David Stockman released his latest book “Trumped! A Nation on Brink of a Ruin” on Monday.
I read an advance copy last weekend.
I could not put the book down. It’s the book I wish I had written if only I had time.
Chapter 1 starts off with Stockman’s take on the revolt of Flyover America kindled by the Trump campaign. He mildly praises Trump with a bit of damnation thrown in, pretty much my position given the alternatives.
“Trumped!” is not really about Donald Trump, the man. Rather it’s about broken contracts and the conditions that led to the rise of Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, and deteriorating economic conditions globally.
Politically speaking the book is anything but one-sided. Stockman goes after “feckless John Boehner” and his “equally spineless” replacement, Congressman Paul Ryan.
Stockman takes on the Fed and the ECB. The “Fed doesn’t serve the Main Street economy: It lives to pleasure Wall Street,” says Stockman, quite accurately.
In regards to Europe, Stockman states the “EU-18” owes Germany so much that permitting any country to leave is unthinkable in Berlin. The call for ‘more Europe,’ it is a desperate gambit to keep alive an utterly flawed and contradiction-ridden monetary, fiscal and political union that never should have been concocted in the first place.”
Stockman is a former Congressman and Ronald Reagan’s budget director.
In regards to defense spending, Stockman says “The one thing that I learned during my time on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is that the defense budget, and the military-industrial complex that perpetuates it, is the mother’s milk of fiscal irresponsibility.”
Better Way Forward
The way to stop ISIS is to ground the bombers and drones; send home the spotters, trainers and other infrastructure of intervention; forget about who controls the oil—it will be produced by someone; and recognize that American has no dog in the 1,300-year-old fight between Sunnis and Shiites.
I hear the voice of General William C. Westmoreland echoing over the decades. We are winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, he intoned; we are Vietnamizing the conflict; the strategic hamlet program has become a swell success; we are building schools and clinics in the rice paddies; the body count of dead Viet Cong is swelling by the day.
It was all one giant tapestry of BS, of course, which temporarily camouflaged the catastrophe of LBJ’s war and the genocidal destruction that it inflicted on an innocent people.
Morning Joe
Stockman was on MSNBC this morning. discussing his book.
Give the video a play. Stockman says ….
I start with an indictment of the status quo. I start with an indictment of Hilllary’s 30-year old bag of deplorables. I am talking about ideas, policies, not her supporters. She has been a warmonger for the last 30 years….
My book lays out very clearly that Trump doesn’t have a program, that half of his ideas are wrong, that Social Security has to be addressed.
On the other hand the heart of the problem is the Federal Reserve. It’s destroying capitalism. It’s turned Wall Street into a casino.
Get “Trumped!”
If you want to know where we have been, why people are really angry, and what we should do about it, then do yourself a favor, set aside whatever political beliefs you have, and read “Trumped! A Nation on Brink of a Ruin“.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
