Trump finally seems to be admitting what millions of Americans already know: the “cost of living crisis” is real. But the “solutions” now being floated are a weird mix of price controls, rebates, subsidies, and longer-term debt traps.
As Doug puts it, “the best thing you could say about Trump and his economic plans is that he’s a schizophrenic… or he just doesn’t understand economics.” And on the big-picture trajectory: “America is well and truly fucked at this point. And it’s getting worse.”
In this episode, we walk through Trump’s latest cost-of-living proposals one by one: the 10% cap on credit card interest, the $2,000 “tariff dividend”, “most favored nation” drug pricing, health savings accounts, 50-year mortgages, portable mortgages, and tapping your 401(k) for down payments. Doug’s bottom line is brutal: “These things… just make everything more political,” and they look like “band-aids… taped on the cancer.”
Then we get into the headline-grabber: Trump’s new “Board of Peace” to oversee the Gaza plan. The roster reads less like a peace commission and more like a real estate cap table. Doug doesn’t mince words: “What does this have to do with peace? It’s about real estate development.” And the bigger unease behind it: “A world without moral authority.”
We also hit a stack of listener questions, including:
Why Doug still hates diamonds (“A difference which makes no difference is no difference.”)
The real risk behind electronic stock ownership and “layers of security” when “they pull the plug”
El Salvador’s mass incarceration program and why it’s “a time bomb waiting to go off”
Alberta secession (Doug: “Alberta’s always been my favorite province in Canada.”)
Deep-sea mining: viable opportunity or political minefield?
Real estate in a coming crisis: consumer good or investment, and what happens when credit breaks?
If you’ve felt like the official story is drifting further from reality, this one will scratch the itch. It’s not polite. It’s not packaged. It’s a straight look at what these policies actually do when you follow the incentives to the end.
