In the protests in Iran the GOP may foresee the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but I fear it may be a mirror as described in this WaPo report:
The unnamed woman is one of countless Iranians who say their savings have been wiped out by the collapse of fraudulent businesses and unlicensed credit institutions in recent years. Economists are now pointing to the abrupt closure of these poorly regulated institutions as laying the foundation for the unrest that struck Iran starting in late December.
“Banks are shutting down without any kind of notice, and it’s creating a huge political and economic backlash at a local level,” said Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution.
Anger over these losses came on top of years of pent-up frustration over a sluggish economy. When the government announced recent price increases and released an austere budget bill, it ignited at-times violent protests that spread rapidly to dozens of cities nationwide. Demonstrators quickly turned their fury on corrupt officials and the Islamic republic as a whole. …
“Most protests in Iran are over economic issues,” Maloney said. “What’s different is that it seems to have tapped into a deep sense of alienation and frustration, that people aren’t just demonstrating for better working conditions or pay, but insisting on wholesale rejection of the system itself.”
Note “poorly regulated.” It’s been an under-reported item that the Trump Administration has been busy loosening regulations, often or always with the justification that they a wet blanket on the economy. My worry stems from the Great Recession, which I (and a number of economists, who are far more credible than myself) believe was triggered through regulation loosening, including the repeal of the old Glass-Steagall Act contained in the U.S. Banking Act of 1933.
If we were to suffer a repeat of the Great Recession of 2008, would we once again hunker down and wait it out? Remember, when the Bush Administration rendered aid to the financial industry, that generated a lot of outrage and arguably contributed to the Obama victory and the brief Democratic dominance of Congress. Is it enough that the politicos can be voted out, or would we be facing our own set of protests over the mismanagement of the economy? After all, for the little guy (being one of them), the economy runs on what might loosely be called honor, the understanding that transactions are honest & etc. But the actions of bankers and insurance (such as bailout recipient AiG) execs were perceived, and perhaps were, less than honorable: monster bonuses in the face of miserable disaster, running companies right into the ground (see Lehman Brothers), and other such activities, often seen as execs enriching themselves at the expense of the hard-working little guy. Just voting out the arrogant assholes in the GOP might not be soon enough, visceral enough.
We could see our own set of riots if an economic crash was seen to be a result of Trumpist greed.
