Trump as the Count of Monte Cristo

When I was little, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas was among my favourite books, and I still remember the text well.

What on earth does that adventure novel of delayed-action revenge have to do with Trump, I hear you ask. Nothing really, except for one episode.

Trying to ruin a banker who had betrayed him years earlier, Monte Cristo bribed a telegraph operator to transmit a false message. At that time, in the early 1840s, Spain’s former king Don Carlos (or Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, for short) was exiled to Bourges, a lovely medieval city in central France.

Bonds issued on the Spanish loan were riding high, and the treacherous banker had invested millions in them. The false message Monte Cristo elicited from the telegraph operator said that Don Carlos had escaped from his exile and was on his way back to Spain to reclaim his throne.

The Spanish bonds plummeted instantly, and the banker had to dump them, losing a fortune in the process – only to see the securities soar again the next day, when the hoax was revealed for what it was.

Things have changed since then: Spanish monarchs have been reduced to ceremonial figureheads, France no longer has the power to imprison them, telegraph has been replaced by more sophisticated means of communication. But one thing remains the same: financial markets are still extremely sensitive to political vicissitudes.

It’s by this circuitous route signposted with literary allusions that we’ve arrived at Donald Trump and his resemblance to the vindictive count. It’s hard not to notice that Trump tends to change his mind overnight about vital political developments.

He’s going to attack Venezuela; no, he isn’t. Yes, he’ll attack Venezuela to effect a regime change. No, he’ll only kidnap Maduro to start with, and then he’ll see. He has kidnapped Maduro as a prelude to occupying the country. No, he isn’t going to occupy Venezuela, he’ll just change her regime. No, he’ll keep the old regime in place as long as it strikes an oil deal; or perhaps he’ll nominate himself president or king of Venezuela.

Then came Iran, and the same kaleidoscopic picture was painted every day: victory won; no, not quite; ground invasion imminent; no, not yet; turn all of Iran into a car park; on second thoughts, perhaps not; open the Strait of Hormuz; or rather form a joint venture with Iran to collect tolls from passing tankers; ceasefire agreed; ceasefire not quite agreed; the war is over; the war is only beginning.

One gets the impression of a terribly indecisive, vacillating president who doesn’t really know what he’s doing or talking about. But have you noticed something? The Monte Cristo Effect (and I’ll claim copyright for this coinage) is still exactly the same as it was almost 200 years ago.

Every time Trump changes his mind, the financial markets, especially those dealing in oil shares, react like the patellar tendon reacts to a neurologist’s hammer testing the patient’s reflexes. Now, just imagine knowing exactly what Trump is going to do or say an hour before he does or says it.

Or in other words, knowing in advance whether the shares of oil companies will go up or down? You’d be speed dialling your broker faster than you could say ‘insider trading’. The broker then would either short the stock or take a long position, with you emerging much richer each time.

It stands to reason that those dear to Trump, his family and close associates, would be privy to such information, and nothing about their characters would suggest that they’d miss these golden opportunities. The Donald himself wouldn’t be averse to turning a quick buck by merely saying one thing today and another tomorrow.

If I were in charge of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, I’d certainly let my curiosity get the better of me. An inquisitive chap by nature, I’d launch a quiet investigation into the investment patterns of the Trump entourage, plotting them on a graph.

Then I’d plot another curve of Trump’s declarations that led to the markets dipping or rising and see whether the two curves followed the same trajectory. That’s it, job done, curiosity satisfied – I don’t know what I’d do next. I’m not the SEC chairman after all, and neither am I a senior law enforcement officer.

But I’d be astounded if someone within the SEC and perhaps the FBI displayed similar curiosity. I doubt that would be the heads of those organisations, who are probably Trump’s appointments and loyalists. But someone lower down the pecking order just might take a peek surreptitiously.

I don’t know what kind of results such an investigation would yield, and I certainly believe in the old principle of innocent until proven guilty. However, and this is a salient point, one can detect nothing in Trump’s character that would make such suspicions demonstrably groundless, as they would be with, say, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.

Looking at Trump’s biography, one doesn’t get the impression that honour was among his primary motivators. For example, when critics reminded him of the numerous bankruptcies his businesses had suffered, Trump’s response was: “That only proves I’m smart”.

It’s true that the owner of an insolvent business seeking Chapter 11 protection against creditors chooses a smart way out of his predicament. But it’s not an honourable way: the creditors who acted in good faith end up losing a fortune, often getting 10 cents on the dollar if they are lucky.

I’ve also heard people who operated in the same property development markets say that Trump was less than honest with his suppliers, often refusing to pay the full amount stipulated. When the suppliers protested, his stock response was “Sue me”. That they wouldn’t do, knowing that Trump could make any litigation drag on for ever, something they couldn’t afford.

This is only hearsay, but, even if you are a fully paid up MAGA enthusiast, can you honestly say that this isn’t something Trump would ever do? No, I didn’t think so.

Honour and morality have no place in Trump’s world, circumscribed as it is by transactional activities. Hence his betrayal of the Ukraine, preceded by some sort of a joint-venture deal for the exploration of the country’s natural resources. Hence his willingness to dismantle NATO for strictly financial reasons. Hence his keeping Venezuela’s evil regime in place in exchange for oil concessions. Hence also his mooted idea of profiting from the tolls at the Strait of Hormuz, something that has no justification in international law.

Hence also his use of Witkoff and Kushner as his ubiquitous emissaries in negotiations involving both the Ukraine and Iran. These chaps aren’t qualified even to broach any issues other than purely financial ones – and these are exactly the areas they do discuss. Nothing else matters very much.

Some time ago I posted an article entitled How Does He Get Away with It?, and the question still remains.

The America I remember was always alert to malfeasance in political office. Congressmen used to be raked over the coals for taking a few thousand for raising certain issues in the House, for example. Here we are probably talking billions, and yet the law enforcement agencies are maintaining their thunderous silence — for the time being.

Should Trump lose some or all of his political power, my guess is that all hell would break loose. I’m sure he knows it – the Donald is indeed smart that way. I wonder how this knowledge will affect his behaviour in the remaining three years of his presidency. Well, at least we don’t have long to wait for an answer to this question.