I was chatting with a good friend about the collapse of the stock market on Friday and we were trying to figure out why someone would do this. It is obvious that Trump himself is so addled by narcicism and dementia that he is not likely aware of what he is doing. But I cannot believe that those around him would blindly do something so stupid as to crash the entire economy. That every single one of them could be so deluded, stupid, or, sycophantic. Someone would have tempered what he was doing. Moved the tariff percentages a bit more toward sanity. Or perhaps set a longer timeline. Something.

But then a light went on. I asked my friend “what’s the reverse of pump and dump?” This is the most logical answer. If you know the market is going to crash it is easy to make a lot of money via short sales and timing your buys. And given that you know exactly when the market will be crashing, because you are the one causing the crash, it should be easy to make a killing (ambiguity intentional). Perhaps this strategy should be called “short and crash”. [update: had I read a bit more, I would have known this is already known as short and distort]

You might think that this is insider trading, but I’m sure the SEC, now that it has been “updated” by DOGE, will correct our misconceptions. Or, at least, remain silent.

I have done no investigation into this, and it may be that nobody in the administration thought such a crash would happen; and perhaps none of them participated in widespread short sales; and it may be that the SEC has not had key enforcement personnel removed from their positions. But it is inconceivable that an administration packed to the gills with grifters and opportunists would not have taken advantage of this situation in any way whatsoever. We will likely not know for many years.