“Crashing the Market Is Good, Actually” — And Other Tall Tales
There is a very special kind of person—let us call him a “Strategic Dolt”—who, when confronted with failure, doesn’t admit miscalculation or unforced errors like Trump’s Smug-Folly Tariffs. No, he declares with all the confidence of a man explaining QAnon at a dinner party: “It was part of the plan.”
So it has been, this week, when the U.S. stock market hemorrhaged over $3 trillion in value in a single trading session. What’s more if we conservatively estimate another $2–3 trillion decline between March 10 and April 3 (based on index performance), the total drawdown from peak to April 3 would easily reach or exceed $10 trillion in cumulative paper losses. The MAGA faithful—drenched in red and lacking irony—took to their keyboards, Tik Toks and other social media platforms to proclaim:
“Trump is crashing the market on purpose stupid! It’s 4D chess! He’s tanking equities to lower interest rates!”
The economic equivalent of lighting your house on fire so the insurance adjuster feels sorry for you and lowers your mortgage or maybe to save money on your electric bill. Got to give it them, they won’t be bogged down by reality. Just yesterday they were denying any market problems as we watched the markets tank. Today: That tank is an intentional tank!
Let me, for the sake of civilization, examine this theory with all the seriousness it deserves.
According to this school of thought (founded in a Denny’s at 2am on a meth-fueled night and chaired by a man who thinks Jerome Powell runs the Illuminati), Donald Trump is strategically tanking the markets to accomplish three things:
Scare the Federal Reserve.
Push capital into Treasuries.
Drive down bond yields and interest rates.
Take a victory lap when money is “cheaper” and America is “winning” again.
I do believe that had Napoleon attempted this level of strategic genius, he would have invaded Russia with a paper mâché horses.
So I’ll begin with the basics.
The Stock Market Isn’t Just a “Scoreboard.”
It is where pensions, retirement savings, business capital, and institutional funds reside. When it collapses, real people lose real wealth. When the S&P drops 3%, that’s not Monopoly money vanishing—it’s the composite value of America's productive enterprise taking a punch to the throat. This idea that the whales (who win even when everyone else is losing because that’s how money works) are the one’s feeling the hurt in this requires words far cruder than “economic illiterate.”
$3 trillion in one day is more than the GDP of France. Vive le destruction! -Scream these Trump Jacobins
So the Trump loyalist now wants you to believe that destroying the financial confidence of a nation is… a fiscal masterstroke?
Bond Yields Don’t Just Respond to Market Panic.
While it’s true that when stocks fall, investors often flee to Treasuries—raising demand and lowering yields—that’s not a healthy mechanism. That’s called a risk-off stampede. Like running to a bomb shelter because the