The Manchurian Candidate

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a "Manchurian Candidate" to destroy the U.S. economy once elected.  What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury Secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one.  Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action...

You'd need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change or eliminate once enacted.  These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

The "Candidate" should also tax businesses, especially profitable ones, with newer and higher taxes. Taxes on energy and added taxes for using or creating carbon in the environment would be easy to pass and popular for the right "Candidate."

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Fortunately for us, this is all hypothetical, and "very unlikely" to ever actually happen.  It would make a good movie, though.

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