Trump’s ‘U.S. Going Out of Business’ Sale

Deals galore, just like in 2008!

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

Most of us think of a recession as being bad, but that’s for ordinary folks. For some people, a recession is simply a big sale. All the assholes are counting their gold (or crypto or dollars) and gleefully thinking about what they might be able to pick up cheap.

Do you remember what happened in 2008?

I sure do! I’d remarried and the little single-mom house that I bought because I needed to scale down suddenly felt too crowded. We fell in love with an 1897 fixer-upper Victorian – the one we live in right now – and put the other house on the market.

I knew we were taking a risk, but I thought I could sell the little house quickly. And in fact, we got a buyer right away, and he was approved for a loan! We were thrilled.

And then the mortgage company called me the day before closing and told me they couldn’t approve the buyer’s loan after all. Somebody didn’t do their due diligence.

The ideal spring house-selling period passed as we waited for the closing date that was abruptly canceled. Worse, the housing bubble was bursting. I knew we’d missed the boat. Yet we’d already moved into the big house, and I’d pulled equity from the little house to make it happen.

And then we got one more offer

It was so low the real estate agent was afraid to tell me what it was. I remember saying she should ask the guy if he wanted the names of some poor orphans he could screw over next. There were a lot of repossessions going on and he assumed my house was one of those but it was not.

I saw no reason why I should let somebody else make money on that house. So I began renting it out myself. I didn’t enjoy landlording one bit, but it was my only option.

It was obvious that if somebody had a little money and wanted to cheaply scoop up a bunch of rental property from struggling homeowners, 2008 was a real opportunity (to be an asshole). Real estate ads that started out “Attention investors!” were everywhere.

We bumbled along dealing with destructive and deadbeat renters for several years. I could tell you some stories you would not believe (unless you’ve been a landlord) but eventually my son grew up and was happy to move into the house where he’d spent part of his childhood. He’s been a model tenant – the only one I’ve ever had who has always paid on time. He’s also the only one who has urged me to raise his rent, which I reluctantly did once.

I’ll retain it for as long as my son wants to rent it. If he decides to move on, I’ll sell it. We will not exactly make a killing on it, because houses in my area have not increased in value the way they have in some other places. (Central Illinois had cheap houses before 2008 and still has cheap houses today.)

You know who did make a killing, though? All the investors who purchased small houses like mine at a steep discount during and after the 2008 bubble/stock market collapse have seen the values on those houses recover. In most areas, housing values haven’t just recovered, they’ve exploded.

So while some families lost everything, certain investors made an absolute killing.

Big sale! Everything must go!

That’s how a lot of people see Trump’s current move. Is he in fact willfully blowing up the economy so he and his oligarch friends can snap up deals?

To be perfectly honest, I doubt it. My stance here is mostly tongue-in-cheek. When it comes to Trump, I am reluctant to attribute to cunning what is more easily attributed to idiocy. This is the man who inherited a fortune, went bankrupt multiple times and actually managed to lose his ass on casinos.

I think he’s a moron, but he thinks he’s a genius. He likely believes everything he’s doing, including the imposition of random tariffs, will work out in the end. (That’s not going to happen.)

However, we all know Trump is more of a figurehead than anything. He’s not the real power. He’s just the one who was able to convince the more clueless among us to vote for him. There are darker forces.

If you saw Dan Rather’s recent Losing Confidence in the Con Man and many similar takes all over the place, you know that people are starting to realize their “purchase” of Trump was a bad bargain.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, as recounted in the Rather piece, said “This is not what we voted for.”

Oh, but it is, Ackman! This is exactly what you voted for. This should not be a surprise. I am not an expert and I have so little money that nobody is going to mistake me for a financial guru. However, to predict that Trump was going to ruin the economy required neither a crystal ball nor a PhD in economics. It required only average intelligence and a willingness to pay attention.

In fact, the way oligarchs literally lined up behind Trump should wake everyone up to the fact that wealth and brains do not, in fact, always go together.

If Ackman is surprised, he deserves to lose his ass and frankly, I would find it endlessly amusing if he did.

He won’t, though. Bad financial luck and/or decisions can sink peasants like me, but oligarchs look out for their own. Just look at all the times people like Trump have been bailed out, or how select boot-lickers have been welcomed into the club via timely investments.

Like most Americans, I’m finding it difficult to wrap my head around what is actually happening. I grew up steeped in the happy fiction that nothing really bad could happen to Americans. Nobody would dare take us on.

That belief was mostly correct. I don’t think any other country would have seriously contemplated going to war with us. The enemy now bent on destroying us is the man we invited to do so.

American Exceptionalism and meritocracy are myths, but like atheists whose parents sent them to Catholic schools, most people find such childhood beliefs die very, very hard.

The harsh reality is that systems serve those who already have power, unless the rest of us demand otherwise.

It’s not impossible to believe that millions of Americans who always thought of themselves as middle-class citizens will begin struggling to purchase food – let alone endless Amazon tchotchkes – and returning to generational living to survive.

Or maybe Trump cultists will actually wake up and put an end to this. He’s just one man, and he only has as much power as his acolytes give him. The minute they decide it’s time for Trump’s nonsense to stop, it will stop.

I don’t know which way it’s going to go, but I hope everything that I and millions of other Americans have worked for all our lives isn’t going to be sacrificed in one big fire sale.

It won’t just be houses and stock this time. It’ll be the very institutions that once defined American democracy.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.