Is the US now the dumb money?<\/p>\n
Trump Media\u2019s $6 billion merger with a nuclear energy company doesn\u2019t even pretend to make business sense. TMTG is, to borrow Matt Taibbi\u2019s defining phrase of another era, the vampire squid<\/a> of this moment, haphazardly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. (It has been less successful than Goldman Sachs in that regard: TMTG shares are down 80% since early 2024, though Trump\u2019s personal stake is still worth $1.2 billion.) Unlike Wall Street profit-seekers, it\u2019s laying its own scent trail by following Trump\u2019s favored policies \u2014 first into conservative social media, then to bitcoin, and now to nuclear energy.<\/p>\n The pandemic-era financial froth \u2014 SPACs, meme stocks, and crypto fever \u2014 was supposed to die with rising interest rates. Now those things look almost charming. The inanity and nihilism is still there, but tinged with something darker and more permanent, a sense that the rules of capitalism changed. As my colleague Rachyl Jones reported<\/a> this week, critical minerals and nuclear energy companies are embracing SPACs in the hopes of catching Trump\u2019s eye and bagging a government investment. The nuclear startup, TAE, is merging with TMTG not because there\u2019s an obvious tie between fusion and all-caps threads, but because of the Trump firm\u2019s \u201caccess to significant capital.\u201d<\/p>\n