So would it surprise anyone reading this to learn that while Trump was planning to core out your retirement savings and drive the cost of household goods through the roof, people inside the administration were selling off stocks in anticipation of the massive market crash the tariffs behind Downmarket Mussolini's unhinged trade war produced? Yeah I didn't think so.

https://www.propublica.org/article/us-officials-stock-sales-trump-tariffs

More Than a Dozen U.S. Officials Sold Stocks Before Trump’s Tariffs Sent the Market Plunging

"More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.

All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms."

I think this article does a pretty good job of covering the bases, while still being emblematic of the corrupt free market fundamentalist society we live in; a society where the laws are more or less designed to facilitate and protect greedbag speculators and cheats, not regular people. At least 12 Republicans in and around the Trump administration sold off their stocks right before the tariff-induced market crash, in an act any reasonable person would call open corruption. You can read the whole article, but the highest profile crooks are AG Pam Bondi, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. This of course isn't the first time a Trump government has been exposed for trading on inside information for their own benefit; as you may recall multiple GOP Senators responded to confidential government meetings about the then-emerging COVID-19 virus by selling stocks in a scandal that likely cost Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler their political careers.

Of course Pro Publica doesn't call it corruption, or directly accuse anyone of what is obviously insider trading, because they're afraid of getting sued in a society that insists rich people manipulating the markets isn't corruption unless all parties involved produce a signed confession witnessed by a member of the Notary Public. Which brings us to the larger issue this story is also pointing toward; namely that insider trading is so easy for government officials in America that it's simply unreasonable to assume any of them are trading stocks and other securities honestly.

Every single day governments in the US, particularly the federal government operating on the national level, make decisions that cause companies and even whole industries to rise and fall in the market; sometimes as in the lead up to COVID lockdowns, these decisions are monumental, and sometimes they're focused on the activities of a small number of unheralded companies, but what all of these policy choices have in common is that they often affect the market in wholly predictable ways. Each one of those decisions, policies, and pieces of legislation are ultimately an enrichment opportunity of some kind for people working in the government who are aware of what tomorrow's economic reality will be in advance, because they're working on the laws that will shape that new reality in the dark.

Given this reality, one would presume that it would be illegal for members of the US government, particularly the federal government, to trade stocks at all. It is however not, and furthermore most oversight of trading activity by members of the US government has been stripped to the bone because let's be frank, politicians and their staffs aren't in the business of sending each other to jail for something a lot of them are getting stinking rich from all the time. This set up is outrageously corrupt at the best of times, but the situation becomes more openly contemptuous of our intelligence with a Trump administration that doesn't give a wet shit if people know they're greedbag crooks engaged in again, a clear act of insider trading; and yet nobody is really allowed to call it what it is - open corruption.

If you want to understand how a bunch of rich nazis ended up installing assclown fascist thieves in the highest positions of power in American politics, you could, as a starting point, do a lot worse than examining a ruling class American establishment that tolerates, encourages, and defends openly corrupt practices like the trading that has occurred here.