by Vincenzo Petrone (*)
ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The great director Robert Zemeckis, 40 years ago predicted it and told, with his time machine that seemed to catapult us in the future but actually wanted to revive the past. It was called “Return to the Future”, this 1985 film. The 17-year-old who is the protagonist returns 30 years, and lives in 1955. Yesterday evening, the President of the United States speaking to the world by Air Force 1 seemed immersed in a time machine, while announcing that after Venezuela, the Delta Force military could soon land in Colombia and soon after, just the time to wear the winter suits, parachute on Greenland. On the other hand, Trump says, America needs Greenland for its own security. That’s enough. A few hours earlier, the President had a new possible attack on Iran. And a few months ago, to return to the courtyard of the house, he turned his attention to Panama, which in his dim words controls the homonymous Channel thanks to a weak president, Jimmy Carter, who gave it to him. And instead, that channel is necessary for the security of the United States and therefore must return “one way or the other” to beat the American flag. Before retracing the Oval Office in the style of Mar or Lake, the President had found time to announce that Canada would do well to run immediately to become star #51 in the flag of the United States.
Finally, Trump wanted to inform everyone, first of all, the President of Mexico, that he does not exclude at all military intervention against narcos directly in Mexican territory. In the meantime, the Pentagon will continue to sink the boats that plausiblely, according to television host Pete Heghseth who became Secretary of War, carry drugs to the American coasts and those boats will be bombed regardless of whether or not they are in international waters when they are obliterate with their crews. Yet, despite the many statements and the many muscular intentions of this 80-year-old President, a look at the realities of our time suggest that we have not returned to the 50s and to the interventions of those years of the CIA in Iran, Cuba and the “Banana Repubblics” American center. And as a result we will have to think about what we can or will have to do Europeans, the historical allies of America in the last 80 years. And don’t let us distract from the dreamlike divorce of Trump Administration from the real world. To reality, Trump has been reported so far only by the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, when in two shots and in four and eight he has blocked the export of rare lands to the rest of the Western world.
If we go out of President Trump’s time machine, a macroscopic inconsistency immediately jumps into the eyes and can be synthesized with a common place, that is, America is no longer that of a time, dominant colossus. In terms of the percentage of global GDP, manufacturing industrial power, absolute dominance, almost monopoly of financial markets. Even in military terms, American power now finds important counterweights, beginning with China’s practice. While the last asymmetric wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan were not a success. However, rather than disregarding the violations of international law and a more or less imminent risk of war, the question that especially in Europe must be questioned is whether President Trump is not exempting all this tune of sabers abroad against opponents who cannot fight it, to divert us from the uncertainties that will dominate this 2026.
There are difficult political deadlines in autumn, but above all there is the possibility that serious accidents in the American economy explode in their hands. The Mid Term elections of next November can cost him the majority of Congress control and turn the last two years of his presidency into the agony typical of the Presidents who become “lame ducks”, ducks. Even the economic side is predicted more than insidious, because they are at least two financial bubbles Trump has encouraged and partly directly fed. Even before November or otherwise probably by the year, there are two other financial corrections that can upset Wall Street and shatter the deployment of large shareholders of reference of Big Tech who today constitute a kind of prehistoric guard around the President, his family and their direct, immediate and personal economic interests. The first crisis can arise from the outbreak of the bubble of stock exchange values linked to investments in artificial intelligence, both in data center hardware and software.
The second possible source of crisis are cryptocurrencies. Both bubbles are partly due to the objectively positive perspectives that I.A and crypto offer investors today and entrepreneurs tomorrow. But to an important extent, part of the hyperbolic expectation of gain is also nourished by the emphasis that many digital platforms both investment and social media devote to the future of these new technologies. The additional problem is that for both bubbles, the Trump family is a direct protagonist, first person, on Wall Street. And in both cases he helped stimulate the flow of investments. Companies owned by the President’s children have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in data centers for the I.A., also receiving public contributions. For cryptocurrencies, a few days before installing at the White House, Melania Trump issued a stable coin called “$Melania” while the new president issued another called “$Trump”. The first today is worth 0.10 cent of dollars against 13,75 of the emission value. The second is worth $4 against 13,73 of the issue. The Financial Times in a very thorough study estimated in $1 billion gross profits cashed out with the crypto currencies from the Trump family by giving the November 2024 elections.
As a matter of fact, technological bubbles would not be intrinsically negative for the economy even if they sometimes bring tears and blood between the savers when the market also sharply corrects quotations and expectations. The technological bubbles historically have often left behind themselves’ technologies and infrastructures that then created extraordinary cycles of new development. Other bubbles instead, purely speculative, have only burned financial wealth. In his beautiful book of 1978, “Manie, panic and collapses, the economist Charles Kindleberger analyzes a bubble of the first type, that of the American and British Railways broke out between 1837 and 1846 that despite many failures of illustrious financiers left Britain and the United States an extraordinary infrastructure that produced great development in both countries. To this bubble, Kindleberger opposed that of the tulips that broke out in Holland in 1637, when it suffices that a single rod of tulip bulbs went deserted in Harleem because tens of thousands of traders, bankers and savers went into ruin in a few hours. Of course, the investment in I.A. belongs to the first type of bubble for productivity gains that this technology will bring in manufacturing and services. And it is probable that the cryptocurrency bubble will also create value along with modern blockchain technology transactions.
But with the bubbles of all kinds, the good ones and the least good ones, the problem is always the same and is common to both: when the ‘Gnomes of Zurich and Wall Street’ decide to return in whole or in part from the flow of investments, the Grants cease or even collapse and in the absence of suitable and credible, tax and financial policies, the crisis passes from finance to the economy that goes into recession. Financial speculation is a fact of life, it is not a sin, but it can become a criminal behavior if it is realized through the “pumping and dumping”, that is the exaltation of expectations and the sub-itaneous discharge and” privileged’ of the art-inflated titles before the market proceeds to their correction. From this point of view, sooner or later someone in America will have objections to the investment practices of the Trump family.
In conclusion: will we have a deeper crisis this year on Wall Street, due to the outbreak of the bubble on artificial intelligence? Will the FED, the American Central Bank, be able to act independently, with the maneuver on interest rates to try to prevent it or to respond to a possible resumption of inflationary tensions due to the translation on consumer prices of tariffs imposed on importers? The answer largely depends on a determining factor that we will know in May. The preservation of the autonomy of the FED and the authoritativeness of the person that President Trump will appoint to the Chairmanship of the Board of the Central Bank. Earlier in this first year of the Trump presidency are not encouraging. Every time it has been a matter of appointing the head of an Authority, the President has given priority to his person and the consequent malleability of any other professional or personal characteristic of the candidates. Only very faithful were appointed to direct for example the Security Exchange Commission, the National Labour Relations Board, the Internal Revenue Service.
Even less promising are the insults and threats Trump has repeatedly addressed to the President-in-Office of the FED, Jerome Powell, who was Trump himself appointed in 2017 during his first term. Powell’s fault was not to lower interest rates if the White House claimed it. If in May, in choosing the successor of Powell will confirm Trump’s aversion to any institution that can reduce the margins of decision-making discretion, the financial crisis will become more likely and potentially deeper. It would be a “man made” crisis because today the fundamentals for a year of continued development of the American economy and finance would be: downward rates, inflation under control, excellent tax collection thanks to 180 billion revenue from rates. Yet, it must reflect the experience already made with the fall of the US Treasury bonds in the following hours at Liberation Day, on April 2 last year, when Trump announces stratospheric rates. The markets forced him to freeze for 90 days.
Ultimately, the Trump Presidency’s crisis this year is possible to be born on Wall Street rather than for the geopolitical countercouples of his dream return to the world of the 50s. In Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Tokyo, in the stationaries of allied countries, we are wondering how to prepare for the fallouts of this possible crisis for inebriation. Perhaps even Italy, which wants to be defined as a country or nation, would benefit importantly from participating in this reflection.
iPA photos
(*) ambassador
(ITALPRESS).
