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Recent Posts
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Science, Culture, & Humanities / Re: Rod Laver
« Last post by DougMacG on Today at 09:49:10 PM »Yes, Lefty Rod Laver won two pure Grand Slams. He won all 4 majors in the same year, twice, no one else has ever done that once (in singles)..
I had a chance to meet some legends of the game when World Team Tennis came to our town (some 50 year ago) and I was stringing racquets for players on our team including Bob Hewitt (who won 15 Grand Slam doubles titles) and Australian Owen Davidson who had just won the US Open Doubles with John Newcombe and won Wimbledon in mixed doubles that year playing with Billie Jean King. He introduced me to both anewcombe and King when they came to town. Both were former number one in the world in both singles and doubles. Exciting for a kid learning the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Davidson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newcombe
I had a chance to meet some legends of the game when World Team Tennis came to our town (some 50 year ago) and I was stringing racquets for players on our team including Bob Hewitt (who won 15 Grand Slam doubles titles) and Australian Owen Davidson who had just won the US Open Doubles with John Newcombe and won Wimbledon in mixed doubles that year playing with Billie Jean King. He introduced me to both anewcombe and King when they came to town. Both were former number one in the world in both singles and doubles. Exciting for a kid learning the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Davidson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newcombe
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Politics & Religion / China’s Bond Market Play
« Last post by Body-by-Guinness on Today at 09:43:22 PM »My monetary policy game isn’t deep enough to assess the scenario shown below, but it sounds like the type of dilemma China likes to create, and outcomes that bear watching:
The story around China issuing USD-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia is generating an enormous amount of buzz in China, and could potentially be immensely important.
I strongly suspect it's a message to the upcoming Trump administration.
Let me explain what seems to be going on.
On the face of it, it's not a major story: China issued $2 billion in USD-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia, which means that investors lent USD to the Chinese government that they promised to pay back. That's what a bond is. So far, relatively boring.
The first somewhat interesting aspect of it is that the bonds were oversubscribed by almost 20x (meaning $40+ billion in demand for $2 billion worth of bonds), which is far more demand than usual for USD sovereign bonds. Typically US Treasury auctions see oversubscription rate between 2x to 3x so there obviously seems to be very strong market appeal for China's dollar-denominated debt.
The second interesting aspect is that the interest rate on the bonds was remarkably close to US Treasury rates (just 1-3 basis points higher, i.e. 0.01-0.03%), which means that China is now able to borrow money - in US dollars (!) - at virtually the same rate as the US government itself. That's the case for no other country in the world. As a benchmark, countries with the highest credit ratings (AAA) typically pay at least 10-20 basis points over US Treasuries in the rare instances when they issue USD bonds.
The third interesting aspect is the venue itself for this bond sale: Saudi Arabia. This is unusual since sovereign bonds are typically issued in major financial centers, not in Riyadh. The choice of Saudi Arabia and the fact that the Saudis agreed to this is particularly significant given its historical role in the global dollar system, the so-called 'petrodollar' system which I don't need to explain... By issuing dollar bonds in Saudi Arabia that compete directly with US Treasuries, and getting essentially the same interest rate, China is demonstrating it can operate as an alternative manager of dollar liquidity right in the heart of the petrodollar system. For Saudi Arabia, which holds hundreds of billions in dollar reserves, this creates a new option for investing their dollars: they can invest it with the Chinese government instead of the US government.
Ok, that's all interesting but still not the main reason why Chinese social media is abuzz. The reason why is because they postulate that this is trial round by China to demonstrate to the US that they can effectively use their own currency against them, with potentially dramatic consequences.
How?
First of all, think it through, imagine if China scales this up and instead of issuing $2 billion worth of bonds, they start issuing 10s or 100s of billions worth of it.
What this means for the US is that China would effectively be competing with the US Treasury in the global dollar market. Instead of countries like Saudi Arabia automatically recycling their dollars into US Treasury bonds, they could put them into Chinese dollar bonds that pay the same rate.
This would create a parallel dollar system where China, not the US, controls part of the flow of dollars. The US would still print the dollars, but China would increasingly manage where they go. Imagine that...
Another critical aspect is that every dollar that goes into Chinese bonds instead of US Treasuries is one less dollar helping to finance US government spending. At a time when the US is running massive deficits and needs to constantly sell Treasury bonds to fund itself, having China emerge as a competing dollar bond issuer that can match Treasury rates could pose immense financing problems for the US government. It could effectively end the US's so-called “exorbitant privilege”.
But wait, you might ask yourself, what's the point of China having so many dollars? Don't they transfer the problem to themselves: they too need to find a place to invest all these dollars, don't they?
You'd be right, the last thing China needs is more US dollars: in 2023 it ran a US dollar trade surplus of $823.2 billion, and for 2024, it's expected to be $940 billion. China is already absolutely awash with dollars.
But that's where the beauty of the Belt & Road Initiative comes in. Out of the 193 countries in the world, 152 of these countries are part of the BRI. And a very common characteristic many of these countries have is: they owe debt in USD, to the US government or other Western lenders.
This is where China's strategy could become truly clever. China could use its US dollars to help Belt & Road countries pay off their dollar debts to Western lenders. But here's the key: in exchange for helping these countries clear their dollar debts, China could arrange to be repaid in yuan, or in strategic resources, or through other bilateral arrangements.
This would create a triple win for China: they get rid of their excess dollars, they help their partner countries escape dollar dependency, and they deepen these countries' economic integration with China instead of the US.
For BRI countries, this is attractive because they can escape the trap of dollar-denominated debt (and the threat of US financial sanctions) and get likely better conditions with China, which will help their development.
In effect this would China placing itself as an intermediary at the heart of the dollar system, where the dollars still eventually make their way back to the US - just through a path that builds Chinese rather than American influence and progressively undermines the US's ability to finance itself (with all the consequences this has on inflation, etc.).
At this stage you probably tell yourself "come on, there's no way China can do that, the US government surely has tools at its disposal to prevent this stuff". And the answer, surprisingly, is that there is actually little the U.S. can do that doesn't undermine them in some shape or form.
The most obvious response would be to threaten sanctions against countries - like Saudi Arabia - or institutions that buy Chinese dollar bonds. But this would further demonstrate that dollar assets aren't actually safe from US political interference, further encouraging countries to diversify, compounding the problem. The dollar's strength partly comes from network effects - everyone uses it because everyone else uses it - but as we've seen with Russia sanctions create a coordinating moment for countries to move away together, weakening these network effects.
Another option would be for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to make US Treasuries more attractive. But this would be self-defeating: it would increase the US government's own borrowing costs at a time when they're already struggling with massive deficits, potentially triggering a recession. And China, getting similar rates as the US, could simply match any rate increase.
The US could also go for the "nuclear option" of restricting China's ability to clear dollar transactions but this would effectively immediately fragment the global financial system, undermining the dollar's role as the global reserve currency - exactly what the US wants to avoid. And with China being the most important trading partner of the immense majority of the world's countries, nothing is less sure that the U.S. would win at this game...
In short this seems to be like some sort of Tai Chi 'four ounces moving a thousand pounds' (四兩撥千斤) move by China, using minimal force to redirect the dollar's strength in a way that benefits China.
Like I wrote at the beginning however, at this stage this is most likely just a message by China to the upcoming Trump administration: "we can do this so maybe think very carefully about all the nasty things you have in mind for us..." The beauty of this move is how strategically elegant it is: it costs China almost nothing to demonstrate, but forces Washington to contemplate some very uncomfortable possibilities.
https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1859446480198828360?s=61
The story around China issuing USD-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia is generating an enormous amount of buzz in China, and could potentially be immensely important.
I strongly suspect it's a message to the upcoming Trump administration.
Let me explain what seems to be going on.
On the face of it, it's not a major story: China issued $2 billion in USD-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia, which means that investors lent USD to the Chinese government that they promised to pay back. That's what a bond is. So far, relatively boring.
The first somewhat interesting aspect of it is that the bonds were oversubscribed by almost 20x (meaning $40+ billion in demand for $2 billion worth of bonds), which is far more demand than usual for USD sovereign bonds. Typically US Treasury auctions see oversubscription rate between 2x to 3x so there obviously seems to be very strong market appeal for China's dollar-denominated debt.
The second interesting aspect is that the interest rate on the bonds was remarkably close to US Treasury rates (just 1-3 basis points higher, i.e. 0.01-0.03%), which means that China is now able to borrow money - in US dollars (!) - at virtually the same rate as the US government itself. That's the case for no other country in the world. As a benchmark, countries with the highest credit ratings (AAA) typically pay at least 10-20 basis points over US Treasuries in the rare instances when they issue USD bonds.
The third interesting aspect is the venue itself for this bond sale: Saudi Arabia. This is unusual since sovereign bonds are typically issued in major financial centers, not in Riyadh. The choice of Saudi Arabia and the fact that the Saudis agreed to this is particularly significant given its historical role in the global dollar system, the so-called 'petrodollar' system which I don't need to explain... By issuing dollar bonds in Saudi Arabia that compete directly with US Treasuries, and getting essentially the same interest rate, China is demonstrating it can operate as an alternative manager of dollar liquidity right in the heart of the petrodollar system. For Saudi Arabia, which holds hundreds of billions in dollar reserves, this creates a new option for investing their dollars: they can invest it with the Chinese government instead of the US government.
Ok, that's all interesting but still not the main reason why Chinese social media is abuzz. The reason why is because they postulate that this is trial round by China to demonstrate to the US that they can effectively use their own currency against them, with potentially dramatic consequences.
How?
First of all, think it through, imagine if China scales this up and instead of issuing $2 billion worth of bonds, they start issuing 10s or 100s of billions worth of it.
What this means for the US is that China would effectively be competing with the US Treasury in the global dollar market. Instead of countries like Saudi Arabia automatically recycling their dollars into US Treasury bonds, they could put them into Chinese dollar bonds that pay the same rate.
This would create a parallel dollar system where China, not the US, controls part of the flow of dollars. The US would still print the dollars, but China would increasingly manage where they go. Imagine that...
Another critical aspect is that every dollar that goes into Chinese bonds instead of US Treasuries is one less dollar helping to finance US government spending. At a time when the US is running massive deficits and needs to constantly sell Treasury bonds to fund itself, having China emerge as a competing dollar bond issuer that can match Treasury rates could pose immense financing problems for the US government. It could effectively end the US's so-called “exorbitant privilege”.
But wait, you might ask yourself, what's the point of China having so many dollars? Don't they transfer the problem to themselves: they too need to find a place to invest all these dollars, don't they?
You'd be right, the last thing China needs is more US dollars: in 2023 it ran a US dollar trade surplus of $823.2 billion, and for 2024, it's expected to be $940 billion. China is already absolutely awash with dollars.
But that's where the beauty of the Belt & Road Initiative comes in. Out of the 193 countries in the world, 152 of these countries are part of the BRI. And a very common characteristic many of these countries have is: they owe debt in USD, to the US government or other Western lenders.
This is where China's strategy could become truly clever. China could use its US dollars to help Belt & Road countries pay off their dollar debts to Western lenders. But here's the key: in exchange for helping these countries clear their dollar debts, China could arrange to be repaid in yuan, or in strategic resources, or through other bilateral arrangements.
This would create a triple win for China: they get rid of their excess dollars, they help their partner countries escape dollar dependency, and they deepen these countries' economic integration with China instead of the US.
For BRI countries, this is attractive because they can escape the trap of dollar-denominated debt (and the threat of US financial sanctions) and get likely better conditions with China, which will help their development.
In effect this would China placing itself as an intermediary at the heart of the dollar system, where the dollars still eventually make their way back to the US - just through a path that builds Chinese rather than American influence and progressively undermines the US's ability to finance itself (with all the consequences this has on inflation, etc.).
At this stage you probably tell yourself "come on, there's no way China can do that, the US government surely has tools at its disposal to prevent this stuff". And the answer, surprisingly, is that there is actually little the U.S. can do that doesn't undermine them in some shape or form.
The most obvious response would be to threaten sanctions against countries - like Saudi Arabia - or institutions that buy Chinese dollar bonds. But this would further demonstrate that dollar assets aren't actually safe from US political interference, further encouraging countries to diversify, compounding the problem. The dollar's strength partly comes from network effects - everyone uses it because everyone else uses it - but as we've seen with Russia sanctions create a coordinating moment for countries to move away together, weakening these network effects.
Another option would be for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to make US Treasuries more attractive. But this would be self-defeating: it would increase the US government's own borrowing costs at a time when they're already struggling with massive deficits, potentially triggering a recession. And China, getting similar rates as the US, could simply match any rate increase.
The US could also go for the "nuclear option" of restricting China's ability to clear dollar transactions but this would effectively immediately fragment the global financial system, undermining the dollar's role as the global reserve currency - exactly what the US wants to avoid. And with China being the most important trading partner of the immense majority of the world's countries, nothing is less sure that the U.S. would win at this game...
In short this seems to be like some sort of Tai Chi 'four ounces moving a thousand pounds' (四兩撥千斤) move by China, using minimal force to redirect the dollar's strength in a way that benefits China.
Like I wrote at the beginning however, at this stage this is most likely just a message by China to the upcoming Trump administration: "we can do this so maybe think very carefully about all the nasty things you have in mind for us..." The beauty of this move is how strategically elegant it is: it costs China almost nothing to demonstrate, but forces Washington to contemplate some very uncomfortable possibilities.
https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1859446480198828360?s=61
4
Politics & Religion / The Reduction Plan
« Last post by Body-by-Guinness on Today at 09:19:49 PM »I can hardly wait:
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government
Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decades long executive power grab.
By Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2024
Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.
President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.
We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.
A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.
Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.
The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.
With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.
https://x.com/rickydoggin/status/1859362612275970277?s=61
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government
Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decades long executive power grab.
By Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2024
Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.
President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.
We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.
A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.
Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.
The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.
With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.
https://x.com/rickydoggin/status/1859362612275970277?s=61
5
Politics & Religion / How to Reorg/Reform the FBI
« Last post by Body-by-Guinness on Today at 03:44:08 PM »No doubt misfiled, but given that this dismantling effort will defang the FBI and its ability to serve political masters to political ends, I am down with this approach, particularly as it will serve to fire a shot across the bow of EVERY bloated agency and serves as a model for how to combine federal efforts by function, pulling law enforcement function out of orgs that tainted by politics, or privatizes these functions.
This proposal does leave one burning question: what will happen to all those hagiographic FBI TV shows?
As that may be, these outcomes couldn’t happen to a nicer set of bastards:
Take apart the FBI, piece by piece. Here's how.
J Michael Waller
@JMichaelWaller
·
Nov 15
Take an antitrust approach to the FBI. The Bureau has value. But it has become predatory, abusive, and dangerous to the public. So it must be taken apart in favor of something new.
Here's an action plan for what to do with the FBI, drawn from chapter 37 of my book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains (Regnery, 2024).
The plan examines the anatomy of the FBI and proposes what to do with each part. The plan leaves room for creating better efficiencies in federal investigations, counterintelligence, law enforcement, and other essential functions. For now, we look at the FBI's structure and functions.
FBI is only a bureaucracy, not created by any law
Like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the FBI, as its name states, is only a bureaucracy. J. Edgar Hoover built that bureaucracy's brand. Once we get over the brand name and stop thinking of the Bureau as "sacred," we see the emperor has no clothes.
No statutory basis exists for the FBI. The FBI has no legal charter. The FBI traces its founding to a one-page attorney general memorandum from 1908.
Therefore, the FBI can be abolished by an attorney general memorandum.
So how would we protect ourselves as a country without an FBI?
Take a critical look at the FBI and its components, and it's easy to see how.
FBI's basic structure
The FBI has six branches, each of which is divided into units called divisions.
The six branches are:
National Security Branch
Intelligence Branch
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch
Science and Technology Branch
Information and Technology Branch
Human Resources Branch
These branches awkwardly make the FBI a domestic intelligence agency with police powers - a threat to our constitutional system. No other major democracy has a domestic intelligence agency with police powers.
Many FBI functions duplicate what other agencies already do. So in the interests of curbing the FBI, we have to take the imperfect approach of transferring duplicative functions to other agencies.
That approach risks empowering other problematic agencies, which we will have to deal with later.
National Security Branch
This politicized and compromised FBI branch must be broken apart, division by division, with relevant personnel, authority, equipment, and budgets transferred to other agencies and, where feasible, removed from federal authority completely and handed back to the 50 states.
Counterintelligence Division. Made notorious by its head, Peter Strzok, the Counterintelligence Division doesn't do as much spy-hunting as the FBI wants people to think. It has a poor track record. It goes after the low-hanging fruit, and is not a strategic tool to penetrate and disrupt hostile intelligence organizations from within.
Counterintelligence should be moved out of the FBI, with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, moved out of DHS. This will be difficult, because NCSC is flaccid and politicized.
Both should be combined into an independent Counterintelligence Service (CIS) with its own ethos as a spy-hunting organization, similar to what the short-lived National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) was designed to have been.
The CIS - which does not exist - would inherit all the personnel, data, technology, and other resources of the FBI Counterintelligence Division and NCSC, retain the most capable and promising personnel, and hunt foreign spies. It would not answer to the Justice Department. DOJ would be responsible solely for prosecuting spies as CIS finds necessary.
Counterterrorism Division. Create a stand-alone counterterrorism agency that has no law-enforcement functions. Remove the Counterterrorism Division, the Terrorist Screening Center, and related elements from the FBI. At the same time, remove the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. NCTC has its own problems to be addressed.
Merge the FBI's former counterterrorism functions and resources with the NCTC into a new, small, stand-alone counterterrorist agency. The proper leadership will transform the agency ethos, cull incompetent and inefficient personnel, and build a small CT service with no law enforcement powers. At the same time, dispense with the "domestic violent extremist" approach and focus on real terrorism.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The FBI's WMDD already duplicates the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives of DHS. ATF is already a significant problem. As with counterintelligence and counterterrorism, remove WMDD from the FBI, remove ATF from DHS, cull the personnel, and create a new, small, independent unit dealing with weapons of mass destruction inside the United States. The new service will have no law enforcement powers and will not answer to DOJ.
The FBI National Security Branch is thus dissolved.
Intelligence Branch
The FBI Intelligence Branch collects information and synthesizes it into analytical products and coordination with other agencies. Such a branch, with entirely different standards of evidence from a law enforcement agency, has no place in the Department of Justice at all.
Divide the Intelligence Branch and its personnel along topical and functional lines. Parcel them out to other agencies with the legal authority and obligation to perform those varied work functions. This includes the new independent counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and WMD services.
The FBI intelligence branch is thus dissolved.
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch
This FBI branch is a mishmash of functions patchworked together since 9/11. It performs important duties, though, and does not have the reputation of being as politicized as the rest of the Bureau.
The Trump Administration can take apart this branch without public danger.
Criminal Investigation Division. This division combats organized crime, international crime, certain violent crimes under federal statute, and certain crimes against children. It also investigates public corruption, financial crimes, and violations of civil rights laws.
The public corruption unit tends to attract some of the most politicized elements of the FBI.
DOJ must transfer as many criminal investigative functions as possible to the states that wish to assume them. Those states can receive federal block grants for the purpose of improving their own capabilities, free of federal interference.
FBI's financial crimes unit should be transferred to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has robust financial crimes capabilities.
The remainder of the Criminal Investigation Division should go to the United States Marshals Service, which is the only federal law enforcement entity created by America's Founding Fathers. All FBI personnel going to the Marshals would be screened for adequacy and retrained under the Marshals ethos.
Cyber Division. Cyber is an increasingly important criminal and national security domain. Because of cyber's growing politicization, often to extremist ends, the solutions offered here are only interim.
Transfer the Cyber Division's security functions to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), while moving the very politicized CISA out of the Department of Homeland Security. The merger between CD and CISA, under proper leadership, would result in a professional, stand-alone cyber security agency. Cyber Division's intelligence functions and resources will go to the new Counterintelligence Service (CIS) created from the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and DHS's NCSC.
Cyber Division's law enforcement functions should be transferred out of DOJ to the independent U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Critical Incident Response Group. The Response portion of the branch is a crisis management unit. It should be transferred to FEMA, which itself needs a complete overhaul.
Services. The Services section of the branch assists victims of terrorism and crime. Its duties should go to FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services. The budget for this unit can go to disaster-prone states as block grants, which the states can spend on disaster relief as they see fit.
A separate unit, International Operations, coordinates federal law enforcement abroad to investigate transnational crimes and to assist foreign countries in assisting American investigators. These experienced personnel can be placed in the service of other federal agencies that presently perform law enforcement/counterterrorism/counter-WMD work abroad, or which would do so under the proposed changes.
The FBI Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch is thus dissolved.
Science and Technology Branch
This small FBI branch creates new scientific and technological methods, products, and training for the rest of the FBI's operations, and provides important support support to state and local law enforcement. Private companies already create these products and services, such as forensic sciences (fingerprint, DNA, and other biometric analysis), other scientific analysis, computer forensics, safe transport of evidence and hazardous materials. The branch also runs the FBI Crime Lab, FBI information services, and the National Crime Information Center.
In Big Intel, I proposed handing the Science and Technology Branch over to FEMA, or establishing it as a stand-alone entity under rotating governors, but after consideration, many functions of the branch should be privatized, with the Crime Lab and National Crime Information Center transferred to the US Marshals.
The FBI Science and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.
Information and Technology Branch
The purpose of this branch is to manage FBI information and maintain and upgrade the Bureau's information systems. With the FBI being dismembered, the need for this branch is mooted, though the experienced personnel, with their specialized training can be transferred to other agencies along with related FBI components.
The FBI Information and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.
Human Resources Branch
This branch will not be transferred anywhere. Its personnel will leave the federal workforce.
The exception is the FBI Academy, which resides in this branch. Since the FBI Academy offers basic training for special agents and other law enforcement, it can be transferred to the US Marshals.
The FBI Human Resources Branch is thus dissolved.
Field Offices
The FBI has 56 field offices and smaller offices across the United States. These offices have secure facilities and other resources that the Marshals, the SEC, the Postal Inspector, the new independent Counterintelligence Service, the new counterterrorism and counter-WMD services, and so forth, can use without disruption, independently and out of their own budgets. Many field offices can be shut down for good.
Unnecessary secrecy
FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed.
FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed. All citizens should have the right to any FBI files - unredacted - on them, with pending criminal or national security investigations, reviewed by judges, as the sole exceptions.
Conclusion
With these steps, the FBI is dismembered, its essential components scattered, in an orderly fashion without disruption to legitimate federal investigations, law enforcement, and national security functions.
Abolish all Special Agent in Charge and SES-level FBI positions prior to dismemberment. Sell FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building to developers and demolish it. Surplus and sell the planned FBI campus in Prince George's County, Maryland, that is twice the size of the Pentagon building.
Complexities in the dismantling of the FBI, especially concerning the Bureau's colossal and extremely sensitive data systems, are to be expected. But these complexities are unacceptable excuses for not dismembering the Bureau quickly.
After this, we can proceed to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.
https://x.com/jmichaelwaller/status/1857617933536542991?s=61
This proposal does leave one burning question: what will happen to all those hagiographic FBI TV shows?
As that may be, these outcomes couldn’t happen to a nicer set of bastards:
Take apart the FBI, piece by piece. Here's how.
J Michael Waller
@JMichaelWaller
·
Nov 15
Take an antitrust approach to the FBI. The Bureau has value. But it has become predatory, abusive, and dangerous to the public. So it must be taken apart in favor of something new.
Here's an action plan for what to do with the FBI, drawn from chapter 37 of my book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains (Regnery, 2024).
The plan examines the anatomy of the FBI and proposes what to do with each part. The plan leaves room for creating better efficiencies in federal investigations, counterintelligence, law enforcement, and other essential functions. For now, we look at the FBI's structure and functions.
FBI is only a bureaucracy, not created by any law
Like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the FBI, as its name states, is only a bureaucracy. J. Edgar Hoover built that bureaucracy's brand. Once we get over the brand name and stop thinking of the Bureau as "sacred," we see the emperor has no clothes.
No statutory basis exists for the FBI. The FBI has no legal charter. The FBI traces its founding to a one-page attorney general memorandum from 1908.
Therefore, the FBI can be abolished by an attorney general memorandum.
So how would we protect ourselves as a country without an FBI?
Take a critical look at the FBI and its components, and it's easy to see how.
FBI's basic structure
The FBI has six branches, each of which is divided into units called divisions.
The six branches are:
National Security Branch
Intelligence Branch
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch
Science and Technology Branch
Information and Technology Branch
Human Resources Branch
These branches awkwardly make the FBI a domestic intelligence agency with police powers - a threat to our constitutional system. No other major democracy has a domestic intelligence agency with police powers.
Many FBI functions duplicate what other agencies already do. So in the interests of curbing the FBI, we have to take the imperfect approach of transferring duplicative functions to other agencies.
That approach risks empowering other problematic agencies, which we will have to deal with later.
National Security Branch
This politicized and compromised FBI branch must be broken apart, division by division, with relevant personnel, authority, equipment, and budgets transferred to other agencies and, where feasible, removed from federal authority completely and handed back to the 50 states.
Counterintelligence Division. Made notorious by its head, Peter Strzok, the Counterintelligence Division doesn't do as much spy-hunting as the FBI wants people to think. It has a poor track record. It goes after the low-hanging fruit, and is not a strategic tool to penetrate and disrupt hostile intelligence organizations from within.
Counterintelligence should be moved out of the FBI, with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, moved out of DHS. This will be difficult, because NCSC is flaccid and politicized.
Both should be combined into an independent Counterintelligence Service (CIS) with its own ethos as a spy-hunting organization, similar to what the short-lived National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) was designed to have been.
The CIS - which does not exist - would inherit all the personnel, data, technology, and other resources of the FBI Counterintelligence Division and NCSC, retain the most capable and promising personnel, and hunt foreign spies. It would not answer to the Justice Department. DOJ would be responsible solely for prosecuting spies as CIS finds necessary.
Counterterrorism Division. Create a stand-alone counterterrorism agency that has no law-enforcement functions. Remove the Counterterrorism Division, the Terrorist Screening Center, and related elements from the FBI. At the same time, remove the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. NCTC has its own problems to be addressed.
Merge the FBI's former counterterrorism functions and resources with the NCTC into a new, small, stand-alone counterterrorist agency. The proper leadership will transform the agency ethos, cull incompetent and inefficient personnel, and build a small CT service with no law enforcement powers. At the same time, dispense with the "domestic violent extremist" approach and focus on real terrorism.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. The FBI's WMDD already duplicates the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives of DHS. ATF is already a significant problem. As with counterintelligence and counterterrorism, remove WMDD from the FBI, remove ATF from DHS, cull the personnel, and create a new, small, independent unit dealing with weapons of mass destruction inside the United States. The new service will have no law enforcement powers and will not answer to DOJ.
The FBI National Security Branch is thus dissolved.
Intelligence Branch
The FBI Intelligence Branch collects information and synthesizes it into analytical products and coordination with other agencies. Such a branch, with entirely different standards of evidence from a law enforcement agency, has no place in the Department of Justice at all.
Divide the Intelligence Branch and its personnel along topical and functional lines. Parcel them out to other agencies with the legal authority and obligation to perform those varied work functions. This includes the new independent counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and WMD services.
The FBI intelligence branch is thus dissolved.
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch
This FBI branch is a mishmash of functions patchworked together since 9/11. It performs important duties, though, and does not have the reputation of being as politicized as the rest of the Bureau.
The Trump Administration can take apart this branch without public danger.
Criminal Investigation Division. This division combats organized crime, international crime, certain violent crimes under federal statute, and certain crimes against children. It also investigates public corruption, financial crimes, and violations of civil rights laws.
The public corruption unit tends to attract some of the most politicized elements of the FBI.
DOJ must transfer as many criminal investigative functions as possible to the states that wish to assume them. Those states can receive federal block grants for the purpose of improving their own capabilities, free of federal interference.
FBI's financial crimes unit should be transferred to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has robust financial crimes capabilities.
The remainder of the Criminal Investigation Division should go to the United States Marshals Service, which is the only federal law enforcement entity created by America's Founding Fathers. All FBI personnel going to the Marshals would be screened for adequacy and retrained under the Marshals ethos.
Cyber Division. Cyber is an increasingly important criminal and national security domain. Because of cyber's growing politicization, often to extremist ends, the solutions offered here are only interim.
Transfer the Cyber Division's security functions to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), while moving the very politicized CISA out of the Department of Homeland Security. The merger between CD and CISA, under proper leadership, would result in a professional, stand-alone cyber security agency. Cyber Division's intelligence functions and resources will go to the new Counterintelligence Service (CIS) created from the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and DHS's NCSC.
Cyber Division's law enforcement functions should be transferred out of DOJ to the independent U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Critical Incident Response Group. The Response portion of the branch is a crisis management unit. It should be transferred to FEMA, which itself needs a complete overhaul.
Services. The Services section of the branch assists victims of terrorism and crime. Its duties should go to FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services. The budget for this unit can go to disaster-prone states as block grants, which the states can spend on disaster relief as they see fit.
A separate unit, International Operations, coordinates federal law enforcement abroad to investigate transnational crimes and to assist foreign countries in assisting American investigators. These experienced personnel can be placed in the service of other federal agencies that presently perform law enforcement/counterterrorism/counter-WMD work abroad, or which would do so under the proposed changes.
The FBI Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch is thus dissolved.
Science and Technology Branch
This small FBI branch creates new scientific and technological methods, products, and training for the rest of the FBI's operations, and provides important support support to state and local law enforcement. Private companies already create these products and services, such as forensic sciences (fingerprint, DNA, and other biometric analysis), other scientific analysis, computer forensics, safe transport of evidence and hazardous materials. The branch also runs the FBI Crime Lab, FBI information services, and the National Crime Information Center.
In Big Intel, I proposed handing the Science and Technology Branch over to FEMA, or establishing it as a stand-alone entity under rotating governors, but after consideration, many functions of the branch should be privatized, with the Crime Lab and National Crime Information Center transferred to the US Marshals.
The FBI Science and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.
Information and Technology Branch
The purpose of this branch is to manage FBI information and maintain and upgrade the Bureau's information systems. With the FBI being dismembered, the need for this branch is mooted, though the experienced personnel, with their specialized training can be transferred to other agencies along with related FBI components.
The FBI Information and Technology Branch is thus dissolved.
Human Resources Branch
This branch will not be transferred anywhere. Its personnel will leave the federal workforce.
The exception is the FBI Academy, which resides in this branch. Since the FBI Academy offers basic training for special agents and other law enforcement, it can be transferred to the US Marshals.
The FBI Human Resources Branch is thus dissolved.
Field Offices
The FBI has 56 field offices and smaller offices across the United States. These offices have secure facilities and other resources that the Marshals, the SEC, the Postal Inspector, the new independent Counterintelligence Service, the new counterterrorism and counter-WMD services, and so forth, can use without disruption, independently and out of their own budgets. Many field offices can be shut down for good.
Unnecessary secrecy
FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed.
FBI abuses of power, and threats to the Constitution, have been possible because of excessive secrecy. This unnecessary secrecy must be undone and exposed. All citizens should have the right to any FBI files - unredacted - on them, with pending criminal or national security investigations, reviewed by judges, as the sole exceptions.
Conclusion
With these steps, the FBI is dismembered, its essential components scattered, in an orderly fashion without disruption to legitimate federal investigations, law enforcement, and national security functions.
Abolish all Special Agent in Charge and SES-level FBI positions prior to dismemberment. Sell FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building to developers and demolish it. Surplus and sell the planned FBI campus in Prince George's County, Maryland, that is twice the size of the Pentagon building.
Complexities in the dismantling of the FBI, especially concerning the Bureau's colossal and extremely sensitive data systems, are to be expected. But these complexities are unacceptable excuses for not dismembering the Bureau quickly.
After this, we can proceed to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.
https://x.com/jmichaelwaller/status/1857617933536542991?s=61
6
Politics & Religion / MSLSDers new jobs or no jobs
« Last post by ccp on Today at 03:10:56 PM »It never pleases me to see people lose their jobs
but.......
MSNBC ====---> 'SpinCo"
I am thinking more like BSinc. might be better
Madcow will get scooped up some where or she may do the Lib version of O'Reilly or Kelly broadcast/podcasts
but.......
I am thinking more like BSinc. might be better
Madcow will get scooped up some where or she may do the Lib version of O'Reilly or Kelly broadcast/podcasts
7
Science, Culture, & Humanities / Rod Laver
« Last post by ccp on Today at 03:03:23 PM »I am old to remember Rod Laver and I recall he won more grand slams than anyone else at the time
(a mere ) eleven.
Amazingly looking him up he is still alive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Laver
(a mere ) eleven.
Amazingly looking him up he is still alive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Laver
8
Politics & Religion / Re: Administrative Agencies, bureaucracy, regs in action: 4th Branch of the US Govt.
« Last post by Crafty_Dog on Today at 02:21:31 PM »Trust me-- he is worth the call. If he can't help you, he will tell you.
10
Politics & Religion / Re: Patriot Post
« Last post by Body-by-Guinness on Today at 02:20:31 PM »
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/112180?mailing_id=8816...
Trump Day 1: Demolish the Demos' Rigged Midterm Election Strategy
There is an irrefutable correlation between the states Harris/Walz won and voter ID requirements.
Mark Alexander
"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." —John Adams (1797)
Two weeks after the biggest comeback in presidential history, I am still amazed that Donald Trump and JD Vance pulled it off. And they did so with expanding margins among unexpected voter constituencies….
I’d add another leg to that tripod: Dems spent the past four years raiding federal coffers and using that money to buy influence if not outright bribe people. Whether it’s illegals getting charged debit cards and phones, or NGOs getting their coffers filled, or FEMA moving moneys meant for Americans in emergent need, and while using high sounding titles like the “inflation reduction act” that did everything but bear any association with its name, Dems have been shoveling money where they can, when they can, and expecting to receiving quid pro quo dividends in return.