We’ve made it to Friday, two full weeks into the Trump presidency. For a majority of Americans, a nightmarish Running Man journey through a game zone of ill-conceived executive orders and late night tweet rants.
But on Wall Street and in the boardrooms of banks, it is time to celebrate. Trump told a gathering of the Business Roundtable today that he is taking aim at regulations put in place since the financial crisis.
As the New York Times put it:
“President Trump mounted an all-out assault on financial regulation on Friday, announcing an array of steps to tear down safeguards enacted to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis and turning to the Wall Street titans he had demonized during his campaign for advice.”
Matt O’Brien at the Washington Post tells us that Trump’s “forgotten men and women” aren’t who we thought they were, writing:
“During the campaign, Donald Trump liked to brag that, unlike his rivals, he wasn’t in Wall Street’s pocket. And you can tell that by the fact that he’s stocked his cabinet with Goldman Sachs alums, has signaled that he wants to dismantle the post-crisis rules reining in banks, and will now allow brokers to go back to giving their clients deliberately bad advice. This is Wall Street’s kind of populism.”
For most of us, the so-called dumb money, our finances are now sailing with less protection. The Privateers are free to roam again, so look closely at the flags flown by bankers and financial advisors, and keep your fingers crossed they don’t raise the Jolly Roger after it’s too late.
Rum is what this Friday calls for, so we can join the pirates with our own Letters of Marque (the license granted by the government for piracy on the high seas), a cocktail from Brad Thomas Parson’s book Amaro.
This delicious, balanced drink is:
1 oz Scarlet Ibis rum
1 oz Cynar
.5 oz Pierre Ferrand dry Curaçao
.5 oz Galliano
Stir, strain, garnish with a flamed orange zest.
Have a few, the pirates are coming. Happy Friday!
Cheers!
Gin & Bitters 