It’s Trump’s casino economy now and you will probably lose
Step into the casino that now passes for the American economy.
Donald Trump campaigned on bringing back American manufacturing and rebuilding what America once was — factories, workers in hard hats — from the ground up. But the investment needed to get there, in both the factories and the workers, hasn’t happened.
What he has ushered in instead is a casino economy, built on speculation and risk. Across markets and policy, wagers on the future are being made with other people’s money at a cost that could prove catastrophic.
This economy is largely defined by froth. What was once a fluke has become the operating system of modern markets: like stock prices largely driven by sentiment rather than fundamentals (recall GameStop and AMC in 2021 and the dot-com boom), the overwhelming power of social media and the flurry of bets on something not quite real.
Look and you will see gambling throughout the economy — in markets, policy and how we talk about the future:
- The tech giants spending billions on A.I. data centers and the power grid to sustain them.
- A government shutdown over Americans’ ability to keep their health care.
- Tariffs used like poker chips to try to shrink the trade deficit.
- The increasingly erratic treatment of the U.S. dollar.
- The rise of over 13 million memecoins.
- JPMorgan now allowing institutional clients to use Bitcoin and Ether as loan collateral.
- Venture capital funding companies that let people “bet against their bills.”
- And the recent rumblings of bad loans from regional banks.
Public and private sectors are rolling dice that the foundations of the U.S. economy will hold under the pressure. Meanwhile, the institutions and programs that help cushion risk — like Medicaid and the social safety net, information systems, independent regulators and Federal Reserve independence, even the legal system — have come under attack.
As the public sector steps back from its role as a stabilizer, the private sector has rushed in as a gambler, betting that technology alone can hold the system together. Big Tech companies are wagering trillions on A.I. infrastructure that might revolutionize everything, chasing a jackpot that could reshape the world — or leave a mountain of empty data centers and broken promises. [Continue reading…]