By Declan Vex, Senior Financial Malcontent
BatShitCrazy.com | April 24, 2025
Just six days ago, we asked the question:
“What are the odds that Donald and Elon are running some deranged shadow options desk in a Mar-a-Lago basement?”
And now, it seems the punchline is writing itself.
This week, Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino — a man not noted for leftist conspiracy theories — reported that “people inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street execs they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India.” The intel, according to Gasparino, is coming from “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House.”
Not in press conferences. Not in policy briefings. In private.
Let’s call this what it is: insider trading dressed as economic diplomacy. A backdoor FedEx of price-moving intel, shipped straight from Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan.
This isn’t some anonymous leaker or Reddit thread. This is Gasparino himself — the man who once argued that trickle-down economics just needed better PR — saying the quiet part with the studio mic hot.
And if you thought this administration would learn from past investigations? Think again. As The New Republic put it:
“The Trump administration is back in the business of selling market-moving news to insiders—again.”
Here’s what happens when the economy becomes an echo chamber: retail investors chase ghosts. Executives trade on rumors with institutional weight. And the rest of us are left watching the Dow twitch like it’s being waterboarded by Goldman’s Slack channel.
We’ve said it before, but it hits different now:
The market always knows — but what if it knows a con?
Emily Peterson-Cassin of the Demand Progress Education Fund nailed it:
“The White House is flagrantly enabling insider trading and is continuing their long history of embracing Wall Street while throwing everyday Americans to the wolves.”
Which, frankly, tracks. Because if you’re going to weaponize statecraft to inflate a portfolio, why not make a little scratch for the boys at the club?
Is it legal? Depends who’s asking and who’s in charge. Historically, insider trading requires a clear breach of fiduciary duty, a quid pro quo, and a prosecutor who didn’t go to college with the defendant. But the SEC has already been neutered and rolled into a burrito of investor confidence and algorithmic shrugs.
Oversight has been replaced by brand alignment. And capitalism has been fully swapped out for Kleptocracy™.
This isn’t deregulation. It’s monetized gaslighting.
This is economic sabotage dressed in a silk tie and riding in a black car with tinted windows and a burner phone. This is the presidency as a cracked Bloomberg terminal, with a direct line to the White House. This is policy for sale, priced by the basis point, distributed like a whisper campaign.
And make no mistake: this story has legs. Because the insiders are running out of secrets. And the rest of us are running out of time.
Filed from a coworking space next to a distressed bond trader and an espresso machine that screams like capitalism in decline.
