The Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be headed up by billionaire Elon Musk and millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy along with oversight committees in both the House and the Senate. Their goal is to reduce government waste by a huge amount and they just posted something on 𝕏 that should silence anyone critical of the department’s formation.

In FY2023, the U.S. Government spent $6.16. trillion while only bringing in $4.47 trillion.

The last budget surplus was in 2001.

This trend must be reversed, and we must balance the budget.

In FY2023, the U.S. Government spent $6.16. trillion while only bringing in $4.47 trillion.

The last budget surplus was in 2001.

This trend must be reversed, and we must balance the budget. pic.twitter.com/mzLaMTZQxA

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) November 23, 2024

The post has been seen by 6.5 million people so far thanks in large part to Musk himself reposting it with an ominous message:

America is currently headed for bankruptcy super fast

America is currently headed for bankruptcy super fast https://t.co/Tm6JFJ6mef

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2024

Balancing the budget would be impossible unless massive cuts are made. Some, including me, believe the federal government could be cut by over 50% and nobody other than the government employees themselves would notice a difference in their day-to-day lives. That may seem like overkill, but I would actually argue we could cut government size by over 90% with some austere maneuvers.

The Trump administration won’t come anywhere close to those levels of cuts, but we should expect huge reductions in government spending if DOGE is allowed to do what they’ve promised.

If the federal government responds this poorly to a hurricane, what is going to happen when we are facing a major long-term emergency that affects the entire nation?  As I have been consistently warning for years, you should not be counting on the government to come riding in on a white horse to rescue you when global events hit the fan.  Unfortunately, global events may hit the fan a lot sooner than most people think.

Politico spoke to a man named Mike Toomey in North Carolina that desperately needs help after floodwaters destroyed his home.  When Toomey called FEMA last week, nobody answered his call.  Instead, he got a recording that informed him that he was 675th in line to be helped…

Mike Toomey called a federal helpline last week to get disaster aid after Hurricane Helene flooded his home in western North Carolina.

He got a recording instead.

“They said I was 675th in line,” Toomey, a painter in a spattered shirt, recalled as he waited outside a federal recovery center in Hendersonville.

Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina over a month ago. And people like Toomey still can’t get help from FEMA even though they are reaching out.

In fact, Politico says that “hundreds of thousands of people” have not been able to get the assistance from the government that they are hoping for…

Hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to recover from disasters nationwide have been unable to get through to federal call centers or have stayed on hold for excessive periods of time in the weeks since Helene barreled into southern Appalachia last month.

Overwhelmed by Helene and Hurricane Milton, the centers failed to answer nearly half of the incoming phone calls over the course of one week recently. For the calls that were answered, it took more than an hour for federal workers to pick up, on average.

This is the worst federal response to a major natural disaster that I have ever seen.

I honestly don’t know how to explain it.

At one time, most federal agencies exhibited at least a minimal level of competence, but those days appear to be long gone.

In addition to not getting hundreds of thousands of people the help that they desperately need, it is also being reported that hundreds of roads are still closed in North Carolina…

Hundreds of roads in North Carolina remain closed or damaged as Americans try to recover in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Helene, according to the New York Times.

Many of the roads have been washed away or severely damaged by the floodwaters that stranded people in remote areas of the state, the newspaper reported on Saturday.

Some of the roadways and portions of major highways have been reopened, the Times reported. “But as of early Saturday, there were just over 700 incident reports noting a portion of road still listed as closed, impassable or otherwise affected by the storm.”

What in the world is taking them so long?

You would think that opening up the roads would be one of the top priorities.

But at this point we are being told that it could take “months” to even get Interstate 40 back to full operation…

Bringing Interstate 40, as well as many other highways and roads, back to full capacity is likely to take months, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars, though officials cautioned it was too early to make formal estimates.

We used to be a country that worked harder than anyone else.

Now we are being run by a bunch of bureaucrats that like to stand around and talk instead of taking action.

After everything that we have witnessed in North Carolina, there should be no doubt about what will happen when a truly apocalyptic national emergency comes along. And that may occur a lot sooner than most people think, because war is here.

In the Middle East, the Iranians are preparing for a major attack against Israel…

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has instructed his forces to prepare a direct attack against Israel after deeming the Jewish nation’s retaliatory strike last week too big to ignore, according to a new report.

While Khamenei attempted to downplay to the public the extent of Israel’s attack on Tehran’s military facilities, privately, he greenlit plans for a counterattack in a meeting with his Supreme National Security Council, three Iranian officials told The New York Times.

The ayatollah allegedly made his decision on Monday after reviewing the damage report from his military officials, which detailed the strikes across Tehran’s missile production plants and defense systems.

Israel has publicly warned that it will hit back even harder than last time if Iran attacks, and the Biden administration has informed Iran that it will not be able to restrain Israel…

“We told the Iranians: We won’t be able to hold Israel back, and we won’t be able to make sure that the next attack will be calibrated and targeted as the previous one,” a U.S. official said.

It appears that this war in the Middle East could soon take an apocalyptic turn, and that would have major implications for the entire planet.

Meanwhile, those living in the EU have been instructed to “stockpile emergency supplies” in case a direct conflict with Russia breaks out…

People living in the European Union should stockpile emergency supplies in the event of war breaking out or another major emergency, a new report has advised.

The report on Europe’s civilian and military preparedness, published on Wednesday, was written by former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in his capacity as Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission.

The report notes that the EU was not prepared for either the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and that it needs to move “from reaction to proactive preparedness.”

As I warned my core supporters on Friday, we are closer to a nuclear war with Russia than we have ever been before.

If missiles start falling on U.S. soil, there will be absolutely no help from the federal government.

You will be on your own.

Speaking of nuclear conflict, North Korea just tested a new ICBM that has enough range to easily reach the continental United States…

Pyongyang officials have since identified the massive rocket, which they dub “the world’s strongest strategic missile,” as a new Hwasong-19 ICBM. Given that nuclear warhead-capable ICBMs can reach several thousands of miles away, such a missile would have the capability of hitting the continental United States. And the timing has not been lost on anyone, as it was a mere days before the US presidential election.

“It can be stored and moved anywhere, allowing for excellent mobility, stealth and survivability,” said Kim of the rocket. State media has subsequently released carefully edited, high quality footage of the ‘perfected’ missile launch, which has been widely circulating on Friday:

2024 has been a year of war, but in 2025 we are going to see things go to an entirely new level.

If you are blindly trusting that our government officials have everything under control, you are not being wise because they don’t.

When war comes to U.S. soil, what are you going to do?

Are you going to be counting on the federal government to bring you food and supplies and everything else that you need?

When things go sideways, the federal government is not going to be there for you. At this point, they can’t even take care of the areas of the country there were devastated by Hurricane Helene.

There are many that are trying to sound the alarm about what is coming, but most of the population is simply not listening.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Socialism rejects human action and economic calculation and sells a false image of a government that can create wealth at will by issuing more units of fiat currency. Obviously, when inflation arrives, the socialist government will use its two favorite tools: propaganda and repression. Propaganda, which accuses stores and businesses of driving up prices, and repression, which occurs when social unrest intensifies and citizens legitimately hold governments accountable for scarcity and high prices, are the two main strategies.

If you want lower prices, you need to give less economic power to the government, not more. Only free markets, competition, and open economies help decrease consumer prices. Many readers might think that we currently have a free market with competitive and open economies, but the reality is that we live in increasingly intervened and overregulated nations where central banks and governments work to perpetuate unsustainable public deficits and debt. Therefore, they continue to print more money, leading many to question why it is getting harder for families to make ends meet, buy a home, or for small businesses to prosper. The government is slowly eating away the currency it issues. They call it “social use of money.”

What is “social use of money”? In essence, it means abandoning one of the main characteristics of money, the reserve of value, to give the government preferential access to credit to finance its commitments. Therefore, the state can announce larger entitlement programs and increase the size of the public sector relative to the economy, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The state issues more currency, which makes people’s money less valuable. Citizens become more dependent on the state, and they will demand more subsidies paid in the currency the state issues. It is, in essence, a process of control through debt and currency depreciation.

When governments and central banks talk about price stability, it means a two percent annual depreciation of the currency. Aggregate prices rising an average of two percent is hardly price stability because it is measured by the consumer price index, which is a carefully crafted basket of goods and services weighted by the same people who print the money. That is why governments love CPI as a measure of inflation. It fails to fully reflect the erosion of the currency’s purchasing power. This is why the CPI’s basket calculation fluctuates so frequently. Even if it accurately measures, it will underestimate the rise in prices of non-replaceable goods and services by adding them to a basket of things we consume maybe once or twice a year at best. When you put together shelter, food, health, and energy with technology and entertainment, there will always be distortions.

Thus, governments and central banks are never going to defend price stability. If aggregate prices fell, competition soared, and citizens saw their real wages rise and their deposit savings increase in real value, their jobs would disappear.

When a central bank like the Fed cuts rates and increases the money supply after an accumulated 20.4% inflation in four years, it is not defending price stability; it is defending price increases. This strategy serves to conceal the government’s financial insolvency. A currency with a declining value.

Governments are the ones that create inflation by spending a currency that is constantly losing purchasing power because the state issues more than what the private sector demands. No corporation or allegedly evil oil producer can make aggregate prices rise and continue increasing annually at a lower pace. Only the one that prints the money, and central banks don’t print money because they want to; they increase the money supply to absorb rising public deficit spending.

Inflation is a hidden tax, a slow process of nationalization of the economy, and the perfect way to increase taxes without angering voters and blaming private businesses in the meantime. The consumer will likely blame the store or business for higher prices, not the issuer of a currency that loses purchasing power.

Why would governments want higher prices? Because it gives them more power. Destroying the currency they issue is a perfect form of control. That is why they need more debt and higher taxes. High taxes are not a tool to reduce debt, but rather to justify rising public indebtedness.

You may have read numerous times that the government has unlimited borrowing power and can manage inflation to allow you to live comfortably. It is false. The government cannot issue all the debt it wants. It has an inflationary, economic, and fiscal limit.

Inflation is a warning sign of declining currency confidence and a loss of purchasing power. The economic limit is evidenced by lower growth, lower employment, weaker real wages, secular stagnation, and declining foreign demand for public debt.

The fiscal limit is evidenced by soaring interest expenses even with low rates, weaker receipts every time they hike taxes, and citizens and businesses leaving the country to more friendly tax systems, all of which add to the poor or negative multiplier effect of government spending.

If you want lower prices, you should give less economic power to governments, not more.

A government that tells you it will borrow $2 trillion per annum in a growth and record receipt economy and will continue to increase debt and borrow well into 2033 with the most optimistic assumptions of GDP and receipt is telling you it will make you poorer.

When a politician promises that he or she will cut prices, they are always lying. A weaker currency is a tool to increase government power in the economy. By the time you find out, it may be too late.

Money is credit, and government debt is fiat currency. Currency depreciation is inflation, and inflation is equivalent to an implicit default. No interventionist government or central bank wants lower prices because inflation allows the government to increase its power while slowly breaching its monetary commitments.