Republicans are on a risky road to financial ruin

By James J. Devine

President-elect Donald Trump’s economic schemes might be sinister but they are more appropriately described as stupid. 

Tariffs on imports would raise prices for consumers, but the inflationary effects are less important than the fuel this would add to a global movement among America’s most dangerous enemies to displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. 

The people who were interviewed for jobs at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) leaked details about their meetings with the Trump transition team that indicates the Republicans want to abolish those agencies. 

It took less than a decade for the elimination of another New Deal banking regulation, known as Glass-Steagall, to manifest into the global financial crisis that plundered middle-class wealth. 

Could you imagine how stupid one must be to even consider taking the brakes off the roller coaster cart?  Billionaire Elon Musk seems to have just such an idea in mind.

In 2023, the FDIC took swift action that stopped the failures of three big regional banks from becoming a similarly widespread disaster. There were actually five bank failures that year, including Citizens Bank in Sac City, Iowa; Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas; First Republic Bank in San Francisco; Signature Bank in New York; and Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California.

The First National Bank of Lindsay in Oklahoma and Republic First Bank in Philadelphia both failed this year, but federal regulators took charge so fast that these blips didn’t get much attention. Neither did the 17 bank failures that occurred when Trump last occupied the White House.

Trump once trashed bitcoin as ‘based on thin air,’ but the prospect of easy money helped him find a new love for cryptocurrencies that he previously ridiculed.  Unlike the US dollar, cryptocurrency is backed by the full faith and credit of absolutely nothing. But what makes you expect greedy morons to learn from watching Sam Bankman-Fried’s play money palace collapse on his head? 

Trump cautioned that digital currencies facilitate illegal underground markets, he discredited bitcoin as “highly volatile and based on thin air,” and even boldly asserted: “We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever. It is called the United States Dollar!” Now, with an unexplained 180-degree turn he is fully committed to the  casino capitalism that is cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency is also an alternative to the existing financial system so its expansion would help the BRICS team devalue our dollar. BRICS is an intergovernmental organization comprising nine countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Any group consisting of Russia, China, and Iran is probably looking for ways to destroy our way of life, our economy,  and our military power. They don’t need Donald Trump’s assistance but he seems intent on helping them. 

Trump and his billionaire boys club might imagine that they are immune to the utter chaos and destruction they are inviting on us all.

When the U.S. and international banking and financial systems collapsed in 2008, the hardest hit by devastating effects were the poor and middle-class. Those who did not bear any responsibility for economic mismanagement or financial speculation paid the heaviest price for the consequences of that recklessness.

However, while the poor and working class Americans are likely to suffer severely when it comes time to reap what the Trump team is sowing, even people who own billions are probably going to be pinched when a global crash erases trillions from the books. It will be little solace to anyone who has nothing to know that penniless former billionaires lost more than them.

On top of all this, the national debt is going to surpass $50 trillion before the end of Trump’s second term, but a slim cushion of 38 Republican representatives prevented Congress from suspending the debt ceiling just four weeks before the White House return of the money juggling real estate mogul, who declared bankruptcy six times.

And since the United States has done worse advancing liberty, prosperity and justice for all outside our borders than it has within our country (for a measure of this, speak to native Americans or Black people), if our global adversaries exploit the imminent catastrophic consequences of financial foolishness, their military forces could be a little tougher on the deposed masters of the world than on the rest of us.

If Trump can’t see the geopolitical ramifications of his domestic policy actions then it would be like trying to win at Monopoly while everyone else is playing Risk.

Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are not playing games and if they gain an upper hand militarily, they will probably be prepared to visit retribution on the entire Western world but it is a safe bet they would deal with America first.