With the development of social production the means of production cease to be means of private production and products of private production, and can thereafter be only means of production in the hands of associated producers, i.e., the latter’s social property, much as they are their social products. However, this expropriation appears within the capitalist system in a contradictory form, as appropriation of social property by a few; and credit lends the latter more and more the aspect of pure adventurers. Since property here exists in the form of stock, its movement and transfer become purely a result of gambling on the stock exchange, where the little fish are swallowed by the sharks and the lambs by the stock-exchange wolves.

Karl Marx, Capital Volume 3, Chapter 27. The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production

[The 1848 – 1870 government of Louis Napoleon was] an orgy of stock-jobbery, finance swindlings, joint-stock company adventure—leading all to rapid centralization of capital by the expropriation of the middle class and widening the gulf between the capitalist class and the working class. The whole turpitude of the capitalist régime, given full scope to its innate tendency, broke loose unfettered. At the same time, an orgy of luxurious debauch, meretricious splendour, a pandemonium of all the low passions of the higher classes. This ultimate form of the governmental power was at the same time its most prostitute, shameless plunder of the State resources by a band of adventurers, hotbed of huge State debts, the glory of prostitution, a fictitious life of false pretences. The governmental power with all its tinsel covering from top to bottom immerged in mud.

Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, p.215

On April 9, according to the stock market analyst blog site, Data and Politics, at just before 1:01 pm Eastern Time in the USA, someone “risked” about US$2.5 million buying short term options on the SPY exchange-traded fund (ETF). An EFT holds shares in companies listed on the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500), which is the stock market index tracking the performance of the leading 500 companies listed on US exchanges. SPY acquires shares in proportion with the weight of each stock in the S&P. Buying SPY options effectively covers the entire market.

Within thirty minutes of the purchase, Donald Trump posted a statement on his Truth Social account that he was “pausing” for 90 days most of the tariffs that he announced on April 2. Within minutes the SPY stocks soared on the markets and the mystery “investor” walked away with over $70 million in profit in less than an hour.

And that was not all. At exactly the same time, someone bought 2.75 million shares in SPY itself. That possibly reaped “over $100 million in profit in sixty seconds.”

That was not the only windfall profit made that day. Suspicious trades occurred in other EFT trusts suggesting to Data and Politics that “the total take may have been far larger.”

Indeed, for the fifteen minutes after 1:01 pm, the trading volume of SPY shares remained elevated. Data and Politics says: “If the same rate of trading continued, that window alone could account for more than 41 million shares traded. That means more than $1.5 billion in potential profit—all before the public even knew why the market was moving.”

There was a similar option play associated with Trump’s contrary policy-making regarding Nvidia’s right to export technology to China. Trump first banned Nvidia from exporting computer chips to China, then changed his mind after the company CEO paid $1 million to attend a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Then, in days following, administration representatives let slip that restrictions were back in place.

All this led to a slide in the Nvidia share price on April 15. Between 1:13 and 1:22 pm on that day someone bought $100,000 of “put options” (essentially, bets that the share price would go down) and reaped $3.6 million in under three hours when the price slumped.

Clearly White House insiders, particular friends of the President or perhaps Donald Trump himself is taking advantage of insider information. Whatever the case, it is indicative of the level of corruption pervading the Trump administration.

The Trump regime is not just violently restructuring US capitalism to ready for war with China and risking sparking a world trading depression, it is looting the USA as it does so.

Cryptocurrency fraud

Donald Trump is rapidly “overhauling” cryptocurrency regulations in the USA, changing tax policies and moving to start a national Bitcoin Reserve that will make the country the first G7 economy to fully embrace crypto.

Marxist writer Michael Roberts describes cryptocurrencies as “yet another form of what Marx called ‘fictitious capital’ – a financial fiction for real value.” Cryptocurrencies are perfectly suited for a conman like Donald Trump.

According to Forbes, “Trump courted crypto-focused voters during his 2024 campaign, when he made dramatic promises to an enthusiastic crowd at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville last July.” He said that “America would become a ‘bitcoin mining powerhouse.”

On April 18, the New York Times published an opinion piece by John Reed Stark and Lee Reiners. Stark was the chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of Internet Enforcement from 1998 to 2009 and Reiners is a lecturing fellow at Duke University.

They say that Trump and his family circle have dived into the crypto market. They have created “$Trump and $Melania memecoins — a risky type of crypto derived from internet memes or trends.” At the same time, following Trump’s dictates, in “little more than three months, the S.E.C. has eliminated its crypto-enforcement program, dismissing, closing or “pausing” nearly every crypto-related lawsuit, appeal and investigation. The S.E.C. has also, among other steps, gutted its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, dropping the word “crypto” from its name, slashing its ranks by 40 percent and reassigning its top litigator to the I.T. department.”

According to Bloomberg News, the “value” of the Trump family’s crypto assets are close to $1 billion.

Stark and Reiners assert that “what cryptocurrency has given our world is a shield that facilitates crime, from sex trafficking to ransomware attacks, drug dealing to child pornography.”

They say that Trump’s administration of financial regulation in the USA, especially crypto, “brings to mind a similar moment in our history — the 1920s, when insider trading, market manipulation and lack of transparency destroyed public confidence in the system and helped set off the stock market crash that in turn played a part in the Great Depression. The S.E.C. was created to restore trust and bring order to our capital markets, something it did for the next nine decades.”

China-US trade crash, world-wide implications

Outside the realm of fictitious capital, in the real world of value creation and circulation Trump’s policies have had measurable and negative effects.

Market intelligence site, Vizion tracks millions of ocean container freight bookings daily and publishes the results. Ocean containers are measured as Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). Vizion records the following percentage reductions in the booking of TEUs by international traders comparing the last week of March and the first week of April:

Vizion’s analysis of this is that shippers “hit the brakes as conditions changed”, that is, as Trump’s tariff policies chopped and changed. Essentially what is shown here is that the major proportion of trade between the world’s two biggest economies has nearly stopped.

Embedded in this overall downturn there was a vigorous upswing in first quarter US imports from China as businesses and consumers rushed to beat the tariffs. Immediately following that the largest US port, Los Angeles reported that the number of empty containers leaving it jumped by 23 percent. In short, Trump’s policies have not so far produced any rise in US exports.

Added to this is the wildly contradictory element of Trump’s governing style. On April 11, the administration exempted tariffs on certain electronic goods imported from China. This appeared to be in response to lobbying from the Apple Corporation. Those goods represent about 25 percent of Chinese exports to the USA.

It was said that the exemption would not be permanent, but nobody can predict the reality. It could be that the wildly varying announcements are designed to spook the stock markets to facilitate “an orgy of stock-jobbery, finance swindlings” and fraud, as Marx described the atmosphere surrounding Louis Napoleon’s government.

Whatever the case, the trading insecurity has led global shipping company DHL to stop shipping packages over $800 in value to U.S. consumers, so-called B2C deliveries. DHL simply cannot predict if tariffs will change while a parcel is in mid-shipment, and it cannot cope with the flood of paperwork involved. According to NPR news, DHL said “it will continue to ship business-to-business packages valued over $800 to U.S. companies, but those shipments may face delays.”

New US customs requirements are due to be announced on May 2, so all trade planning is provisional at the moment.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) began its annual Spring Meeting in Washington in on April 21. In preparation, the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva gave a scene-setting speech on April 17. “Financial market volatility is up,” she said. “And trade policy uncertainty is literally off the charts.”

She said that the IMFs World Economic Outlook, prepared for the Spring Meeting will predict “notable markdowns, but not recession” in world economies. She then used very careful wording to describe “unusual movements in some key bond and currency markets.”

Referring to the above graph, she said that U.S. Treasury yield curves “smiled”, that is: rose. But “it is not the sort of smile one wants to see.” She had the courage to say: “Such movements should be taken as a warning.” However, as a warning of what, she was silent.

In reality, the combination of rising inflation caused by Trump’s tariff policies combined with rising US Treasury costs will recreate the so-called “stagflation” that dogged US capitalism during the Reagan administration. But Georgieva dare not say its name.

There is no way that all this is not going to affect the Australian economy, though neither major party is talking seriously about it. In 2008, then-Treasurer, Wayne Swan attended the Spring Meeting, heard about the enormity of the Global Financial Crisis and rewrote the Australian budget when he returned.

Australia’s current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers will not be in Washington for the Spring Meeting because of the election. However, will he be honest enough to speak about the IMF predictions before the end of the federal election campaign? Will either major party be prepared to mention the criminal behaviour of the Trump administration?