President Trump’s interest is largely self interest. According to The NY Times, he has personally pocketed $1.4 billion over the past 12 months. While not stuffing his pockets and those of his family, he has transformed our “shining city upon a hill” into a quasi-fascist state, sold out our allies, upended the rule of law, deployed a private army that murders American citizens in broad daylight, orchestrated political witch hunts, and abrogated our civil liberties, including, of late, the right to bear arms. Whether we’ll have a fair and free election in November is anyone’s guess. How much of Trump’s behavior is dictated by Putin, an inner demon, mental illness, or avarice, no one can say. But the world no longer respects America. It fears and despises America. And it is realigning away from America at a rapid rate.
I’ve invited Anders Åslund back to Economics Matters — the Podcast to assess the damage, and its perilous implications.
Per Anders Åslund is a Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is also a chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE). His work focuses on economic transition from centrally planned to market economies. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine and from 2003 was director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Åslund was an advocate of early, comprehensive, and radical economic reforms in Russia and Eastern Europe. He worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 2006 to 2015. In 2013, neoconservative David Frum wrote that “Anders Aslund at the Peterson Institute is one of the world’s leading experts on the collapse of the planned Soviet economy.” From 2010 to 2013 and again in 2022 he contributed to The Moscow Times, an independent English-language newspaper; he is also a long-time contributor to the Kyiv Post.
Economic Matters – The podcast is hosted by Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University Economist, a NY Times Best Selling Author, President of maxifi.com, and Author of Money Magic.