JFC. So far, Trump has caused markets to lose about 14%.
Here's how the same period to date looks under other recent presidential terms
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— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Though it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever be anything but obscenely rich, most of Trump's billionaire supporters (of which there are alarmingly many) have found the administration’s economic policies—or lack thereof—incredibly costly, both in absolute and relative terms.
Trump keeps finding new ways to terrify Wall Street | CNN Business
Allison Morrow
After months of swearing up and down
he wouldn’t fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Trump on Thursday
reversed course and said Powell’s “termination” couldn’t come soon
enough. Stocks fell sharply.
Then US stock traders had a nice three-day weekend — the
first sunny and warm spring weather New York City has seen this year —
to ponder whether Trump was serious. Perhaps Thursday’s threat was just a
bit of bluster from a president prone to tantrums — a one-off social
media post that his more stable advisers will surely try to rein in to
avoid an all-out panic.
Or…not.
Shortly after the US stock market opened Monday morning,
Trump once again attacked Powell for ostensibly not cutting interest
rates fast enough. Stocks immediately tumbled and the US dollar fell to its lowest level in three years.
While Trump’s tariff plan has been disruptive, the
uncertainty it created had, to an extent, become priced in. Markets
famously hate uncertainty, but the 90-day pause on the administration’s
most aggressive tariffs offered a measure of reassurance that Trump may
relent if there’s enough of a negative reaction.
Attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve is a new
level of recklessness that few thought possible. But now even Kevin
Hassett, the White House adviser who literally wrote a book
arguing against firing the Fed chair, is saying openly that the
administration is discussing whether to do so before Powell’s term ends a
year from now.
At the same time, those plutocrats who happen to be first in line find
themselves on the verge of huge, perhaps unprecedented, windfalls from
massive and blatantly corrupt government boondoggles.
Among the
“My yacht has a yacht” wealthy, it's safe to say that there will be
winners and losers, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former. The
one name that seems safely in that first group is Peter Thiel. The
outcome for Elon Musk, however, is much more uncertain. On one hand, he
appears to be in the pole position for billions upon billions of
dollars in sweetheart government contracts. On the other hand, he is
likely to lose hundreds of billions through the damage that has been
done to Tesla. It could well take a quarter of a trillion dollars in
graft just to break even.
Christopher Bing and Avi Asher-Schapiro reporting for ProPublica:
GSA is eying Ramp to get a
piece of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program,
known as SmartPay. In recent weeks, Trump appointees at GSA have been
moving quickly to tap Ramp for a charge card pilot program worth up to
$25 million, sources told ProPublica, even as Musk’s Department of
Government Efficiency highlights the multitudes of contracts it has
canceled across federal agencies.
Founded six years ago, Ramp
is backed by some of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. One
is Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who was one of
Trump’s earliest supporters in the tech world and who spent millions
aiding Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio Senate run. Thiel’s firm, Founders
Fund, has invested in seven separate rounds of funding for Ramp,
according to data from PitchBook. Last year Thiel said there was “no one
better positioned” to build products at the intersection of AI and
finance.
To date, the company has
raised about $2 billion in venture capital, according to startup
tracking website Crunchbase, much of it from firms with ties to Trump
and Musk. Ramp’s other major financial backers include Keith Rabois of
Khosla Ventures; Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother
of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and 8VC, a firm run by Musk allies. [Specifically Joe Lonsdale -- MP]
The special attention
Gruenbaum paid to Ramp raised flags inside and outside the agency. “This
goes against all the normal contracting safeguards that are set up to
prevent contracts from being awarded based on who you know,” said Scott
Amey, the general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government
Oversight. He said career civil servants should lead the process to pick
the best choice for taxpayers.
...Rabois, one of Ramp’s
earliest investors, is part of an influential group of tech titans known
as the “PayPal Mafia.” Leaders of the early payments company include
several influential players surrounding the Trump administration,
including Musk and Thiel. Rabois and his husband, Jacob Helberg, hosted a
fundraiser that pulled in upwards of $1 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to media reports. Trump has nominated Helberg for a senior role at the State Department.
And it gets worse.
Mike Stone and Marisa Taylor reporting for Reuters
WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.
...
All three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major
political supporters of Trump. Musk has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump,
and now serves as a special adviser to the president working to cut
government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
...
One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as "a
departure from the usual acquisition process. There's an attitude that
the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and
deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government."
SpaceX
and Musk have declined to comment on whether Musk is involved in any of
the discussions or negotiations involving federal contracts with his
businesses.
But, as Josh Marshall points out, that's not the jaw-dropping part.
4/ This honestly is perhaps the most insane thing we’ve heard since Jan 20. Musk, Thiel and Luckey want the US to pay for the creation of this network of surveillance and attack lasers and then the Pentagon will become a subscriber to the service. So the US won’t own our own missile defense.
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— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) April 19, 2025 at 4:42 PM
