NEW YORK - President Donald Trump’s tariffs have spooked investors, with fears of an economic downturn driving a stock market sell-off that has wiped out US$4 trillion (S$5.3 trillion) from the S&P 500’s peak last month, when Wall Street was cheering much of Mr Trump’s agenda.
At some level of wealth, money stops being conceptually a medium of exchange for goods and services, and just becomes a scoreboard for bragging rights.
At some level its a scoreboard, sure. But at a much more important level, it is a claim on future consumption. Currency and credit consolidated in the hands of a tiny minority create a de facto oligarchy. Corporate industry decides national policy entirely from within board rooms and on billionaire chat groups devoid of democratic participation or oversight.
If it was just a high score or a championship ring, the consequences would be far less severe. But imagine a football team that - upon winning the Super Bowl - got automatic first pick on every draft-eligible college student. That’s the real danger of this wealth consolidation. It puts businesses in a position such that they can greedily gobble up the most valuable resources, entirely for the purpose of over-performing into the next season and maintaining their lock on championship title indefinitely.
And then imagine of the city that hosts the Super Bowl gets a “Hunger Games” style socio-economic dividend, affording them a quality of life that radically outstrips their neighbors. And then we run this cycle quarterly for a solid century.
More or less, although it’s important, that it still very much is a medium of power, as its role as financial capital and/or in national budgets ultimately decides which projects and actions are allowed to exist and go through and which aren’t