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Historian of America's old, weird political economy. Unincorporated but proudly unionized citizen of Delaware. Adding “levity to discussions of financing and high politics” since 2022. Wrote Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America.
I made the thread on the President's new bribery storefront into a blog post (with some French literature "erudition" thrown in for good measure)
daelnorwood.com/2025/08/12/b...
A Continuing Series For a while now on social media (Bluesky, mainly), I’ve taken to making short threads about the ways that Delaware’s corporate franchise hooks into the headlines abo…
But in another sense, this is a victor’s dilemma. Since the consolidated business class has won so totally, & destroyed even the pretense of effective political pushback on the project of the deconstruction of the US state, there’s no moderating influence or long-term planning.
Echoes of the 1920s.
The options @erinkaylockwood.bsky.social laid out are useful to think with/about.
I think the way GOP ideology has helped rot the institutions that - at other times - organized capital to less self-destructive ends (eg local and reg chambers of commerce) is a big part… bsky.app/profile/erin...
Large swaths of Trump's agenda are bad for capital, yet despite strong incentives to collectively mobilize AND significant power to exert their will, we have seen very little resistance from big business interests. Why?
Below, five non-mutually exclusive possibilities that have occurred to me:
This has to be the defining question for any supporter of the post-New Deal, neoliberal order. That’s lots of people & institutions in the US, many powerful (until recently)
Capital, organized & in control, doesn’t see value in the system that it built, and that built it.
So what’s to be done?
I'm totally baffled abt the markets. Where is Capital? Trump is messing w/ govt data; imposing tariffs; flirting w/ default; meddling in corporate management.
Where are the CEO complaints? The bond vigilantes? Where are billionaire hedge funders who trade on good data? Was Capital's power a mirage?
oh hey, it’s @microcosm.bsky.social newsletter official: they’re publishing an expanded (but still concise!) version of my Leading in Times of Crisis zine. plus a @portersqbooks.bsky.social shoutout!
I’m super proud of how this turned out-you can order here: microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zine...
Nice!
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
Inshallah, the Celery will be free - I'll keep you posted
This mess is what I mean when I say that Delaware law and Delaware lawmakers are directly implicated in the vast corruption that’s turned the US into an autocracy. Neither POTUS nor his family would be able to sell their office this way – or plan to sell even more – without the First State’s say-so.
This kind of transaction – in which the Trump family is opening a new storefront to process bribes – is exactly the kind of bogus investment that Congress, led by DE Rep. McBride, is trying to make more widely marketable to non-insiders by gutting the law defining “accredited investors.”
It’s 2025: Do you feel like you aren’t getting scammed enough? Are you tired of not being cheated, ripped off and defrauded? Probably not. We’re drowning in spam calls, phishing emails and junk mail, ...
