The recession racket.

Musk, Trump, and the billionaire's blueprint for profit.

America's billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.

In a recent town hall, billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize winning economists across the country have predicted.

If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their

project to cut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession. We have to reduce spending to within

our means, Elon said. And you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will

ensure long-term prosperity, end quote.

Most Republican voters aren't taking his embrace of a recession or a short-term depression

like George W. Bush brought us seriously. Why would Republicans, they're asking, who generally

represent the interests of corporations and the rich above all else, risk crashing the stock market and

economy where those very same wealthy people have their money invested.

The question itself reveals a misunderstanding of how things work for the morbidly rich.

They are uniquely in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people

or those who put their money into 401ks invested in the market or certain stocks.

This is a story as old as capitalism.

During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example,

some of America's greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.

My late friend, Gloria Swanson, once told me over dinner in her apartment

how her former manager and lover Joe Kennedy,

who'd made a pile of money manipulating the stock market,

bailed out as the market began its slide and even short of the market,

...