The Final Trump?

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As I've mentioned before, I read the Financial Times; always at the weekend, and once or twice in the week. Where other news outlets are politically biassed to a greater or lesser degree, the FT generally sits at one remove from all of that. It follows only the money and reports on what politics is doing to the world of money: "Without Fear and Without Favour" to quote its strap line. Hence, you often come away from reading it with an interesting and illuminating basket of views, almost, as it were, from the sidelines. From today's copy:

Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, seems to be doing his level best to bring the US armed forces to its knees, fuelled by his President's continued 'adventures' in the Middle East and having sacked or forced out just about anyone of worth and/or experience from the military side of US government; which inevitably exacerbates the now stupendous debt mountain being accrued by Trump and his administration as they burn through biblical quantities of cash in their imperialist endeavours. The interest on that national debt currently runs at over three percent of GDP. As a result of this and other factors, US government ten year treasury bond yields are now 4.8%, pushing toward the 5% that flattened the dotcom boom. According to Ruchir Sharma, this would have the effect of bursting the ambition of the AI industry, which is already leveraged up to the hilt on the strength of market caps supported only by blind optimism and the get-rich-quick brigade.

Returns are slow to approach borrowing [nowhere near, in fact, for the most part] and the markets are growing increasingly cautious over future investment in equal and opposite measure to the enthusiasm for the brave new world hullabaloo surrounding the tech: exactly the scenario that obtained towards the end of the dotcom boom and its inevitable and storied bust. The truth is we've seen it all before: tulips, pineapples, peacock feathers, etc., etc. There will be a great levelling once again sometime soon, but as usual, as far as the real world and ordinary people are concerned there will only be negatives: the US is now faltering in its self-proclaimed 'Leader of the Free World' schtick, and the global economic and social damage already caused by the misadventures of Donald J. Trump and his believers and acolytes is evident in political and market instabilities, with concomitant energy and food price increases and supply-chain insecurity. His 'adventures' are already costing the rest of us on the planet dearly. Let's hope, that like all other 'emperors' throughout history, he will eventually taste the bile of his own defeat, and sooner rather than later: then we might just stand a chance of righting the mothership before it founders on the reefs of his - and the rest of the world's madmen of power - utter stupidity, greed and hubris.

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