Once in a Generation?

Once in a Generation?

 

Blaring car horns on the three-lane A40 in west London are nothing new. However, on Saturday, they weren’t aimed at other drivers for a change; instead it was Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, who was the target of their anger as part of the “Takedown Tesla” movement, which has spread from the United States.

 

“It’s too overwhelming to do nothing,” said Louise Cobbett-Witten, who has family in the US. “There is real solace in coming together like this, everyone has to do something. We haven’t got a big strategy besides just standing on the side of the street, holding signs and screaming.”

 

-       Protesters picket London Tesla showroom on global anti-Musk day, Guardian

 

By Gregg Wall (3-29-2025)

 

The 2008 financial crash provided a once in a generation opportunity to revisit America’s libertarian paradigm and overhaul the greed first economy.  But the Federal Reserve quickly stepped in with an alphabet soup of programs and money printing to backstop, bailout, and support America’s failed establishment, the empire, our teetering economy, the political duopoly, and of course, Wall St.  Post-bailout, financial engineering and greed would remain, the crooks were rewarded with greater concentration of Wall St banks, those CEOs that exited were often well rewarded with golden parachutes, no one went to jail, Washington exhaled and gave a collective sigh of relief.  The American people, on the other hand, were stuck with austerity, the IOU, trillions in debt, the very same economy that had failed them.  The American people, and many Western citizens, faced central bank easy money campaigns that further fueled corporate consolidation, debt slavery, inflated asset classes of the rich, spurred M&A, monopoly & monopsony, provided cheap debt to finance the building of factories & operations offshore, and catastrophic wage & wealth inequality

 

The national debt leading into the crisis was approximately $12 trillion when Bush (W) left office, due to Middle East wars and tax cuts (which largely benefited war contractors and the wealthy).  Today, the national debt has exploded to $40 trillion (including Trump’s Wall St bailout in his first term).

 

As gloomy as these economic times are for many, Trump’s chaos and tariffs, the desire for a restoration of the American economy and manufacturing, the fading out of unipolar world power (like the death of a star or a supernova), and the incoming multipolar world order… also provides an opportunity: another once in a generation opportunity to revisit Western economies.  An opportunity presents itself once again, to ditch - or significantly moderate - colonialism, debt extortion & slavery, deregulation, financial engineering, greed first economics, necro-politics, neoliberalism, oligarchy and endless colonialism and wars.  You know, recognize the fraud, failure, moral bankruptcy & degeneracy surrounding Western economies & governments.  And recognize what a complete disaster it’s been.

 

Will humanity seize the moment?  There certainly are a great many barriers to change: the predatory elite are not feeling contrite, not in the least.  Problem?  What problems?  But DOGE and Mr. Musk’s efforts in Washington tell us that all is not well, there is a big problem.  As we would expect, banks, the billionaire class, and Wall St. are shirking responsibility and failing to, correctly, blame what drove America’s debt to catastrophic levels.  Specifically, American elites are not willing to hit pause and take the time to correctly assess blame to the billionaire welfare state; corporate entitlements; dereg and lack of funding for regulatory bodies; an unaudited DOD and endless for-profit wars & empire; explosive growth in corporate welfare; fraudulent privatization schemes; globalization; laissez-faire; money in politics; neoliberalism; our trickle-down tax code; AI, automation, Wall St greed and its impact upon labor & the public; and corporate consolidation as a means to eliminate labor and simultaneously the tax base, etc., etc.  Instead, DOGE is taking a blowtorch to the federal workforce, regulatory agencies, the tattered remains of America’s safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) … not with the goal of paying down debt but with the objective of further consolidating corporate & oligarch power, greater privatization of government, and a greater transfer of wealth to the obscenely wealthy.  In a similar manner, tariffs, under Trump, allegedly serve a dual aim…  designed not only to restore business to the U.S. but also to raise taxes on the public, so that more tax cuts and welfare can be heaped upon the anointed few.  

 

Musk & Trump seem hellbent on misdirection and sophistry… again, blaming the American public and other nations for the sins of the billionaire class, deregulation, globalization, and the neoliberal economy that have failed the United States (and much of the West).  Musk and Trump blaming Americans and social programs for the fallout & national debt created by our central bank, corrupt crony government, and the libertarian economy… when the nation’s rulers looted and ran the country into the abyss over the last forty-five years.  Trump scapegoating trading partners for ripping off America, when it was America’s captains of industry, CEOs, and shareholder value that led the charge in exporting the US economy, jobs, opportunity, and tax base offshore (so as to exploit foreign labor, governments, judicial systems, and tax laws).  Have some of our partners adopted mercantilist economic & trading policies?  Absolutely.  But again, it was American boardrooms, C-suites, corporations that ultimately pulled the trigger on moving American manufacturing offshore.  Greed and an entirely corrupt congress and political duopoly allowed that to happen.  And there is no recognition of any of this.  The establishment and the MSM are predictably silent.  Wall St, predictably, wants to ignore all this and go back to business as usual.  Trump gets credit for wanting to return businesses home, but his plan – and a lack of communication as to what’s in store – appear strained at best.  And DOGE is upsetting a lot of Americans, including republican rank & file voters.  With his empire on the line & Tesla sales down, Musk appears unhinged, showing up in right-wing echo chambers to vent.

 

Neoliberalism and corporate consolidation not only provide totalitarian power over government, labor, prices, profits, and wages… but it also crushes the public at large, by eliminating jobs & income.  Neoliberalism and corporate consolidation redistributes wealth and wages to a predatory few, and it’s an unmitigated disaster.  It’s also highly damaging to our economy, no wonder 25% of the economy/GDP is dependent upon federal spending.  No one, that I’m aware of, has owned up to any of this.  No CEOs, no economists & politicians, no central bankers, no oligarchs… instead, the public is gaslighted and lied to constantly, via the establishment's mouthpiece, the MSM, that everything is well, the economy is sound.  Go back to sleep, what are you whining about: tent cities and soaring poverty, notwithstanding.

 

And how do we know dereg and neoliberalism have failed?  There is: the aforementioned national debt, and the acceleration in the growth of national and private debt; there’s growing child poverty; homelessness; a complete lack of affordability; the death of social mobility; the dearth of jobs that pay a living wage; the eradication of the American Dream – mugged, beaten and raped by private equity and Wall St criminals; deaths of despair & fentanyl abuse; medical bankruptcy; and ever-increasing corporate welfare.  It’s a red flag: widespread corruption and the inability of congress, the president, and state legislative bodies to say NO to the demands of oligarchs and Wall St.

 

I lived through the ‘80s, I drank the Reagan Kool-Aid, and I can tell you we had it beaten into us that tax cuts for the rich would come trickling down and rain manna (bread) from the heavens.  A rising tide would lift all boats.  Obscene profits would cause competition and new entrants into the marketplace, so that monopolies could not prey upon the public and labor, prey upon the nation.  Junk debt, Milken, and private equity were just getting started… I’m not sure anyone dreamed of the financially engineered insanity that would follow.  Of course, it was all a lie.  Tax cuts… Trump and the GOP are about to embark on a new round w/ complicit Dems… do not lead to investment in CAPEX or new competing entrants into the marketplace.  And why should they, when the idiots in government are willing to dole out close to two hundred billion in corporate welfare, per annum?  (By the way, $200 billion is light, when we consider the indirect subsidies industries like O&G receive annually, for burning down the planet w/ zero accountability or hits to their financial statements.)  Instead, tax cuts are hoarded or are directed back to wealthy shareholders or investors in the form of dividends, earnings, yet greater financial engineering, AI and algorithms that accelerate collusion & layoffs, and of course, market manipulation and stock buybacks. 

 

The irony, despite all the chaos surrounding Trump’s efforts to return businesses home… corporate greed still reigns, and extremely wealthy companies are still flooding and pumping money into Mexico.  Read here, here and here.  Seems failure and fraud are everywhere these days, neoliberalism is dying along with the planet that the oligarchy appears perfectly content to destroy.  A once in a generation opportunity to create a new economic paradigm awaits… or, given the state of the world, one final opportunity awaits?  Before the candle that is humanity is finally snuffed out by corporate greed and economic violence. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

Trade Wars & Mark Carney Takes Over Canada

Trade Wars & Mark Carney Takes Over Canada

 

OTTAWA — Incoming prime minister Mark Carney says he has put all his assets other than his “personal real estate” into a blind trust after months of Conservative questions about his potential conflicts of interest.

 

In a statement Tuesday, spokesperson Audrey Champoux confirmed that Carney had set up a blind trust and provided the confirmation document to the federal ethics commissioner when the Liberal leadership results were announced Sunday evening.

-             Carney puts assets into blind trust as he prepares to become prime minister, National Post

 

By Gregg Wall (3-15-2025)

 

The last two weeks have been manic, even by Trumpian standards.  Trump appears hellbent on a trade war.  If Trump’s tariffs stick, they could drive the U.S. economy, and potentially trading partners’ economies, into recession. But recession maybe exactly what Trump, Musk are aiming for, both at home & abroad: not only as a potential tool for annexing targeted countries; but also, as a tool to drive down interest rates and debt service loads on America’s catastrophic national debt.  As the U.S. national debt climbs ever higher, and corporate greed (what the establishment likes to call ‘inflation’) remains part of the fabric of our lives, now entering year six… the national debt service load climbs higher, due to growing debt and the higher interest rates set by the Federal Reserve & markets in an effort to combat inflation.  The higher interest rate regime has proven troublesome not just for government but also for America’s financialized economy, that is private sector endeavors and industries that our beneficiaries of and reliant upon cheap debt & finance.

 

Towards the end of the Biden presidency, there was plenty of articles out on how the interest to service the national debt was climbing by approximately a trillion dollars every 100 days.  Hence, Musk & DOGE and the relentless attack upon the government, government employees, regulatory agencies, and government expense… hoping that Wall St and bond underwriters will come down on ten year Treasury yields.  So far, Wall St is not biting from the DOGE angle.

 

Rates are coming down since the inauguration, not due do DOGE, but rather, because markets are anticipating a full-blown trade war may tank the economy and send America into ‘technical recession.’  As the stock market tanks, as a result of doubts and a lack of consistency surrounding tariffs, there’s been a flight to quality & safe haven assets, like gold and Treasuries.  I say 'technical recession' because tens of millions of Americans are already living in an economic slowdown, on the edge of existence & precarity, a growing number homeless and in poverty.  The recession by the way could make things a hell of a lot worse for everyone, cut consumer spending, stave off CAPEX and investment in onshoring businesses back to America due to diminished demand … and may possibly send the nation’s debt higher, despite possible cuts to interest rates, prospective cuts to government spending, via DOGE, simply because the economic slowdown will drive down tax revenue and receipts.  Obviously, there’s a trade-off:  lower debt service loads driven by prospective FED rate cuts – as a result of a recession, versus lower tax revenue driven by lower GDP, income, jobs numbers, productivity, and recession (factor in potential tax cuts for the wealthy, pending in congress, and this idea that America could end up in a worse fiscal, debt, and deficits position… as a result of a recession…  is not a stretch, given the abject failure of trickle-down tax cuts).  The more severe the recession the less tax revenue coming in.  Caught in the middle are the American people, as well as, potentially, the citizens of nations targeted by Trump for tariffs & trade conflict.  It’s just one more way the elite and the oligarchy have screwed over American children, families, labor, and the public (those who aren’t privileged enough to be filthy rich), after 45 years of deregulation, globalization, industry consolidation & offshoring, laissez-faire, neoliberalism, privatization scams, supply-side and trickle-down economics.  In a world of many possible solutions to America’s growing poly-crisis, including but not limited to taxing the rich and great wealth… always look for the establishment and the obscenely wealthy to stick it to We, The People.

 

Other examples of the wealthy shafting essential Americans: one, higher interest rates as a way to address corporate greed driven, supply-side inflation, which drives up car loans, credit card service loads, and mortgages for American families; two, endless corporate consolidation and monopoly formation with the resulting monopsony power crushing small business owners and workers’ wages & benefits (there’s zero excuse for any of this and the extraordinary power monopolies & utilities hold over economies & governments); three, current administration efforts to suppress dollar strength and interest rates, which diminish the dollar’s purchasing power particularly on imported goods (i.e. making the affordability crisis even worse); and four, the pending wave of tariffs, which is a regressive tax upon the American people and will also make life considerably less affordable at a time many Americans are tapped out after five years of greedflation.  Et al.  There are, of course, alternative solutions to these challenges, like windfall taxation to contain corporate greed, crush all incentives for businesses to price gouge, and force businesses home; but per the usual, the oligarchy, Dem & GOP politicians, and Wall St. have targeted the disenfranchised, essential Americans for abuse and often very blunt & crude policies.  Policies which may not work.  And the end result, greater transfer of wealth to the rich, via pending tax cuts, while literally skinning the public alive.  Has DOGE recommending any cuts to: endless corporate welfare; eliminating the kleptocracy’s tax code that often allows wealthy corporations and individuals to dodge taxation altogether; eliminating privatization scams; or ending endless colonialism and for-profit wars that only serve bankers, big oil & gas/mining companies, defense contractors, multinationals, and the rich?  Not once, that I am aware of, has Musk and Trump suggested regulatory, spending, & taxation reforms to the oligarchy’s entitlements, that have played an outsized role in running up America’s national debt, including future Wall St bailouts – at a time Musk is pushing for greater deregulation.

 

Meanwhile, here in Canada, Mark Carney became Prime Minster of Canada.  Mr. Carney was sworn-in after a brief intra-party campaign, where Carney ran as an outsider and the voice of change.  What could the Liberal party be thinking?  Moreover, what could the Liberal party faithful have been thinking to place Trudeau’s primary economics and financial advisor, a private equity chairman, a central banker for the BOC & BOE, and Mike Bloomberg’s partner in running GFANZ into a position of power and running the Canadian federal government?  GFANZ, by the way, is a banker/private finance initiative, arguably, established to conquer the world through a spin on all too familiar debt slavery.  That is, while providing green finance to poor nations in exchange for said nation surrendering their sovereignty, adopting neoliberal reforms, accepting privatization of state assets, enacting endless austerity, subjecting themselves to corporate courts, and bowing to complete domination and control by Western banking concerns.  Whitney Webb’s piece... UN-Backed Banker Alliance Announces “Green” Plan to Transform the Global Financial System… and her website, Unlimited Hangout, are an outstanding place to read up on some of Mark Carney’s recent endeavors, after serving as head of the BOE and BOC.  Presently, Mark was chair of Brookfield Asset Management, with scandals already erupting from his tenure there: as Mark was involved in moving the head office of Brookfield from Toronto to New York; and allegations of Brookfield tax avoidance are also in the news.  

Here is man freighted in baggage, in addition to the obvious connection to the deeply unpopular Trudeau.  But apparently, not well-known baggage, as Liberal party voters do not appear to be caught up on the mercenary activities of central banks and private equity firms?  Yesterday’s coronation speech and press conference was a classic example of the imperiousness of a man, who has led a privileged existence for a great deal of his professional career, an authoritarian & corporate existence (where private sector leadership isn't often questioned).  In his press conference yesterday, Carney attempted to distance himself from Trudeau and shield himself from any criticism by admonishing against any ‘negativity’ (attempting to read Carney's mind,‘negativity’ being code for any democratic attempts to hold Mark accountable, preemptively block any merited criticism of the Liberal government, and head off any debate or ‘negativity’ on Liberal government performance, as a federal election draws near?).  What is that famous motto among Liberals: now, is not the time?  The West, of course, has been to this dance before… bankers like Draghi, Macron, Sunak as heads of state… all of them, predictably, keepers of austerity’s, globalization’s, and neoliberalism’s flame.  All of them booted from power, with Macron still clinging to office, despite his party’s loss in the last election.  And now comes Carney with his connections to central banks, massive global investments at Brookfield & considerable personal wealth & personal investments, American & fossil fuels investments, the private equity industry, and presumably, affiliation and some allegiance to great power and privilege… not to mention inherent conflicts of interest from a private equity firm he will likely return to someday (possibly, depending upon how short-lived his career as prime minster).  

 

Does Carney sound like the grand outsider and an agent of change to you?  

 

Note: Private equity and its partners in crime, central banks and easy money, are notorious for crushing companies, destroying jobs, thrashing opportunity, underfunding CAPEX and innovation, wielding chainsaws against customers, products, and services… all so that a handful of fat cats can make a fortune by looting company balance sheets.  Private equity are agents of M&A, corporate consolidation, monopoly & cartel, agents of extinguishing competition and markets (if for no other reason than many of their enterprises end up bankrupt, stripped down for parts, & ultimately, dead).  Private equity companies are known for opaque accounts, private accounting, a complete lack of regulatory oversight.  Not so ironically, Mr. Carney is said to want to introduce and maintain two books, two ledgers for the Canadian government.  Nice.  The primary vehicle by which private equity carries out acquisitions is via easy money and low bond yields, easy money flooded into markets by central banks.  Mark, apparently, after years of guidance & service, directly & indirectly, to Bay Street, The City in London, Team Oligarchy, and perhaps even less directly Wall St -- as a central banker -- went in through the revolving door to private equity’s Brookfield (not the first high profile player to take this or a similar career path and certainly not the last) … presumably, Carney earned the top slot at Brookfield for his connections, knowledge & expertise, services rendered to finance at large, and a deep knowledge of central banks, markets, rules, and regulations.  For the connected and powerful, Carney, during his tenure at the BOC and BOE, would have held the keys to the kingdom on advance information concerning rate moves and central bank policies, a vast treasure trove of invaluable information.  None of this is to suggest Carney skirted any laws, rules, or regulations in anyway, during his tenure at the BOC and BOE.

 

Please tell me again, does a Goldman Sachs banker -- with a net worth estimated by some at $100 million -- really seem like he’s going to overhaul the Canadian economy, attack globalization, address failed neoliberalism, cut the private sector tax of commodities speculation & monopoly, that has left one in four Canadians living in poverty?  Is Carney really going to rollover on the global financial elite, crush and break up Canadian monopolies, demand that offshored, globalized businesses return to Canadian shores to pay Canadian taxes and employ real Canadians… demand that the minimum wage be increased by the provinces, push & achieve greater funding for Medicare, restore well-paying jobs to Canada, at a time of Trumpian crisis?   Or will Mark, more than likely, protect banks, bankers, monopolies, oligarchs, privatization, profits, and continue to crush businesses’ greatest expense: labour?  Canadian labour, arguably, obliterated by Trudeau, our current Bank of Canada governor, Tiff Macklem, and presumably, by Trudeau’s primary advisor… the star of today’s essay, Mark Carney… as I wrote about last year under the title, Trudeau’s contempt for Canadians & Labour.  Seems that the Canadian elite/the Liberal party have been exploiting and flooding Canada with highly inexpensive immigrant labour to hold wages and benefits in check, send food and rent prices soaring (or at least provide the excuse for such price hikes), while ensuring existing Canadian labour had their legs cut out from under them in terms of wages and opportunity, due to a surfeit of new immigrant arrivals.

 

And I couldn’t help but think, as I watched Carney giving his victory speech yesterday: of all the Canadians and British citizens screwed over by central bank policies; the bankers, politicians, & men of finance bailed out and aided by central bank policies, while the general public receives no such direct benefit; the bourses boosted by easy money & central bank backstops, the stocks and assets classes of the rich levitated to ever more extreme valuations; the jobs and opportunity eradicated thanks to corporate consolidation, monopsony power, and private equity, again facilitated by central bank governors.  I couldn’t help but think of the Canadian dollar deliberately suppressed, currencies manipulated, purchasing power crushed due to central bank actions & easy money policies, the soaring greedflation now entering year six… the financialization of global economies, the transfer of wealth to a predatory few - via ubiquitous & financed bailouts, corporate welfare, financed tax cuts for the chosen ones.  Couldn’t help but think of the militarization & weaponization of finance and central bank activities, as an extension of foreign policy and war (and the Global South and Western citizens who all too often pay the price for targeted actions of central banks and their governors).  Perhaps it’s the way these individuals hold themselves, the air of confidence, the air of superiority, while failing to acknowledge that corporatism, neoliberalism, & ultra-accommodative monetary policy have been an unmitigated disaster for the West, the planet itself, and the vast majority of the West’s citizens. 

 

Moreover, will the powerful ever acknowledge the role central bank easy money and money printing played in creating a global oligarchy that is presently pushing & underwriting fascism, the capture of democracies, the desecration of free speech and attacking academic freedom on college campuses… will the powerful acknowledge the role central bank money and financial institutions have played in financing & funding colonialism, wars, a pandemic of financially engineered poverty, as the clearest manifestation of necro economics & politics and population control?  Acknowledge the debt slavey and indentured servitude that has accompanied global finance?  And more recently, green initiatives & finance as a way for banks to gain hegemonic control over poorer nations & nature itself, and the subjugation, ultimately, aimed at all peoples.  As a result of greed.  

 

As a direct & indirect result of the actions & policies of bankers and private equity mavens, not unlike Mark Carney, now Prime Minster of Canada.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

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