Finance Is Hell

The Iran war is the first global conflict ever to open a theater of operations inside the New York Stock Exchange. The bulls won today, but long term my money's on the bears.

Look for the Bear Necessities. From Walt Disney’s “The Jungle Book” (1967), words and music by Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman. Sung by Phil Harris.

Every time I start to think the Trump administration has lost its power to shock me it does something to prove me wrong. The latest is the Financial Times’s report, based on three anonymous sources (that’s pretty strong), that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker allegedly tried during the immediate run-up to the Iran war to invest millions of Hegseth’s money in munitions. As I observe in my latest New Republic column, this is the most sordid of the many ways the Iran war is being fought inside the New York Stock Exchange.

Hegseth’s alleged attempt is especially stomach-turning because, if it it really happened, he was trying quite literally to profit personally from bloodshed over which he exercised much control. (It would also put a new spin on Hegseth’s creepy prayer for “overwhelming violence.”) But there are lots of guerrilla operations underway on the stock market front. Trump keeps posting on Truth Social statements of questionable veracity about how well negotiations are going to end the war. The purpose is to stop the stock market from tumbling. It actually works, though the effects wear off pretty quickly. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, is playing the market-manipulation game, too—for instance, by threatening to kill anybody who buys U.S. treasuries—but he doesn’t seem to be having much luck with it. Finance is hell.

You can read my New Republic piece about all this here.

On Monday I posted a New Republic piece announcing that we’re about to enter a bear market. Of course the stock market instead rose on Monday and Tuesday, making me look like a fool, but I still think it’s true. The only reason the market rose was because Trump goosed it. I can’t believe that will continue to work. You can read my bear market piece here.