[snip description of how our current markets resemble the pre-crash 1920s in many ways including very high margin]
Mr. Trump has been ordering the chaperones removed. Since January, his administration has been firing regulators and vigorously tearing down the guardrails that have kept our markets thriving for nine decades.
For the first time in a century, the S.E.C. is seriously exploring how to allow firms and funds to sell investments to masses of Americans without registration or disclosure. The administration is even encouraging individual retirees to vouchsafe their life savings to exotic financial offerings like private equity. Private equity is, as the name suggests, notoriously opaque, which means retirees would know little about what they’re investing in….
The five-person Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tasked by this administration to oversee significant portions of the crypto and prediction markets, has dwindled to a single member. Only two of five statutorily mandated S.E.C. commissioners are serving in their normal terms…
S.E.C. staff has been cut by 16 percent (substantially more than the 10 percent of a literal decimation), quarterly reports are on the chopping block and forms that provide intelligence about dark corners of the market are being repeatedly deferred.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is relentlessly browbeating the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. That could also, as it did in the 1920s, overstimulate an already-lofty stock market….[end quote]
Remove guard rails and step on the gas.
Wendy