By David Glenn Cox
It’s almost like a freak show act. The self-immolating man! Watch him burn himself down to the ground. The Iranians offer him a way out of a most unpopular war, but John Wayne says “no” total victory or nothing, so he chooses nothing. Screw what three hundred million Americans want. Never mind the war issue is killing Republicans on the ballot. Never mind what it’s doing to the economy. It’s either what Trump wants, or we burn this mother down to the ground.
How do you like your news, straight with no chaser? Or network style with omissions and half-truths? September is the tail end of the home-buying season. Mortgage interest rates are up! Mortgage applications are down. Not just down, but down by record amounts. Down 20% in a month. Down past Covid levels. Hmm, lower than a pandemic, without a pandemic? Maybe the Trump pandemic? CNN can’t ride on Air Force None anymore! The big baby, the terrible toddler says so. Home foreclosures are rising towards 2008 levels. Call it the double-Trump whammy.
But take your choice; this is a cafeteria-style disaster, so you can take your pick. Oil industry experts say that provided the refineries are willing to defer annual maintenance and nothing else rocks the diesel supply, we should just make it through October by the skin of our teeth. Never mind the price. Just thank your lucky stars that the supply is there at whatever price. On the other hand, if there are more supply troubles and the refineries do their annual maintenance, there will be supply issues, regardless of the price, at any price.
It is literally Nero fiddling while Rome burns. This idea that Trump can tear down the economy brick by brick. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says business activity is the highest it’s been in five years. But for some strange reason, major employers are laying off thousands of workers. But read between the lines, business activity is up, but is anyone making any money? Billions and billions of dollars are being invested in AI data centers, but as of this morning, no one has turned a profit yet. Oracle is on the hook for 156 billion dollars and warns, the checks are in the mail, maybe. These companies are borrowing money as fast as they can lay their hands on it to refinance the old loans that they can’t pay now. Business activity is way up, while the retail economy isn’t.
What do slaughterhouses and bond brokerage houses have in common? They both have blood on the floor. Bond prices are creeping up, making the stock market nervous and less attractive. Let’s review! Soaring fuel prices with a chance of dry pump shortages next month. Falling mortgage applications with rising defaults. Guess what happens to home prices if none can afford to buy? Guess what happens to bond prices if buyers are too scared to buy? Donald Trump said it himself: he’s going to lower fuel prices because everything runs on fuel. And if he causes fuel prices to soar? It’ll be fine.
Treasury boob Scott Bessent tells the bond brokers not to bet against the house, because he’s the house. Guess what bond brokers are doing? Don’t say they’re betting against the house. Say, that’s rising business activity, isn’t it? Thanks to hitting that iceberg, the Titanic now has free ice water in every room? Watch closely! It is reported that consumers have shown great interest in hybrid vehicles. Does that equate to sales or just great interest?
Did you notice how Mr. Trump kissed the Chinese Premier’s Red backside while he was here? And now he’s gone home and Mr. Trump reverts to his old imprudent self again. Mr. Trump is clearly insane, and now even dyed in the wool Republicans are saying so. Marge Tater Greene says Trump wants to declare martial law before the elections and even Fucker Carlson says Mr. Trump should be removed from office immediately! After he threatened a nuclear war. When Mr. Trump says, “He has a big decision to make,” that is what he’s talking about. What? Did you expect the media to explain that to you? Mr. Trump threatens nuclear war, and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut. Antelope Freeway, one mile.
There is a Rod Serling disconnect here as the two sides of the photograph don’t match. There is a doppelganger trying to steal our suitcase at the bus station of success. All is well; in fact, all is great, except for the economy we all live in. No news is good news! While bad news isn’t news at all. Meta has come up with super-expensive high-tech glass that do amazing things and only one in a thousand can actually afford them. Say, the new Rolls-Royce’s should be at the dealer’s showroom any day now! I can’t wait to get my hands on a $2,000 folding I-phone. It does everything your old I-phone does, but this one folds and it’s only two thousand dollars. Gimme two! Everyone said the 1927 Duesenberg was one of the finest automobiles ever built. When a new Cadillac would set you back three grand, a Duesenberg would set you back seventy thousand. Great cars, but who could afford one? Luxury items for the masses who can’t afford food and fuel.
Did you know consumer credit and auto loan defaults are at record levels? Remember, bad news isn’t for publication. That must be some of that rising business activity they’re always telling us about. Invest in the Repo man! He’s got job security! Let me unfold my new $2,000 I-phone and check. Help me find my $1,300 Meta glasses. New cars sales are up because credit standards are down. They will sell one to anybody stupid enough to pick up a pen. Are you sure you can afford an $1,100 a month car payment with 27% interest, while working at Walmart? Okay, then! She’s all yours!
This is fun, no matter what they tell you, never forget Fascism is always fun, and dictatorship is a blast. JD, the shady hillbilly, thinks it’s funny when Mr. Trump stomps on the First Amendment and the free press. “Ha, ha, ha, ain’t that great? He threw CNN off the plane. Ha, ha, ha, ha!” That’s what JD leads with to get the crowd excited. But the question remains unanswered. If that’s what JD leads with, what does he follow up with?
“This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from “I” to “we”. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I”, and cuts you off forever from the “we”.
― John Steinbeck,
“God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America that have got more control over things than all the 120 million people together, you know what the trouble is.” – Huey Long
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