Are The Banksters Really Stupid Enough To Believe Anything That Comes Out Of Trump's Mouth?

Tomorrow May Tell Whose Side Adam Schiff Will Be On In The Senate

Adam Schiff did a little better than Kamala did in California last month, even as the state moved right. She took 58.5% of the vote (down from Biden’s 63.5% and Hillary’s 61.7%) and he took 58.9%. Trump’s barrage of attacks against him— and his strong response— made him attractive to some Democrats who might otherwise not been interested in voting for either corporate-oriented centrist. If Schiff attracted progressives who ignored Kamala, they probably were unaware that he had already sold himself to the crypto-cartel, which spent $10,000,000 smearing Katie Porter in the primary. Just how sold out is he to crypto? We may see tomorrow when Sherrod Brown tries to get 2 Biden nominees confirmed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The alternative would be an SEC with 5 Republicans and no Democrats.

Members of Congress are now petrified to stand up to the crypto-cartel. Most, on both sides of the aisle, have now pledged their fealty, regardless of the likelihood that the bandits are going to destroy the dollar, wreck the country and do grievous harm to their constituents. I’ve never seen anything like the speed and totality of a sell-out that combines fear and greed and DC politics. 

Yesterday, Brendan Pedersen, John Bresnahan and Laura Weiss reported that Schiff could join Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in stabbing the Democrats in the back because the crypto criminals hate and fear one of the Democratic nominees, current Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw. Recent tweet from one of the cartel’s top lawyers, Ji Kim:

Another completely sold-out crypto whore, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) asked Biden to withdraw his nominations after the election, the exact opposite of what Republicans do in lame duck sessions after they lose elections, the most recent being Trump in 2020, who rushed to have incompetent nominees confirmed. One was Aileen Cannon, the MAGA judge who let him off the hook for stealing and retaining thousands of top secret documents are he was defeated.

“Democrats,” wrote the trio of Politico reporters, “are now treating the Crenshaw nomination like it may be the last opportunity for the party to get representation on the SEC’s five-member commission during the upcoming Trump administration. ‘This will be a commission with no Democrat on it if she’s not confirmed,’ Brown said, referring to Crenshaw. ‘The Securities and Exchange Commission is too important to allow one party, particularly the one party that’s so captured by industry, to move forward on it.’”

If Brown can even get the nominations to the floor tomorrow before senators start leaving for the Christmas holiday, all eyes will be on Schumer— plus Sinema and Manchin, who already killed a Biden nominee’s chance to be confirmed in order to hand Trump control of the National Labor Relations Board. Schumer, Sinema and Manchin are staying mum on how they’ll vote if Crenshaw’s name comes up.

Meanwhile, the banksters in general, are very excited about their opportunities to get much richer in the next 4 years. Yesterday, Jeaanna Smialek and Ana Swanson reported that Wall Street expects Trump to do everything they want, even when it clashes with the MAGA agenda and Project 2025: “tax cuts are poised for extension, deregulation is all but guaranteed, immigration reform for high-skill workers has real potential and Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) might just cut the deficit. Tariffs, by contrast, are a mere bargaining chip. Immigrant expulsions will probably be limited, and there is no way on earth that the incoming White House would meddle with the independent Federal Reserve… Many of the optimists are choosing to believe that the Trump promises they want to see fulfilled are going to become reality, while dismissing those they think would be bad for the economy as mere posturing. ‘A lot of people are using deductive reasoning and concluding that he’ll only do things that are good for the market,’ said Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives. ‘They can ride this wave of hope-ium through the end of January,’ she said, adding that much of it ‘feels delusional.’”

There’s a reason for the hope: Many investors believe that markets themselves will act as a bulwark against extreme proposals.

Trump does care enormously about financial markets, and particularly the stock market. He points to it as a marker of success in a way that few if any presidents have ever done. And during his first term in office, he sometimes backed away from more extreme plans— like an idea to oust the Fed chair— when they caused markets to plummet.

That has convinced many investors that he will not do anything that roils the S&P 500, which is up more than 5 percent since the election. And those convictions have been reaffirmed by Trump’s recent appointment announcements: He is giving finance insiders prominent roles within his administration.

In particular, his pick of investor Scott Bessent to be the next Treasury secretary has been met with widespread relief, because Bessent is seen as an experienced player who understands how markets work and who would argue, at least behind the scenes, against measures that risk rankling them.

But the split screen, between belief in and dismissal of Trump’s promises, is a fragile one. If he does what Wall Street wants in all cases, he might renege on campaign promises. If he defies market logic and pursues the policies anyway, he risks roiling stocks.

In some ways, the divide resembles one during Trump’s first administration, when investors doubted that he would follow through on policy promises— often until he did.

No policy provides a clearer example than tariffs.

Trump has said there is no more “beautiful word” in the English language than tariffs, and has pledged to slap big ones on American trading partners during his second term. On Nov. 25, the president-elect surprised leaders in Canada and Mexico when he said in a social media post that he would put 25 percent tariffs on their goods unless they stopped drugs and migrants from coming into the United States. He has promised even bigger levies on China.

Tariffs of that magnitude could push up prices, damage economic growth, disrupt supply chains and bite into corporate profits. But Wall Street has barely blinked at the threats.

Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that in “the benign, Wall Street version” of Trump’s plans, the White House would use tariffs as a negotiating tool without enacting them. Alden did not think that was correct.

“There’s no question he means it,” Alden said. “The first thing he said in his acceptance speech is: I will keep my promises. And that’s very much at the top of the promise list.”

Many on Wall Street see Bessent’s presence at Treasury as a deterrent against big tariffs. In a note to his clients nearly a year ago, Bessent said it was “unlikely” that across-the-board tariffs would be enacted at the same time that Trump made major moves on immigration.

“The tariff gun will always be loaded and on the table but rarely discharged,” he wrote.

But Trump likes to lead on trade policy himself— and he has recently been making that clear. A week before Trump picked him, Bessent wrote an opinion piece for Fox News praising tariffs, in what some saw as a demonstration of his loyalty to Trump’s trade plans.

“We should not be afraid to use the power of tariffs to improve the livelihoods of American families and businesses,” he wrote.

Trade is just one arena where Wall Street is hearing what it wants to from Trump. Another is the government’s deficit.

While investors are attentive to the risk that the deficit could continue to grow after ballooning in recent years, a few have begun to express optimism that Trump could cut costs and narrow the gap between what the United States spends and what it takes in through taxes and other revenue. He has assigned the task of finding places to cut spending to Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate.

…Trump has promised to protect Social Security and Medicare, which together make up a third of federal spending. And during his first term, he requested more funding for the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

“Two-thirds of federal spending would be off limits,” [Oxford Economics analyst Bernard] Yaros wrote. “Massive cuts to the remaining third of the budget would be a tough sell for members of Congress.”

Finally, Wall Street is taking for granted that the Trump White House is not going to try to reshape the independent Fed.

Apolitical central banks are the gold standard internationally, because they are capable of making hard short-term choices, like keeping rates high, that keep inflation in check over the longer term. Given that, people in Trump’s orbit have stressed that hurting the Fed’s independence could send stocks into a tailspin.

There’s reason to believe that investors are right to think that Trump will leave the Fed alone: He has already signaled that he is not going to fire Jerome Powell, the Fed chair.

…“The proof will have to be in the pudding,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, a rates strategist at TD Securities, explaining that markets might continue to soar until tariffs seem real or the economy itself takes a hit. “The market is very excited about all of the good aspects of a Trump presidency, and is discounting the bad aspects.”