CONTEXT: The Crypto Lie. Trump, Elon Are Consolidating Power, Stealing Your Money, Giving It To Rich Guys
Corporate Transparency Act destroyed. FDIC on the chopping block. SEC offices closed. World's most corrupt men do world's most corrupt things. Why aren't you in the streets?
CONTEXT, a series from Public Enlightenment, gives us all - right, left, center - the context we need to understand the news.
Mainstream newsrooms are failing to warn us of imminent threats to our way of life. Share this post so that all Americans can understand the moment and respond accordingly. HINT: You should already be in the streets! In this Context…
Marisa Kabas, Justin Miller, Mitch Jackson, Critical Resistance, The Trumpland Diary, Oregon Public Radio, The Verge, Truthout, Max Kennerly, The New Republic, Public Citizen, The Nation
In a time when legacy media cannot be trusted to consistently explain reality to us, be sure to follow and subscribe to the above providers of essential context.
THE CONTEXT
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their buddies are purposefully destroying the US economy. Mainstream media is avoiding telling you about a plan by the most corrupt people on the planet to enrich themselves and take power at your expense. We already know Musk’s goal is to direct our taxpayer dollars into his businesses as he deletes the agencies that regulate them. But it’s all so much worse than that. Below is the context for these statements.
No Country For Poor Men
Just listen to Trump about his self-serving love for bad markets.
2004: “I don’t want to blame the real estate markets, because I always made a lot of money in bad markets. I love bad markets. You can do very well in a bad market.”
2014: “You know what solves it?” he said. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”
One way to enrich himself and his friends is for Trump to create a Tariff War and allow the stock market to drop. Billionaires can swoop in and buy a bunch of stock at low prices. Trump can then rescind the tariffs and, et voila, the rich get richer.
FDIC-Ya Later
Another way for Trump and his pals to really get in there and Make America Lose All Its Money Again is to eliminate one of the government’s most trusted and necessary programs.
The FDIC provides deposit insurance for the trillions of dollars held in American bank accounts and is funded by charging premiums on banks. Taxpayers do not foot the bill.
The oligarchs are already using bullshit DOGE excuses for eliminating the FDIC despite its necessity and wide support. From Oregon Public Radio:
About 170 probationary employees of the FDIC were fired this month after about 500 workers had already accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer…The reported cuts amount to more than 10% of the agency’s workforce…
“This administration is really sowing the seeds for the next financial crisis,” says Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, a financial risk consultant who works with banks and regulators…
The destruction of banking protections dovetails nicely with Musk’s plan to replace all of our banking infrastructure with his dumb app. From The Verge:
“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”
Financial instability is also a great way to consolidate power. From Critical Resistance:
Whenever a ruling class wants to consolidate power, financial destabilization is one of their most effective tools…
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s transition plan for the Trump administration, outlines strategies for weakening regulatory agencies, consolidating financial oversight under corporate-friendly leadership, and limiting federal intervention in banking crises.
Page 705 of Project 2025 discusses shrinking or restructuring federal financial protections, including the FDIC, under the justification of ‘market efficiency.’
Elon Musk and other tech billionaires have advocated for “free-market banking” that circumvents federal oversight.
Crypto and fintech billionaires push for privatized financial safety nets—which would only protect the ultra-wealthy while leaving average depositors vulnerable.
Highway To Hell: “On-Ramp To Corruption” Edition
Corrupt rich guys love money laundering and they are destroying the protections against it.
The Trump administration announced Sunday it will cease to enforce penalties and fines on businesses that fail to adhere to…financial reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act, an anti-money laundering law passed by Congress in 2021. The announcement was panned by…economists…who called the move an on-ramp for corruption.
Trump cheered the new on-ramp to corruption calling it “exciting news.” The thing Trump calls an “economic menace” is a form that takes ten minutes to fill out and is only bad if you are a money launderer.
Presto Crypto! Nothing to S-E-C Here.
Do you see the inelegant sleight of hand happening before our eyes? Trump and Elon and David Sacks want to use crypto to launder money. And the crypto bros and the oligarchs want to move our financial system to the blockchain. This is widely considered by experts to be a terrible idea.
So, won’t the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) step in a put a stop to all this nonsense? Not if it doesn’t exist.
Crypto is a speculative asset ripe for fraud with nothing of value backing it up and so the SEC was not very friendly to the industry. Crypto bros are determined to make crypto happen, though, so they essentially bought whatever was left of Donald Trump’s presidency after Elon paid for most of it.
Rich crypto bro donations accounted for half of all corporate election spending in 2024!
Trump immediately stopped the United States’ crypto crackdown once he took power.
Now, Trump wants to steal taxpayer money and give it to rich crypto bros by creating a strategic crypto reserve.
From the Texas Observer’s Justin Miller:
Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who specializes in financial regulation, said state crypto reserves are unwise .“There is simply nothing behind Bitcoin. It has no strategic use,” Allen told the Texas Observer. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are, Allen says, effectively a “ponzi–like asset” with no tangible value, entirely dependent on a supply-and demand-market of speculation and manipulation.
“I think the only people this will benefit are the Bitcoin ‘whales’.”
More on this in The Nation:
From an excellent deep dive by Substacker Mitch Jackson:
Unlike oil or gold, Bitcoin and its digital peers have no track record of providing stability or tangible utility in a crisis. To the contrary, as we shall see, crypto assets embody instability and uncertainty – the exact opposite of what a strategic reserve is meant to provide.
…a closer look reveals the reserve may be nothing but a blatant insider trading scam to make his billionaire crypto czar richer—funded by taxpayer money.
Trump announced that he plans to add five cryptocurrencies to the strategic reserve: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano. Not so coincidentally, his crypto czar David Sacks has a venture firm linked to Bitwise Invests, one of the biggest crypto index fund providers. Bitwise holds significant amounts of the very same cryptocurrencies. Sacks promised that he sold his personal, direct holdings, but made no mention of his multiple indirect holdings.
If this wasn’t enough, just a few hours before Trump’s announcement, someone bought $200 million in Ethereum and Bitcoin, raising the question of who may have known about the plan ahead of time.
To make sure they can get away with it they are taking a hatchet to the SEC:
Harsh, But True
From The Trumpland Diary:
This isn't conspiracy land at this point. These dudes told everyone what they wanted to do, and then they started doing it while we all watch dumbfounded. The Left is going, "Surely they can't be doing what it sure as hell looks like they're doing—taking over the government!" and the Right is just...cheering them on because it "makes the libtard snowflakes cry."
This is not about government efficiency and never was. It is about removing any regulatory barriers so rich guys can do whatever they want. Economy collapses, regular Americans are without protections, money can be laundered freely, and anyone around the world can pay $5 million to get in on it while receiving benefits unavailable to American citizens.
Just as bad, while the vast disinformation complex that backs Trump distracts us all (“savage” illegals, harmless trans kids) mainstream media has avoided contextualizing for the public, with the prominence and frequency required, that Donald Trump is a corrupt person flagrantly breaking the law.
This allows Trump to be construed as normal by an American public already swimming in a toxic stew of online disinformation (made to look like regular American speech by our enemy, Vladimir Putin). One more reason Trump is destroying the economy is that he is clearly doing Vladmir Putin’s bidding and Vlad wants us destroyed.
Will all these corrupt men get away with it? If Scooby Doo taught us anything it’s that bad men usually do get away with it unless us damned kids foil their plans. Spread this piece of context far and wide ahead of tomorrow’s big Scam Summit at the White House to raise awareness. Maybe more folks will start to catch on and take to the streets. Every American—left, right, center, and hopelessly disengaged—will be harmed if we all don’t put a stop to this.
Public Enlightenment provides the context we need to understand the news. When you sign up as a subscriber or pledge a subscription, you're supporting the idea that we are in this trouble because of our toxic information ecosystem and we must fight like hell to improve public understanding. Every single day.
Help spread this far and wide:
Like this post!
Re-stack it using the ♻️ button below!
Share this post on other social media sites:
Join the conversation, add your thoughts and other reporting that contextualizes the current slide towards techno-fascism:
I livestream about media and democracy every Monday at 9pm ET. You can watch me do it live right here on Substack and check out my other content on Twitch and YouTube. Be sure to follow me on TikTok and Instagram. Every like, follow, repost, and subscribe helps me continue the work of changing our information ecosystem to one in which we all achieve healthier outcomes.
Thank you, Brian, for this incredibly important work. I have been taking to the streets regularly and I look forward to more folks joining our ranks as people like you spread the good word.