Smash and Grab

Smash and Grab 

Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers.

 

Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis has found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.

 

-             Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding, Washington Post

 

By Gregg Wall (3-1-2025)

 

There were three stories in the last two weeks that really stood out, at least in my mind, that were emblematic of the continued collapse of the necroeconomy, neoliberalism, the two-party system, and any claim to moral superiority the Western establishment believes it holds over other nations.

 The first was Olaf Scholz and his Social Democratic Party’s loss in the German elections.  Mr. Scholz’s party was trounced and came in third, after the establishment center-right Christian Democratic Union party, first place, and the extreme right, populist right Alternative for Germany party, second place.  Of course, I’ve been writing about the collapse of the Western establishment, the moral decline of the West, neoliberalism’s rot, decay, and failure, as an economic model, going back to shortly after the 2008 financial crisis.  And predictably, the German elections did not disappoint in reinforcing the belief in the West’s decline.  The Social Democratic Party and its coalition completely failed the German people with outdated support for neoliberalism, corporate rule, underfunding of public services, policies & proposals for greater defense spending and greater austerity.  In fact, it’s an all too familiar pattern we’ve seen throughout Western democracies.  The public fed up with the establishment’s smash and grab culture… where the spoils of government and central banks belongs exclusively to banks, multinationals, and oligarchy… while the public is forced to go without (tenuous job prospects, stagnant wages, an affordability crisis, high energy & home costs, diminished public services, inflation, higher defense spending, & migratory waves).  In fact, there was little that distinguished Germany’s two centrist, corporatist political parties, except a tougher position on immigration by the CDU.  This has resulted in Western leader, after leader deposited upon the ash heap of history.  Increasingly, it is the nature of duopoly, however, that the best one can often hope to achieve is voting the incumbent crooks out of office, knowing full well that the alternative mainstream party of crooks -- also owned by the establishment -- will probably deliver more of the same, offering little that is new except to be on the opposite side of the culture wars and maybe immigration.  Hence, the people increasingly growing more desperate for real change; hence, the voters - especially young voters - increasingly turning to the far-right and the far-left parties.  Therefore, the ascendency of the Alternative of Germany party, the first populist right party to achieve this much success, since Adolph Hitler was in power.  Notably, Germany’s Left Party came in first among the 18 to 24 year-old demographic and should build upon its success, particularly when Germans discover populist right parties are little different on the economy than the establishment’s duopoly.

 

But fear not, the first-place, right-wing establishment party, the Christian Democrats, installed a BlackRock board member, Friedrich Merz, to lead the nation.  Clearly demonstrating the establishment has learned precious little from this election…  and why should they, the extreme right is no threat to bankers, billionaires, multinationals, and the war industry.

 

 

The second raft of stories that caught my attention was on Elon Musk’s DOGE.  And here again, we can see the Silicon Valley ethos on full display: move fast and break things.  Or, perhaps more accurately: smash and grab.  Mr. Musk and team have been very busy.  Busy taking out agencies, firing thousands of workers, crushing regulatory agencies that once stood in his path, damaging sound government that delivers invaluable services to Americans and people around the globe.  And of course, DOGE is already privatizing government, scooping up contracts, and solidifying Musk’s, SV venture capital’s & Wall St’s hold over government agencies & entities where they have existing contracts and there are new contracts to be had.  Conflict of interest… ???... forget about it, Mr. Musk & Co. are fully capable of policing themselves, per POTUS Trump.  And to top it off, Messrs. Trump and Musk are considering a DOGE dividend for the people.  Except such a dividend's accounting appears specious at best.  Some of the DOGE accounting seems well… to put a positive spin on it, premature?  For instance, it’s easy enough to cut heads and salaries, it’s quite another to account for the fallout created by axing agencies and regulatory bodies that protect the American people, like CFPB, or NOAA, the FAA, or the NIH, et al.  Or my personal favorite, the IRS… which collects hundreds of billions, when properly staffed, at fractions of a penny on the dollar or more accurately, per Vox, 34 cents of expense for every $100 collected. 

 

Wait a minute... isn’t the goal or purpose of DOGE to achieve greater efficiencies and to address the national debt?   Then why is DOGE gutting the IRS, an entity that collects billions, hundreds of billions in additional revenue when properly funded & staffed?   Unless greater efficiencies and lowering debt and deficits isn’t what truly motivates DOGE, but rather, something, seemingly, perhaps, more sinister motivates DOGE like the aforementioned smash and grab, seizing the reins of government to further consolidate power, enrich & protect the oligarchy?  Maybe?  Even Wall Street bond underwriters aren't buying all the good news coming forth from DOGE, US Treasury borrowing costs have yet to fall (at least not for the right reasons, a tariffs scare has begun to move yields down in anticipation of an economic slow down).  Meanwhile, our day trading, worthless crooks in Congress are getting ready to conduct their own smash & grab and passed a massive tax cut resolution for the rich, which will cause the national debt to skyrocket.  In Trump parlance: So much losing? 

 

And the last story that caught my eye comes from Bloomberg.  This story noted what a complete disaster the U.S. economy is and how catastrophic wage and wealth inequality are thoroughly ingrained within the economy.   The key concept in this story… Rich People Are Firing a Cash Canon at the US Economy, But at What Cost?... speaks to epic transfer of wealth into the hands of the few that has become the hallmark of neoliberalism, and catastrophic & endemic poverty that are baked into the U.S. necroeconomy.  Which, if we are completely honest, has turned into a global pandemic, seen throughout many Western economies.  See the restive American, Canadian, European, and Japanese voters throwing the bums out, repeatedly.  (Notably, Biden, Draghi, Harris, Kishida, Macron, Sunak, and Trudeau.)  Particularly eye-catching in the Bloomberg story was the following statistics: ten percent of the US public, the top decile, accounts for 33% of GDP and 50% of consumption.  Bloomberg correctly notes this level of inequality is not good, not good at all.  For instance, if the entire economy is geared to catering and pandering to the top ten percent, things could head south rather quickly if this small cadre of elites were to suffer economic reversals and stop spending.  These numbers, again, point to the significant poverty deeply imbedded into a failed neoliberal nightmare, the monopolization of the economy, the influx of immigration that serves to suppress wages, the crushing monopsony power that capital lords over the American public, labor, & small business owners… the complete silence that surrounds the political duopolies, throughout the West, to address these issues and corporate media’s unwillingness to hold political duopolies accountable.  It’s just another example of our smash & grab oligarchy: an economy that fails the majority; a necroeconomy that commodifies human existence & labor; the disaster that is globalization; an unaccountable & unelected oligarchy, that owns and runs so-called democratic governments; and a fraudulent neoliberal paradigm, where catastrophic human misery, poverty, & suffering have now become a global pandemic (but especially acute in the West, given the West’s collective wealth).  Moreover, there is little interest on the part of the establishment in acknowledging reality and seeking reform, everything – from their perspective – is working according to plan.

 

 

Perhaps we haven’t seen this level of inequality since Louis XVI was forced to decamp from Versailles to face justice from an angry populace in Paris.  I’m sure some enterprising economist and historians could make the case that there have been worse times, but with all this record wealth floating around, often conjured up by central banks and the Federal Reserve, does it really have to be this way:  

 

Just another hit & run, just another smash & grab?  

 

If there’s one bright spot in the ongoing DOGE saga, it’s this:  All the myths and lies surrounding the brilliance and infallibility of billionaires and oligarchs being “masters of the universe” and the most intelligent of humanity… should be dead and buried by the end of Trump’s second term.  In fact, they are already dead and buried.  See forty trillion in national debt in the greatest wealth transfer scheme ever recorded by humanity, into the hands of oligarchy and Wall St.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025