Trump is about to target something far more terrifying than tariffs
When I was a teenager, my dad decided it was a good idea to keep as much cash as possible in the bedroom safe. I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was probably around 1987. That’s when the stock market crashed so badly that people feared another Great Depression.
My dad didn’t trust banks, because his dad didn’t. Grandpa came of age during the Great Depression. He remembered and feared bank runs and bread lines and not being able to find things, forget about not being able to afford them. He grew up to be the kind of man you don’t see anymore. No one saves jars and scraps of tin foil. In his youth, those were hard to come by. We live in an age of abundance now.
At least I thought so. Since watching the Dow fall and fall and fall, before springing back up again, I’ve been thinking about my dad’s decision to pull cash out of the bank and keep it close – about his fundamental distrust of banking, finance and that class of men who manage to make money, not with labor, but other people’s money.
I’ve been thinking about how the fear of another Great Depression seemed to fade into the background as I grew up and entered college, to the point where having doubts about investing your life-savings in the stock market was quaint and old-fashioned. Even my dad seemed to accept this fashionable faith in the markets, however grudgingly.
By the middle of the 1990s, the world was roaring with globalization. The internet and the information economy had arrived. Company pensions were passé. The new trend was putting your nut in a bunch of letters and numbers: 401Ks, IRAs, 501c3s, etc. As long as we had “diversified portfolios,” we had little to fear, we were told. But if things went really wrong – like people-jumping-out-of-windows kind of wrong – we could still have faith. The government was behind us.
The Great Recession tested that trust. But however bad it was, and it was bad, I don’t think anyone felt like the government was going to stand by and watch the world burn, as it did in 1929. If anything, people expected the government to do too much, and it did. It bailed out Wall Street bankers to the tune of hundreds of billions, and not even once did it perp-walk any of those Brooks Brothers to jail.
This is a reflection. I’m no historian. But after watching the Dow fall this week and last, as a direct consequence of Trump’s import tax, things feel fundamentally different. In 2007-2008, the problem was the bankers. They were the bad guys. The government was the good guys. They were the firefighters who stopped the world from burning. The difference now is that the firefighters have become arsonists.
This feeling that something fundamental has changed deepened for me after seeing Edward Luce explain the impact of the Trump tariffs on normal people, which is to say, on you and me and everyone we know, who has become so trusting of the system we no longer think about it.
The Financial Times editor told CNN yesterday afternoon that “if you’re retiring in the next year or two, this is extremely bad news. If you're 45, then of course you can afford to wait, but a lot of it depends on is this a permanent shift to de-globalization, because if you're going to de-globalize, then everything becomes less efficient and prices go up structurally, and that means that the returns on equities, the stock market growth is reduced. So a lot depends on just how sustained this war of Trump against the whole world happens.”
Translation, as I’m hearing it: Do not allow yourself to believe that you’re going to be OK, even if you’re only 45 and retirement is far off. Time and patience used to be on your side, back in the day, but that was when America was the center of the globalized world. America is now de-centering itself under Donald Trump, and no one knows how far he’s willing to go. Investor confidence used to be based a stable, orderly government. The government is the source of chaos now.
Are you still willing to be confident?
If not, you’re in good company. MetLife released a report yesterday titled “Trade War Is Hell,” in which analysts pretty much said that no matter how far Trump goes, the damage has already been done.
“Sustained instability based on the whims of one person does not make for a good investment environment. When policy can immediately take the value of any instrument to zero, there is no incentive for business to invest. … With no clarity … and no rule book from which to operate, we continue to see investment slowing substantially. This will likely be paired with reduced hiring.”
They went on to say: “We expect to see customers save more after a flurry of pre-tariff implementation buying. Price increases are coming, equities are still lower, the dollar is still weaker and [bond] yields are still higher than before ‘Liberation Day.’ An element of trust has been lost and that will take time (and good policy decisions) to recover.”
Translation, as I’m hearing it: Trump will quickly make things worse. More than “an element of trust” is going to be lost. Most of it will be.
Again, this is a reflection. I’m no banker. But it seems to me that trust is the link between two big things. The more globalized America became, the more mainstream Wall Street became. The less globalized America becomes, the less mainstream Wall Street is going to be.
Most of the discussion about tariffs centers on the president, bankers, investors and other elites. The focus is on trade, trading partners and the international economy. All of it ignores normal people. Even the debate over alleged insider-trading by Trump and his goons does.
But normal people, which is to say, you and me and everyone we know, are at the heart of this unfolding story. It took six or seven decades, give or take, for public trust to recover from the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing decade-long Great Depression. And it recovered thanks to efforts made by the government to earn back that trust.
But the government is shredding it now, and I’m not just talking about tariffs. Bloomberg reported that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has arrived at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC is the reason why no one under 100 years of age has ever witnessed a bank run. It insures every account under $250,000. If your bank goes under, your money doesn’t go with it.
If DOGE does to the FDIC what it has done to other public agencies, the dreams of maga really will have become a reality. It will have turned the clock back to a time when the government was so feeble that by 1929, it could do little but stand by and watch the world burn.
I don’t remember what Dad did with that safe. He probably still has it. And knowing his inborn distrust of banks and that class of men who make money with other people’s money, it’s probably full of cash.
I never once in my adult life thought about following his example.
But lately, I have.
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