curve that they have virtually no possibility of truly normalizing
Speaker:monetary conditions before the third and most unstable and unwarranted
Speaker:financial bubble of this century finally splatters all over the casino.
Speaker:And that will surely transpire because the Fed foolishly,
Speaker:pegged the money market rate to the zero bound for seven straight years (from
Speaker:December 2008 to December 2015).
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:with only a handful of monthly exceptions,
Speaker:the Federal funds rate (blue bars)
Speaker:has been well below the annual inflation rate (red bars)
Speaker:for 108 months running.
Speaker:That means money market rates have been negative in,
Speaker:real terms for nearly a decade,
Speaker:yet negative carry costs are the mother's milk of speculation on Wall Street,
Speaker:and this time the Fed has fueled a full decade of exactly that.
Speaker:It's why the casino is chock-a-block with financial explosive devices (FEDs)
Speaker:from stem to stern.
Speaker:Nine Years Of Negative Real Interest Rates.
Speaker:So as these reckless and interconnected bets continue to,
Speaker:unwind-sometimes violently so-the Fed and other central banks will be impotent
Speaker:to arrest the carnage.
Speaker:In part,
Speaker:that's because the magnitude of bottled-up,
Speaker:speculation in the financial system after seven years on the zero-bound and
Speaker:nearly nine years of negative real interest rates simply dwarfs the build-ups
Speaker:which previously occurred during the dotcom/tech bubble and the Greenspan
Speaker:housing and credit bubble.
Speaker:During those bubble expansions,
Speaker:the Fed had pegged the funds rate at a far higher bottom and then for only a
Speaker:few quarters,
Speaker:not nine years,
Speaker:as is evident in the chart below.
Speaker:Worse still,
Speaker:before each of the two prior stock crash- triggered recessions,
Speaker:the Fed got the money market rate up and re-loaded for "cuts" well before the
Speaker:crash incepted.
Speaker:Thus,
Speaker:the Eccles Building ratcheted the funds rate to 6.50% more than a year before
Speaker:the dotcom recession incepted in March 2001;
Speaker:and had ratcheted it up to 5.25 % nearly two-years before the Lehman meltdown
Speaker:of September 2008.
Speaker:Accordingly,
Speaker:it was able to goose Wall Street with a 550,
Speaker:basis point reduction in the cost of carry trade speculation after the 2001
Speaker:recession and cyclical bottom;
Speaker:and,
Speaker:likewise,
Speaker:to slash the Fed funds rate by 525 basis points (down to zero)
Speaker:after the 2008 meltdown and recession.
Speaker:To be sure,
Speaker:slashing the overnight money rates on Wall Street did exactly nothing for
Speaker:Flyover America's deeply indebted households,
Speaker:but it was a godsend to Wall Street speculators.
Speaker:It enabled the latter to fund their positions directly with nearly zero-cost
Speaker:repo or unsecured credit or indirectly through the implicit carry-trades
Speaker:available on the options market or at the bespoke trading desks of the Wall
Speaker:Street prime dealers.
Speaker:What this meant,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:is that the Fed deployed massive firepower on both occasions to artificially
Speaker:and hyper-aggressively force a robust reflation of asset prices in the casino.
Speaker:When combined with massive Q. E. in 2008-2009,
Speaker:especially,
Speaker:the result was a drastic V-shaped rebound of the stock averages that erased
Speaker:entirely all of the losses and lessons imposed on speculators and
Speaker:leverage-based momentum traders by the Great Financial Crisis (G. F. C. ).
Speaker:The G. F. C. ,
Speaker:in fact,
Speaker:was the most terribly "wasted" crisis in,
Speaker:modern financial history - The capital and money markets were not disciplined
Speaker:or repaired,
Speaker:but quickly reverted to a full-on casino-style modus operandi.
Speaker:And the fatally debt-encumbered main street economy,
Speaker:was not really deleveraged one bit.
Speaker:Combined household and nonfinancial business debt today stands at $30.5
Speaker:trillion compared to $24.3 trillion at the 2007 pre-crisis peak.
Speaker:Self-evidently,
Speaker:with the Federal funds rate still encapsulated,
Speaker:in the red circled "normalcy" range shown below,
Speaker:there will be no 525 basis points of rate slashing available to goose Wall
Speaker:Street into a pell mell reflation of financial asset prices this time around
Speaker:the barn.
Speaker:Instead,
Speaker:the casino will twist and turn at the bottom.
Speaker:That's especially true because this time there is also,
Speaker:drastically more bottled up inflation in financial asset prices than there was
Speaker:at the 2000 and 2007 tops.
Speaker:So the impending unwind of nearly a decade of rampant carry trade speculation
Speaker:will be unusually violent and deep;
Speaker:and,
Speaker:in the absence of Fed money market rate slashing capacity,
Speaker:also unusually long-lasting.
Speaker:This stock market shock,
Speaker:in turn,
Speaker:will trigger another Wall Street-style recession in which desperate C-suites
Speaker:toss jobs,
Speaker:inventories and restructuring charges overboard with reckless abandon in a
Speaker:futile effort to appease the trading gods and rescue their evaporating stock
Speaker:options.
Speaker:Once again,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:Flyover America will bear the brunt,
Speaker:of recession and that will elicit a renewed wave of dislocation,
Speaker:demoralization and sense of betrayal among the Trumpian base.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:if the Donald had even remotely grasped the financial time-bombs he was
Speaker:inheriting,
Speaker:he would have attacked the Wall Street speculators from day #1,
Speaker:and aggressively house-cleaned the Fed as their culpable handmaid and enabler.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:the Donald choose to puff-up his chest and,
Speaker:thrust it directly into harms' way,
Speaker:instead.
Speaker:So when the heavy,
Speaker:Fed Funds Rate shoe of a collapsing stock market and recessionary economy hits
Speaker:the pavement,
Speaker:it will be all over for his two year joy-ride.
Speaker:Trump's 2016 electoral base was always fragile and,
Speaker:reflective of a what amounted to a political Hail Mary by the disenfranchised
Speaker:millions who voted for him in the burned-out and left-behind counties and
Speaker:precincts of Flyover America.
Speaker:But when the U. S. economy lapses into another downturn,
Speaker:and the M. A. G. A. myth is visibly rebuked and eviscerated,
Speaker:the Donald's patented immigrant bashing and Border and Trade War rhetoric won't
Speaker:cut it.
Speaker:Donald Trump,
Speaker:like Richard Nixon before him,
Speaker:will find,
Speaker:himself home alone in the Oval Office-with the hinterlands betrayed,
Speaker:the G. O. P. defenders silenced and the Imperial City thirsting for the kill.
Speaker:No Cigar For C. N. N. .
Speaker:Nevertheless,
Speaker:let us be clear .- It is the impending hammer of financial collapse and
Speaker:economic retreat that will be the Donald's undoing,
Speaker:not the long-running C. N. N. /M. S. M. political indictment.
Speaker:And it is the pending assault on the paychecks of the voters and the bank
Speaker:accounts of the Republican donors which will awaken the G. O. P. pols from
Speaker:their one eye-open slumber and mobilize them to defenestrate the Donald.
Speaker:That is not to say,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:that the endless antiTrump bloviation of the mainstream media's talking heads
Speaker:and their collaborators among the Washington establishment and the Dem pols has
Speaker:been for naught.
Speaker:They were right,
Speaker:for instance,
Speaker:about Trump's temperamental,
Speaker:unsuitability for the office,
Speaker:but that's a national blessing in disguise.
Speaker:The Donald has single-handedly discredited the Imperial Presidency like never
Speaker:before,
Speaker:and that's the sine qua non of wresting democratic governance from the clutches
Speaker:of the Deep State and its permanent Washington nomenklatura.
Speaker:The same is true with respect to the charge that the Donald,
Speaker:has alienated most of the outside world-friend and foe alike- and has thereby
Speaker:badly diminished America's global "leadership."
Speaker:But,
Speaker:ironically,
Speaker:that will surely remain his lasting (and likely,
Speaker:only)
Speaker:accomplishment.
Speaker:What we mean is that the ruination of prosperity and liberty,
Speaker:in America by Imperial Washington has no hope of surcease until the latter
Speaker:declares a war,
Speaker:occupation or intervention and no one shows up for the party.
Speaker:That outcome,
Speaker:at least,
Speaker:the Donald has pretty much,
Speaker:guaranteed.
Speaker:Still,
Speaker:more than anything else,
Speaker:the Donald's fluke elevation,
Speaker:to the Oval Office has finally caused the Deep State to come out of hiding and
Speaker:bare its fangs against American democracy itself.
Speaker:So doing,
Speaker:it has awakened the sleepwalkers of the Foxified Right about the immense
Speaker:dangers of the Warfare State and the sweeping surveillance and police state
Speaker:apparatus that has been created in the service of the neocon's misbegotten war
Speaker:on terrorism and quest for Empire.
Speaker:In a word,
Speaker:the terrifying capabilities,
Speaker:resources and (purported)
Speaker:credibility of the nation's $75 billion per year intelligence community were
Speaker:hijacked by top Obama officials led by then C. I. A. Director,
Speaker:John Brennan,
Speaker:in furtherance of a plot to first forestall Trump's election,
Speaker:and then to re-litigate the outcome and eviscerate his Presidency after the
Speaker:voters had spoken.
Speaker:No greater threat has ever been mounted against America's,
Speaker:constitutional democracy than the plain as day collusion of Brennan,
Speaker:Rice,
Speaker:Comey,
Speaker:Clapper,
Speaker:Yates,
Speaker:McCabe,
Speaker:Rosenstein,
Speaker:Strzok,
Speaker:Page et. al. to thwart the will of the electorate.
Speaker:That Deep State assault incepted in the utterly unjustified,
Speaker:investigation of Russian influences on the Trump campaign during July 2016;
Speaker:became blatantly overt in the crude Comey/ Yates entrapment ploy against
Speaker:General Flynn on the eve of Trump's inauguration;
Speaker:and then went full-on public,
Speaker:seizing the Justice Department's investigative and law enforcement machinery
Speaker:via the Mueller Special Counsel appointment in order to conduct an abusive,
Speaker:bare-knuckled witch-hunt against the president and any and all bystanders who
Speaker:could be used to discredit his incumbency.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:the mainstream media is so caught up,
Speaker:in the anti-Trump mania fomented by the Imperial City's ruling classes and
Speaker:partisan shills that the plain fact of the attempted coup by the Deep State has
Speaker:been completely muffled.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:this very real homegrown case of election meddling by the intelligence and law
Speaker:enforcement agencies of the American state has been virtually covered in
Speaker:spray-paint by C. N. N. and the rest of the M. S. M. via the Russia/Trump
Speaker:collusion counternarrative.
Speaker:Yet the latter is so preposterous and threadbare as to,
Speaker:virtually force the ultimate question.
Speaker:Namely,
Speaker:given the fact that Russia's G. D. P. is just 7% of that of the U. S. and
Speaker:that Washington's defense spending is 12X greater than the Kremlin's,
Speaker:how in the world can rationally-thinking adults view Russia as any threat
Speaker:whatsoever to the security and safety of the American homeland--to say nothing
Speaker:of the implied existential threat embodied in the current anti-Kremlin
Speaker:fulminations?
Speaker:The RussiaGate Hoax-A Form Of Washington Bereavement Ritual There is a simple
Speaker:answer,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:and it's not about the Kremlin's threat to national security or even the silly
Speaker:social media click-baiting efforts of a pint-sized St. Petersburg troll farm
Speaker:operated during the 2016 election by a second tier Russian oligarch and
Speaker:nationalist agitator.
Speaker:In fact,
Speaker:if Russia didn't exist,
Speaker:the Imperial City would have needed to revive Orwell's enemy states of Eurasia
Speaker:or Eastasia.
Speaker:That's because the Dem party and the Washington,
Speaker:establishment have been so traumatized and rebuked by losing to a buffoon like
Speaker:Donald Trump that they have embraced a virtually fictionalized Russian meddling
Speaker:story to explain the November 2016 outcome.
Speaker:For them,
Speaker:RussiaGate has apparently become a form of bereavement ritual.
Speaker:Indeed,
Speaker:without the implicit postulate that Trump could not,
Speaker:have won the presidency without massive and decisive external intervention,
Speaker:the bare facts of the Russian meddling story fall on their own face.
Speaker:In this context,
Speaker:there is also something slightly more- However he got there,
Speaker:candidate Trump-and to a lesser extent President Trump-never bought into the
Speaker:Imperial City's post2012 anti-Putin narrative for the utterly rational reason
Speaker:that it's unwarranted.
Speaker:The real Putin,
Speaker:as opposed to the Imperial City's cartoon,
Speaker:caricature,
Speaker:is a completely sober and rational nationalist leader of the semi-impoverished,
Speaker:rump-state of Russia.
Speaker:The notion that he's an expansionist aggressor and mini-Hitler in the making is
Speaker:just the latest invention of Imperial Washington,
Speaker:which desperately needs a foreign enemy to justify its $1 trillion annual
Speaker:fleecing of America's taxpayers,
Speaker:current and unborn.
Speaker:In this instance,
Speaker:the actual truth is more nearly the opposite.
Speaker:It was Washington's aggressive expansion of Nato to Russia's very borders and
Speaker:its financing and recognition of the Ukrainian nationalist/crypto-Nazi coup on
Speaker:the streets of Kiev in February 2014 which forced Putin to take defense actions.
Speaker:Even then,
Speaker:it was limited to accommodating the,
Speaker:overwhelming desire of the Russian-speaking population of Crimea to return to
Speaker:mother Russia,
Speaker:which it had been an integral part of for 171 years,
Speaker:rather than being ruled by the hostile political parties which seized power in
Speaker:Kiev.
Speaker:The War Party's Phony Case Against Alleged Russian Aggression.
Speaker:The same was true of Putin's limited support for the Russian,
Speaker:speaking populations of the Donbas (eastern Ukraine).
Speaker:It takes only a surface knowledge of the blood-soaked history of the region to
Speaker:understand why the Russian speakers there took up arms against Kiev after the
Speaker:2014 nationalist/Nazi coup.
Speaker:The 1930s Stalinization of the Donbas' iron,
Speaker:steel,,
Speaker:coal,
Speaker:chemical,
Speaker:engineering and armaments sectors essentially moved reliable Russians into the
Speaker:factories and towns;
Speaker:and in the process liquidated or sent to Siberia Ukrainian nationalists and
Speaker:other political dissidents who didn't cotton to Uncle Joe's form of socialist
Speaker:dystopia.
Speaker:Soon thereafter came the World War,
Speaker:Ii battles which pitted Ukrainian collaborators with Hitler's Wehrmacht against
Speaker:the Russified locals.
Speaker:In the first instance,
Speaker:the former conducted a scorched earth march through the Donbas on the way to
Speaker:Stalingrad.
Speaker:Then,
Speaker:when the battle of Stalingrad was won,
Speaker:the Red Army retaliated in kind against the Ukrainian collaborators during its
Speaker:equally destructive march back through Ukraine on its way to Germany.
Speaker:So exactly what dog did the American people have in that,
Speaker:hunt?
Speaker:Obviously,
Speaker:the safety and security of the homeland was,
Speaker:not impacted a whit by an unnecessary re-opening of the Ukraine's bloody modern
Speaker:history.
Speaker:That's especially true since the current fight between Kiev and the
Speaker:Russian-speaking eastern provinces was owing to Washington's after-the-fact
Speaker:meddling in the country's 2010 election,
Speaker:which resulted in the deposing of its dully elected President by a
Speaker:Washington-funded street mob.
Speaker:Besides,
Speaker:the Ukraine for centuries has been a Russian,
Speaker:vassal and set of meandering borders looking for a country.
Speaker:In that context,
Speaker:Washington's ridiculous demand that Crimea be "returned" to Ukraine is
Speaker:downright laughable.
Speaker:Crimea was never part of the Ukraine after it was purchased,
Speaker:for good money from the Ottoman's by Catherine the Great in 1783.
Speaker:The "return" in question amounts to Washington's insistence on enforcing the
Speaker:dead hand of the Soviet Presidium,
Speaker:which transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic in 1954 as part of
Speaker:Khrushchev's consolidation of power after Stalin's death.
Speaker:It may well be that the candidate Trump didn't know all,
Speaker:the ins-and-outs of this history and Washington's phony demonization of Putin
Speaker:and Russia.
Speaker:Then again,
Speaker:he wasn't house-trained by the War Party,
Speaker:either;,
Speaker:and he had enough common sense to see that rapprochement with Russia was the #1
Speaker:priority-if his inchoate desire to reorient U. S. foreign policy to an America
Speaker:First standard was to gain any traction at all.
Speaker:Yet that is also the very reason why the whole groundless Russia-collusion
Speaker:narrative got traction in the first place.
Speaker:To wit,
Speaker:the Imperial Washington groupthink was so invested in demonization of Putin and
Speaker:in the risible exaggeration of the Russian threat that Trump's rejection of the
Speaker:War Party line was taken as proof that the Russians had something on him.
Speaker:Stated differently,
Speaker:the entire Mueller witch hunt rested,
Speaker:on the blind proposition that the Kremlin had blackmail because there was
Speaker:purportedly no other possible basis for Trump's Russia friendly position or for
Speaker:even such minor common sense steps as removing from the G. O. P. platform the
Speaker:neocon's idiotic proposal to supply the Kiev government with lethal arms.
Speaker:Needless to say,
Speaker:Mueller's legal thugs have not found a,
Speaker:sliver of evidence to support the collusion/blackmail predicate because Trump's
Speaker:pro-rapprochement position rested all along on common sense,
Speaker:not nefarious doings.
Speaker:But what the whole Deep State coup has accomplished is,
Speaker:something quite lethal for American democracy.
Speaker:To wit,
Speaker:it has opened-up a no-holds barred war between two dangerous statist factions
Speaker:in the Imperial City.
Speaker:On the one hand,
Speaker:the anti-Trumpers have already seized,
Speaker:the machinery of state to nullify the democratic process.
Speaker:Apart from the fact that candidate Trump defied the Imperial City's
Speaker:anti-Kremlin policy line,
Speaker:no honest custodian of the national intelligence machinery would have ever
Speaker:opened up the F. B. I. investigation of the Trump campaign in July 2016 based
Speaker:on the ultra thin gruel available.
Speaker:And that's to say nothing of obtaining a F. I. S. A. warrants to wiretap the
Speaker:campaign headquarters of the Republican candidate for president.
Speaker:Those actions were massively beyond the pale.
Speaker:After all,,
Speaker:the target of suspicion was Carter Page,
Speaker:a complete no count who was a mere campaign volunteer and had never even meet
Speaker:Donald Trump.
Speaker:Likewise,
Speaker:the F. I. S. A. warrant was based on the hideous,,
Speaker:Clinton-paid-for Dossier and the drunken musings of Baby George Papadopoulos,
Speaker:who was an even more peripheral figure in the campaign than Carter Page.
Speaker:In an honest democracy,
Speaker:Comey,
Speaker:Clapper or Brennan would,
Speaker:have gone to candidate Trump and shared their concerns about the purported
Speaker:Russian connections of Page and Papadopoulos,
Speaker:which didn't amount to a hill of beans anyway.
Speaker:And it is absolutely certain that both of these no counts would have been
Speaker:unceremoniously booted from the 26th floor of Trump Tower- without or without a
Speaker:parachute.
Speaker:The plain fact is,
Speaker:Trump didn't know them,
Speaker:didn't need them,
Speaker:and had not said a single word during his campaign based on whatever they were
Speaker:doing,
Speaker:which was actually above board,
Speaker:anyway.
Speaker:By the same token,
Speaker:from that screaming abuse of state,
Speaker:power there metastasized the entire RussiaGate narrative,
Speaker:the despicable prosecution of General Flynn for doing his job and the launch of
Speaker:the Mueller witch-hunt designed to remove from the nation's highest office the
Speaker:Trumpian threat to the Deep State's rule.
Speaker:Not surprisingly,
Speaker:the Donald has fought back in his,
Speaker:patented street brawling style.
Speaker:But so doing,
Speaker:he has defaulted to policy positions which are no less statist than those of
Speaker:the antiTrumpers.
Speaker:To wit,
Speaker:his massive defense build-up,
Speaker:unhinged Border Wars and all-out Trade War assault on China are designed to
Speaker:mobilize and incense his red state political base,
Speaker:not solve any notable national problem as we document in the pages which follow.
Speaker:At the end of the day,
Speaker:of course,
Speaker:it will be American,
Speaker:capitalism,
Speaker:democratic governance and the prosperity and liberty of the people that will
Speaker:end up the worse for the wear.
Speaker:Still,
Speaker:the Deep State coup has visibly failed,
Speaker:and soon the,
Speaker:misguided Trumpian protectionist and statist economic agenda will be crushed by
Speaker:the collapse of the giant Wall Street financial bubble and the phony,
Speaker:debt-fueled recovery that was the source of the Donald's temporary sojourn in
Speaker:the Oval Office.
Speaker:We have chosen to label this baleful state of affairs as Peak Trump,
Speaker:and in the chapters to follow we attempt to explain why it happened and where
Speaker:it goes from here.
Speaker:On the latter score,
Speaker:we claim no clairvoyance about the,
Speaker:future whatsoever.
Speaker:But what we do know is that Washington's Empire abroad and phony prosperity at
Speaker:home is terminally failing;
Speaker:and that whatever comes next won't be M. A. G. A. .
Speaker:Not by a long shot.
Speaker:This has been
Speaker:Peak Trump:
Speaker:The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA By David A. Stockman, narrated by russell newton.
