Corruption In Plain Sight?

The equity markets, better known as the stock markets, have been touted by Trump and his minions as evidence of his impact on the American Economy. Just looking at what has happened tells a very different story.

If you follow the time after the G.W. Bush Administration, using the S&P 500 as the index, you’ll see that during the Obama years the equity markets increased just under 300%. During the first year of the Trump Administration, before Trump had attempted any influence on…well…just about anything (but especially the economy) the equity markets advanced another 26%. Then the big Republican brainstorm, the tax cut for large corporations and the wealthy, kicked in. What’s happened since then?

(Note: The following calculations are all my own; I did not pick them up from any site - left, right, or center. They’re in plain view for anyone with a grasp of arithmetic to see.)

If you had $100,000 invested in an indexed stock fund on January 26, 2018 and held it, it would be worth $99,233 today. That would be the result of Trump and his Republican Congress performing 20 months of their “economic magic”. It would likely be the case for an ordinary worker with a 401K who contributes to his account to accomplish long term goals, like retirement.

The fact is that whatever they had left in equity investments in 2009 was (after the devastation that took place during the Bush Administration) salvaged and recovered by an economy overseen by the Obama Administration (which really includes the first year of Trump’s Presidency). Since that time, beginning with 2018, the American equity markets (as shown above) have been essentially flat - no growth for the long term investor. However, the equity markets themselves over that period look like a patient going in and out of cardiac arrest.

Maybe somebody can, but I can’t find a year and a half period with the same degree of volatility. It’s hard to see how anyone benefits from this instability…or is it?

The dramatic swings in the equity markets have all been either directly or indirectly the result of pronouncements or actions made by Donald Trump. It would be ridiculous to suggest that Trump and his confidants are not aware of this. Given his ego, he surely revels in the impact a couple of his tweets can have on the American economy or even the world economy. His psychological abnormality is a clear and present danger to us all.

Yet, is Trump’s overfed ego the only winner in these displays of erratic behavior…quite possibly not.

Wealthy individuals with the cash, the investment tools, and (most importantly) some sense or knowledge about Trump’s queer pronouncements might see their investments during this last 20 month period look considerably different than the average American who hasn’t earned a penny (or even lost money) over the same period.

If an investor had $1,000,000 on that same January 26, 2018 in a indexed S&P 500 exchange traded fund, sold out and bought short positions at the top of the market (meaning they’re betting the fund would drop in value), then “sold” short at the bottom and bought back into the same fund, and did that over and over each time Trump snorted or passed wind, their investment would be worth $4,503,500 today.

That estimate is just on an indexed fund. Targeted investments in the even more volatile Dow or NASDAQ stocks could increase that return exponentially.

Normally investors don’t know the top and bottom of stock markets, and timing purchases and sales to correspond to the market’s highs and lows has been considered a gambler’s folly. However, when these investments react predictably to the uttering of an empowered fool, then it becomes reasonable to consider that knowing what this fool is going to utter next has real value.

 The reality is that the only thing predictable about Donald Trump is his unpredictability. He has literally said that and takes pride in that fact.  To think that savvy people (including Trump himself) see that the most advantageous route between two points is a crooked road is not hard to consider.  When it comes to money and sex, what is right out in plain sight is usually correct.

Let's Spell It Out...Again

I believe this is the fourth or fifth time I have written on this topic since 2016, at least so often I don’t even care to go back to find out.

Let’s just start out with a definition. This one is from Psychology Today, but if you research multiple sources you will find little variation:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):  Hallmark characteristics are grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration. People with this condition are frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. They may also have grandiose fantasies and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. People with NPD often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way, which can enhance their own self-esteem. They tend to seek excessive admiration and attention and have difficulty tolerating criticism or defeat.

I find constant frustration that the medical community in the United States and the news media are so reluctant to publicly address that the President of the United States suffers from this malady. I am frustrated because this disorder of an individual in his position literally puts the entire World at risk.

To say that Donald Trump puts the World at risk would be ignored by many and discounted as hyperbole by many others. But what if it’s not hyperbole? Then it becomes a guessing game as to what level of risk we face, and that uncertainty deserves acknowledgement.

Narcissism is a human trait, everyone falls on the spectrum. Subjectivity is not an option in the human condition. However, NPD is something else, and it is not particularly common. It is a label for those who fall so high on that spectrum that it involuntarily governs their behavior, i.e. it becomes a disorder. In observing Donald Trump it explains just about everything.

His bazaar pronouncements (which his opponents categorize as lies, already in the tens of thousands), his delusions (think crowd or brain size), his total lack of empathy (especially notable when criticizing an individual’s personal or physical characteristics), his virtual inability to admit error, and his endless self-aggrandizing make diagnosing Trump as a sufferer of this disorder a no brainer.

Yet, this discussion cannot seem to rise above whispers.

I say sufferer, because the anxieties caused by this disorder are real and profound. The primary anxiety is fear, which can often manifest itself as anger and/or paranoia. I know this because my mother had a NPD, and in the later stages she found herself blaming both specific and mythical individuals for actions she could not accept as her own. Her pain was palpable. Not only is this disorder disabling, it is nearly impossible to treat since the sufferer will refuse to submit to treatment because to do so would be antithetical to their understanding of themselves.

A psychologist friend of mine pointed out that the only people they got to treat were those affected by a person who had the disorder. I would love to know how many of Trump’s family are currently under the care of a psychiatric physician. You can be assured that Donald Trump is not.

Moscow Mitch and the Republican Party generally are at least intuitively aware of Trump’s disorder and have manipulated him to their ends enough to justify ignoring his behavior. However, that does not explain why Democrats choose to embrace an explanation of Trump’s NPD as simply bad conduct. They too, I assume, are just politicizing away the risk in calculating their own self-interest.

This disorder of the President is not just a byline, to provide chuckles as he drives his golf cart over the greens. He is setting precedent by making his behavior appear as an aggressive choice, a choice other Americans can choose to emulate, as it’s obvious many do.

His systematic gutting of the Executive Branch of government by replacing disenchanted competency with incompetency, or just not filling jobs at all, has a ripple affect over the entire Nation. His obsession with Obama, as a foil for his own greatness, has made him arbitrarily dismantle good and popular public policy. He is fouling international relationships, both political and economic, so profoundly that it may take decades to repair, and his Constitutional ability to engage this Country in cataclysmic international confrontation should rob sleep across the planet.

His apparent need to enhance his self-esteem by gravitating toward authoritarian leaders may be a catalyst for negatively impacting international freedom.

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger, but that can only be seen if we understand and expose that he has no choice over his behavior. In my mother it made for times that were uncomfortable and often sad. In the President of the United States it impacts and can unravel the very fabric of this Nation.

It can’t be dealt with if everyone considers that tomorrow he may be different or that he will suddenly see the light.

Understanding that Trump has this disorder goes beyond discussions of his removal from office, which would be difficult. However, not removing him as President is no reason not to publicly identify the problem. I feel it is critically important for the people of the Nation to know (in Trump’s own words) “what the hell is going on”. Perhaps healing could start before January of 2021.

What I Want to Hear on Gun Violence

I don’t believe any of the Democratic candidates for President get it. Trump, who views virtually everything from a position of self-interest, couldn’t understand the issues related to gun violence in American under any circumstance. As far as I’m concerned even the progressive pundits can’t articulate an understanding, and the sooo “compassionate” Christian Conservatives don’t really give a damn.

If what happened at Sandy Hook wasn’t enough to bring this large, highly diverse nation together it should be no surprise that over two thousand mass shootings have occurred since that horrendous event. (https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence)

Personally, I am tired of Trump Republicans and Conservatives as a whole sympathetically embracing the NRA’s view that gun violence has everything to do with the shooter and nothing to do with the weapon. However, I’m equally frustrated with Progressive Liberals who react to each mass killing with the call for political changes so “this will never happen again”.

Given that this issue will certainly come up in the next Democrat Debate, here is the two minute response I want to hear from at least one of the candidates:

America, the rhetoric being fed to you does not address the reality of gun violence in America nor does it provide even the semblance of a solution.

Our Country is unique in the world regarding guns. We have created a normalcy that certain individuals look to gun violence as a means to solve their anxieties, fears, and delusions. They may represent only the tip of an anti-social iceberg, built by the kind of hatred articulated by someone like Donald Trump, but in a nation of 330 million that puts hundreds or perhaps thousands on unstable paths to arbitrarily murder and maim.

Here’s the reality America: these mass shooting are going to happen again, and again, and again, and again, and again…and again. They are going to keep happening until the people of this Nation collectively begin to communicate to their children and grandchildren that solving their individual problems with a gun (which includes suicide) is unthinkable.

This is not done by endlessly displaying the misery caused by each killing. It is by the Nation rising up and embracing legislation which says to these children that we as a nation do not accept behavior that uses guns as a means to an end.  It is done by creating a moral imperative.

 In a democracy laws are nothing more than socially acceptable ethics. It’s what laws do…it’s what they’ve always done. We do it with automobiles, we should be able to do it with guns.

What can be done? Identity checks, size of magazines, elimination of assault weapons, strong regulation of handguns,  gun buybacks, increased regulation of non-military weapon manufacturers, defense of gun-free zones, gun registration and large financial penalties for violations, and large financial penalties for unregulated sales, to name a few…none of which would keep any ordinary citizen from owning a gun. 

With 300 million guns already loose in America, it isn’t the elimination of these weapons that will create change, it’s how our children view them.

If we started today then maybe in one or two generations we might start to see a turnaround in the rate of mass shootings and overall gun related deaths and injuries. The later we start then the greater the despair we inflict on those children and grandchildren we claim to love so much.