Are We Great Again, Yet?

    This was last Friday, when the Dow Jones lost 2231 points in one day. Note that was 5.5% of the Dow Jones's value, or over $6 trillion. This was the day after Trump announced his 10% baseline tariffs on every land mass that wasn't named Russia, Israel or Saudi Arabia. Part of this panic on Wall Street was driven by the news that China was going to hit us with a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods effective today.

     It's impossible for anyone to divine what's going through Trump's Adderall-addled brain or what passes for one. No matter how completely insane his actions are, he can always find idiots in his administration or right wing circles who will obediently bend themselves into pretzels to justify or rationalize it.

      Apparently, wiping over $10 trillion dollars off Wall Street's value in order to wage needless and unjustified tariff wars on our allies and other nations are one of those things that makes perfect sense in Trump's Bizarro World.

      And it's equally impossible for me to divine why exactly he's doing this when he should know that higher tariffs on goods coming into the US will simply mean higher prices for Americans. This will surely lead to a recession, if not a depression the likes of which we haven't seen since the last Depression of the 30s.

      Granted, you would be hard-pressed to find a rank and file American who has any sympathy for Wall Street and its heartless, avaricious oligarchs. But if this trend continues, it'll only be a matter of time before Wall Street's sinking financial fortunes begin to be felt on Main Street, just like in 1929.

      And, except for deliberately tanking our economy to somehow strengthen Russia's, one is at a loss to see what Trump's end game is. Maybe, as David Brooks wrote nine years ago, it could merely be that Trump's brain is just an empty jar containing a few fireflies that intermittently light up.