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disaster capitalism
Critics Ask If Trump and Musk Are 'Intentionally Crashing the Economy'
"If you think back at the last economic crashes... the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before," noted one progressive commentator.
Mar 05, 2025
Are U.S. President Donald Trump, top adviser Elon Musk, and allied oligarchs deliberately trying to tank the economy in order to line their own gilded pockets?
More and more observers from both sides of the political aisle are asking the question this week as the U.S. president implemented steep tariffs on some of the country's biggest trade partners, threatened a global trade war, and is taking chainsaw to government spending and programs—policies that, while inflicting economic pain upon nearly everyone else, could dramatically boost their already stratospheric wealth.
Numerous observers have likened it to the " disaster capitalism" examined in Naomi Klein's seminal 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism—politicians and plutocrats exploit the chaos of natural or human-caused crises to push through unpopular policies like privatization and deregulation that harm the masses while boosting the wealth and power of the ruling class.
Economic alarm bells were already ringing before Trump's 25% tariffs on most products from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China—for a total of 20%—took effect on Tuesday, prompting retaliatory measures and threats of more to come.
Then, during his rambling joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, Trump threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on every nation on Earth starting April 2 (because he "didn't want to be accused of April Fools' Day") if those countries did not lower barriers to trade with the United States.
@jamellebouie Replying to @C. Stetzer ♬ original sound - b-boy bouiebaisse
New York Times economic policy reporters Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson called Trump's sweeping tariffs "one of the biggest gambles of his presidency," and a move "that risks undermining the United States economy."
But what if that's the whole point?
"I've been entertaining this theory a little bit more lately, because [Trump's] economic moves seem so stupid and terrible and counterproductive without thinking that he is intentionally trying to cause harm," progressive political commentator Krystal Ball—who also has a degree in economics and is a certified public accountant— said Tuesday on the social media site X.
Ball cited an X
post by Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive Democrat running for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) House seat who worked on Wall Street for six years and helped found the online payment processing company Stripe, in which he accused Trump of "manufacturing a recession."
"But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is run by a few oligarchs loyal to him," Chakrabarti added. "Creating that state is hard in a large, dynamic, powerful economy with too many actors who can oppose him. So he's accelerating concentrating money and power into the hands of his loyalists while he crashes the rest out."
Responding to this, Ball asserted that "at this point, until proven otherwise, the primary actor in the government and the economy is actually Elon, so I think it makes sense to think of Elon's incentives here and what he may actually want to accomplish."
"If you think back at the last economic crashes—both in Covid and in the 2008 financial crash—while initially everyone suffered, including the rich, out of both, the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before," she noted.
"So in 2008, not only did they get their own custom bailout, but they were able to buy housing stock at absurdly low prices," Ball recalled. "The rich got richer than ever, inequality skyrocketed, and the big banks got bigger than ever."
"Same deal with the Covid-era recession," she continued. "So, while again, everyone suffered initially, there was a huge bailout package which, yes, did benefit ordinary people, but if you look at who came out really on top... you could see people like Elon Musk, people like Jeff Bezos, people like Mark Zuckerberg getting far wealthier. Their net worths, which were already very high, skyrocketed beyond anyone's wildest dreams."
Indeed, as Common Dreams reported, 700 billionaires got $1.7 trillion richer during two years of pandemic. Between March 2020 and April 2022, Musk got 10 times richer, while Zuckerberg's net worth more than tripled and Bezos' grew by nearly $80 billion, according to Forbes.
"Here's the other piece that's worth thinking about as well," Ball added. "Crash and crisis leads to governments and authoritarian leaders claiming more power for themselves. They can use the crisis and the emergency as a justification for taking on extraordinary powers and for taking extraordinary measures... measures that can be custom fit to primarily benefit oligarchs like Elon Musk."
"So I don't know guys, while we're running around here going... 'can't they understand how this is going to be devastating for the economy,' maybe they do understand," she concluded, "and maybe that's kind of the point."
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Fury at Private Power Giants as Puerto Rico Suffers New Year's Eve Blackout
"People have been angry for a while now," said one San Juan resident. "This is just what we needed to end the year."
Dec 31, 2024
The latest failure of Puerto Rico's privatized power grid on Tuesday plunged much of the island into darkness on New Year's Eve, sparking fresh anger toward the system's for-profit operators and political leaders who sold off the U.S. territory's public utility company.
Tuesday's outage left over a million people without power, according to local officials. LUMA Energy, the Canadian American firm in charge of power transmission and distribution on the island, said in an update posted to social media on Tuesday afternoon that it is "working closely with Genera PR and other generators to restore power as quickly and safely as possible."
Genera PR, a subsidiary of the New York-based gas company New Fortress, received a multimillion-dollar, decade-long contract last year to operate Puerto Rico's power generators. In 2021, Puerto Rico's government—under the leadership of Gov. Pedro Pierluisi—chose LUMA to take over the island's power transmission and distribution operations in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The 15-year contract agreement, when it was announced, was loudly decried by advocacy groups as "terrible."
"In its singular pursuit of American investors, the local government has ignored political protests and demonstrations, disregarded the concerns raised by opposition political parties, and ignored studies that caution against privatizing the public power utility," Pedro Cabán, a professor in the Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Department at the University at Albany, wrote for The American Prospect last year. "For many Puerto Ricans, the Pierluisi government seems intent on converting the archipelago into a dystopia for its people."
"LUMA has Puerto Rico in an energy stranglehold, and Puerto Ricans shouldn't have to put up with continued subpar service."
The Associated Press quoted Puerto Ricans expressing their frustration over the New Year's Eve blackout, which came months after an outage left 350,000 people without power.
"It had to be on the 31st of December!" exclaimed a man identified as Manuel, who said Tuesday was his birthday. "There is no happiness."
AP noted that the latest blackout "fanned simmering anger against Luma and Genera PR... as a growing number of people call for their ouster."
Camille Rivera, founder of La Brega Y Fuerza—a New York-based advocacy group that works to organize Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland—said in a statement Tuesday that "LUMA needs to fix the grid or get the hell out of Puerto Rico."
“Almost 25 years into the 21st century, it is ridiculous that Puerto Rico's power grid has failed its people again," said Rivera. "Puerto Ricans deserve answers and accountability from LUMA for this latest fiasco."
"LUMA has Puerto Rico in an energy stranglehold, and Puerto Ricans shouldn't have to put up with continued subpar service," Rivera added. "In 2025, it should be out with the old and in with the new—we have to fundamentally address the energy crisis facing Puerto Rico, reevaluate Luma's role as an energy provider, and build more sustainable solutions."
Conservative Gov.-elect Jenniffer González Colón, who is set to take office on Thursday, wrote on social media that "we can't keep relying on an energy system that fails our people."
AP reported that the incoming governor has "called for the creation of an 'energy czar' to review potential Luma contractual breaches while another operator is found."
Jeanette Ortiz, a resident of San Juan, told The Guardian on Tuesday that "the blackouts have been worse" since the privatization of the island's power grid.
"People have been angry for a while now," said Ortiz. "This is just what we needed to end the year."
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Progressives Demand Federal Action Against Companies 'Exploiting' Hurricanes for Profit
"This egregious price-gouging hampers evacuations and undermines recovery efforts, while putting vulnerable residents in serious jeopardy."
Oct 09, 2024
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a group of Florida representatives said late Tuesday that the federal government must do more to crack down on airlines, hotels, and other companies taking advantage of emergency conditions brought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton to jack up prices and pad their bottom lines.
"Instead of making it easier for people to evacuate, airlines and hotels are exploiting a horrific situation to charge astronomical fares only the rich can afford—from over $600 for a single night in a Hampton Inn to over $1,000 for flights that usually cost around $100," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said in a joint statement with Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.).
"Exploiting vulnerable people fleeing a deadly storm for higher profits is a new low," said the CPC members as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida as a monstrous Category 5 storm, fueled by record-high ocean temperatures made far more likely by the climate crisis. The hurricane is expected to make landfall in the Tampa area on Wednesday night.
The federal lawmakers' statement came amid a flood of price-gouging reports from Florida residents seeking to escape Milton's path. A spokesperson for Florida's attorney general said earlier this week that the office had received hundreds of complaints about price gouging, particularly for fuel and water.
"There were also scattered instances involving overnight accommodations, including one Airbnb listing of a 'room in Tallahassee' for nearly $6,000 a night," The Tallahassee Democrat reported Tuesday. The outlet noted that "during a storm-related state of emergency, state law prohibits price gouging for equipment, food, gasoline, hotel rooms, ice, lumber, and water needed as a direct result of the event."
The Biden Transportation Department, meanwhile, said it has "been in touch with airlines to get more information about the capacity and affordability of flights in the affected areas" amid reports of sky-high ticket prices. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he is "calling on the airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to accommodate evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, to just do it on the level."
The Associated Press reported that "by midafternoon Tuesday on the East Coast, airlines had canceled more than 700 U.S. flights, compared with fewer than 200 cancellations on Monday and fewer than 100 each of the two previous days, according to the FlightAware tracking service."
Major airlines, including Delta and United, said they capped fares under the emergency circumstances, but people seeking last-minute tickets reported dramatically elevated prices. One woman trying to buy a one-way ticket to New York said prices more than tripled "in a matter of seconds" as she examined her options.
"There were prices even as high as $1,000 for one leg. So wrong! So wrong!" the woman told The Associated Press.
In their statement Tuesday, Jayapal and the Florida lawmakers noted that "in North Carolina and Georgia, while families try to recover and rebuild from the devastating impacts of Helene, there have been hundreds of similar incidents of bad actors price gouging residents on everything from groceries to gas to hotel rooms."
"This egregious price gouging hampers evacuations and undermines recovery efforts, while putting vulnerable residents in serious jeopardy," they said.
While welcoming the Transportation Department's efforts to monitor and prevent airline price gouging, the progressive lawmakers said that "we will need a whole-of-government focus" in the coming days and weeks "on protecting the people impacted by these disasters from predatory price gouging."
"Further action is still needed from the federal government to stop the corporate exploitation that impacts all areas of American life, whether at the grocery store or gas station," the lawmakers said. "We need a federal ban on price gouging, more stringent antitrust laws and enforcement, and for Congress to reassert its role and governing power in this space—something CPC is deeply committed to and actively engaged in."
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