—Donald Trump (1946- ), (in a speech to the ‘Evangelicals for Trump Coalition’, on January 3, 2020
“The 1929 Great Depression was so wide, so deep, and so long because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and U.S. unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it by discharging five functions:
(1) Maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods [basic necessities];
(2) providing countercyclical, or at least stable, long-term lending;
(3) policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates;
(4) ensuring the coordination of macroeconomic policies;
(5) acting as a lender of last resort by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in financial crisis.”
—Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003), American economic historian and author of The Great Depression 1929-1939, (1973)
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The United States radical government of real estate mogul Donald Trump, in office since just a few weeks, is full of plutocratic oligarchs, and it is led by a deeply flawed president who is convinced that he has all the knowledge in the world all by himself. He seems to believe that his country should not import or export any product and live isolated in economic autarky.
An Unhinged President
The last two weeks of January will go down in history as presenting the most questionable and unhinged behavior of any newly elected American president.
Never before, indeed, has such a flurry of dictatorial presidential decrees come from the Oval Office, some in violation of existing laws adopted by the US Congress and of the US constitutional system of checks and balances, as if the US government had suddenly become the business of a single individual. Add to that Donald Trump’s bizarre and increasingly inflammatory statements and rhetoric on a variety of topics, most of which are rarely, if ever, based on evidence, studies or sound analyses.
As far as economic issues are concerned, one has the impression that the new Trump 2.0 administration seems to have abandoned all intention and responsibility for stabilizing the international economy; he is instead promoting improvised, irrational and destabilizing policies.
In addition, many countries and even some international institutions, created after World War II under American leadership, have been the target of insults, threats and demagogic attacks by President Donald Trump. This raises many important questions.
