The Economy

You go 30 years of unleashing the power of unlimited, artificially priced credit on an entire economy. ... and in the housing market (which is an ideal parking spot for the excess capital you unleash), you get artificial scarcity, rent serfs and half-vacant locales owned by absentee landlords.

It starts with the disastrous idea of fixing the cost of money to pull demand forward (thinking that somehow creates something-for-nothing prosperity). But what it really does is exact a price in the form of a complicated series of chain reactions (people reacting to the distorted environment you've created). And you get all of the "unintended" consequences that brings us to 2024 and conversations like this.

 

The Martin Act gives the state arbitrary authority it shouldn't have over people. But unfortunately, we have all kinds of laws that have codified a nanny state at best and the law being made pliable enough to be oppressive and arbitrarily be used to violate people's civil rights at worst. It makes the country weaker.

Trump might have "fashioned" himself as all kinds of things, and we all know he's actually just a garden-variety con man. But what happened in that court room wasn't just, and was actually antithetical to a free society.

We have a civil legal system that gives ample and fair opportunity for anyone Donald Trump defrauds to seek a remedy, compensation, damages, etc. In this case, none of the supposed victims ever claimed any victimhood! None of THEM sued him. The main "victim." ... testified FOR Trump at the trial.

We have criminal law that could have addressed anything criminal Donald Trump did. This wasn't about anything like that, either.

What happened here was something New York should NOT be proud of. People are happy about it because it's Donald Trump and he's a douche, but when you weaponize the "law" on that rationale that you want to go after the guy you think is a jerk, you make the justice system weaker.

 

Trump wasn't in that court room for any crime. It was a civil trial. And he wasn't in the court room for tax fraud.

Let's be exact about what happened. It was a straight, "He defrauded someone else. ... except THEY aren't the ones making that claim, and in fact they are testifying FOR him."

The Martin Act allowed Letitia James to argue a civil fraud when nobody actually involved in the activity was alleging any fraud, and a judge was empowered to just substitute his judgment about what should have happened over what the willing participants were perfectly OK with.... as evidenced by the fact that THEY could have sued if THEY thought they had been wronged.