Trump and DOGE haven’t been able to curtail Federal spending … yet.
There IS NO Constitutional Crisis with DOGE. The President is fully within his rights to manage the Executive Branch and its agencies. Democrats just don’t like their piggie bank (aka. USAID) being audited.
Example: Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months. Great if this was the 1950s!
The US deficit for the first four months of fiscal Year 2025 is $838 billion, up $306 billion. Adjusted, the increase is more like $157 billion to $225 billion.
The federal budget deficit totaled $838 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That amount is $306 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year. Revenues were $11 billion (or 1 percent) higher, and outlays were $317 billion (or 15 percent) higher.
The change in the deficit was influenced by the timing of outlays and revenues, which decreased the deficit during the first four months of fiscal year 2024 but increased it during the same period this fiscal year. Outlays in October 2023 were reduced by shifts in the timing of payments that were due on October 1, 2023, a Sunday. (The payments were made that September.) Outlays in the first four months of 2025 rose, on net, because payments due on February 1, 2025, a Saturday, were made in January. If not for those shifts, the deficit so far this fiscal year would have been $750 billion, or $146 billion more than the shortfall at this point last year. Part of the deficit increase in 2025 also arises from the postponement of some tax deadlines from 2023 to 2024 (described below), which boosted receipts in 2024.
Outlays in the first four months of fiscal year 2025 were $2.4 trillion, CBO estimates, $317 billion more than during the same period last year. If not for the timing shifts discussed above, outlays so far in fiscal year 2025 would have been $157 billion (or 7 percent) greater than outlays during the same four months in fiscal year 2024. The discussion below reflects adjustments to exclude the effects of those timing shifts.
Maxine Waters is an unhappy girl along with most Democrats about Trump and Musk looking into USAID.
Oh we’ve got trouble in (Potomac) river city … with a capital P and that rhymes with D and that stands for DOGE. But can DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency
In 2025, $9.2 TRILLION of US debt will either mature or need to be refinanced. The US now holds $36.2 trillion worth of government debt, meaning 25.4% of the total is set to mature.
The total debt owed by the free-spending Federal government stands at $36+ trillion and growing. The DOGE clock stands at $64 billion and hopefully keeps growing.
As expected, the Trump Administration levied tariffs against Canada, Mexico, China, etc. The short-term result? Gold is stable, Bitcoin fell. Or as Gene Autry sang, “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)”.
The stock market? Down -1.53%.
And then we have the doom porn about Mexico’s “impending” collapse. The Peso is declining, and Senator Chuck Schumer is getting hysterical about Mexican exports to the USA for Super Bowl Sunday. He incorrectly claimed that most beer is imported from Mexico and avacados for guacamole. Avacados are also grown in the USA, Peru, etc.
Bear in mind that Mexico is like California where the Left holds a supermajority. Hence, Mexico employs destructive economic policies (it could only be worse if California Governor Gavin Newsom was President of Mexico. But Mexico’s impending collapse is years in the making and Trump’s tariffs were only the last nudge over the cliff. Mexico COULD try to get control over the drug and human trafficking cartels, stop illegal immigration and stop the flow of fentanyl.
Nobel prize winner in economics, Gene Fama, said recently that cryptocurrencies will eventually be worthless. Well Gene, not if The Federal Reserve and other central banks keep printing money.
Global M2 money supply is at $97T and increasing. And with the increase in global M2, bitcoin and other cryptos are likely to keep rising.
On the US side, M2 Money has increased 12.7% under reckless spending Joe Biden while Bitcoin has increased 249%.
Retail investor holdings have declined while large investor holdings as Bitcoin increases in price.
On a different note, the Philadelphia Eagles will be playing the Kansas City Swifties next Sunday.
The Federal Reserve (aka, The Green Slime) represents the Spirit of Washington DC. A glutenous pig spending trillions it doesn’t have on insane policies. And The Fed ends up funding the insane spending and racking up massive losses.
Trump is inheriting a Federal Reserve w/ not only unprecedented losses of $218 billion, but it’s still losing money; the Fed won’t send the Treasury a dime for the entirety of Trump’s term; that’s never happened since the inception of the Fed – another challenge for Trump.
No, Freddie Mac is not a new cheeseburger from McDonald’s. Freddie Mac is a government sponsored enterprised (GSE) that purchases residential mortgages from lenders and assists in the bundling of mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS). They also monitor home prices.
Freddie Mac reported that its “National” Home Price Index (FMHPI) increased 0.54% month-over-month on a seasonally adjusted (SA) basis in December. On a year-over-year basis, the National FMHPI was up 4.0% in December, up from up 3.9% YoY in November. The YoY increase peaked at 19.0% in July 2021, and for this cycle, bottomed at up 0.9% YoY in May 2023.
But let’s look at the dark side of home prices, which is price declines. Led by Communist enclaved Austin Texas, down -12.7% from peak. The next six cities are all in Florida.
This is the lowest December print since records began (in 2000).
Let’s see if Trump can loosen up regulations on mortgage lending and housing. Hopefully, the new HUD Secretary (Scott Turner) will be an upgrade over DofHealth’s Rachel Levine.
Wow. Money printing by The Federal Reserve went will after the Covid outbreak in early 2020. So did Federal spending. Unfortunately, politicians are addicted to Federal spending. And Senators like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are trying to obstruct any spending cuts by Trump and his DOGE.
Well, M1 Money printing is UP 365% since Covid while M2 Money printing is UP 40%.
Federal current expenditures are up 45% since the Covid outbreak. But were never returned to normal spending levels.
New York senator Chuck Schumer is opposed to Trump’s efforts to cut Federal spending. Is Senator Schumer REALLY the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party’s political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th-century New York City and State?
One reason that US home prices remain high (and unaffordable for many) is The Federal Reserve (aka, The Green Slime). Former Fed Chair (and Biden’s Treasury Secretary is no Luciana Paluzzi, the Italian beauty from the James Bond film Thunderball. Yellen is just a far-left economic hack.
Look at the Case-Shiller national home price index compared with The Fed funds target rate.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 3.8% annual return for November, up from a 3.6% annual gain in the previous month. The 10-City Composite saw an annual increase of 4.9%, recording the same annual increase in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a year-over-year increase of 4.3%, up from a 4.2% increase in the previous month. New York again reported the highest annual gain among the 20 cities with a 7.3% increase in November, followed by Chicago and Washington with annual increases of 6.2% and 5.9%, respectively. Tampa posted the lowest return, falling 0.4%.
The pre-seasonally adjusted U.S. National, 20-City, and 10-City Composite Indices’ upward trends continued to reverse in November, with a -0.1% drop for the national index, while the 20-City Composite saw a -0.1% decline and the 10-City Composite was unchanged.
While the Fed Funds target rate gyrates, The Fed’s balance sheet remains high.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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