The Hoover Boom

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

H.L. Mencken

A week has passed since Donald J. Trump was re-elected president. The stock market has celebrated with the most impressive run-up since Herbert Hoover was elected. Hoover was a take-charge kind of guy too. “For six years, that man has been giving me unsolicited advice,” remarked out-going president Calvin Coolidge, “all of it bad.”

But Hoover was elected in 1928. Thereafter, stocks rose a spectacular 40%, before crashing in 1929.

Since the election results were announced last week, one third of the country has been overjoyed, whooping and hollering, sure that happy days are here again. Another third acts as if it were looking at the Reichstag Fire. And the final third gets out the hotdogs and marshmallows.

The poor Democrats have gnashed so many teeth, it is amazing they have any left. This time, they lost by such a big margin the familiar excuses — Russian interference, misinformation, bad luck — just don’t seem to be enough. This time, the Trump victory tells us “who we really are,” says a recent New York Times headline.

Yes, we are a nation of dumbbells and dreamers… neither always good, nor always bad… but always subject to influence. And when ‘the plain folks’ speak, they don’t necessarily say what the elites want to hear.

But here at BPR, we emphasize the positive. It is a shame Americans elected Donald Trump. But it’s a good thing they didn’t elect Kamala Harris. And some other good things have come out of the experience.

For one, the benevolent expertise of the elites as channeled by their propaganda media has been thoroughly discredited. The Wall Street Journal:

Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind

The old media — TV, newspapers, magazines — were overwhelmingly behind Ms. Harris. She had the support of the whole Elite Establishment — the press, the universities, Hollywood and the DC establishment. One study showed that 80% of the news coverage on Trump was negative. And yet, the public seemed to pay no attention.

The legacy media also clung to themes that favored Harris over Trump. One was the idea that ‘our democracy is in danger.’ Donald Trump was supposed to be a ‘fascist’ and should he win, or so went the line of argument, it might be the last election in America.

They held steadfast to the idea of the January 6th ‘insurrection,’ too, when any fool could see that the middle-aged dopes milling around the Capitol building were no threat to the police power of the empire.

They insisted that the Covid was an ‘existential threat,’ and not just another flu. Again, the evidence told a different story.

And they even wanted to change the English language to accommodate their woke-ish fads; the ‘him’ or the ‘her’ was replaced by the fake gender-neutral plural, ‘them.’

And while they were adamant about not offending someone’s tender sensibilities by using the wrong pronoun, they were nevertheless eager to send US-made bombs overseas… so the killing of the hes, shes, and thems could continue apace.

These absurdities attached themselves to Ms. Harris like ticks to a dog. She represented the Powers-That-Be….the ‘system’ that had saddled the nation with $36 trillion in debt, and made America’s rich richer than ever…but not given the working class a real raise in half a century. It was this ‘system’ that ‘the plain folks’ despised. And what could Ms. Harris say, but ‘vote for me; I’ll give you more of it.’

So, it turned out that the real threat to democracy was not the MAGA crowd. It was democracy itself. The ancient Greeks warned us about it. Allowing the masses to choose a leader is always a threat to the health of the nation. And in the election of 2024, it gave us the choice between cholera and the plague, Trump or Harris.

Voters washed their hands and tried their best to avoid getting sick. But most felt a patriotic duty to run a fever… for one or the other. And since they couldn’t stomach any more-of-the-same from Kamala, they crossed themselves and pulled the lever for Trump.

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

H.L. Mencken

But Hoover was elected in 1928. Thereafter, stocks rose a spectacular 40%, before crashing in 1929.

For one, the benevolent expertise of the elites as channeled by their propaganda media has been thoroughly discredited. The Wall Street Journal:

Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind

They insisted that the Covid was an ‘existential threat,’ and not just another flu. Again, the evidence told a different story.

And they even wanted to change the English language to accommodate their woke-ish fads; the ‘him’ or the ‘her’ was replaced by the fake gender-neutral plural, ‘them.’

At the absolute peak of the dot-com boom — routers stacked to the ceiling and PowerPoint masquerading as profits — Cisco’s market capitalization topped out at roughly 4.4% of U.S. GDP.

Nvidia today? Roughly 16% of U.S. GDP.

That’s not a rounding error.

Measured against the size of the economy, Nvidia is in a category Cisco never visited. Which means that any serious disappointment in the AI build-out would scale 2000–01 – geometrically.

America has consistently reinvented itself in times of crisis. The founders survived monarchy. Lincoln survived disunion. We’ve survived bank panics, oil shocks, stagflation, and disco. We’ll survive deplatforming, too.

The Second American Revolution won’t be fought with muskets or manifestos. It won’t be fought with petty violence and street demonstrations. It will be written into code. And available to those who wish to take advantage of it.

Russell Kirk called the first American Revolution “a revolution not made, but prevented.” The second will be the same. We’re not tearing down the house — we’re going to rewire it in code.

The result may not be utopia. But it will be freedom you can bank on.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called stablecoins, including USDC, “a pillar of dollar strength,” estimating a $2 trillion market within five years. U.S. Treasuries back every coin.

Bessent’s formula even suggests that a broader, more efficient market for US dollars will help retain its best use case as the reserve currency of global finance… and, perhaps, help the current administration address the nation’s $37 trillion mountain of debt.

In trying to cancel a man, the establishment accidentally reinforced the dollar, and may add decades to its life as a useful currency.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, it’s worth recalling that our first Revolution wasn’t waged to destroy an order — it was fought to preserve one.

Political philosopher Russell Kirk called it “a revolution not made but prevented.” The colonists sought not chaos but continuity — the defense of their “chartered rights as Englishmen,” not the birth of an entirely new world. Kirk wrote:

“The American Revolution was a preventive movement, intended to preserve an old constitutional structure. The French Revolution meant the destruction of the fabric of society.”

The difference, Kirk argued, was moral. The American Revolution was rooted in ordered liberty; the French in ideological frenzy. The first produced a Constitution; the second, a guillotine.

Two and a half centuries later, the argument continues — only now, the battlefield is financial. Who controls access to money? Who defines legitimacy? Can a citizen’s ability to transact depend on their politics?