Saturday, January 26, 2019

Will This Be the Final Nail in Trump's Coffin?


Donald Trump rode one signature phrase straight into the White House - "Make America Great Again." The TV show hustler convinced the Gullibillies, his base, that he was an unparalleled real estate tycoon, master of the 'art of the deal,' and, just like those other hucksters, the 'prosperity gospel' preachers, he would rain wealth down on his followers until they were sick of winning and the weight of all that windfall cash. He even plunged the US a trillion dollars deeper in debt to float a tax cut for the rich, reviving the 'trickle down' madness in the developed nation that has the worst inequality problem of them all. That money which Trump said would spark an economic Nirvana instead was diverted into share buybacks and executive compensation, not economic expansion.

A lot of Trump's first two years in office was marked by arm twisting, browbeating, even outright threats to not just Democrats but also congressional Republicans.  With the feckless House leader, Paul Ryan, and the utterly servile Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, Trump rode'em hard and put'em away wet.

Trump, however, is no master of the 'art of the deal.' He is master of the con. That's something many people have learned first-hand. People like the unpaid trades who constructed his buildings. People like the investors who poured their money into Trump's failed casinos. Even the saps who paid big bucks to enroll in the laughably named "Trump University."

Trump's administration has been the ultimate expression of a con artist and, like all cons, it cannot last. He's got a lot of weight bearing down on him. The House is now in the Democrat's control. The Mueller investigation is closing in, the latest to fall being Trump's longtime buddy and fixer, Roger Stone. Big as those threats may be, Trump's greatest problem could turn out to be the economy.

Business Insider reports a sharp decline in home sales in 2018 that could spell bad news for the American economy. It's the same phenomenon that presaged nine out of the eleven recessions in America in the postwar era.
As 2018 headed toward its close, Americans' appetites for buying homes fell off a cliff. 
In December, the rate of existing US home sales cratered to 4.99 million, 10.3% below the mark from the year-ago period, according to data released earlier this week by the National Association of Realtors. 
That's the steepest decline in more than seven years, and it followed year-over-year declines of 7.8% in November and 5.1% in October.
...At two of the largest bank mortgage originators and servicers in the US, the numbers were more pronounced. 
At Wells Fargo, mortgage banking revenues fell 50% to $467 million in the fourth quarter, while originations declined 28% to $38 billion. 
JPMorgan, meanwhile, saw mortgage income fall to $203 million, a 46% drop from the same period last year. Originations fell 30% to $17.2 billion.

5 comments:

John B. said...

I already have it from the guys I know that admire Trump: should the implementation of his master plan for the little guy be interrupted, any of the mess he’s created for that guy will be the fault of the parties that succeed him and find themselves faced with the cleanup task.

I think some of them believe, as Rudy seems to, that they’re partners in his con game. While Rudy may have it right, I have trouble figuring out these guys because they don’t seem to have noticed that they aren’t on the payroll.

the salamander said...

.. in a strange way, Mound.. Canadians understand the Trump mode better than Americans. We live through the Stephen Harper era. You know, the two staggering minorities, the scandals, the nonsense.. then that disgusting Fraud and a Majority Government, the stripping of Environmental Legislation, the trashing of habitat and species, the denials, the backrooms black ops, the scumbaggery or outright fuckery, the selloffs for fake surplus.. anything to desperately cling to 'power' ..

Now Americans see what a dangerous dose Trump is and all his sellout enablers.. Roger Stone just another, as is Eptein or Bannon, or McConnell, Manafort, Cohen.. Donald Trump Jr, Michael Flynn.. laughable, tragic, radioactive.. Welcome to Animal Farm, 1984.. and Lord of the Flies ..

The Mound of Sound said...


Of course Trump will try to pin whatever befalls him on others. He always has and always will.

As for Trump's administration, Sal, I'm with you on Lord of the Flies.

Jay Farquharson said...

Orange Crush has hinted how it will end,.....

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/12519-4/

Northern PoV said...

I see you are still living in an alternate reality:

Will This Be the Final Nail in Trump's Coffin?