The Urgent Need For D.O.G.E.! $4.7 Trillion In Virtually Untraceable Treasury Payments

Janet Yelllen, the former Federal Reserve Chair and Treasury Secretary under clueless Joe Biden was a disaster in every respect. As Fed Chair, she was noteworthy for her clinging to low rates for too long. And as Treasury Secretary, she is noteworthy for her gross fiscal mismanagement (look at the deficit and debt crisis!). Now Zero Hedge has this disastrous report of $4.7 TRILLION in virtuallly untraceable Treasury payments.

The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are “almost impossible” to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money.

With a debt load of $36.5 trillion and D.O.G.E. clock at $109 million and growing. Not to mention the $227 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Mind you, it’s not as if such a federal tracking system wasn’t already in place — it simply went casually unused for all sorts of payouts adding up to an almost unfathomable $4.7 trillion. Without Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) identification codes associated with those payouts, there’s little hope in figuring out where all that money went.

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those “optional” days are over. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE added.

Musk celebrated the move. “Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!” he tweeted. “This was a combined effort of DOGE, USTreasury and FederalReserve. Nice work by all.”

DOGE’s scrutiny of various government agencies is eliciting high-pitched shrieks from nearly every leftist in America, from establishment politicians who don’t want the curtain that hides their hijinks and grifting torn down, to your liberal sister-in-law who thinks the government has an endless supply of money and that it spends it all virtuously.

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back on portrayals of DOGE employees as reckless rogues. “These are highly trained professionals,” he told Bloomberg. “This is not some roving band going around doing things. This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings.”

In the wake of the latest revelation that makes normal people glad that DOGE teams are scouring the federal government, Democrats desperately tried to find a way to make it sound bad that DOGE exposed trillions in untraceable payouts and promptly instituted tighter accounting discipline.

Meanwhile, leftists have also been foaming at the mouth over news that DOGE staffers are looking into the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) books, as if they were going to start rerouting funds to Tesla. Considering Social Security is careening toward mandatory benefit cuts as soon as 2033, everyone should welcome a team of financial professionals making sure the system isn’t being drained by improper payments.

Of course, that appears to be exactly what’s been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of “the biggest fraud in history,” as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old.

Bent on derailing DOGE, Democrats have sued to prevent the organization from accessing federal data associated with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Transportation, Labor and Commerce departments. On Monday, the federal judge handling the request for a restraining order expressed skepticism over Democrats’ challenge, noting that their “evidence” was largely media speculation about potential harms springing from DOGE’s activities: “The courts can’t act based on media reports. We can’t do that.“

A ruling is expected Tuesday. Here’s looking forward to DOGE proceeding to uncover a relentless string of scandals for months and months to come.

Has Bitcoin Peaked Vs Gold? Mike McGlone Thinks So (Gold Is Winning!!)

Mike McGlone has an interesting perspective on Bitcoin versus Gold.

Gold $3,000, Bitcoin $70,000?

Is there good reason for reversion lower? My bias is leaning that way, especially if the US hashtag#stockmarket reverses some of last year’s almost $12 trillion advance, about 40% of GDP.

Bitcoin approaching $150,000 in 2025 might suggest another $12+ trillion year of US stockmarket wealth creation, inflation and Fed tightening. Heading toward $50,000 could coincide with some typical deflation following the inflation and put the Fed at ease. Up about 10% since Bitcoin first closed above $100,000, gold may sniffing out a bit of risk-asset normalization. So it appears gold is winning.

Full disclosure: I own both. Plus silver. And a house.

US Industrial Production Surges Most Since Oct 2022 (Capacity Utilization Rose To 77.8%, But Still Below The Critical 80% Barrier)

Silver Thread and Golden Needles under Trump? Yes, while under Biden/Harris we had lead thread and pyrite needles (governmrnt directed investment).

In January, US Industrial Production rose 2.00% YoY, the strongest growth rate since Oct 2022.

Capacity Utilization accelerated again in January (2nd straight month), rejecting the recessionary red flags. But CAPUTE remains below the critcal measure of 80.

Biden/Harris’ economic policies were no good.

How Low Can Mortgage Rates Go? Mortgage Rates Decline To Just Under 7% As Yield Curve Falls

How low can mortgage rates go?‘

According to National Mortgage News, the 30-Year Fixed mortgage rates dropped to 6.930%, a decline of 0.063%.

The conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate is hovering just below 7%.

Note that on the left=hand side of the above chart that the US Treasury yield curve slope (green dashed line) hit its local high as Joe Biden became President, then began to decline as the insane spending ensued. Mortgage rates started to rise in 2022 as the yield curve slope declined.

But will the yield curve continue to fall along with mortgage rates? I hope not, because it would require to Biden’s insane spending.

Speakig of killers, DNA tests revealed that Aaron Kosminski, a Polishbarber was the murderer known as Jack The Ripper. Although Janet Yellen was my leading suspect.

January Inflation Comes In Hot, Hot, Hot! CPI Increases To 3% YoY As Federal Spending Continues

Inflation Picks Up Speed, Rising to 3% in January. It’s hot, hot, hot!

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!

Is The Mortgage Market Back?Mortgage Refinance Applications Increased in Weekly Survey (+10 Percent) While Purchase Applications Increased (+4 Percent)

The mortgage market is back in town!

Mortgage applications increased 2.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 7, 2025.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 6 percent compared with the previous week. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 4 percent compared with the previous week and was 2 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent from one week earlier.

The Refinance Index increased 10 percent from the previous week and was 33 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

Prepays are down significantly since 2021 which marks the beginning of The Fed starting to raise rates.

Aggregate prepayments for agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) fell 12% in January, with housing seasonals declining and mortgage rates lingering near 7%. MBS turnover speeds have bounced back considerably relative to 2023 lows, though high rates may be starting to take a toll. Even at current elevated rates, GNMA streamline refinancings are picking up as loans issued in spring of 2024 pass out of the refi lockout period.

Why Doge? Federal Deficit Is Up $306 Billion Compared to Same Period Last Year (Long-run Deficits Are Grim!)

When the (fiscal) music’s over. For corrupt politicians, that is!

Mike Shedlock (aka, Mish) had a great article on the fiscal dumpster fire facing the Trump Administration. After you get a load of the long-run deficits and debt load, you can understand why Trump wants to cut Federal waste (Doge).

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.

The long-run deficits are grim, according to the CBO.

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.

Welcome to a new world under Trump.

Economic Heartbreaker! Over 1 Million Foreign-Born Workers Found A Job In January But Virtually No Native Borns

It’s no fun paying for illegal aliens. And under Biden/Harris, there are a lot of them in the USA. And they have been taking American jobs too.

Most of the job gains in the past few years, and especially 2024, were a mirage, and following the dramatic August 2024 preliminary data revision which vaporized 818K jobs (which had never existed in the first place.

Over 1 Mmillion foreign-born workers found a job in January … but virtually no native borns.

And in the longer view, you can see the Biden/Harris effect after 2021.

Biden/Harris were economic heartbreakers. For the middle class, not for the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders class who made out like bandits under Biden’s corrupt leadership.

Big pharma owns Bernie, Liz, Chuckie, Patty Murray, Warnock and Wyden.

Trouble In (Potomac) River City! $9.2 Trillion In US Debt Needs To Be Refinanced In 2025 (DOGE Making A Dent In US Debt Owed)

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.

Here is Elon Musk warning the members of Congress and the bloated Federal bureaucracy of the wasteful spending by the Feral government.

4 Of USA’s Most Affordable Cities Are In Ohio (Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus), None In California (Ohio Requires 10 Workdays To Afford Monthly Mortgage Payment)

No, its not 1903. Its 2025 and Dayton Ohio is the third most affordable city in the USA.

Ohio, the cradle of American Presidents (McKinley, Grant, Taft, Benjamin Harrison, Hayes, Garfield, Harding), is also home to 4 of the most affordable cities in the USA, according to The Virtual Capitalist.