2mo ago

Fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn’t have a tariff plan and that he ‘might be insane’

www.independent.co.uk Fund managers worry about Trump’s mental state amid tariff debacle

Some fund managers concerned ‘that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology’

Trump’s tariff reversal came after he watched an interview on Fox Business with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, during which the bank boss said that a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new trade policies, according to the Washington Post.

Trump was asked by a reporter on Wednesday when he decided to put a pause on the tariffs.

“I would say this morning. Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it. Fairly early this morning,” he said.

105 comments

Really? What was their first clue?
- A few hints here and there for sure.
  
  The we’re only a few possible hint against him being a senile old moron. And they were probably when he was cranked on amphetamines.

It’s important to the world to drop the “quietly” bit.
The US administration is behaving erratically and irrationally. This isn’t a punchline to some smug joke, it has important repercussions for world trade and defence needs.
Let’s cut the conspiracy theories about how they are doing this for graft, and the unfounded “4d chess” approaches. Some people in the administration may be trying to steer the government in these ways, but the captain of the ship is an unleashed chaos monkey surrounded by sycophantic yes-men.
The tariffs could double tomorrow or be gone tomorrow. The US could invade Greenland with a military force tomorrow or drop it completely move onto some shiny new idiocy.
We in the rest of the world need to move with urgency in order to be prepared for the worst. This is a tall task, so the longer we keep these admissions quiet the longer we are vulnerable
- Let’s cut the conspiracy theories about how they are doing this for graft, and the unfounded “4d chess” approaches.
  He is doing it for a grift, it's pretty out in the open. You're right about the 4d chess though. That's his thing, think like a stupid mob boss that only does it for the grift. He thinks they owe him a favor now.
  Link to video: https://nitter.net/MorePerfectUS/status/1910340290260463771#m
  Video of Trump Bragging About Enriching His Billionaire Pals Draws Outrage
  
  The video doesn’t show evidence of this being a planned out endeavour.
  For it to be grift, those people would have had to benefitted from the dip in some way. But that’s not what this shows, it’s just billionaires having their shares go down in value because of trumps idiocy and then back up from the whiplash when he erratically reversed course.
  Spraytan is trying to ingratiate himself to these rich assholes by taking credit for their gains by wilfully ignoring their losses were inflicted by him.
  This is not to say that no one in the administration is using this for their own gains. It’s entirely likely that some are.
  I’m just super sick of this narrative that Trump secretly has some master plan when we have 40+ years of well documented evidence about how stupid this man is.
  
  I don't think Trump is an idiot anymore. I think he's playing a persona just like Borris Johnson. It's a cover for him. It's not his stupidity that's harming us, it's his self-centered, ego and greed driven maliciousness thats destroying our futures.
  He's not a stupid person. He's an evil person.
- !lemmysilver
  
  Thank you for voting. You can vote again in 24 hours. leaderboard
- He could be insane and doing it for graft. He obviously sees himself like a mobster and tries to operate like one. My theory is he wants to individually negotiate tariffs to solicit bribes from businesses and foreign countries. It's not exactly 4d chess. He just knows he has the power to pressure the richest and most powerful people on the planet, so he's going to use that power to enrich himself and family. I don't think he actually understands much about tariffs or much of anything though.
  Also, the evidence of insider trading and market manipulation is pretty convincing to me. I don't think that was the original intention, but Trump, or those around him saw the opportunity and took it.

If only we had 4 years of this exact behavior to judge him by to predict he may act like this.....
- 8 years. He didn't stop misbehaving after he was out of office.
  
  I mean, by that metric, we've got decades of evidence
  
  He only got more insane during the stretch from 2020-2024. The insanity was on full display during the 2024 race. I don't understand what's wrong with our electorate.
  
  Somewhere a New Yorker is saying 70 years because this shitwad has been the same since he was in diapers.
- Well that and if only he had been honest about what his intentions were when he was running.....

"Might"?
- It's warranted. He might be insane or he might be insider trading and enriching himself and friends with his actions.
  My non-existent money is on the latter.
  
  Two things can be true at once. These animals don't realize they're pushing the rest of us into the arms of China. Going to war with them is suicidal, but America seems intent on swallowing her own lead.
  
  Yep. I wish he was insane, that would be less damaging than it being his fucking personality

I know it's fun to circle-jerk around these headlines, but it's a misdirection to give lay-people something titter about because it's too difficult to explain what's really happening. His behaviour actually is rational, he's just an idiot.
For Trump's entire life, the US stocks/bonds markets have mapped closely to market greed/fear respectively. When the market gets spooked, they turn to more conservative investments, and US bonds have historically been that. (Government bonds are typically seen as the least risky investment, because it's unlikely that a country falls apart and fails to pay its debts).
Fast forward to today, the US has a bunch of debt that needs refinancing this year, and lately, we haven't been getting good interest rates on our bond sales (which indicates people are seeing US bonds as more risky than usual). So Trump said, "no problem, we just need to instill a bit of fear in the market to drive investors to bonds, which will cause the interest rate to drop, so we can refinance our debt at a better rate." So he announces a bunch of nonsensical tariffs, which tanks the stock market, and just like he expected the bond market saw a dip in interest rates......for about a day, followed by a sharp increase! That sharp increase is why Trump agreed to pause the tariffs. Not only did it not work how he thought, it would seem he exposed a pronounced decline in trust for the US' ability to pay its debts. Instead of running to US bonds, investors ran everywhere else (gold, the Swiss Franc, the Euro, etc.)
I don't know what his next move is, but I have to think he's feeling a bit desperate. He's going to probably try to up his "blame the Democrats for their spending" game, of course without acknowledging that he has also only increased spending (even with all of DOGE's hard fought, and definitely not half-baked, budget cuts).
But all his strategies seem to be overt market manipulation, and nothing else. I feel like it really highlights the difference between someone who can create actual value using intelligent planning and innovation, and someone who is a capitalist leech who has fooled themselves into thinking that buying low and selling high does something useful for someone.
- That still feels like too much thought/reasoning for him. I could see some other idiot connecting those dots and convincing Trump it was his idea. Or just Putin trying to crash the economy.
- I can guarantee you have put way more thought into this than he ever has, or will.
  
  His true masters have put more thought than that into it. They just can't control him to the extent they thought. But it's mostly working out for them.
  
  There is nothing to be gained from assuming your opponent is not acting rationally.
  
  You can't guarantee that at all. You want it to be true because it serves your own ideas and rhetoric but in reality, you have no idea what he has, hasn't or will think about it.
- I... respectfully disagree.
  Every time I've made the mistake of thinking these idiots have some deeper plan I inevitably learn that there is in fact no plan.
  Trump is old. He was desperate to get elected so he didn't die in jail. He achieved that by promising to deport brown people, be mean to poor people, and implement tariffs. He's doing those three things.
  As regards the tariffs, he's a kid kicking an ants nest to watch everyone scurry around. It pleases him greatly to be able to make some stupid post on truth social and watch the earth tilt on it's axis.
  He implemented the tariffs because he said he was going to and the yes-ken's and yes-barbi's told him "yes that would be amaze".
  You're right, the bond market is what ultimately spooked him. When the interest rate volatility started climbing someone staged an intervention and told him how serious it was. He basically said that in the presser when he said people were getting twitchy or whatever he said.
  However, there's still no plan. That's the only explanation for the on again off again flip flop don routine.
- I don’t know what his next move is, but I have to think he’s feeling a bit desperate.
  his only move is cutting spending (actually) raising taxes, and running a surplus. That and maybe dont be such a fucking dumbass.

What do they mean by might be
- seriously.
  Did no one pay attention to his first term?
  Hes an emotional, hyper-reactionary infant throwing levers to provoke reactions and to punish those who dare do anything but praise the glorious kissableness of his orange painted ass.
  Theres no deep thought to it.
  There is no 4d interdimentional chess moves.
  There is no thinking.
  There is just a monkey throwing shit for his own amusement.
  
  What about the "marxist" Kamala Harris? We were told if she got in there'd be an immediate downturn. The cope is just to say either Biden goofed up so hard that's why we are down OR it would have been worse under a democrat. This administration and its supporters have lots and lots of excuses.
- What they mean is this:
  "We spent a fortune to put this fuckin puppet in power, we had to work with every other sleezebag nation with the will to subvert democracy so we could get our golden-idol worshipped by the country's stupidest peasants so we could deregulate the whole world via force if necessary, but it turns out the clown is so stupid he's listening to the morons around him and not just our orders and now the market is crashing and the wrong people are profiting!"

Let me tell you, it’s really god damn annoying seeing people just now have “epiphanies” about shit a lot of us have known for decades now.
- Cue the corporate news headlines for 20 years: "studies show trump was 'bugfuck insane' for much of his political life"

Get loud you pricks.

"Quietly fear"
motherfuckers, we've been saying this for 10 years...
- Then stop talking and do something.

He has concepts of a plan.

Does he know what a recession is? Genuinely asking. That would help understand this response.
- If he does it was explained to him repeatedly through a TV with lots of pictures
- His experience of the last couple of recessions has probably been:
  "The Markets, Politicians and Press do a lot of noise whilst poor and working people have to be squeezed even more whilst the Government makes sure rich people don't lose any wealth and at the end of it we the rich are making even more money than before"
  I mean, all that it takes is to look at the changes in wealth of the top 1% of the population compared to the rest in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash.
  From his point of view a recession is a good thing because it and subsequent measures by the Government and Central Bank makes him even more money than "normal" times. Sure, it's on the backs of the riff-raff, but who cares about the riff-raff when they're so easy to lead by the nose?!

- Ooh, great one. Here are my picks for each panel:
  "The Weave"
  Sharpiegate
  Vaccine/Covid Denialism
  Ukraine Blackmail
  Election Denialism
  January 6th

Let me guess?
....but supported him because they wanted the tax cuts and any side effects of having monsters like the qons in charge they thought would pass them by...

No shit, Sherlock.

An insane man surrounded by amoral, self-serving handlers and white supremacists.

I quietly fear that fish doesn’t have a tariff plan and that they might be swimming.

Trump does in fact have a tariff plan and has had it for years. He uses tariffs to crash and recover the market for insider trading. These fuckers need to all be in jail. Since the justice system in non functional then US citizens should probably defend themselves from this economic terrorism in ... other ways.
- Fox news: But but but Biden knows a guy who has a dog walker who has a cousin that once babysat for a family that is corrupt so Biden was worse!!

It's great to be a "radical left" these days and be allowed to openly and freely doubt the mental togetherness of the orange buffoon.
- Hold still, the radicaler lefter will be long shortly to accuse you of being a "liberal" who's worse than hitler.
  
  It's great. I can play both sides by just sitting on the couch!

Insane? No.
Drunk with power? Obviously.
Source: History.
- Exactly. He’s in his second term. The man has literally nothing to lose. Who’s tried to stop him successfully so far? And don’t tell me a judge, because they haven’t — they’ve put up annoying speed bumps which are getting flatter by the day.

Lmfao I’m truly baffled that they thought he had a plan beyond “grab as much money as possible for myself”
- C'mon, thats not fair! He also wanted to stay out of prison. He's a multiple objective kind of guy.

A callback to his healthcare reform- the man has the concepts of a plan. Somehow that doesn't deter his voters
- Any day now...

Gosh you think? Has any of these morons been paying attention to the Orange Turd.
- Repubs get a completely different perspective of Donald Trump. His evil is filtered through propaganda networks until they're left with the God Emperor himself.

Mental acuity of a turnip

Why are they feeling this way quietly?
- Because if they’re too loud Trump will hear and drag them to El Salvador.
  
  Sounds about right.
- most of these people arent media personalities, they've never had to deal with this before.

Wait, is this the Onion… Oh, nope. This is a real life one, got it…
- So if you're fooled into thinking onion article is real, you've 'ate the onion'.
  What do we call it when you think a real article is clearly an Onion article?
  
  Yeah, I think you’re missing the joke

He's not insane. He's an addled PoS narcissist.

looks at index funds dive, 'might be insane'.

He's literally a psychopath. There's a lot of psychopaths in high places because America rewards their accomplishments.
- That’s a human problem not a peculiarly American problem.

British Journal of General Practice
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6145972/

Every day I the thought that I'll never retire becomes closer to reality. My IRA is only 2 years old. I can't bring myself to check on it because I expect it to be gone. I'll just let the dude who manages it stress over the details while I stress over the big picture.

105 comments