White House · Donald Trump · South Korea · U.S. · Fortune Technology
Hanke agreed that it is a modern update of Charles Mackay’s 1841 bubble classic
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“That’s exactly the point,” he said, running through the history of famous financial panics.
Key facts
- The total number is $2.2 billion in 2025, according to White House disclosures, with roughly $1.4 billion of it coming from crypto assets
- While a broad federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 208) bars executive officials—Cabinet members such as Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth—from participating in matters where they hold financial interests
- Hanke agreed that it is a modern update of Charles Mackay’s 1841 bubble classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- The latest $2.2 billion disclosure—and especially the crypto windfall—fits the same pattern, according to Koppl
Summary
President Trump made big news this week by revealing how much income he’s personally made in his second term. The Johns Hopkins economist, a veteran advisor on monetary policy to several administrations (including the Trump White House), told Fortune that when he saw the big income disclosure, he immediately flashed onto “the economics of big players.” An expert in “dollarization” who has advised Asian, Eastern European, and South American governments, Hanke has spent decades studying market manipulation in developing countries and now sees the same dynamics playing out in Washington. Three characteristics define the phenomenon, according to both Hanke and Roger Koppl, the Syracuse University professor who originated the theory decades ago: the actor is big enough to shift markets, is not disciplined by profit and loss the way ordinary firms are, and operates by discretion rather than any knowable rule. Both Hanke and Koppl frame big player dynamics as a broader structural shift rather than any single politician’s idiosyncrasy.