George Carlin - It's A BIG Club & You Ain't In It!

You know, before Trump introduced a meme coin in the middle of the night that was rolled out with no fanfare and is like 80% held by "insiders" (that means everyone else is a hind tit investor and are entirely not getting maximum value from this shiny thing in the event of a big old cash out event), there was a well-attended crypto gala, and Trump and his people gave all the signs of really digging what the crypto bros have been laying down. Yeah. Strategic reserve Sure. Brave new currencies. 

But on the whole, Trump did what he does--it's a potential scam? Fine.  He and his will eat. 

If you are sweating in the bit mines looking for legitimacy for your popup non-accepted currency of the week, he just pantsed you. It looks to me like a short-term con vehicle for raising funds in a hurry, not to be mistaken for his crypto long con. But what does this have to do with George Carlin?

Celebrating Everything "We" Stand For!

 

Right before his (indoor, possibly cursed) swearing in (as opposed to his cussing out, which is every day around here), Trump has launched a meme coin because "it's time to celebrate everything we stand for" which feels about right, depending on your value of what Trump stands for. He might not do anything about your grocery bill--he's VERY likely to make your fuel bills higher, but he definitely, with a raised fist no less, will fight to do this.

This always feels to me like the sort of obvious buck-raking activity that should counter the sort of wide-eyed Trumpstans who say things like, "He refused his presidential salary; look at all he gave up!" The office of the presidency shouldn't be a gold mine!

But this also leans into the notion of Trump's popularity is a sunk-cost situation: forget about hats and flags and "emotional investment". This is a political figure who has made his political persona also about a financial investment. 

Taxation Without Representation and Mad King Don

 

REPORTER: I've spoken with some economists about your tariff proposals and they say they don't see how it won't make items cost more--

TRUMP: I don't need Congress, but they'll approve it. I'll have the right to impose them myself if they don't. pic.twitter.com/YuRHvzCkE3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 23, 2024

Mad King Don is pretty sure this would constitute an official act and he would get away with it. Sure, it raises prices (he knows it would "punish" John Deere if he put a heavy tariff on their products, so he understands the mechanism when he wants to).

But keep in mind that this is the same person who says that the stock market is up because people are anticipating he will win, when his own stock, $DJT is plummeting, and even its CEO, Devin Nunes, is selling. Something seems pretty sketchy with that reasoning. 

The Trump solution is here, though-- never fear: because something something crypto, something something also a commemorative coin. And the hem of his garment, which possibly cures scrofula. 

Have you even ever met someone with scrofula? You don't know!

TWGB: The OTHER $DJT

 

I have expressed my dislike of cryptocurrency before--it's a waste of resources to create an exchange of false value for the purpose of mostly performing intentionally non-traceable transactions. Or something like that--except for all this memecoin shit, which is just POGS for cyberpunks. I' m just not the one--my money goes to tangible shit like internet access and costume jewelry and ravioli and vodka. I don't understand this weird tribal digital bead-trading thing. 

Anyway, I noticed a couple months ago that if you searched the social media site formerly and currently known as Twitter for "$DJT" you no longer just got current posts about Truth Social (Which is still failing! Sad!) but so many MAGAs and weird assorted bros just using that as a hashtag and stuff on their posts, and also, there was this memecoin with the same identifier: $DJT. And maybe it was supposed to kickback money to Donald Trump's eWallet or whatever? That's funny money-it doesn't matter--

Or does it? 

Something Inauthentic Here

 

This is wild. Particularly the part where he says "my friends and I coordinated a bank run" followed by "so then I bought shares of the bank thinking I could profit off the run". pic.twitter.com/67iwCrE6yj

— @chimeracoder@mastodon.social🦦 🏳️‍🌈 (@chimeracoder) March 12, 2023

While I appreciate the idea that people with money in SVB aren't necessarily bad actors who deserve to lose their savings (above the insured amount) and that the majority should be "made whole", there is something that feels inauthentic about the collapse of this bank and Signature Bank (which has a lot of crypto money in it).  I don't trust what I'm looking at because of the people I'm looking at. There are people wealthy enough to lose some portion of their vast fortune and still be fine--a bank run is just an investment in fuckery.

I remember back in December I was snarky about a Russian bank run. These things can be precipitated by rumors. I feel like the bank management and certain investors need to be looked at. This bank run has nothing to do with "wokeness" specifically (how do you even connect the dots on that one? A bank certainly could do woke shit and be responsible enough to have a risk assessment officer--these guys didn't) so much as deregulation and gambling in the old savings establishment again. In the meanwhile, the people who served us junk bonds and the dot com and housing bubbles really don't have anything they need to be telling us about moral hazard right now. 

There is no good reason there should be any "contagion" from this thing. Doom-saying about it...feels inauthentic.