Trump in 2007: 'I'm Excited' for Housing Market Crash

Donald Trump counseled Trump University students to take advantage of the housing bubble as an investment opportunity.

Donald Trump counseled Trump University students to take advantage of the housing bubble as an investment opportunity and said, just a year before it burst, that he was "excited" for it to end because of the money he'd make.

"People have been talking about the end of the cycle for 12 years, and I'm excited if it is,' he told the Globe and Mail in March of 2007. "I've always made more money in bad markets than in good markets."

I also worry they are trying to cause people to panic and to crash the economy, so that the oligrachs can swoop in and pick up the shattered pieces.

So being promoted gets you fired? That's heavy logic in action.
#4 | Posted by REDIAL

Yes, that's the way I understand it is working in all the agencies under attack. You could have been there for 20 years, but if you got promoted in the last 6 months, you get the axe.

I think the hope is that people will become so disgruntled with social security because they can't talk to anyone in person, can't get their questions answered over the phone if there is some sort of mix up or delay in payment and will turn against the program and then beg for it to be scrapped and/or privatized. The bottom line that unifies all of these cuts and firings is to undercut people's faith in the federal govt, so that it can be dramatically downsized and whatever essential services remain can be privatized and brought under presidential control.

FTA:

Nothing could have prepared Americans for what the first 50-ish days of the second Trump administration have been like. Even some Cabinet members and Republican members of Congress seem caught off guard. But if you took time to look closely at Project 2025, the effort from the conservative Heritage Foundation to prepare for a new Republican administration, you're probably a little less shocked than other people.

I'm not the first to point out that many of the actions the White House and other departments have taken since the inauguration are pulled directly from Project 2025. Even though Donald Trump vociferously denied any connection to the work during the campaign, that was always transparent bunk. For example, Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, led the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump White House, was the policy director for the Republican National Committee's 2024 platform, and is now leading OMB again.

The authors of Project 2025 believe that far too much of the executive branch is not functionally under the control of the president. "What we're trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them," Vought told The New York Times in 2023.

Are these cuts necessary? Considering the way it's being done and communicated, I'd say no.
Meaning the cuts won't be strategic....just cutting to cut.
And that will lead to more problems....and a media devoted to hammering it step by step.
#40 | Posted by eberly

Yes, they are just cutting to cut. This has never been about cost cutting and saving money. That's how it's being marketed, but the truth is this has always been about P2025 & the GOP's desire to drastically reduce the size of the federal govt and to corral what is left of the federal work force under auspices of "the unitary executive" i.e. the president:

Mapping the DOGE Game Plan: New Details on Which Contracts Get Axed

Let's start with my story from last night about the abrupt and reckless cancelation of upwards of a thousand VA contracts totaling roughly $2 billion and covering a huge variety of work VA does, everything from funeral care to doctor recruitment. As I reported last night, VA contract officers were sent an Excel spreadsheet of almost a thousand contracts in the early morning of February 21st, told that all of these contracts should be canceled and that if anyone wanted to make a case to spare individual contracts they had until the end of business that day (February 21st) to make their case. My sources noted that the contract code on all of these contracts was NAICS " 541611, which is "Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services." It's very clear the DOGE people pulled up everything under that label and slated it to be cut. My sources' impressions are that the DOGErs making these decisions read that label as basically, McKinsey/MBA consulting type --------, easy stuff to cut. At VA, most of it wasn't that at all. But they didn't seem to make any attempt to look under the hood at what those contracts were.

If your goal is just to cut, cut, cut, and you cut sloppily, as one guy in a town hall said, or haphadardly without understanding the ramifications of what you are cutting, you are going to end up being pennywise but dollar foolish as the old adage says.

MSDNC: DOGE is making no cuts
Also MSDNC: the cuts DOGE made is also affecting red districts
#5 | Posted by THEBULL

Link?

MSDNC: DOGE is making no cuts
Also MSDNC: the cuts DOGE made is also affecting red districts
#5 | Posted by THEBULL

Keep in mind this is all part of P2025's plan:

Russell Vought: Trump appointee who wants federal workers to be in trauma'

The Christian nationalist head of the office of management and budget was central to the Project 2025 blueprint

If federal employees are feeling traumatized right now, Russell Vought, the new head of the office of management and budget (OMB), probably has something to do with it.

"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected," Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. "When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down ... We want to put them in trauma."

Vought's words, delivered at an event hosted by his thinktank, Center for Renewing America, were striking. They reflected a view, long-espoused by Vought, that the government should be brought to heel by a sweepingly powerful executive branch.

This is all part of Trump/P2025's plan :to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will":

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power"including power currently held by the executive branch"to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America's families, faith communities, local governments, and states.

The cruelty is the point. So is the corruption.

FTA:

As Democrats and the public struggle to even keep up with what the Trump administration is doing to the nation, it's tempting to get caught up in the play-by-play. And although the details certainly are important, the single message must be this: Trump is trying to be a king or a dictator, and Project 2025 is his monarchical playbook.

In its first section, the "Mandate for Leadership" sets out Project 2025's overarching ideology: a theory of an all-powerful president, someone with authority more akin to that of a monarch than an elected democratic leader. The core section on this comes from Russell Vought, now the Trump-appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget, essentially the central nerve center of the federal government. The idea of agency or expert "independence""with independence rendered in scare quotes"is rejected. "The greatest challenge" ahead, Vought writes, is "aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch," which requires the "boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will."

If Trump has done one thing so far, it's break the federal bureaucracy.

I feel so much safer now. This will fix everything I'm sure:

Katherine Eban
@katherineeban.bsky.social

Scoop: As federal health agencies are gutted, Kyle Diamantas, a Florida attorney w/ a slim resume + no prior gov't experience, is the new head of food safety at @US_FDA. Turns out, he's Donald Trump Jr.'s hunting buddy,

America's Food Safety Is Now in the Hands of Don Jr.'s Hunting Buddy

As federal health agencies are gutted with abandon, a Florida attorney with a history of hunting with the president's son has been put in charge of food safety at the FDA, overseeing the nation's food supply, infant formula, and more.

FTA
"The FDA said it was first notified of an outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes linked to the product on Nov. 25 last year "with many ill people residing in long-term care facilities (LTCF) prior to illness onset."
Biden's FDA
Rine the diddler in 3...2...1..
#1 | Posted by lfthndthrds a

From the FDA:

According to CDC, this outbreak includes cases dating back to 2018, with 20 cases across 2024 and 2025, and is currently ongoing. Epidemiologic evidence in previous investigations were unable to identify a source of the outbreak. As of February 21, 2025, a total of 38 people infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes have been reported from 21 states. Of the 38 people for whom information is available, 37 people have been hospitalized. Eleven deaths have been reported. Of the 38 people for whom information is available, 34 (89%) reported living in long term care facilities or were hospitalized prior to becoming sick. Records reviewed from facilities indicated nutritional shakes were available to residents.

PS Trump is also trying to make it impossible to undo the damage he is causing should he be replaced by a Democratic president in 2028:

Salting the earth': Trump ends presidential management fellowships and federal executive boards
The move to kill a key pipeline for aspiring civil servants and regional agency councils reflects a desire to make it impossible to rebuild the federal bureaucracy, experts said.

We all knew Trump was lying when he said he didn't know anything about Project 2025 & here's the proof. This site shows the progress Trump & Musk have made meeting the goals of Project 2025 & also outlines where they plan to go. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say:

FTA:

Senior citizens, in particular, have been hit hard, with some unable to get out of their homes, said Palermo Church pastor Tammie Nipper on Wednesday night.

Roofs are creaking under the weight of snow.

Neighbors are helping neighbors and, in some cases, people are coming from neighboring towns, she said.

Palermo Town Supervisor Patricia Redhead said the amount of snow is unprecedented.

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social

AZ AG Kris Mayes: Let's talk about that visual of Elon Musk with the ridiculous chainsaw. I don't think he's ever actually used a chainsaw in his life. I don't know what that was"some lame attempt to make himself look manly.

The future is ugly and self inflicted
Posted by truthhurts

Well said.

I read that as a prediction and fear held by the public. Based on the recession that Delon Mrump is pushing us towards.
#13 | Posted by censored

Yes, I think you are right. We haven't had government failure or dictorial alliances yet either, but we are rapidly heading in those directions:

"Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular."

FTA:

Impoundment refers to a president's decision to withhold funds that Congress has already allocated rather than executing the budget as mandated. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress exclusive power over federal spending, making impoundment a direct challenge to legislative authority. The key question before the courts is whether impoundment represents a legitimate executive function or an unconstitutional overreach that undermines the balance of power.

President Trump's impoundment strategy pushes into legally uncertain territory, where past presidents have hesitated to tread. Project 2025 promotes impoundment to weaken Congress and empower the executive branch. Proving once again that far from being a conservative document, Project 2025 is an extremist plan to disrupt constitutional checks and balances. . . .

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, will likely decide the fate of Trump's impoundment push. While the Court has historically ruled against unilateral executive spending authority, recent decisions have favored broad presidential powers in areas like immigration and administrative rulemaking. . . .

If Trump successfully expands impoundment powers, the effects would be immediate. Recent court actions to halt Trump's NIH cuts could no longer occur going forward, giving the administration free rein. Federal agencies and public services could face sudden funding freezes, disrupting regulatory enforcement, social programs, and foreign aid. With Congress unable to override Trump's impoundments without a supermajority, its budgetary authority would be effectively neutralized.

Good article and so is this one by the same author:

Gangster Party
As gangsterism, it all makes sense.

Much of the ongoing confoundment with Donald Trump's governing style comes down to what metaphor you apply to him. Is he a wannabe strongman? Sure. A fascist? Of course. An autocrat, an authoritarian, an aspiring dictator? Yes, clearly, though there is no guarantee that he knows what those words mean. Leave those terms in the textbooks. There is a much more accurate way to describe who Donald Trump is: He is a gangster. He governs like a gangster. And if you think of him not as any variety of politician but rather as a gangster--who sits atop not a political party, but a gang--his actions make perfect sense.

If Trump was out to Bolster The Republican Party, he would only be slashing budgets in blue states and protecting red ones. Instead he is lashing out at everything, ignoring every rule. The humiliating ritual of forcing Republican allies to come and beg him to restore cuts he has already made is the point. This process reflects the success of the system that Trump wants: All control of all things in his own hands. Rules and laws--even the ones that Republicans traditionally like!--are impediments to his own control of all decisions. Therefore rules and laws must be smashed, discarded at a whim, openly violated, ignored. Do not search for some archaic form of ideological conservatism at work here. The goal of all this is not "remaking the government in a conservative image""it is "if you want anything, you have to ask me for it." The rules that governed how the government works are tossed out and replaced with "Trump's will." That's how mob bosses rule.

"stock market crash"

Should have just said, stock market dips/dives.

I think Graff is on to something with this approach, which is very well-executed:

Across the capital, the new regime accelerated its sweeping removals of government workers, evoking comparisons to the disastrous "De-Ba'athification" movement that the United States instituted in Iraq in 2003 that removed huge swaths of civil servants after the country's invasion. That move is now widely considered one of the greatest mistakes of the occupation, though it now appears that Musk and Trump are seeking equally disastrous results in the capital at home.

While traditionally a small number of political appointees turn over in a new presidential administration, Musk's coup has been followed by massive, disorganized, and chaotic firings at many government agencies and ministries. Last weekend, DOGE mercenaries actually blindly fired a large chunk of the agency that secures the country's vast nuclear weapon stockpiles before attempting to reverse their mistake.

Other firings appeared equally ill-conceived and executed"including the removal of veterans working on suicide crisis lines, public health staff combatting bird flu, and medical workers supporting the country's indigenous populations. Inexplicably, the mass removals also included more than 400 engineers, technicians, and personnel who help keep safe the nation's airspace, which has long been the envy of the world but under the Trump regime has already suffered a series of troubling incidents.

It's increasingly clear that the mass firings and reprisals are less a thoughtful exercise in management or efficiency gains and instead a wholesale effort to dismantle the long-respected administrative state's capability and regulatory structures have might hem in the ambitions and profits of the nation's oligarchy, which has been emboldened since November by Trump's surprise electoral victory. The country's banking regulators, now firmly in the regime's control, made clear in a series of actions this week that they would look the other way amid egregious abuses by the cryptocurrency industry, an electronic financial system favored by Musk and criminal groups.