The other goal of DOGE (which is being studiously ignored by the Party / MSM) is to expose the grift and self-dealing by the Democratic Party and NGOs.
Big donor stands up a NGO -> NGO gets USAID funds -> spends most of the funds on salaries for people employed in advancing Democrat Party goals.
The other goal was to expose how much of the manufactured consensus was simply astroturfed using taxpayer funds. Like the Great Awokening
I think most Trump voters would be delighted to see the NGO self-dealing and Democrat Messaging Machine cut off from taxpayer funds. Anything else is gravy.
And think tanks like Antony Blinken's Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which was essentially a holding pen where Obama/Biden retreads could grift until they could get back on the government payroll.
One of life's ironies is, as the article demonstrates, the President has quite limited power over the economy but is typically held responsible for any setbacks. One who did was LBJ with the simple expedient of lying to his own economic advisors about his plans for Vietnam. The inflation unleashed and 8 years of flailing by Nixon and Ford left poor Carter holding the bag. He was blamed for the whole thing. Carter got his revenge by setting up the system that led to the subprime meltdown. Inaction by 4 Presidents left Bush 2 holding the bag. To be fair, he deserved some of the blame but he got all of it.
So here we are again. Book has yet to be written on Trump's efforts but if they fail, this article will be Exhibit A in his defense.
Carter's deregulation of the banks was due to regulatory failure. He didn't do it because he wanted to - he did it because he was forced to.
The FDR-era deposit caps of 5% (a move meant to prevent "ruinous competition") caused people to withdraw their funds en masse from the banks to put their savings into more profitable Treasuries. The banks couldn't survive without deposits, so Carter allowed them to increase deposit rates and gave them the ability to invest in riskier assets in order to cover the higher interest cost of market-level deposit rates.
The blame for the subprime meltdown goes back to Bill Clinton, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and HUD Director Andrew Cuomo, with the American Dream Commitment which pushed more affordable housing requirements on Fannie but also let it invest in subprime loans. It turned what was previously a sleepy government sponsored entity into the biggest mortgage arbitrage hedge fund on the Street.
Note that Google has completely memory-holed the American Dream Commitment
First steps in the Carter years. Not that Clinton didn't make it worse. And Bush. There is a quite good book by Gretchen Morgenson which it looks like you read. I had dealings with her on another topic and was impressed enough that I bought the book.
The "how we got here" story in US banking is fascinating. Unlike anywhere else in the world.
The 30 year fixed rate mortgage, which Americans take for granted as a birthright exists nowhere else on the planet. It is 100% the result of subsidies
Nixon put pressure on the Fed to lower rates we've now learned via declassification of tapes. Against all advice he put lots of pressure on the fed, who lowered rates and therefore unemployment. After the election price controls on wages, gasoline, etc staved it off for a time, but eventually it all caught up with stagflation, and Volker got hired who raised rates, and we made the Fed more independent.
Every president bar none wants lower rates, it juices the economy and brings down unemployment, it can also lead to runaway inflation and a recession at the same time ie stagflation.
Nixon was disastrous economically while Ford was just inept but they both lived in the shadow of LBJ. It was actual Carter that appointed Volker for which he deserves but doesn't get credit.
Some argue that it was Nixon's pressure on the Fed to lower rate that accelerated the stagflation of the 1970s. The concept of an independent Fed was weak 50 years ago following the removal of the gold standard.
The actual budget rescissions in the draft Trump budget is $9.3 billion, aimed at cutting funding for foreign aid, NPR, and PBS. Not $1 trillion, not $150 billion. The federal debt will be getting much larger over the next few years.
Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego said “It’s not the two dolls that’s the problem. It’s the fact that less people are going to be shopping, which means there’s going to be less people stocking their shelves, there’s gonna be less jobs, less sales tax collected for localities, that means people aren’t gonna be able to pay cops and firefighters. This is going to end up causing problems.”
Well, let's see, yes, Trump campaigned on a pledge to balance the federal budget and reduce the size of government by ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse. Politicians of all stripes have promised to do that for decades of s rapidly ballooning and out-of-balance federal budget. Trump is delivering and Democrats, the modern-day party of government, are screaming.
Will those same Democrats, come next year's midterms and thex2028 presidential race, campaign honestly on a pledge to grow government spending including on the large "chump change" they now defend.
As taxpayers if they would care to have some of their billions in "chump change" back?
Doubt that it will "fall well short." Already the Treasury expectations for needs were far lower than expected, suggesting cuts are already having an impact. The best thing about all these cuts is that once gone and agencies dismantled, it would take decades of Democrat rule to recreate them. This promises long term savings as has never been imagined. When this is over, historians will grudgingly admit that in probably less than a year President Trump has wiped away most of the New Deal and Great Society. A giant detox.
Larry, if you’d actually had to pass through the rigors accompanying doctoral attainment in economic history as you claim you have (but clearly haven’t), you’d know that the fuel for the growth of the New Deal welfare state was economic hardship and instability—and Trump is going to deliver the latter at generational scale. He’s going to cement the welfare state in a way LBJ could only dream.
He has pledged not to eliminate the big money in both-Social Security and Medicare. I agree since people have paid into those programs and depend on them. Any fraud in SS is mostly to be found in the disability program rather than the retirement portion. In Medicare a hard look needs to be taken at providers. Past efforts have been to squeeze providers across the board rather than really whack actual fraud.
It is good and helpful to see some analysis suggesting that there remains some significant ‘stickiness’ in actual budget and political realities behind Trump’s boorish theatrics.
Our nation and our world are very lucky that it is ‘The Donald’ who uncovered such endemic weaknesses in our nation’s world-historical experiment in democratic governance. He fails at everything except grift because he’s not any good at leading. He’s only good at ‘hosting.’ And even there, he’s incapable of hosting anything more complex than the equivalent of a golf tournament or a WWE extravaganza.
So, thankfully, Trump is extremely unlikely to lead a march into dictatorship or some such — because he simply isn’t either interested in or capable of having to think or work that hard. And I don’t think he really likes the idea of too much unpleasantness beyond some essentially performative ‘roughing them up a bit.’ (I’m not suggesting that sending blood-thirsty mobs to assault the Capitol, summarily kidnapping and deporting people, or hoping paramilitaries and police will ‘deal’ with some people is not horrible and despicable. I’m only suggesting that, thankfully, I don’t think Trump has either the inclination or stomach for becoming a bloodthirsty tyrant like Putin or Kim Jung Il.)
But, Trump has surrounded himself with the sorts of weak-minded people that George Lukas warned us about in Star Wars through Darth Vader. Trump has, indeed, ‘turned’ many weak-minded people into consigliere’s and have put them in charge of actually running our various agencies/worlds of governmental and ‘law and order’ administration. And since none of them (MUSK, Hegseth, Kennedy, etc.) has any subject-matter expertise, all they can do is all that anyone has ever done with clumsy, dumb thuggery. They will eventually screw-up enough and piss-off enough people that Americans will ‘toss the bums out’ — and look to getting back to life
So, anyhow, thanks for the encouraging report of the ongoing existence of what will eventually turn the lights out on the Trump Show — even as he will inevitably pocket a huge windfall of contraband and tribute, avoid accountability, and return to lording it over the weak-minded people who come and go on planet Mar a Lago.
There is certainly tons of waste, and I'd probably agree with much of Trump's ideological cuts to agencies, but it was much too blind in it's cutting off of heads.
Musk, and I've heard this from many tech execs, and it's more than likely true,,,, figures a large percentage of people working for companies are basically useless. Hired when things are booming ten percent become rock stars making your company tons of money, many of the rest simply put in the time collecting a pay check. With mass hiring you keep the rock stars out of the hands of your competitors. Periodic massive layoffs rid yourself of dead weight.
Looking at the numbers though, the savings is tiny. Maybe a hundred billion or two, or maybe a tenth of that. We lose twenty times as much simply giving tax breaks when we should be paying off our debt.
Musk is good at taking chances in business and wrapping his STEM brain around new ideas, he should stick to what he's good at.
Under the guidelines passed by the House earlier this year, the Ways and Means Committee can expand the federal deficit by as much as $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Extending the expiring 2017 tax cut will cost $4.4 trillion. Republicans wants to do more besides, including expanding the deductions people can claim for local and state taxes. DOGE? What DOGE?
The other goal of DOGE (which is being studiously ignored by the Party / MSM) is to expose the grift and self-dealing by the Democratic Party and NGOs.
Big donor stands up a NGO -> NGO gets USAID funds -> spends most of the funds on salaries for people employed in advancing Democrat Party goals.
The other goal was to expose how much of the manufactured consensus was simply astroturfed using taxpayer funds. Like the Great Awokening
I think most Trump voters would be delighted to see the NGO self-dealing and Democrat Messaging Machine cut off from taxpayer funds. Anything else is gravy.
And think tanks like Antony Blinken's Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which was essentially a holding pen where Obama/Biden retreads could grift until they could get back on the government payroll.
One of life's ironies is, as the article demonstrates, the President has quite limited power over the economy but is typically held responsible for any setbacks. One who did was LBJ with the simple expedient of lying to his own economic advisors about his plans for Vietnam. The inflation unleashed and 8 years of flailing by Nixon and Ford left poor Carter holding the bag. He was blamed for the whole thing. Carter got his revenge by setting up the system that led to the subprime meltdown. Inaction by 4 Presidents left Bush 2 holding the bag. To be fair, he deserved some of the blame but he got all of it.
So here we are again. Book has yet to be written on Trump's efforts but if they fail, this article will be Exhibit A in his defense.
Carter's deregulation of the banks was due to regulatory failure. He didn't do it because he wanted to - he did it because he was forced to.
The FDR-era deposit caps of 5% (a move meant to prevent "ruinous competition") caused people to withdraw their funds en masse from the banks to put their savings into more profitable Treasuries. The banks couldn't survive without deposits, so Carter allowed them to increase deposit rates and gave them the ability to invest in riskier assets in order to cover the higher interest cost of market-level deposit rates.
The blame for the subprime meltdown goes back to Bill Clinton, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and HUD Director Andrew Cuomo, with the American Dream Commitment which pushed more affordable housing requirements on Fannie but also let it invest in subprime loans. It turned what was previously a sleepy government sponsored entity into the biggest mortgage arbitrage hedge fund on the Street.
Note that Google has completely memory-holed the American Dream Commitment
First steps in the Carter years. Not that Clinton didn't make it worse. And Bush. There is a quite good book by Gretchen Morgenson which it looks like you read. I had dealings with her on another topic and was impressed enough that I bought the book.
The "how we got here" story in US banking is fascinating. Unlike anywhere else in the world.
The 30 year fixed rate mortgage, which Americans take for granted as a birthright exists nowhere else on the planet. It is 100% the result of subsidies
Last I knew the Japanese were doing 100 years. How that works when the next generation has no kids is beyond me.
Nixon put pressure on the Fed to lower rates we've now learned via declassification of tapes. Against all advice he put lots of pressure on the fed, who lowered rates and therefore unemployment. After the election price controls on wages, gasoline, etc staved it off for a time, but eventually it all caught up with stagflation, and Volker got hired who raised rates, and we made the Fed more independent.
Every president bar none wants lower rates, it juices the economy and brings down unemployment, it can also lead to runaway inflation and a recession at the same time ie stagflation.
Nixon was disastrous economically while Ford was just inept but they both lived in the shadow of LBJ. It was actual Carter that appointed Volker for which he deserves but doesn't get credit.
Some argue that it was Nixon's pressure on the Fed to lower rate that accelerated the stagflation of the 1970s. The concept of an independent Fed was weak 50 years ago following the removal of the gold standard.
The actual budget rescissions in the draft Trump budget is $9.3 billion, aimed at cutting funding for foreign aid, NPR, and PBS. Not $1 trillion, not $150 billion. The federal debt will be getting much larger over the next few years.
Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego said “It’s not the two dolls that’s the problem. It’s the fact that less people are going to be shopping, which means there’s going to be less people stocking their shelves, there’s gonna be less jobs, less sales tax collected for localities, that means people aren’t gonna be able to pay cops and firefighters. This is going to end up causing problems.”
Well, let's see, yes, Trump campaigned on a pledge to balance the federal budget and reduce the size of government by ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse. Politicians of all stripes have promised to do that for decades of s rapidly ballooning and out-of-balance federal budget. Trump is delivering and Democrats, the modern-day party of government, are screaming.
Will those same Democrats, come next year's midterms and thex2028 presidential race, campaign honestly on a pledge to grow government spending including on the large "chump change" they now defend.
As taxpayers if they would care to have some of their billions in "chump change" back?
Doubt that it will "fall well short." Already the Treasury expectations for needs were far lower than expected, suggesting cuts are already having an impact. The best thing about all these cuts is that once gone and agencies dismantled, it would take decades of Democrat rule to recreate them. This promises long term savings as has never been imagined. When this is over, historians will grudgingly admit that in probably less than a year President Trump has wiped away most of the New Deal and Great Society. A giant detox.
Larry, if you’d actually had to pass through the rigors accompanying doctoral attainment in economic history as you claim you have (but clearly haven’t), you’d know that the fuel for the growth of the New Deal welfare state was economic hardship and instability—and Trump is going to deliver the latter at generational scale. He’s going to cement the welfare state in a way LBJ could only dream.
He has pledged not to eliminate the big money in both-Social Security and Medicare. I agree since people have paid into those programs and depend on them. Any fraud in SS is mostly to be found in the disability program rather than the retirement portion. In Medicare a hard look needs to be taken at providers. Past efforts have been to squeeze providers across the board rather than really whack actual fraud.
It is good and helpful to see some analysis suggesting that there remains some significant ‘stickiness’ in actual budget and political realities behind Trump’s boorish theatrics.
Our nation and our world are very lucky that it is ‘The Donald’ who uncovered such endemic weaknesses in our nation’s world-historical experiment in democratic governance. He fails at everything except grift because he’s not any good at leading. He’s only good at ‘hosting.’ And even there, he’s incapable of hosting anything more complex than the equivalent of a golf tournament or a WWE extravaganza.
So, thankfully, Trump is extremely unlikely to lead a march into dictatorship or some such — because he simply isn’t either interested in or capable of having to think or work that hard. And I don’t think he really likes the idea of too much unpleasantness beyond some essentially performative ‘roughing them up a bit.’ (I’m not suggesting that sending blood-thirsty mobs to assault the Capitol, summarily kidnapping and deporting people, or hoping paramilitaries and police will ‘deal’ with some people is not horrible and despicable. I’m only suggesting that, thankfully, I don’t think Trump has either the inclination or stomach for becoming a bloodthirsty tyrant like Putin or Kim Jung Il.)
But, Trump has surrounded himself with the sorts of weak-minded people that George Lukas warned us about in Star Wars through Darth Vader. Trump has, indeed, ‘turned’ many weak-minded people into consigliere’s and have put them in charge of actually running our various agencies/worlds of governmental and ‘law and order’ administration. And since none of them (MUSK, Hegseth, Kennedy, etc.) has any subject-matter expertise, all they can do is all that anyone has ever done with clumsy, dumb thuggery. They will eventually screw-up enough and piss-off enough people that Americans will ‘toss the bums out’ — and look to getting back to life
So, anyhow, thanks for the encouraging report of the ongoing existence of what will eventually turn the lights out on the Trump Show — even as he will inevitably pocket a huge windfall of contraband and tribute, avoid accountability, and return to lording it over the weak-minded people who come and go on planet Mar a Lago.
There is certainly tons of waste, and I'd probably agree with much of Trump's ideological cuts to agencies, but it was much too blind in it's cutting off of heads.
Musk, and I've heard this from many tech execs, and it's more than likely true,,,, figures a large percentage of people working for companies are basically useless. Hired when things are booming ten percent become rock stars making your company tons of money, many of the rest simply put in the time collecting a pay check. With mass hiring you keep the rock stars out of the hands of your competitors. Periodic massive layoffs rid yourself of dead weight.
Looking at the numbers though, the savings is tiny. Maybe a hundred billion or two, or maybe a tenth of that. We lose twenty times as much simply giving tax breaks when we should be paying off our debt.
Musk is good at taking chances in business and wrapping his STEM brain around new ideas, he should stick to what he's good at.
Under the guidelines passed by the House earlier this year, the Ways and Means Committee can expand the federal deficit by as much as $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Extending the expiring 2017 tax cut will cost $4.4 trillion. Republicans wants to do more besides, including expanding the deductions people can claim for local and state taxes. DOGE? What DOGE?