Warren Mosler

In the first part of this series, I looked at how the Trump administration's blend of ignorance and unscrupulousness has led them to consider a cryptocurrency stockpile as a win-win for both scammers and the public being scammed alike. Or perhaps they're being a bit disingenuous there. Here I go on to look at how their profound misunderstanding of money threatens to turn the US into an impoverished kleptocracy. Which, on reflection, might also be a deliberate part of the plan.

In February, Donald Trump carried on appending his distinctive zigzag scrawl to a growing pile of executive orders, including A Plan For Establishing A United States Sovereign Wealth Fund. This declared:

Cory Doctorow recently cited this article which talks about how insurance is a terrible instrument for mitigating climate risk. The standard neoliberal patter on this runs that insurance will send a price signal that steers investment away from environmentally damaging activity and towards adaptive responses.

One problem with this is that the people doing the damage are not necessarily (or even likely to be) the people who will experience the worst of its' effects, so this will do little to prevent investment in — for instance — fossil fuel extraction. In fact, you'll likely see investment flowing away from the uncertain business of keeping populations alive and secure, and directed towards digging up minerals and sludge.