Paper Prosperity

 In the two remaining days before he becomes president once again, Trump is devoting himself to—what else?—creating yet another financial pyramid scheme by which to gull the American people. This one is so blatant that it puts even his social media meme stock craze to shame. Now, Trump has unveiled a crypto token with his blood-spattered face on it. Prices apparently took off overnight, and people were already having trouble buying the tokens by late Saturday, because demand had so far outstripped supply. 

Why do people want these digital tokens? Do they generate income? No. Are they backed by the full faith and credit of any government? No. Do they exist anywhere outside of a stream of digital zeros and ones? No. So why—then—do they have any value at all? Because people say they do. And if you can convince enough other people that they have value for long enough, they can retain or even gain in value. To that extent, the value proposition works. But—the same is true of any Ponzi or pyramid scheme. 

The problem comes on the day of reckoning when someone starts trying to call their bets. That's when the bubble always bursts. Of course, there are people who tell us: "but this time is different." We live right now in an age of particularly rampant and unapologetic speculative capital, after all. The stock price of "MicroStrategy" has shot up astronomically despite the whole company apparently being little more than a pass-through for owning Bitcoin that investors could just as well buy themselves. 

But at the time of every speculative bubble in history, people said the same thing: "this one will last forever. If everyone would just continue to believe, then the day of reckoning may be postponed indefinitely." As Melville's original "confidence-man" put it—if you could just keep the "bears" from pooh-poohing everything, then the price would go up forever and the bets need never be called. It's just those skeptics—those incorrigible "philosophic bears"—that end up ruining the party for the rest of us. 

Maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe this one really is different. Maybe the prices of crypto tokens, MicroStrategy, and the new assassination-attempt–themed Trump digital coin (seriously) will just keep going up forever. "Have fun staying poor," as the MicroStrategy investors reportedly tell all of those "philosophic bears" online who doubt that the company's shares have any real intrinsic value, and who therefore choose to stay on the sidelines. Maybe the Trump-fueled crypto mania really will just keep raging forever. 

But history suggests this is not the case. Knowing this, even some crypto true believers are trying to distance themselves from the particularly blatant rip-off of the new Trump token. The New York Times quotes one venture capitalist who is certainly pro-crypto generally, but who could nonetheless be counted in the ranks of the "philosophic bears" with regard to Trump's latest scheme: "Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it."

This, after all, has been the trajectory of every other speculative mania and pyramid scheme in history. As a skeptical character in Thomas Love Peacock's satirical novella Crotchet Castle puts it: "[I]n the days of paper prosperity," he writes, of Mr. Crotchet (whose speculations paid for Crotchet Castle), "he applied his science-illumined genius to the blowing of bubbles, the bursting of which sent many a poor devil to the jail, the workhouse, or the bottom of the river, but left Young Crotchet rolling in riches."

That, obviously, appears to be Trump's plan as well. As the venture capitalist-turned-"philosophic bear" put it above: "many will likely get hurt by it," but Trump will profit enormously. He may send thousands if not millions of other Americans into debt, bankruptcy, or worse, but he will turn a handsome profit himself so long as he cashes out soon enough to leave others holding the bag. And so it has been, with confidence artists—as Melville wrote—since the first con duped the first mark in the Garden of Eden. 

I've quoted it before on this topic—how could I have predicted, when I did so, that Trump would create more than one speculative pyramid scheme all in the same year?—but, alas, I find it all too apropos once again to pass up. If Melville was right that the serpent was the prototype of all future con-artists and bubble-blowers, and Eve the original of all the marks who are now once again poised to be gulled and bankrupted by their tricks, then I can only repeat the fervent prayer of the poet Ralph Hodgson: 

Oh had our simple Eve

Seen through the make-believe! 

Had she but known the

Pretender he was!

Would that the American people would finally come to the same realization about Trump. This man does not have your best interests at heart, people! He is not going to make you rich. He is not going to carry you up with him on the mother ship when the comet comes. He is, instead, going to pull up the ladder behind him and leave you stranded and desperate and poor. He is, in short, a "Pretender." And would that the American people could finally see through his tinsel lies and know him for who he is!