November 12, 2025
Every dictatorship is a grotesque opera buffa. No encomium is too outrageous. No bribe too small. No violation of civil liberties too extreme. No stupidity too absurd. All dissent, no matter how tepid, is treason.
El Dookie – by Mr. Fish.
By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost
El Presidente Trump is cast in the mold of all tinpot Latin American despots who terrorize their populations, surround themselves with sycophants, goons and crooks, and enrich themselves — Trump and his family have amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency — while erecting tawdry monuments to themselves.
“Trujillo on Earth, God in Heaven” — Trujillo en la tierra, Dios en el cielo — was posted by state order in churches during the 31-year reign of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. His supporters, like Trump’s, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s con artist pastor, Paula White-Cain, offered an updated version of Trujillo’s self-deification when she warned, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”
Trump is the gringo version of Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza in Nicaragua or Haiti’s François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who amended the constitution to have himself anointed “President for Life.” One of the most celebrated images of the Haitian dictator’s long rule shows Jesus Christ with a hand on the shoulder of a seated Papa Doc, with the caption, “I have chosen him.”
ICE thugs are the incubus of Papa Doc’s dreaded 15,000-strong Tonton Macoute, his secret police who indiscriminately detained, beat, tortured, jailed or killed 30,000 to 60,000 of Duvalier’s opponents and which, along with the Presidential Guard, consumed half the state budget.
ICE agents on top of the Broadview ICE Detention Center in Chicago on Sept. 9. (Paul Goyette /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
El Presidente Trump is Venezuela’s Juan Vicente Gómez, who looted the nation to make himself the wealthiest man in the country and disdained public education to — in the words of the scholar Paloma Griffero Pedemonte — “keep the people ignorant and docile.”
El Presidente — in every dictatorship — follows the same playbook. It is a grotesque opera buffa. No encomium is too outrageous. No bribe too small. No violation of civil liberties too extreme. No stupidity too absurd. All dissent, no matter how tepid, is treason.
Executive orders, budget cuts, gerrymandering, the seizure of polling stations and voting machines, the abolition of mail-in balloting, the overseeing of the vote count and the purging of voter rolls ensure fixed election results.
Institutions, from the press to the universities, kneel down before the idiocy of El Presidente. Legislatures are obsequious echo chambers for El Presidente’s whims and self-delusions. It is a world of magical realism, where fantasy replaces reality, mythology replaces history, the immoral is moral, tyranny is democracy and lies are true.
It is not only violence and intimidation that keep El Presidente in power. It is the stupefying inversion of reality, the daily denial of what we perceive and its replacement by disorienting fictions that keep us off balance. This, combined with state-induced fear, turns countries into open-air prisons. Human consciousness is bombarded until it is broken and becomes a well-oiled cog in the vast carceral machine.
The warped psychology of El Presidente Trump is captured by Miguel Ángel Asturias in his novel El Señor Presidente, inspired by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera who ruled Guatemala for 22 years; Gabriel García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat and Conversation in the Cathedral.
These novels offer better insight into where we are headed than most tomes on U.S. politics.
‘Everything for Sale Here’
Elon Musk with Trump and a Tesla outside the White House in March. (White House/Flickr)
“Everything is for sale here,” writes Julia Alvarez in her novel, “everything but your freedom.”
Dictators — hermetically sealed in the cloying adulation of court life — swiftly lose touch with reality. Conspiracy theories, quack science, bizarre beliefs and superstitions take the place of evidence and facts.
Sociopathic, incapable of empathy or remorse and given to describing the world in vulgarities and childish sentimentality, dictators cannot distinguish between good and evil. They wield power solely for how it makes them feel. If they feel good, it is good. If they feel bad, it is bad. L’état, c’est moi.
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility,” Hannah Arendt writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “he can never admit an error. Mass leaders in power have one concern which overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.”
The dictator of El Salvador in the 1930s, Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who passed a series of laws that restricted Asian, Arab and Black immigration and who ordered the massacre of an estimated 30,000 peasants in the wake of an abortive uprising in January 1932, was convinced sunlight cast through colored bottles cured illnesses.
In the midst of a smallpox epidemic, he ordered colored lights to be hung throughout the capital, San Salvador. When his youngest son had appendicitis, he brushed aside doctors to try his colored-lights cure, which resulted in his son’s death. He turned down a donation of rubber sandals for the country’s schoolchildren, announcing:
“It is good for children to go barefoot. That way they better receive the beneficial effluvia of the planet, the vibrations of the Earth. Plants and animals do not wear shoes.”
El Presidente Trump is cut from this vein. He does not exercise because he insists the human body resembles a battery with a finite amount of energy. He urged the public — during the Covid-19 crisis — to inject disinfectant into themselves and irradiate with ultraviolet light.
He warned pregnant women not to take Tylenol during a press conference where he babbled incoherently, suggesting it causes autism.
He dismissed the climate crisis, tweeting, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” only to later say he was joking while claiming that “it’ll change back again.”
The noise of wind turbines, he suggested, causes cancer. Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he mused, may be the secret son of Fidel Castro.
Wallowing in Kitsch
Donald and First Lady Melania Trump hosting a Halloween event at the White House on Oct. 30. (White House/Daniel Torok)
Dictators wallow in kitsch. Kitsch requires zero intellectual investment. It glorifies the state and the cult leader. It celebrates a fantasy world of virtuous rulers, a happy, adoring population and idealized portraits of the citizens.
In the case of Trump, this means white citizens. It glitters and sparkles, like the garish gold trophies and vases lined up on the mantelpiece in the Oval Office that have been matched by equally tasteless gold coasters with Trump’s name on them. It snuffs out culture.
The National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center now opens all its performances with the national anthem. Trump, who appointed himself the new chairman of the center, posted, “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”
This year’s season at the Kennedy Center, where the name Donald J. Trump has been etched into the marble of the Hall of States, opened with “The Sound of Music.” The Trump-appointed interim president of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, hopes to make the center’s programming more “like Paula Abdul.”
Milan Kundera described kitsch as an aesthetic, “in which shit is denied, and everyone acts as though it does not exist,” adding that it is “a folding screen set up to curtain off death.”
Epstein & Trump
Best Friends Forever statue, protest art put up anonymously in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23 and removed days later by the U.S. Parks Department. (Joe Flood /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
Trujillo raped the wives of his associates, ministers and generals, along with courtesans and young girls. Trump, who was a close friend of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by at least two dozen women.
Julie Brown, in her book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, writes that an anonymous woman, using the pseudonym “Kate Johnson,” filed a civil complaint in federal court in California in 2016, alleging she was raped by Trump and Epstein — when she was 13 — over a four-month period from June to September 1994.
“I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop,” she said in the lawsuit. “Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he could do whatever he wanted.”
Johnson said she met Trump at one of Epstein’s “underage sex parties” at his New York mansion. She says she was forced to have sex with Trump several times, including once with another girl — 12 years old — whom she labeled “Marie Doe.”
Trump demanded oral sex and afterward “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of their sexual performance,” according to the lawsuit, filed on April 26, 2016, in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
When Epstein learned Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, he allegedly “attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists,” furious that he had lost the opportunity.
Trump, she said, did not take part in Epstein’s orgies. He liked to watch while 13-year-old “Kate Johnson” gave him a hand job.
Johnson said Epstein and Trump threatened to harm her and her family if she spoke of their encounters.
The lawsuit was dropped, most probably by way of a lucrative settlement. She has since disappeared.
Dictators are not content with silencing their critics and opponents. They take sadistic delight in humiliating, ridiculing and destroying them.
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law,” Óscar R. Benavides, the authoritarian president of Peru said, summing up the credo of all dictators. The law is weaponized as an instrument of revenge. Innocence and guilt are irrelevant.
The U.S. Justice Department’s indictment of former Trump adviser John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. director James Comey, and the subpoenas served to former C.I.A. Director John Brennan, former F.B.I. special agent Peter Strzok and former F.B.I. lawyer Lisa Page, send the core message of all dictatorships — collaborate or be persecuted.
This culture of vengeance calcifies civic and political life.
Dictators vainly seek what they cannot achieve: immortality. They flood their countries with images of themselves to ward off death. Trujillo had the capital Santo Domingo, renamed Ciudad Trujillo and the island’s highest mountain — Pico Duarte — renamed Pico Trujillo.
Trump wants the proposed Washington Commanders $3.7 billion football stadium to be named after himself. The U.S. Treasury Department has released draft designs for a commemorative one dollar coin — featuring Trump’s face on both sides — to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
There are plans to name the Kennedy Center’s opera house after the first lady. The $40 million that Amazon paid for the rights to film a documentary about Melania Trump, will no doubt replicate the fawning coverage given to Elena Ceausescu — known as “the Mother of the Nation” — on Romanian state television during the reign of her husband, Nicolae Ceausescu.
Huge, expensive banners with El Presidente Trump’s face adorn the exterior of federal buildings in the capital. This, along with the various Trump Towers throughout the world, is just the beginning. Flood the world with Trump portraits, emblazon his name on buildings and public squares, pay ceaseless homage to his divinity and genius, and death is held at bay.
Mario Vargas Llosa writes in The Feast of the Goat how dictatorships turn everyone into accomplices:
“The rich too, if they wanted to go on being rich, had to ally themselves with the Chief, sell him part of their businesses or buy part of his, and contribute in this way to his greatness and power. With half-closed eyes, lulled by the gentle sound of the sea, he thought of what a perverse system Trujillo created, one in which all Dominicans sooner or later took part as accomplices, a system which only exiles (not always) and the dead could escape.
In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. ‘The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,’ he had once heard Agustín Cabral say (‘A very intelligent and competent Dominican,’ he told himself) and the words had been etched in his mind: ‘Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.’ He was proof of this truth. It never occurred to him to put up the slightest resistance to his appointments. As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/12/c ... -republic/
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Correct, The King of America ...
... must be pardoned. The servant says so.
US President Donald Trump has called for a full pardon for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his corruption case, in a letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday. Three criminal cases have been opened against Netanyahu, who faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He could receive a sentence of up to ten years for the bribery allegations, while both the fraud and breach of trust charges carry a maximum of three years each. ”While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System, and its requirements, I believe that the ‘case’ against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution,” Trump wrote in a formal letter shared by Herzog’s office on Wednesday. “I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu.”
I guess, Epstein "files" are now fully at work, as intended. But then again, people with honor and pride in D.C.? Nah, nobody has seen one in a long-long time.
(More, OT, at link.)
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/11 ... erica.html
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Takeaways from the new Epstein emails mentioning Trump
Analysis by Aaron Blake
Updated 14 hr ago
CNN
The federal government shutdown provided President Donald Trump a weekslong reprieve from major revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
But as Congress looks to reopen the government this week, it’s clear Trump’s Epstein problem hasn’t gone away.
The big news Wednesday morning was that House Oversight Committee Democrats released three emails obtained from Epstein’s estate that mention Trump. Those emails came amid another huge release from the GOP-led committee of Epstein documents that CNN is still reviewing.
In one 2011 email, Epstein describes Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked.” He writes that someone who Democrats identify as an Epstein victim (but whose name is redacted in the released email) “spent hours at my house with him,” apparently referring to Trump.
Republicans on the committee have since said the redacted victim who supposedly spent time with Trump is Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent survivors, who died by suicide in April. (Giuffre never implicated Trump in any wrongdoing.)
And in a 2019 email, Epstein appears to reflect on Trump asking Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to stop recruiting employees from Mar-a-Lago. In the email, Epstein says of Trump: “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
And in a 2015 email, Epstein writes to author Michael Wolff about how Trump might handle questions about his past relationship with Epstein.
(You can see the emails for yourself here.)
Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case and has denied involvement in Epstein’s crimes. The White House on Wednesday said the emails “prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
But what do these emails add to our understanding of their past relationship? Let’s break it down.
Emails reignite questions about what Trump knew and when
There have remained huge unanswered questions about what Trump knew and when about Epstein’s proclivities. That’s especially given Trump’s explanations have often proved evasive or false.
The White House responded to the initial three emails mentioning Trump by arguing Democrats had “selectively leaked” the emails to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”
But these emails certainly deepen the intrigue about what Trump knew.
To recap what we already knew: Trump in 2002 referred to how Epstein liked women “on the younger side.” A Florida businessman said in a 2019 interview that he raised concerns with Trump about Epstein “going after younger girls” at a 1992 “calendar girl” event. Trump adviser Roger Stone in a 2016 book quoted Trump talking about how Epstein’s “swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls” and joking that it was nice of Epstein to “let the neighborhood kids use his pool.”
The president and his aides have also repeatedly said Trump distanced himself from Epstein because Epstein was a “creep” — but without elaborating on why, precisely, Trump viewed him as such.
(More at link.)
https://us.cnn.com/2025/11/12/politics/ ... ails-trump
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Why Trump’s 50 Year Mortgage Scheme Is an Even Worse Idea Than You Imagined
Posted on November 12, 2025 by Yves Smith
Your humble blogger does not like having to discuss lame proposals because giving them any attention has the effect of legitimating them. However, since the Trump 50 year mortgage proposal can’t be put back in the toothpaste tube, let us contribute to the chorus of well-warranted criticism by adding some issues that don’t yet seem to have been aired.
Let’s first turn to the obvious negatives. The Trump idea is an admission that he and pretty much everyone are unserious about addressing the housing unaffordability problem because too many powerful players benefit from it. The most obvious remedy is to build more middle/lower middle class residences in high cost areas. But right away, that runs hard into NIMBYism: all those well off with their tony houses don’t want the servant classes or even dull normals living nearby and possibly harming their property prices.
A confirmation of that notion: the last time I heard about 50 year mortgages was in the 1980s in Japan during its bubble years. To give an idea of how badly overpriced residential real estate was (along with the more famous commercial real estate bubble), I visited a prime 3 bedroom, where a bedroom was barely bigger than a tatami mat, with a gallery kitchen, one bath, and a small combined dining and living room, owned by a board member at Sumitomo Bank. It was about 900 square feet. The price in 1989 was $5 million, or in current dollars, $13.4 million.
A search on Japan’s 50 year mortgages reminded me:
As the bubble progressed, lender expectations improved, leading to excessively loose credit standards. New 100-year, three-generation mortgages popped up. Grandkids would be paying off their parent’s parent’s mortgage.
Another measure would be to reverse rules that made what were formerly called single-resident occupancy apartments illegal. My understanding is that what killed this type of cheap housing, which kept many from being homeless, was barring shared bathrooms. Funny how we are just fine with them in student dorms and military barracks….and homeless shelters.
We’ll turn to points many have already raised, that the 50 year mortgage would preserve and promote unaffordability by loading up borrowers with mortgages they could probably never pay off (assuming they never moved) and would saddle them with more interest over the loan life. So it’s another “help the FIRE sector at the expense of the citizenry” plan.
But the popular freely-refinancable (as in no prepayment penalty) 30 year fixed rate mortgage is a very unnatural product and is found in comparatively few advanced. economies. On paper, it puts the interest rate risk on the lender. If rates drop, borrowers refinance, taking the loan away from creditors just when taking the risk of longer-dated loans is paying off. There are many ways to better share the interest rate risk, such as barring refis for the first five to seven years of a mortgage, or having interest rates float subject to a floor and ceiling. I had that sort of product in the early 1980s and was very happy with it. You can pencil out what your worst-case mortgage costs might be and benefit with no expenditure of effort if interest rates fall.
So why is this supposedly borrower-favoring feature, of the “freely refinancable” fixed rate mortgage, actually not good for borrowers? Because that option is NOT free! Not only do borrowers pay fees when they refinanace, but lenders have succeeded in structuring refis so that roughly 2/3 of the economic benefit of the refi is captured by financiers, not by the homeowner.
A related bad feature of the refinancable 30 year mortgage is that it increases systemic risk. Mortgage guarantors Fannie and Freddie have to hedge the refi risk. That hedging is pro-cyclical on a systemically disrupting scale. From a 2012 post:1
Both Freddie and Fannie have a long standing practice of hedging their prepayment risk. Their hedging activities are so massive as to have macroeconomic impact. They are “pro cyclical” meaning they tend exaggerate interest rate moves, pushing them down faster when they are falling and forcing the higher when they are rising. Greenspan was concerned about the distortions caused by the GSE’s hedging in 2003 and was relieved when the Freddie and Fannie accounting scandals led to them having their loan growth restricted, since it kept a big problem from getting even bigger. John Dizard of the Financial Times discussed this problem in early 2008:
The core problem for the housing GSEs is, and has been, the prepayment option embedded in US fixed-rate mortgages. That has meant that the term of the GSE assets extends or contracts depending on whether homeowners can refinance at an advantageous rate. However, most of the long-term debt on the liability side of the GSE balance sheets has a fixed term. So the GSEs must more or less continually offset this imbalance between the average maturity of their assets and liabilities through the derivatives market, specifically the interest rate swap market. Otherwise the mark-to-market losses would overwhelm their small equity bases.
Recall that Greenspan advocated floating mortgages then too, again to try to reduce the needed level of interest rate hedging.
50 year mortgages will make both these problems more severe. 50 year mortgages, compared to a 30 year obligation have more of their payments over their life in interest. That means in a refi more total interest savings. That means even more in fee extraction by middlemen! More critically, it also means much greater pro-cyclical hedging action, and thus an even bigger increase in systemic risk, assuming that there actually was consumer receptivity to this bad idea.
Let us turn the microphone to others who have derided this Trump mortgage plan. From Michael Shedlock, who documentshow much more a borrower will wind up paying in interest:
The FHA head said the proposal is a “complete game changer.” Yeah right.
Complete Game Changer – Not
50-Year mortgages won’t help with the down payment. For many, that is a huge obstacle.
Home prices are starting to decline. Anyone who needs to sell their home within a few years would be upside down. We don’t nee more people trapped in their homes.
Prices need to fall and fall dramatically. To the extent the product would create demand, it would help keep prices higher.
The average age of the first-time home buyer is over 30. Congrats. They would own their home at age 80+, assuming they were still alive. If not, heirs would own the mortgage.
30-year mortgage rate are higher than 15-year rates. 50-year rates would be higher still. The higher rate would eat up some of the alleged “savings”.
People are already in trouble because they do not understand property taxes or maintenance……
Addendum
After 12 years of payments on a 50-year mortgage very little principle will have been paid back.
Here’s the exact comparison for a $400,000 loan at 6% fixed rate after exactly 12 years (144 monthly payments) on 15-year, 30-year, and 50-year mortgages.
And Supermoney in 5 Reasons Why Trump’s 50 Year Mortgage Proposal Is a Horrible Idea:
1. Little effect on affordability
With home prices and mortgage rates both high, a new idea is gaining traction—the 50-year mortgage….
How a 50-year mortgage works:
The longer term reduces monthly payments, helping buyers meet debt-to-income (DTI) ratios.
Illustrative example at the same 6.30% rate on a $500,000 loan:
30-year loan: ~$3,103/month
50-year loan: ~$2,801/month
Monthly savings if rates were identical: ~$302
Longer terms have higher interest rates
>Reality check: 50-year loans would carry higher rates (+0.7% to +1.0% or more) because they expose lenders to decades of extra risk. At a realistic 7.00%, the 50-year payment rises to ~$2,907, cutting savings to just $196/month. At 7.30%, savings shrink to $146/month.
2. Explodes the long-term cost
SCENARIO RATE MONTHLY PAYMENT TOTAL INTEREST
30-year standard 6.30% $3,103 $617,080
50-year — Same rate (unrealistic) 6.30% $2,801 $1,180,600
50-year — Realistic rate +0.70% 7.00% $2,907 $1,244,200
50-year — Conservative +1.00% 7.30% $2,957 $1,274,200
Bottom line: The longer term guarantees a higher rate. Once that penalty is added, the monthly “savings” become tiny, but the lifetime cost explodes past $600,000 extra interest.
3. Retirement risk
A borrower who buys a home in their early 30s could still be making payments well into their 80s….it blurs the line between owning and renting — you may technically own your home, but you’re still making payments for most of your life.
Entering retirement with a mortgage means a large, fixed expense at precisely the time income typically drops. …What seems like affordability in the short term could become a generational form of debt…
4. Will lead to housing inflation
Longer terms let buyers qualify for bigger loans, which pushes prices higher in supply-constrained markets. Canada (40-year loans pre-2008) and the UK (35–40-year terms) saw similar demand spikes followed by tighter rules. Extending terms doesn’t add homes, lower land costs, or raise wages, it just inflates another bubble.
5. Slows equity growth
A long mortgage term builds equity slowly, so homeowners have less to tap into if they want to downsize, relocate, or take out a home equity loan. …
After a decade, the 50-year borrower has less than half the equity despite paying only ~$196 less per month.
More disses courtesy Twitter. The first focuses on a critical issue, that just about no one would keep a home for the life of the mortgage, and the impact of the longer maturity and higher interest on typical ownership terms. This is similar to the point we made at the top, that a longer-term mortgage with a refi will result in more money going to middlemen, and also means more money will have gone to interest if you sell the house before maturity, so less in principal recovery and gains if any:
Thomas Massie
@RepThomasMassie
·
Follow
How is
“here, enjoy this 50 year mortgage”
different from
“you will own nothing and you will like it”
And last but from the least, just in from The Hill:
Lower monthly costs could also tempt prospective homeowners to buy more expensive homes, which, Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner told CBS News, could further drive up prices, eliminating any benefit from lower monthly payments.
“This is not the best way to solve housing affordability,” he told the network.
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) also expressed skepticism about the feasibility of a 50-year mortgage.
An MBA spokesperson told The Hill the “mortgage lending industry welcomes efforts to make homeownership more affordable and attainable for more Americans,” but “our concern is that any affordability benefit derived from expanding the mortgage term to 50 years would be offset by increased borrower risk and slower borrower equity growth resulting from the extended amortization period, especially given the expected slowing of home price growth.”
Freddie and Fannie nevertheless will spend money devising standard mortgages at these 50 year terms and promoting them to lenders. And DOGE will peculiarly fail to head this wasteful expenditure off at the pass.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/11 ... gined.html
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World must pay to make America great again
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram (Posted Nov 13, 2025)
Originally published: JOMO on November 11, 2025 (more by JOMO) |
US President Trump’s economic strategy for his second term aims to get the rest of the world, especially its wealthy allies with greater means, to pay more to help strengthen the U.S. economy.
Recent U.S. initiatives have undoubtedly accelerated de-dollarisation but these have largely been unavoidable consequences of its own actions rather than due to any conspiracy by others to that end.
De-dollarisation distraction
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff recently observed,
We are absolutely at the biggest inflection point in the global currency system since the Nixon shock to end the last vestige of the gold standard.
After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the gold price was set at $35 per ounce. In August 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon ended this gold-dollar parity.
De-dollarisation has gradually continued since, with occasional brief spurts and reversals. For example, capital flows abroad rose following the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
Growing weaponisation of economic relations has probably accelerated de-dollarisation. Rogoff observed,
this was happening for a decade before Trump. Trump is an accelerant.
Governments, central banks and BRICS countries have been de-dollarising. Even U.S. dollar hegemony advocates no longer deny alternatives to the dollar’s role as global reserve currency.
Meanwhile, private foreign investors, including foreign asset managers, investment banks and pension funds, do not want to be left behind.
Investment fund managers are increasingly ‘de-risking’ by cutting exposure to dollar-denominated assets.
Mar-a-Lago plan
Economist Stephen Miran has proposed a new Trump initiative to require other governments to pay the U.S. for services purportedly rendered.
First appointed chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Miran has since been appointed to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.
A few days after Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs on April 2, Miran articulated five expectations. These expect other nations to pay the U.S. for ‘public goods’ services it ostensibly provides the world.
Allies will be expected to pay the U.S. more for the ‘security umbrella’ it provides to NATO and other allies. The U.S. also expects those buying Treasury bonds to pay more for the ‘privilege’
In November 2024, Miran’s A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System proposed the Mar-A-Lago accord, named for Trump’s exclusive Florida island resort and residence.
He also referred to the Plaza Accord, which the Reagan administration imposed on its G5 allies in September 1985. Then, the U.S. forced Japan and Germany to appreciate their currencies against the dollar.
The yen’s appreciation fuelled a massive Japanese asset price bubble that burst with devastating consequences in 1989, ending its post-war boom.
Trump now seeks the appreciation of other major currencies. Already, he has succeeded in getting his European allies to agree.
However, it seems unlikely that Trump will get China and other BRICS economies to do so, as they are aware of how the Plaza Accord affected Japan.
Century bonds
Other national monetary authorities buying U.S. Treasury bonds to stabilise their own currencies have long caused dollar appreciation.
They are now expected to help depreciate the dollar. Miran has proposed that the U.S. issue century, i.e., 100-year bonds, at very low interest rates, well below the current rates for U.S. Treasury securities.
Miran wants foreign central bank reserve currency managers to sell off their dollar-denominated assets. They should “term out” their “remaining reserve holdings” and refinance short-term debt with long-term borrowings.
Miran is explicit:
The U.S. Treasury can effectively buy duration back from the market and replace that borrowing with century bonds sold to the foreign official sector.
His plan thus intends to force foreign holders of U.S. government debt (‘Treasuries’) to extend the duration of their loans.
Very low interest rates for century bonds will ensure that foreign bondholders effectively pay the U.S. more for the ‘privilege’ of borrowing dollars.
For Miran, the appreciation of other currencies against the dollar will also strengthen the American economy. U.S. manufacturing will strengthen as its exports become more competitive.
Thus, his Mar-A-Lago accord plan expects other nations to pay more to strengthen the world’s largest and richest economy.
Miran’s Mar-A-Lago plan is not yet official U.S. policy. However, this can change with Miran’s likely appointment as the next Fed chair, replacing Trump 1.0 appointee Jerome Powell.
BRICS de-dollarisation?
However, Miran’s declared plan to strengthen the U.S. economy by depreciating the dollar against other major currencies has also accelerated de-dollarisation.
In recent years, the BRICS have been accused of conspiring to accelerate de-dollarisation worldwide, but this is certainly not a shared ambition.
Lacking significant trade surpluses, Brazil and South Africa have long advocated de-dollarisation. But Russia’s complaints have more to do with recent NATO weaponisation of financial instruments against it.
There is no comparable enthusiasm among other BRICS member states, which have much healthier trade surpluses and more dollar assets.
Its recent membership expansion will make an official BRICS de-dollarisation stance even more unlikely.
Nevertheless, Trump’s leadership relies on the American public believing the rest of the world is conspiring against them.
https://mronline.org/2025/11/13/world-m ... eat-again/
Perhaps the rest of the world should...
Gustavo Petro BLASTS The United States
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