Trump Is Pushing Us Toward a Crash

Published a century ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” captured the culture of an overheated economy on the brink of demise.

Just as Jay Gatsby fell from the height of fortune to an ignominious death, the 1920s roared with financial overindulgence until the markets drowned in the Wall Street crash of 1929. 

The Great Depression followed, and the consequences for the global economy proved calamitous.

Today we find ourselves again dancing toward new highs in the stock market. Speculative money is once more pouring into risky investment schemes, with staggering sums of money being thrown at artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. 

But rather than heed a century of hard-won lessons, the Trump administration’s financial regulators are embracing dissolute policies to keep the punch flowing.

We should be heeding the words of the former Federal Reserve chairman William McChesney Martin, who warned that market stewards must be willing to serve as the “chaperone” who can order “the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.”

Mr. Trump has been ordering the chaperones removed. Since January, his administration has been firing regulators and vigorously tearing down the guardrails that have kept our markets thriving for nine decades.

For the first time in a century, the S.E.C. is seriously exploring how to allow firms and funds to sell investments to masses of Americans without registration or disclosure. 

Mr. Birdthistle served as director of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2021 to 2024.

New York Times 7 November 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/opinion/donald-trump-great-gatsby-roating-20s-sec.html

 

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