The Witness Chronicles, 5/24/25

The insanity

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

On the Brink of Collapse: the Trumpian Economic Meltdown

And why it might be a good thing

Note: I paused publishing on this piece until it became more clear what the House was likely to pass in its budget bill. Unfortunately what they passed is the worst possible bill for our economy and the American people, excepting of course, the very wealthy.

We’re in the world of ‘truth is lies’ and ‘bad is good’ as our President constantly lies and exaggerates for two reasons. The lies are because reality is not conveniently following his orders, and the exaggeration is because nothing he is doing is working. Literally nothing.

The inability to admit that you were wrong or to adapt to reality is the sign of impending insanity, driven by narcissism and panic. The disastrous tariff trade war is now starting to hit reality and the White House’s attempts to stave that off are pitiful in their ineffectiveness.

This week past we got two blunt reminders of how bad this is getting. The first came from the CEO of Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, who stated that they will have to raise prices soon. The second came from credit rating company Moody’s who lowered their rating of the United States’ credit for the first time in over 100 hundred years. The two other major rating firms had already recently lowered their ratings.

For those who don’t follow this stuff, what that means is borrowing money is going to cost more, including things like mortgages, credit card bills, and car loans. Trump’s tariffs have created a kind of perfect economic storm as things like car prices skyrocket and borrowing the money to buy them costs more.

That’s going to be the case for nearly everything we consume. On top of those two whammies, investment is already stalled as investors no longer trust the plans of the White House, if there actually are any. And nearly every small business is literally perched on the brink of failure, meaning jobs lost.

If you think all this is an exaggeration, just wait. I’m not making any of this up. It’s all right out there in the news every day. Trump tried to order Walmart to ‘eat’ the increases but that is not how business works. Discount stores exist on razor thin margins, giving them no wiggle room to swallow higher costs and the reality of shrinking inventory.

Walmart already is the only place to shop in many rural communities, having swallowed up local small businesses over the past thirty years. Those rural communities constitute the Republican Party’s base and they are likely to turn on those who have been making empty promises for years. 2026 is not looking like a good year for the GOP in elections.

Trump’s constant blaming of the Biden administration for all our woes is not flying as it becomes obvious that this all started when Trump took office and starting spewing out executive orders that were illegal and indefensible, but still created the chaos we are experiencing now, chaos that conveniently provided cover for Trump’s open financial corruption.

The Qatar jet fiasco was the most glaring example. It solved two problems for the Qataris. If Trump accepted it, it got a costly and outdated plane off their hands and it implied that Trump may owe them one, a debt they will collect at some point. It also served to whitewash the country’s reputation as a backer of terrorists, including Hamas.

It also served to signal that Trump was open to bribes and welcomes them. It’s looking doubtful he’ll take the plane because the entire idea is not popular and it turns out it would cost as much as a billion to retrofit it. But it proved Trump can be tempted by shiny things.

Update: The Air Force announced it is taking delivery of the 747, verifying that the President can be bribed and get away with it.

It’s hard to imagine how one man and his cronies could have screwed things up so thoroughly in such a short time, but they have and we are starting to pay for it. But I’m going to offer a short digression on the subject of karma, the universal rule that actions have consequences.

Karma is not simply action/reaction. It is driven by the intent behind your actions. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any good intent behind Trump’s actions. Instead they are driven by greed, ego, and a disdain for anyone other than himself. It even appears that he enjoys inflicting pain on others, the definition of a psychopath.

This week the Republican House is moving forward with their insane budget that cuts billions from Medicaid and food aid to Americans while raising the deficit by $4 trillion, all to pay for tax cuts for the rich and big corporations. So much for fiscal conservatives. These cuts will cause a rise in poverty, close rural hospitals, and shut down more family farms, all core Republican constituencies.

That looks like midterm election suicide to me. We can always hope.

Given all of this, not to mention all the other stuff they are breaking, it seems inevitable that we will be facing a recession in the near future and only a few months ago that would have been unimaginable. Quite an achievement.

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Martin