Cometh the hour, cometh the man

The key circumstance of 2026 is that the Donald Trump’s dominion depends on the bubble-era dollar...and the dollar depends on the willingness of foreigners to take it.

Monday, January 19^th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland

‘I think that we need to calm the country down, not head further toward chaos.’

--Rand Paul, referring to Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act

Hot off the presses on Saturday came more chaos. Reuters:

Trump vows tariffs on eight European nations over Greenland

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said additional 10% import tariffs would take effect on February 1 on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Britain - all already subject to tariffs imposed by Trump.

Wow...is he turning even our closest allies against us? Is that his historic role?

Last week, we left dangling, like a condemned man at the end of a rope, a question: is there anything that Donald Trump positively, absolutely cannot do?

But before we get to it...let us tell you a bit about our lives down here in Nicaragua. We arrived in the country last week after an absence of five years. Not much seemed to have changed. Same airport. Same trash along the roads. Same horse-drawn carts and rusty tin.

There were, however, more police checkpoints. What they were checking for, we don’t know. Typical of authoritarian governments everywhere, leaders fear being overthrown. They don’t know who or when...so they try to control everything, just in case.

How much it affects you depends on the particulars. Here in Nicaragua, we see both some of the highest living standards and some of the lowest — within a few miles of each other. Driving to the Rancho Santana resort, for example, we pass what looks like profound poverty. People live in hovels with dirt floors and bare tin roofs. They have very little money. Their diets are poor; life expectancies are low.

When we get to the ranch, however, it’s a different story. There are manicured gardens and million-dollar houses...perched on the slopes overlooking the pacific. The weather is nearly perfect (it can be windy!). The views are stunning. The food at the resort’s three restaurants is excellent. The service is world class. And each house has its own team of cooks, gardeners, and house maids.

Both rich and poor live under the same sun and the same laws...and may even stop for the same police checks. But for a white man in the tropics, with enough sunscreen, Nicaragua can be very agreeable.

The deeper truth came out on the way down here. We stopped to visit an old friend in Florida. He spent his whole life chasing the big payoff — investing in small start-ups that never seemed to go anywhere. He got poorer and poorer as he waited for ‘his ship to come in.’ Finally, the ship crashed into the dock!

He became fabulously wealthy when a stock that he had been holding for years unexpectedly went public. In a matter of days, he went from sleeping in his car...to staying in his own Boca Raton home, with a full-time staff to take care of him.

Unfortunately, about the same time that he came upon so much money, a stroke seems to have come upon him. And so, with all his millions, all he can do is sit in a wheelchair, watch football games, and dream of the wonderful life his money can’t buy him.

Meanwhile, the fate of the US...and maybe the world...seems to lie with another white man, also rattling around in the tropics and also, according to some, may be the victim of a stroke. He has taken control of Venezuela. Now, he says, he ‘runs’ the place.

He says he will run Greenland too.

And maybe he will run them both. But who runs Donald J. Trump?

He, Trump, didn’t invent himself. His life and fortune were shaped by the post-1971 bubble economy. His investments...headed for insolvency in the 1990s...were saved by lower interest rates and abundant dollar credits.

Each of those dollars is borrowed, not earned. And they leave their stain on the economy in the form of debt — about $105 trillion total debt in the US. Or, about $1.5 million per family. At 4% interest, that would saddle the family with monthly payments — interest only — of about $5,000 per month...or about half of the average family’s take home income.

Nor can the money be taken out of the bubble stock market. As soon as stocks were sold to try to cover the debt, the bubble would deflate...which is the very thing Mr. Trump absolutely, positively cannot permit. Obviously, that debt is not going to be repaid.

And while the situation could be corrected by radical Milei-style cutbacks, that’s another thing Donald Trump cannot do. He’s a low-interest, big government kind of guy. And he is the prime beneficiary of the bubble economy. It saved him from bankruptcy and it made him the most powerful person in the world.

Recall that hinge-point leaders tend to be chosen by History. Cometh the hour; cometh the man. They may be brassy, shallow opportunists. But whatever they are ab initio, they must evolve. They must think what they need to think...and do what they need to do...as circumstances require.

The key circumstance of 2026 is that the Donald Trump’s dominion depends on the bubble-era dollar...and the dollar depends on the willingness of foreigners to take it. Once they stop stocking their vaults with it, dollars will come home and the full weight of dollar printing over the last half a century will hit the US like the plague.

Of course, by then, we might all be drooling helplessly while watching the NFL playoffs...but poorer, not richer.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

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