As we race to irrational dictatorship, we need a personal playbook.
I cannot predict what might happen in the next three plus years — except that it will be ultra-bad (based on the first 2+ months).
Here are some self-preservation thoughts:
+ You need $100,000 in cash under your mattress. Why that much? Imagine if Trump woke up one day and decided he didn’t like you. And he froze your bank account, your brokerage account and your credit card accounts. No food. No rent. No mortgage.
You’re out on the street or in a Salvadoran prison.
+ Don’t travel outside the U.S. Too many questions coming back.
+ You need to wipe your phone and your laptop of stuff “they” might not like. Don’t wipe it completely. That would be too suspicious.
Today, immigration and ICE people are routinely asking to unlock your phone and laptop and look at them. They often take them into a back room where a machine copies everything from your phone and laptop. Later AI programs will search for words, ideas, photos and videos. If ChatGPT can work wonders, imagine what ICE, Immigration and DOGE it can do with your stuff.
+ You need to be wary of anything you say in texts or emails. I remember visiting communist countries back in the 1960s. To talk, you left the apartment and walked along the river. Where is your “river?”
+ Buy a new laptop, a new iPhone, a new car, a new washing machine before the price skyrockets. In recent days, Apple and others have flown emergency airlifts with tons and tons of stuff that is about to double (or so) in price.
+ Friends are eyeing passports from other countries. Many countries now award you permanent residency if you invest some money there. Do it while the dollar is still worth something. There’s a cruise line offering a cruise that guarantees to visit many countries in the next four years — but not the United States.
+ Maybe you need a cabin the woods with oodles of food and maybe a gun or two to hunt for food. Don’t get too excited about “living off the land.” In middle ages some places were so poor they ran out of birds to hunt.
+ You need a garden and maybe some farm animals. Sheep are good. You can shear them for clothing. And you can eat them. Don’t get big dogs. They eat too much.
+ You need a generator (e.g. Generac) for when Canada stops supplying us electricity. Make sure you have a thousand gallon tank. Replace all your light bulbs with LED ones.
+ Friends are looking at bitcoin. They hope Uncle Trump won’t find their stash. He will.
+ Don’t buy art, gold or diamonds, thinking you will be able to sell or barter them. My local supermarket does not accept bitcoin or gold.
Think I’m crazy?
Here’s the latest Economist:
From the Economist:
The president’s advisers display a jaw-dropping insouciance about the damage tariffs can do to the economy. In
their view, foreigners foot the bill for tariffs and market declines hurt only rich investors. Yet the dollar’s
fall all but guarantees that tariffs will cause American consumer prices to surge, hurting households’ real
incomes. The knock-on hit to consumer spending, including on goods made in America, is likely to be substantial,
compounded by the blow to confidence from volatile stocks. …
In any case, Mr Trump remains in an open stand-off with China from which it could be hard to back down. As we
published this leader, America’s new tariff on Chinese imports had reached 125%; China’s levies, including in
retaliation, came to 84%. These tariffs are high enough to devastate goods trade between the world’s two largest
economies, which have hitherto been deeply intertwined even as tensions have ratcheted up between the superpowers…
The first Trump administration put tariffs on about $380 billion of imports, in 2018 and 2019, according to the Tax
Foundation. Now, there are tariffs on more than $2.5 trillion of U.S. imports – or, about seven times more.
If you still don’t believe me about how bad this is becoming, look at today’s New York Times tariff charts:
Today, we levy 145% on stuff coming in from China.
And they levy 125% on stuff going into China from America.
Let that sink in.
These sky high tariffs will only exacerbate (make worse) our present recession.
Want to learn more about the idiocy? Watch this brilliant short video with Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz. Click here.
Want even more idiocy?
Jimmy Kimmel passes the MAGA hat around, and finds that it and all the other Trump merch is made in — guess where — China.
The industry benefiting the most from all this Trump Madness? Comedy.
Instagram has AI-generated videos showing Trump and his cronies on in a factory assembling iPhones.
The coming constitutional crisis
Our Supreme Court has told Trump to bring the man back who was mistakenly sent to the prison in el Salvador.
Here are some of the prisoners there posing for the cameras. Charming place.
So far, he’s still there.
If Trump ignores the Supreme Court, we have a constitutional crisis on our hands.
Our courts have no army. Trump has ICE. Guess who wins?
I could be next. You could follow.
This s not the world I wanted for my old age, for my wife, my children or my grandchildren.
Forward this to your friends so they’ll be prepared.
Have a great weekend– Harry Newton
