Lock, Stock, and Bankrupt

By BRUCE LOWITT

Despite stock markets being closed for the weekend, securities have continued to collapse, losing another 9.7% worldwide Saturday and 11.4% Sunday after President Donald Trump declared, “It’s all going to be okay because I’m about to sign an executive order declaring my $TRUMP memecoin the official currency of the United States, so soon stocks will be totally worthless.”

“Plus,” he added, “my family and I have been selling short, so we’re making a freaking ton of money.” Selling short refers to borrowing stocks from brokers lending shares at one price, then selling them back when the price drops and keeping the difference as profit. Trump, his son, Don Jr., daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, reportedly have made $217.6-billion since Tuesday, when the president announced his new tariffs.

Trump said top trade advisor Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and several of the president’s other closest henchmen also have “profited handsomely through my complots, a word I just learned and which I am told is not a fruit. But my idiot son Eric hasn’t done as well since buying a shitload of Tesla stock in January. What a putz. Am I using that word correctly?”

According to Senior Market Columnist James Mackintosh of the Wall Street Journal, one effect of the Trump tariffs has been the planned merging of hundreds of corporations in various industries in attempts to offset potentially disastrous losses.

“For example,” Mackintosh said, “GM, Toyota, Ford, and Stellantis will become Genetoyordis. Aircraft manufacturers Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics will be Airing Lockdyn. And there are so many pharmaceutical companies merging that they’ve just given up trying to combine their names and will rebrand themselves as Addiction, Inc.”

Columnist Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, Europe’s premier economic newspaper, said most Western European nations have opted to cease doing business with the United States “except for France’s perfume exports because, as French Prime Minister François Bayrou put it, ‘Americans in general stink.’”

However, Wolf added, the fear of a recession and possible depression has prompted a number of European nations to begin negotiating potential mergers. “Don’t be surprised,” he said, “if we come out of this with Spaintugal, Switzaly, or Norwedenland. But don’t expect anyone to accept Germany’s offer to merge with it. That hasn’t gone well the last few times Germany tried it.”