MAGA's March Toward a Command Economy

21 cocacola1 12 8/22/2025, 1:01:55 AM insights.som.yale.edu ↗

Comments (12)

general1726 · 1h ago

It is deeply ironic, but again proves that horseshoe theory is real.

chiefalchemist · 7h ago

> Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism is anything but conservative

As long as we have the heavy-handed Federal Reserve - tilting the game to pick winners and losers - we don’t have free-market capitalism.

Funny enough, I heard an interview with Robert Reich early today about his new book. I didn’t hear the full interview but in the time I listening he didn’t get close to naming the Fed. I was dumbfounded.

The truth is, the socioeconomic system and the sociopolitical system sits on a foundation. That foundation is the financial system. The Fed sits at the head of the table of the financial system. The Fed pulls the levers. The Fed shakes the snow globe.

toomuchtodo · 7h ago

Sound comment, but a couple of points. There is no such thing as an absolute free market capitalistic system in existence today. Each system has thumbs on the scale in different ways to encourage different outcomes ("picking winners and losers") in some capacity. And while the Fed pulls the levers, trust is the foundation. Trust in consistency, the rule of law, and property rights. This is why US treasuries were considered the safest financial asset in the world. Once you begin to lose trust, the entire foundation shakes.

Also, I'd argue the bond market is far more powerful than the Fed. The Fed can set short term target rates, but the bond market sets longer term rates. The bond market is what kept this admin in check earlier in the year. One might say they are the Fifth Estate, after journalism and the three branches of US government. "Whoever holds the gold makes the rules."

https://tisegroup.com/news/2025/the-power-of-the-bond-market...

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/12/what-to-k...

https://www.bloomberg.com/explainers/bond-vigilantes | https://archive.today/XcRIq

> Have bond vigilantes influenced government decision-making before?

> Yes. In fact, they’ve already influenced Trump’s decision-making. In the hours after Trump’s long-awaited tariffs on most imports to the US went into effect on April 9, the bond market tanked. Many investors, concerned that the duties would accelerate inflation and reduce foreign demand for US assets, started dumping their holdings in order to pressure the administration to reverse course.

> It worked: Just 13 hours after the tariffs had gone into effect, Trump announced that he would pause them, and yields came down. “The bond market is very tricky,” he conceded. “I was watching it.”

aredox · 1h ago

>As long as we have the heavy-handed Federal Reserve - tilting the game to pick winners and losers - we don’t have free-market capitalism.

This is why Trump and MAGA will make the FED less heavy-handed and increase the freedom of the free market, right? ... Right?

bediger4000 · 5h ago

I think it's good that we as a nation found Trump to make these decisions, to decide winners and losers in the market, to set interest rates and so forth. Trump makes the decision, and it's done and good, no media frenzy, no court cases, no endless congressional hearings. Just a very few dispassionate, factual articles. The voting populace is happy, the Supreme Court is happy, job creating billionaires are happy. It would have been such a mess if Obama or Biden or even G.W. Bush made these decisions. They'd have made wrong decisions, and we'd be unhappy.

pjmlp · 1h ago

Are there already audiences in place where the plebeian are allowed to expose their problems to the monarch in expectation to get a solution for what troubles their souls?

defrost · 5h ago

> Trump makes the decision, and it's done and good ..

Hmmm. Perhaps the principle advantage of a Trump decision is their short shelf life, all done until the next 3am doom scroll on the Golden Shitter hits poor reception from the bond market or an unkind word from Putin.

quantified · 5h ago

You missed the </sarcasm> tag at the end there.

WalterBright · 2h ago

The Democrat method of a command economy is heavy regulation of every detail.

aredox · 2h ago

So you don't deny that Trump and MAGA and the GOP - who all pretend to be much, much better than the terrible, horrible, not good "socialist" Democrats - aren't, in fact, better at all?

Did it cross your mind they could, in fact, be worse?

And do you really think setting up rules to be followed by everyone - after careful deliberation and contradictory debate by hundreds of persons in several branches of government - is the same as bending backwards to the contradictory and unstable whims of a 79 y.o. mobster seeking only loyalty to himself?

WalterBright · 1h ago

I'm not defending what Trump is doing with this. I am simply amused that the left wing academics thought that what the Democrats do is promote free markets. They greatly interfere with the operation of the free market. They're just doing it in a different way.

See rent control, for just a tiny example.

aredox · 1h ago

Since when is rent control the platform of the Democrats? Haven't they been slipping in popularity exactly because they fully embraced neoliberal "free markets" orthodoxy, starting with Bill Clinton's deregulation and free trade agreements? Has Bernie Sanders been anything but a misfit and a completely powerless minority faction within the Democratic Party in the last decades?

>They greatly interfere with the operation of the free market.

No, regulation in itself is not interfereing with free markets. It depends. There are tons of regulation in very free markets, that have been voted by very liberal people, to avoid market manipulation, insider trading, etc...

>I'm not defending what Trump is doing with this.

The Democrats aren't in control of the Presidency, Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Why did you insert them?

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MAGA's March Toward a Command Economy

Comments (12)