Trump voters sought economic protection and immigration sanity, not for Elon Musk to use his new government gig to stymie regulators overseeing his firms. Credit: Getty
Last month, in one of his final acts as outgoing director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Rohit Chopra proposed to restrict financial institutions from dropping customers based on their political or religious views. If adopted, the rule would have been the most politically significant of Chopra’s many reforms: after all, Right-wing activists have been the most frequent victims of debanking.
In 2021, PayPal blocked GiveSendGo, an evangelical crowdfunding site, after it helped raise money for January 6 defendants. In Canada, truckers resisting Covid vaccine mandates faced similar bans. Across the Atlantic, Nigel Farage was debanked. As Chopra told me, “just because someone disagrees with corporate executives, that’s no grounds for losing their fundamental rights”.
Chopra also spearheaded Team Biden’s crusade against corporate “junk fees” (ordering a concert ticket online? That’ll be a $5 service fee, plus a $15 processing fee and a $3 convenience fee). He also sought to wipe medical debt from credit records and to protect veterans’ privacy against data brokers. Trumpian America would have been the chief beneficiary of these measures: lower-income consumers with little to no bargaining power against Big Finance and Big Tech.
Yet in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, powerful tech barons vented rage at Chopra’s agency. Most notably, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg — who previously oversaw the censorship of pro-Trump content on Facebook but is now making nice — complained about CFPB oversight on Joe Rogan’s show: “We had the CFPB looking after us. I didn’t even know what that is. It’s some financial institution that Elizabeth Warren set up.”
Elon Musk was more forthright: “Delete CFPB”, he posted on X on 27 November. That seems to have done the trick. As of last week, visitors to the CFPB website encountered a “404: page not found” error. Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is dramatically remaking the federal government, gloated about the agency’s apparent demise with a tombstone emoji, adding: “CFPB RIP”.
By Saturday, Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, said he would be taking over as acting head of the CFPB. Given Musk’s “RIP” message, however, and the sheer power he wields in the new administration, the future of the agency is far from certain. CFPB lawyers have been ordered to stand down in all lawsuits, including one challenging financial institutions’ right to debank Americans. “Oh, and Musk now has access to all this confidential CFPB info about his competitors”, a current CFPB staffer told me.
Less than a mile away, in Washington, the National Labor Relations Board, another agency tasked with levelling the economic playing field, is in similar disarray. Last month, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the board, and Jennifer Abruzzo, its general counsel. While Abruzzo’s dismissal was no surprise — Biden did the same thing to Trump’s NLRB general counsel upon taking office — Wilcox’s firing is a different matter.
In 1935, a unanimous Supreme Court held that the president can only remove a member of a bipartisan board like the NLRB for good cause, such as neglect or malfeasance. The National Labor Relations Act, the law that created the NLRB, likewise requires notice and good cause for removing board members. Wilcox received no notice, and by all accounts, she has a sterling record (whether Team Trump disagrees with her views on labour law is irrelevant).
Wilcox’s removal might be a first step toward overturning the high-court precedent that limits presidential power over bipartisan, multimember boards, a question over which reasonable people can disagree. But it also deprives the board of the quorum needed to uphold collective-bargaining rights. That has the effect of “creating chaos and disruption and making this agency inoperative”, said Wilma Liebman, who served 14 years as a member of the board under presidents of both parties, the final two as chairwoman.
Rendering the NLRB inoperative in this manner serves the interests of pro-Trump tycoons, Musk foremost: even before the election, he filed a lawsuit attacking the constitutionality of the New Deal-era board. Now, it seems, Musk the efficiency czar has achieved what Musk the employer had long desired. Said Liebman, “The fact that it is Musk is glaring”.
Unless Team Trump changes course, the plutocratic, self-dealing policy choices will become impossible to ignore. And the Trumpians will end up betraying the millions of working-class and union households who pulled for them in last year’s election seeking immigration sanity and economic protection — not to make it easier for Big Finance to surveil and debank them, or for Musk to use his new government job to stymie organising efforts at his firms.
So far, the GOP’s activist base feels no danger, only joy. (This, even as Musk’s influence on Trump has already become much less popular, even among normie Republicans.) Among Right-wing activists and intellectuals, the mood is retribution, and TrumpElon the avenging dagger. As one Right-of-centre operative told me, describing an attitude he himself disavows, the thinking is: “Now it’s our dicks that are hard, and we’re gonna f–k you in the ass.”
It’s understandable. Who on the Right could have lived through the political and cultural turmoil of the recent past, and not feel some version of the same sentiment, even if expressed in less vulgar terms?
From the #Russiagate hoax to Trump’s first impeachment on the flimsiest grounds; the Big Tech suppression of the lab-leak theory to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop; the pandemic-era banning of Catholic masses and Jewish funerals (even as George Floyd protests were encouraged) to the unlawful altering of election rules in Pennsylvania in 2020; the winking permission granted to Left-wing rioters setting fire to a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., compared to the hammer dropped on Right-wing rioters who stormed the Capitol; and so much more besides — Democrats and their allies in the media, Silicon Valley, and the security forces subjected the other half of the country to a lot of mishigas over the past decade.
As I say, who on the Right — or even the non-woke Left — could have lived through all that and not feel a jonesing to burn down all their works?
Then again, politics isn’t only about enmity and payback, even if it would be foolish to deny a place altogether to these primordial urges in the affairs of fallen human beings. Politics is also the art of prudence, especially when dealing with a state apparatus as large and complex as the federal government, overseeing an even larger and more complex society and economy.
It shouldn’t require the insights of Aristotle or Weber to know that the state isn’t a tech startup. The danger in unleashing Musk and his team of Groyper whizz kids is that, in slashing and burning, they might bring about not just efficiency and an end to DEI nonsense, but careless enshittification.
If some drug-approval process is short-circuited, and lots of people end up being harmed; if critical entitlements payments are withheld from senior citizens needing medical care; or if some official unit gets axed whose job it was to alert decision-makers to this or that natural or manmade hazard, and something somewhere goes boom; or if… In any of these scenarios, it won’t be Musk left holding the bag, but the politically accountable men who empowered him. Musk insists he is the soul of caution, of course, and so far nothing of that sort has taken place. But these things take time to ramify through a delicate system.
Then, too, the slash-and-burn mentality represents a reversion to the neoliberal model that Trumpism promised to counter. Recall that Trump won the first time around by rejecting the GOP’s Reagan-Bush-Romney orthodoxies. He pledged to protect social insurance, and he even hinted at a public option in health care. The 2024 Republican platform reiterated his entitlements pledge.
Musk, meanwhile, has vowed to trim as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget, or about a third of total outlays. There simply aren’t enough silly expenditures — programmes funding research into transgender monkeys or musicals about Ireland’s black roots — to get him to that amount. If Musk really means it, and if Trump isn’t prepared to restrain him, then entitlements will end up on the chopping block. An eccentric billionaire cutting Grandpa’s Social Security payments: the 2026 and 2028 electoral kill shot Democrats are rubbing their hands for.
And what about state capacity? Trump won in 2016 and then again in 2024 by promising to restore the battered manufacturing sector. Tariffs are one important tool for doing so, with origins in the American tradition going back to Alexander Hamilton. But a manufacturing revival also requires a competent workforce and long-term research and development on a massive scale — tasks that have proved too big for any entity but the state.
None of this is to defend waste or entrenched bureaucrats who’ve grown accustomed to defying the president’s will, especially when the president happens to belong to the Republican Party. But de-Baathification is unlikely to work any better for the US state than it did for Iraq, and the Right, especially, should be wary of Year Zero delusions: the utopian dream of starting totally anew, unencumbered by the past — heedless of why our institutions took the shape they did.
Which brings us back to those crippled agencies, the CFBP and the NLRB. Both emerged in the wake of market emergencies: one fairly recent, the 2008-2009 financial crisis precipitated, in part, by banks’ risky home lending and the securitisation of those loans; and the other much older, the Depression, brought about by a demand crisis in the economy resulting in turn from a brutally lopsided distribution of the social income (low-paid workers unable to afford the goods they produced).
Trashing these agencies would do nothing to address the structural power imbalances which bedevil Trumpian America and which compelled it to vote for him in the first place. On the contrary, it would exacerbate the imbalances. A regulation such as the CFPB’s anti-debanking rule is the best defence against people being arbitrarily cast out of the financial system, whether it’s over a belief that there are only two sexes or 107 genders. Likewise, collective bargaining, upheld by the NLRB, gave rise to the American middle class and such blessings as paid vacation time, health insurance, disposable income, and, yes, a measure of protection for what workers think and say off the job.
Is it not telling that, say, Jeff Bezos — who, three years ago, marched at the forefront of corporate America’s Black Lives Matter column — has now joined the anti-woke ranks? Is it not obvious why the Amazon boss, notwithstanding his ownership of an anti-Trump #Resistance newspaper, The Washington Post, has teamed up with Musk in challenging the existence of America’s basic labour law? Does anyone believe that Zuckerberg has undergone a profound change of heart about online censorship, now that a new administration is prepared to remove barriers against his power in the name of owning the woke?
There is no denying that parts of the federal government fell in thrall to the same whacky and unpopular ideologies taken up by professional classes in the private sector. But abuse doesn’t negate the proper use of something. And as time goes on, it is becoming obvious that the oligarchs, and Musk especially, are taking advantage of justified public outrage against wokeness and DEI to ram through wide-ranging economic changes whose benefits beyond their own circles are questionable at best.
The cynic might respond that the American state has always sought the favour of the rich: better to get rid of the meddling institutions of the New Deal and have the class antagonism out in the open. The successor state is here. Get with the times.
Maybe that’s right. But the populist Right should be clear that this could entail enormous pain for the working and lower middle classes and galling self-dealing by Musk & Co., the likes of which we haven’t seen since the late 19th century. Once the dust settles, and the next reforms take hold, the political rewards will redound not to the neo-Gilded Age party and politician — there is a reason Trump had to drag William McKinley out of obscurity — but to the transformative reformer.
If Trump himself wants to earn that mantle, it behooves him to apply his signature motto to Elon Musk: You’re fired.
Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It
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SubscribeThere is no denying that parts of the federal government fell in thrall to the same whacky and unpopular ideologies taken up by professional classes in the private sector. That’s no reason to replace them with whacky and unpopular ideologies peddled by a toxic South African import.
No reason to replace them with “whacky and unpopular ideologies” like accountability and efficiency ?
Yes, yes it is.
Most government entities are “inefficient”, and some might be “unaccountable”. That is no reason to burn them all to the ground.
It absolutely is. After all we pay an awful lot of taxes for it to be thrown down the toilet. I can spend my money a lot more effectively and wisely than the US government. Time to reform the ship of state and Trump and Musk are doing just that.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk don’t have the authority to set the budget for the federal government. That’s the problem. Congress decides how much money gets spent, not the president, and certainly not a man who is only working part-time while running huge companies that are affected by his actions.
Way too many hyperbolic what if scenarios in this essay. What if Musk simply cuts all the fat, which he appears to be doing.
Shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Board and the USAID is hardly trimming off fat. Those agencies were created and have been funded by Congress.
I don’t think this essay is hyperbolic. If anything, it’s not presenting the problem starkly enough. I’ll outline what I can piece together. Let me know if you know anything more.
It seems that this started when two DOGE people in their early 20s went over to the USAID and demanded access to its accounting data. These people are of the intern and new entrant level, with no accounting skills or experience. They know how to code, and did a rough audit. They found about $4 million in questionable expenses for things like promoting LGBT, but that was about it. Those expenses total 0.01% of USAID’s budget.
Based on that, Elon Musk asked Donald Trump for permission to shut the agency down, which he gave. Notices went out to more than 10,000 people around the world that they have been fired or that they will be placed on administrative leave. Attorneys for the federal government told a judge that the headcount of 14,000 employees and contractors at USAID will be reduced to 290. All payments under grants have been stopped.
That means some people in medical trials are left with drugs or devices in their bodies and no one to make sure they are safe. That means that people who were receiving food in Gaza and other places will now have to starve. That means that the hundreds of millions of dollars of medicine and food that the government purchased and is now sitting on ships will sit there indefinitely as there is no one to unload and distribute it. All aid has been cut off abruptly for at least 90 days and an aid organization that took decades to build has probably already been destroyed.
Republicans in Congress have long complained about USAID. Marco Rubio has recently reiterated some of his frustrations. Joni Ernst wrote about hers in a Wall Street Journal article that came out today. And USAID should be audited and its activities made public. That’s a good thing — there seems to be plenty of room for reform. Donald Trump should put his own people in there to run the organization.
But Elon Musk is going way beyond any of that. I am not a fan of Samantha Power, who ran USAID during the Biden administration (and was UN ambassador during the Obama administration). But she wrote an article for the New York Times that quite accurately assesses the damage shutting down USAID will do. It’s sickening to think about.
A counter-argument to your comment is that USAID has deliberately intermingled its legitimate humanitarian activities with its politically-motivated activities precisely because shutting down the political stuff will also harm the humanitarian stuff and generate outrage.
It might be argued that Musk et al should take a slower, cautious approach to reforming federal agencies, and that is a reasonable view point, but that approach affords the bureaucrats and their lawyers plenty of time to mount a defense of their overgrown agencies.
Sadly, there’s much truth in the old adage that to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.
There is truth in that adage. I’m just worried that you can’t make much of an omelet if you throw all your eggs against the wall to crack them. And I think Elon Musk and the people he brought in are doing just that.
Some of us Americans don’t want omelettes. We’re okay with scrambled eggs.
I think you’re going to have to lick your eggs raw off the wall.
I like ’em both ways, in fact. Cheese omelets are great, if done right.
I disaagree. The government is so broken with so much waste and nonsense filled with deep-state actors that it has to be completely broken down and those people removed before they can cause any more damage. And the only way to do this is fast. That way, places like USAID can be brought to heal before the lawsuits start pouring in as so many of their employees will see the writing on the wall and resign.
The problem with what Elon Musk is doing is that he is not replacing old people with new, but that he is shutting the whole agency down. The USAID offices no longer exist. The name has been taken off the building, the servers have been removed, and no employees are being let in.
The top people and all outside contractors have been fired and all foreign employees have been ordered to return to the US. All employees have been told to work remotely but they can’t — they have been shut out of systems and all funds have been frozen. With the top people gone the agency has had its head cut off, and what remains is dead.
The government says that of the 10,000 USAID employees only 290 will be retained. They will become part of the State Department. Trouble is, that’s not enough to disburse anything close to the $40 billion that Congress appropriated for foreign aid. So the executive branch has repurposed those funds for something other than what Congress intended — a blatant violation of the Constitution.
There are many conspiracy theories circulating about USAID and what it funds/funded, but when you dig into these they fall apart and tend to illuminate the conspirators can’t handle much complexity. Thus coupled with the classic narcissism of the Conspiracist (me of the secret knowledge etc) they find the stories easier to absorb.
Elon of course taken money from USAID – some Starlink contracts. Forgets to mention that doesn’t he.
Now is there some ‘bloating’ that needs puncturing? Sure. But the world’s Richest man hitting many projects that help the v poorest not the greatest look and eventually that reality will catch up and leave a majority uncomfortable.
“Now is there some ‘bloating’ that needs puncturing? Sure. ” People who say this then proceed to do nothing and it is business as usual. Critics say “don’t throw out the bay with the bath”, but the left has been throwing out babies for years and celebrating it!
Well, there is really not all that “much truth” in the adage about eggs and omelets. The often overlooked aspect of the glib breaking eggs to make an omelet doesn’t take into account that perhaps nobody is interested in having an omelet made for them.
It strains the analogy a bit, but you could say that Congress ordered the USAID to make $40 billion worth of omelets. If that order is to be canceled, Congress will have to do it.
Appreciating these insights CD, thanks for sharing.
Some of these are known but adds ‘colour’ to the picture.
USAID was primarily a front for the CIA destabilizing governments worldwide and causing the US a lot of trouble. And this includes the 2014 Ukrain Maidan revolution in Ukraine. ISAID just has to go in its present form. It is a rogue agency filled with progressive, left-wing uber-woke extremists bent on subjecting the world to their woke idiocy while acting as a cover for the CIA. Sure keep the good stuff and subsume USAID into the State Department which is where it belongs.
That’s a strong accusation to make. What evidence can you cite to support it? In 2024, for example, how much of the USAID’s $40 billion budget went for deep state and CIA activities?
Conveniently for you, the CIA doesn’t publish its budget.
In that case how does the original poster know a large proportion of USAID is used by the CIA?
I worked on two different USAID-funded projects, one in South Africa many years ago, and one in Ukraine (!) just before the COVID hysteria.
USAID really is a mechanism for laundering tax dollars into payments that support the malignant Quango-sphere.
There was a time, decades and decades ago, when USAID staff would run around drilling water wells for peoples in underdeveloped countries, but starting with Afghanistan, USAID went all in on using contractors to do its work. That is, it ended up doing all its business with NGO’s. And, then USAID got into preposterous things like funding gender studies at the esteemed Kabul University. Hmm …
Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his team are Trump’s people. Sorry.
One of the USAID documents posted on Twitter by Musk contained a budget line of 1.2 billion (!) in undisclosed payments.
I am inclined to agree with the author and some commenters that probably the audit of USAID should have been more discerning, but this budget line alone speaks volumes.
Besides, as far as I understand it, the USAID functions are now subsumed under the remit of the State Department.
In other words, certain activities will continue, but without a separate governmental agency to perform them.
Powers is deep state, she’s got her hands all over the cookie jar.
We have absolutely no idea what Musk and his team have found and will find. Neither do you. You’re basing your opinions on the scraps coming out piecemeal
If I were guessing USAID is a vehicle for some of the most pernicious fraud perpetrated on America. It’s quite feasible it was the vehicle being used to undermine Trump in the name of the “Resistance”. Why do you think the Left is squealing so much.
No doubt USAID does some humanitarian work and does it well. How else would it have got away with its nefarious deeds otherwise. Yet even it’s so called “Good” is couched in questionable motivations and manipulations of sovereign states and its people. Not to mention the robbing blind of the U.S. taxpayer.
So why don’t we wait and see instead of having Democrats display their shrill and idiotic histrionics.
Correcting a point you made. CFPB is the poster child for bureaucratic madness.
CFPB was designed by Senator Elizabeth Warren to be an executive department than was not subject to the executive authority of the president, or to the financial control of the Congress. The Supreme Court ruled that the president, under the Constitution, could fire the CFPB leadership. The CFPB funding currently is solely CFPB discretionary draws on the Federal Reserve’s profits which are currently zero.
The Federal bureaucracy has grown massively in the past four years. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that the financial and other support the Democratic Party receives from public employee unions is a significant factor in the growth. The grossest recent example is that the leadership of the Department of Education signed a labor contract that guaranteed the right to work remotely just before Trump’s inauguration. Nor do I think it’s unreasonable to expect and require that bureaucrats advance the legal policies of their elected superiors, although it is sad that the point needs to be stated.
It can be fun to run about shouting “the sky is falling.” Glitches in any huge enterprise are inevitable. It will take time for the courts to detangle the new issues. I propose looking for the actual results and then making a judgement.
If you cut back you can add later.
That’s the point, you can’t. If you shut down the USAID, it’s dead. You can’t revive an organization that has been reduced from 14,000 employees and contractors to 290. It took decades to build an organization, but it can be destroyed in days.
It’s like if you accuse someone of fraud and corruption and then execute him. If it turns out later that you didn’t have the evidence to justify his execution or the power to carry it out, it doesn’t matter. He’s still dead.
Sounds suspiciously like Year Zero
Calm down, son.
Ummmm Because ending whole agencies that Congress created and funded, without any Congressional authorizing law, is against the law. The Constitution is clear, Congress and Congress alone has the power to levy taxes, as well as authorize and fund spending. So if the US remains a Constitutional Republic, it’s against the law. If, however the current White House resident wishes to do away with the Constitution and rule by decree and the American people allow him to get away with it, the US is, effectively, a dictatorship.
Isn’t that ironic given that the Obama and Biden administrations refused to enforce existing laws, cf. the massive inflow of illegals across our southern border.
Mostly projection. The CFBP is a prima facie unconstitutional agency and should never have been started. The NLRB has become a rubber stamp for union activists and should be gutted.
A 30% across the board cut in the staffing of ALL government functions other than safety and defense would be a good start.
Who has the power to impose a 30% cut in staffing across the board? Congress has the power to decide how federal revenues are spent. Congress passes the budget. The president’s only say is whether to veto the budget or not. He can’t change it.
In 1999 Elon Musk sold off Zip2 to Compaq sold for $305 million, with Elon Musk pocketing $22 million,. Three years before, his investors had decided to put experienced, though still relatively young, executive Rich Sorkin in charge as CEO, and demote Elon Musk to Chief Technology Officer.
I had worked for Rich Sorkin as an outside lawyer when he was at another company, and I knew him to be a very capable and straightforward guy. He became a multimillionaire from the sale of Zip2 too.
Rich Sorkin did well, but rumor had it that he should have done better. Rumor had it that Elon Musk had found a way to get even for his demotion. “Elon Musk would stab his grandmother in his back,” someone told me then, “if he made more money that way.” And as an uber alpha male he resents anyone who threatens his dominance.
As far as I know the only time Elon Musk has ever worked under a boss was those three years he worked under Rich Sorkin. He’s not the type to follow, he likes to lead. He does what he wants to do, and he doesn’t care if other people like it or not. The greater good is not his concern. His concern is for Elon Musk.
In 2002 I got interested in electric cars and started working on how to change the business model in carmaking to be more friendly to startup companies. (An effort I am still working on today.) An investor who I was talking to at the time told me two guys, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, were shopping around a business plan for a company called Tesla that would build electric cars.
Needless to say, I kept a close eye on Tesla and was impressed by what I saw. Elon Musk came in to lead investment in the company, and dabbled in design and manufacturing but he didn’t do much more than that. Martin Eberhard ran the company, and he started getting recognition for it. People lauded him for being a world leader at bringing electric cars to the world.
As became clear later, Elon Musk bitterly resented that. That wasn’t the only reason, but soon Martin Eberhard had been kicked out of Tesla as Elon Musk took it over, claiming to be one of its founders — a bogus claim. After a while the way he was booted and Elon Musk’s founder claim irked Martin Eberhard, and he sued Elon Musk for libel and breach of contract. The lawsuit was settled, and Elon Musk became a Tesla founder while Martin Eberhard got some things in return.
The odd thing is that Elon Musk still rages against Martin Eberhard any time his name is mentioned. He hates the guy, and his hatred is pathological. It’s crazy, literally. I’ve heard he does the same thing with his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive who he bailed out of a mess they had gotten into with Solar City. Elon Musk says he has not spoken to them for years and will never speak to them again.
That attitude serves Elon Musk well in business. He’s a genius. He knows how to get things done. I don’t know how he does it, and he probably couldn’t tell you either. He just does. He’s not much as an individual contributor. He pretends to be in charge of engineering and design at SpaceX and Tesla, but his efforts at engineering and design are almost bumbling and rarely helpful. His talent is at setting a goal and finding dedicated and talented people to work their hearts out to achieve that goal.
And that talent has served him well in business. Tesla is what it is today because of Elon Musk, not because of what Martin Eberhard did. SpaceX is the same way too. Elon Musk is one of those talents that come around only rarely. Steve Jobs. Jeff Bezos. Bill Gates. A few others. These people tend to engage in what are euphemistically called “sharp business practices”, and could be called modern robber barons. At the same time, there is no questioning the contributions these people made and make, and it’s not clear that we could get the good without the bad coming along with it.
But Elon Musk’s talent when leading from the top is a detriment for someone who is just supposed to be a powerless advisor. This article is a brilliant analysis of why Donald Trump should fire Elon Musk, the sooner the better. I can’t add anything to what is said here, so I won’t try. I don’t think Elon Musk is the devil incarnate, and I think he’s done a lot of good for the world, as well as for himself, at SpaceX and Tesla. But his business is business — he has no business being in government.
Musk is not going to fire Trump, and he can’t become president, so it doesn’t appear that he’ll be able to replicate the actions you described in his current role at DOGE. What if he actually does uncover fraud and waste, saving us billions? Somebody needs to go through our government with a fine-tooth comb. Who would do a better job? Most past attempts have seemed perfunctory.
I’ll read the article again, but my first reading did not instill confidence. Sohrab reminded me of the Democrats trying to protect USAID. Does he actually want our government to be reformed? It doesn’t seem like it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the concept of DOGE, and of Elon Musk and his team rooting around in government to see what they can find, and writing reports on it. And I’m all for Donald Trump putting in his own handpicked leadership to run these agencies. I like what they are doing in that regard.
Where I draw the line is on Elon Musk making the decision to shut down USAID, an independent agency of 10,000 employees and a $40 billion budget based on the claim that it is a vipers nest and a criminal organization. He has given us nothing to support that claim and he has no power to shut down an agency.
DOGE was set up to run audits and write a report by July 4, 2026 (the country’s 250th birthday). That’s it. They have no authority to usurp Congress’s power and shut down an agency.
It’s a matter of “semantics,” isn’t it? Someone might say that DOGE is shutting down USAID, but that’s not actually what is happening. If I understand correctly, he’s making recommendations to Trump who is taking action that the courts will be ruling on. Many of these decisions are likely to end up being decided by congress.
Incidentally, you might find this of interest. It does not appear that everything USAID does is actually humanitarian in nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZtXQNDJJm4.
Tucker Carlson is a good interviewer and Mike Benz obviously knows a lot and is thoughtful. But I think they are blowing things out of proportion, so much so that they’ve created a balloon that is about to pop. All these people that say that USAID is laundering money for the deep state and engaging in fraud and corruption are all talk and no hard evidence. At least from what I’ve seen, 99.9% of the funding goes to projects that are legitimate.
Of course I have no direct knowledge of what went on at USAID, but I did look into it some before this whole fiasco. I saw that Joe Biden had appointed Samantha Power to head up the USAID, and I have been following her career since she was the jet-setting “genocide chick”, who made her name and mentions in Vogue and Vanity Fair from covering genocides around the world. She is from Ireland, has a mane of red hair to go along with her blue eyes and still a hint of a Dublin Irish brogue, and with degrees from Yale and Harvard Law and a Pulitzer prize-winning book, cut quite the figure on the diplomatic circuit.
During Barack Obama’s run for the presidency in 2008 Samantha Power made the news by calling his opponent Hillary Clinton a “monster”, and had to resign from her position on his campaign because of it. But she soon got back into his good graces, and after marrying law professor Cass Sunstein, 16 years older than she who also worked for Barack Obama and had a fair amount of political power of his own, she was slotted in as ambassador to the UN.
I was quite critical of her work at the UN so my ears perked up when she then moved over to the USAID under Joe Biden. But she seemed to do an unremarkable and competent job. She toned down her opposition to Israel and though she apparently confronted Benjamin Netanyahu in private about the war in Gaza, the “genocide chick” herself held back from calling it genocide.
I read her article in the New York Times about what closing down the USAID means. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/opinion/usaid-trump-samantha-power.html?unlocked_article_code=1.v04.gYrm.4XNxnseOl-SV&smid=url-share) I kind of hate to admit it, but I agree with her. Elon Musk is making a big, big mistake.
Samantha Power? You have to be joking sir.
She’s a complete fraud or SIB* as we used say over here. How she has floated to the top of the USAID cesspit is a complete mystery to me and many others.
However in former times she might have made a reasonable Boadicea, or Boudicca as we now must call her.
*Standard issue Bogtrotter.
Really? What do you think Samantha Power has done wrong at the USAID? I think she was a poor ambassador at the UN, but she seems to have done a competent if uninspiring job at the USAID. The genocide chick has mostly lost her looks and turned from chick into a mature almost graying chicken, maybe that has something to do with it.
Do you know what her position is on NORAID?
No, I don’t. What is Samantha Power’s position on NORAID?
At least from what I’ve seen, 99.9% of the funding goes to projects that are legitimate.
Of course I have no direct knowledge of what went on at USAID,
Haha! I know what to do, but I know nothing!
I wouldn’t rely on the New York Times for an objective view of things!
Precisely, mostly complete tosh.
The New York Times article I reference was written by Samantha Power, so it is her subjective views. I’m interested in whether her many opponents here can contradict with evidence the what I think are cogent and compelling arguments that she makes.
DOGE hasn’t shut down anything. All DOGE does is make recommendations. It is the White House that is doing the shutting down, and quite rightly so. As for Congress, until the democrats become sane again, that body is completely ineffective.
DOGE is part of the White House, and DOGE is doing the shutting down. Elon Musk is bragging about doing exactly that.
If DOGE is just making recommendations, they should do that in a report that they give to Congress for it to act. Congress has the power to shut down the USAID, and the White House does not.
DOGE does not report to Congress, but to the Executive branch, i.e. Trump.
Stop talking through your hat.
Who would do a better job? Somebody with qualifications and experience in auditing?
And a willingness to recommend cuts despite the objections of powerful stakeholders. At this point I’d take anyone with these qualifications.
We’ll see if he uncovers fraud. To date not much on that. Ok so early days in theory but it’s not jumping off the page is it.
And having the Auditor looking for the fraud be also the Govt’s number one beneficiary of Federal largesse more likely to result in the reverse.
I wouldn’t mind if someone else did it as long as it got done.
Fraud is not the issue. Abuse is not the issue. Waste, however, is a massive issue. I can tell you, for example, that at the NIH the cost to get permission to travel to a scientific conference is greater than the cost of the conference.
Abuse is certainly the issue when Congresscritters and their cronies are getting large pieces of the pie.
Indeed. While I don’t think there is much fraud and abuse, there is a huge amount of waste. I know, for example, that at the NIH, they could easily fire 50% of the administrators, and nobody would notice. They could simplify the grant process by an order of magnitude which would enable them to reduce the number of program officers by 50%. That would be a massive saving coupled with an increase in scientific productivity.
It does appear that entrenched unnecessary government employees represent a big problem across all of our agencies. They are not likely to go quietly.
I am intrigued that you refer to Musk as an alpha male. There are two reasons why I would question that. The first is that while alphas want to be the “leader of the pack”, they know that getting the respect and cooperation of others is crucial to that. As you say yourself, Musk doesn’t seem to care what other people think of him (which, from his perspective, is probably just as well). The second is that it is a matter of record that Musk was (very badly) bullied at school. That doesn’t square with being an alpha. After all, it is often the alphas doing the bullying.
Maybe alpha male is not the right word then. What I mean to say is that Elon Musk is a leader. He is not a follower. He apparently hated to work for Rich Sorkin, the only real boss he has ever had, and I found Rich Sorkin to be an easy man to work for. He is not an individual contributor. He flits around from task to task meddling rather than focusing. (Just like he did at Mar-a-Lago and now does at the White House. And this man is supposed to be running his companies!) He gets things done, but he does that by driving the people who work under him to make a tremendous effort.
I don’t know what you call that, and it probably is not alpha male, but it’s a lot like Steve Jobs was. And like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk is a bully. He lashes out at people for no good reason and holds a grudge if once you cross him. Maybe that comes from being bullied himself, but he’s certainly a bully now.
There is probably a word for what Musk is, but I cannot for the life of me think what it is. To the extent that he is a “leader”, he doesn’t seem to have particularly many followers in the traditional sense (inasmuch as that those who like him the most don’t actually know him personally). Trump, on the other hand, is probably an alpha male. He wants to be liked, and he has sufficient interpersonal skills to make people like him.
Of course he’s an alpha.Anybody who makes it from basically nothing (normal middle class) to the richest man in the world based on technical innovation, sheer willpower and brains is an alpha male. If Musk were female, her would still be busy on his very first project worried about people’s feeelings.
But nobody actually likes him, and he seems, if not comfortable with that fact, at least resigned it it. Very un-alpha male. Oh, and as to “normal middle class”, how many emerald mines did your father own? Plus, it was apartheid-era South Africa. All whites were rich compared to the population as a whole.
Musk spent $44 bn of his own money on Twitter to restore free speech in the world, and took a big loss on the purchase. He is a hero of democracy.
Not to mention his numerous technological contributions. He is in precisely the position in which we need him – advisor to Trump.
Oh, yeah. “To restore free speech to the world”. Right.
Restore free speech to the world….then promptly silenced many accounts that were critical of him
I am not optimistic about Trump having a “come to Jesus” moment with his multi-racial working class base. This base has no independent organization; it will be angry and disorganized and unable to exercise counter-clout against Musk.
Bannon, though, has the correct analysis of Musk at least, but Bannon has already been frozen out of the court this time around. Moreover, Bannon lacks the charisma to be an opposition leader of a mass movement.
What will end Musk’s chainsaw rampage, if it ends, will be a falling out with Trump or aggressive court rulings against him. In the interim, though, a lot of people are going to be hurt.
Your use of the word “chainsaw” made me remember Chainsaw Al Dunlap. He was an American corporate executive known for his aggressive cost-cutting measures and turnaround management strategies. He went into companies like Kimberly-Clark and Sunbeam to implement mass layoffs and drastic restructuring.
At first, Al Dunlap’s methods worked. He would boost stock prices and appear to turn around struggling companies. But at Sunbeam, his methods were exposed as fraudulent, leading to an accounting scandal and Sunbeam’s bankruptcy. Al Dunlap was banned for life from serving as a company director.
I predict the same for Elon Musk. Many are cheering him on now. I think the cheers will change to jeers directed at Chainsaw Elon.
I can’t imagine Trump ever having a “come to Jesus” moment. He would expect Jesus to come to him.
This is a fine essay, imo. It sets out the potential dangers of allowing corporate interests to manage, on behalf of Trump, a long-overdue reduction and reform of the federal government.
Unherd has become a natural home for pro-Trump views, imo, but it’s refreshing (and reassuring) to see it’s still willing to present articles describing potential pitfalls of Trump’s approach to government and, equally importantly, to demonstrate its commitment to presenting a balanced view of current events.
Thank you for your kind remarks. Means a lot. The sort of comment that makes a writer’s day.
I also agree that this is a brilliant analysis. Thank you!
Seconded.
It is an interesting point. Following the financial crisis, the (almost certainly not originally from Mussolini) quote regarding merger of state and corporate interests was the true definition of fascism was repeated in many quarters. And although that term has been given more airing than an episode of the Young Ones on repeat, we’ve actually arrived back at where we were fifteen years ago.
We’ve seen this play out frequently. When the banks and government were holding hands (in fairness it was, and will ever be, thus), the occupy movement were quick to complain. When it became government and media it changed, it just required a sprinkling of identity politics.
I am watching with some amount of amusement at the hair cut that US government is taking, plenty of which is long overdue. However, it is clear that the vacuum created will likely be filled by a different set of interests.
Of course, right now, we’re in the right wing equivalent of the media + government + DEI/ID politics phase. So the right aren’t bothered just yet. And I’m not too bothered as a rolling back was necessary. The inevitable occurs when we go past the point of need into self-interest and we ask the question that the essay does.
Glen Greenwold, once hero of left, pointed out that executive overreach during the Obama years was a terrible idea. He was ignored. He reminded everybody once Trump was elected and had those powers that he said as much. That made Glen a fascist though.
I guess that’s the moral of the story. Unlimited power is good when your allies have it, but not so much when it’s your adversaries. It’s not always obvious when those positions change.
Thirded. Great article.
I’m curious as to why my reply is blinking in and out of existence like some kind of virtual particle. Now maybe it wasn’t immediately published because it contained a word begging with ‘f’ and ending in ‘ist.’ Which is rather odd as it is about the 3rd most used word in the English language right now.
However, that doesn’t explain why it was published and then removed again.
I have become fed up with this. There is a continued lack of explanation as to why this happens. And despite my near certainty that most of these moderation issues are technical (wordpress) there is no confirmation.
Before we engage in a debate about Musk, let’s review some general facts about the United States:
* US National Debt: $36.4 trillion ($343,000 owed per taxpayer) and increasing by almost $1 million every second
* US State Debt: $1.05 trillion and increasing by $1,200 every second
* US Local Debt: $2.07 trillion and increasing by $25,000 every 25 seconds
* US Federal Budget Deficit, which is the amount spent by the US government each year beyond the taxes received in that same year and added to the US National Debt each year: $2.0 trillion and increasing by $3,000 every second
* Net Interest Paid on US National Debt: $1 trillion and increasing by $115,000 every 20 seconds
* US Trade Deficit which is the balance of goods traded between the US and other countries: $1.17 trillion more goods traded to the US than traded from the US to other countries and increasing by $60,000 every 20 seconds
* US Total Personal Debt: $101.8 trillion and increasing by $4 million every 20 seconds
* US Federal Income Tax: 40 percent of households pay no (zero) Federal Income Tax
With these facts out of the way, two significantly-large levers can help the US:
(1) Remove deficit spending and decrease the amount of total debt at the Federal, State, and Local government levels. This means that although some (or perhaps many – a point that could be debated) government programs might be good, if they are not necessary to the country, they should be eliminated until we dig ourselves out of this massive hole that we’re in.
(2) Jobs, jobs, jobs in the US. Less burdensome regulation and less red tape (e.g. the NLRB has been, on the balance, antagonistic toward business for many years). And if other countries have used protectionist policies to unfairly carry forward a trade surplus with the US for years and years (even decades), then it’s time for the US to respond in kind.
By way of analogy, a person without a job and owing massive debt should not pull out their credit card in a misguided belief that they’re helping others. One should never – never – give away money that one does not have in the first place. First, do not incur more debt and find a job, then pay off the debt balance and accrue some wealth. Then start philanthropy work.
It is not very useful and fair to constantly talk about the national debt and deficits without also looking at things like central bank policies, such as quantitative easing. It just does not show a complete picture otherwise.
If you think that there is too much public spending it might be a good idea to see where all the money supply, not just deficits, end up. Well, the RAND corporation gives us a clue. They showed that between 1975 and 2018, 50 trillion was transferred from the bottom 90% to the 1%. So if your inequality is brought back to 1975-levels the US could have a surplus.
Not that it makes a lot of sense, deficits are just money creation in the end. But it does show that, besides cutting bureaucracy, maybe the US should do something about its dazzling inequality. For example, to make sure that one can actually buy a house and health insurance with those manufacturing jobs they say they want to bring back.
An overarching trend since 1975? 50 years? Surely over the past 50 years, good and virtuous politicians have noticed this trend, have risen up, and have declared, “this is unfair!” After which they’ve done the right thing by not serving their wealthy donors instead of the 99 percent.
No?
The trend continued, despite the election of good and virtuous politicians from both political parties? And we’re now broke as a country?
If I take my broken-down car to a trusted mechanic who tells me, “I can fix this! Pay me now – I’ll hire some good mechanic friends of mine and we’ll have this issue fixed in no time!” And each time over the next 50 years when I return to pick up my car, the mechanic says, “… your car’s still broken – it’s far more difficult and complex than I ever could have imagined – but I can fix this! Pay me again – I’ll hire some more good mechanic friends of mine and we’ll have this issue fixed in no time!”, I’d hopefully reach the point at which I can be honest with myself:
“I’m now broke, my car’s not fixed after 50 years, and this these rotating car mechanics who keep telling me that ‘… it can be fixed! It’s just the case that real car-mechanics hasn’t been tried yet…’ are fleecing me.”
Perhaps I’d also surmise that the car-mechanic industry as a whole is systemically set to demand more money with little to show for the vast expenses when there is little-to-no accountability.
A man who is without a job, who is now in massive debt (paying for a broken car amongst other things), and who enjoys spending on credit like a drunken sailor, may continue to glance around at his wealthy mechanic (and other) friends and complain about inequality and his ‘poor lot in life’ until he’s blue in the face …
… but this won’t change the fact that he is without a job, he is now in massive debt, his car is still broken, and he still spends like a drunken sailor.
For one example (among legion) of these government mechanics, read Betsy DeVos’s recently published article at The Free Press. She details how this ‘middle man’ phenomenon perpetuates itself at the Department of Education, based upon her ‘inside knowledge‘ as the 11th US Secretary of Education.
We are in massive debt. We have set up governmental bureaucracies that run as inefficient monopolies and fiefdoms, that now serve the men and women within their hierarchies far more than the end taxpayers or those they were meant to serve. There is precious little accountability to the end taxpayers for these programs because there is – on purpose – minimal visibility both for taxpayers as well as the Executive boss (the President) into the spending of taxpayer funds and whether they’re fixing anything or just shuffling around money while taking their cut.
An overhaul seems warranted, wouldn’t you say?
Yes, sir, I do agree. Well said!
“$343,000 owed per taxpayer“. I was interested to learn recently that this is about the same amount that Norway has in SAVINGS per citizen in its sovereign wealth fund (about €330,000 per citizen)…..
I agree. What the author does is keep his eyes on the ball, not the players. That is very important. To some degree libertarian virtue signaling was already used to selectively cut regularly protection, welfare and labor rights during the neoliberal period. Perhaps some of those reforms were necessary. But in the end it facilitated a lot of wealth accumulation at the top (which never trickled down), while governments became even more bloated, crony and bureaucratic. Which is a big reason of how we got here in the first place.
So it is wise not the be mesmerized by the spectacle and the rhetoric. Always keep track of who the beneficiaries actually are.. For example, if you are told it is inevitable you have to work more for less, while the people telling you this double their wealth, there is a good chance you are being conned.
It’s true that wealth accumulates to the already-wealthy (an example of the Pareto principle). But it’s also a truism that duly-elected political representatives of the American people – no matter how good and virtuous – will not hold the wealthy accountable. Refer to the wealth trend since 1975 that you mentioned earlier.
The wealthy have money in rich abundance and some measure of power, whereas politicians have power in rich abundance and they exhibit a great need for money. The wealthy want more power (usually as a form of protectionism against the power of the State) and politicians want to fund their campaigns in order to survive and thrive and to accumulate for retirement. And so the two sides reach an agreement.
Look at the 2008 Financial Crisis as one recent example. The US Congress mandated “affordable housing” during the 1990s and they loosened the financial rules governing mortgages. This was a significant factor for the rise of risky subprime mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as by wealthy financial institutions that donated to those very same politicians. And as defaults reached critical mass, these financial institutions and US financial markets eventually experienced a liquidity crisis that led into the Great Recession.
Who paid the price?
Many of the politicians in Congress that initiated these events were already voted out or retired. Others were still in Congress and because of the murky and complex nature of the causes of the liquidity crisis, many of them made their case with verbosity and thrived during the aftermath.
The politicians railed at the evils of capitalism, even as they issued bail-outs to their donor friends at these financial institutions (“too big to fail”). Most ‘guilty’ executives at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc, merely shuffled around to new positions, whereas most ‘guilty’ executive at Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers were hired by other financial institutions.
Who was left to pay the price for the guilty by funding their bail-outs?
The average American taxpayer.
One could also refer to the Halliburton and d**k Cheney connection before and during the (insanely lucrative for Halliburton) Iraq War as another example of the same principle that politicians look after their wealthy friends and donors, and wealthy friends and donors look after their protectionist politicians.
I understand your general theory about equality – that the wealthy in America should look out for the average citizen. But as witnessed via failed application and practice over and over again, such wishes and dreams are merely that: Wishes and dreams. Politicians and the wealthy, like the car mechanics in my earlier analogy, rarely if ever pay a price. They look after each other. Only the owner of the car pays the price.
As long as they limit the gdp government can soak up they will achieve their ends.
Like a cancer you have to make it smaller.
Hopefully if it gets small enough you can cut it out.
Me too. We need transparency, balance and truth, from whichever camp. Our consciousness will never expand if we hear only half the story.
yeah, you’re right and these people supporting you. Now is the time to focus on restraining Trumps ability to drain the swamp. It’s best to let these agencies operate like they have. Also, we should encourage Trump not to get revenge on these enemies of the US who assaulted him constantly. Much like, right after Israel was attacked on October 7th, by October 8th it was time for Israel to calm down and not go after hamas unless it could guarantee no civilian casualties. Maybe we should have voted for Kamala instead and mirrored the shining beacon of Keir Starmer. Way to encourage caution.
Our Bureacracy is in Peril.
Hallelujah!
Let’s be clear about something, there are a lot of reasons for me not to trust Elon Musk. Him killing the Twitter Files in a pique simply because Substack introduced their Notes feature or pushing for H1B visas are but two examples. The problem is Mr. Ahmari, you are not the best person to be making this case. Vanity Fair of all people exposed you taking money from Soros’ Open Society Foundation. You know that same oligarch that was just counted as “one of the good billionaires” and just received a Presidential Medal of Freedom (along with Bono for some reason) as Biden was leaving office?
https://archive.ph/WeeLf
Whatever Mr Musk’s faults he is a great improvement on the UK’s cheapskate equivalent, one Dominic Cummings Esq.
In short Musk has ‘made a fortune’ whilst Cummings has
done nothing, bar nearly destroying this country with his draconian Covid antics, for which he will be rightly, forever cursed.
Let’s all be straight – if Trump/Musk want to really deliver the promised $2 Trillion Federal expenditure reductions they’d be hitting Defence spending and health and Social security entitlements, not small beer like USAID. The fact they aren’t should be telling everyone something crucial – they are on an ideological and revenge driven crusade which will avoid clashes with big Corporate interests so long as they get left alone to carry on.
And as is becoming clearer by the day they don’t have a Reconciliation Bill package that secures the Billionaire tax cuts and the investment in Sheriff’s Joe’s and Detention centres for their 11 million deportations prog. DOGE hitting the wrong targets if it wanted to square this. But of course it can’t because Defence is where Elon gains the most and Trump promised not to touch entitlements. So Govt shutdown coming.
You clearly haven’t read the news, since DOGE is looking into the Pentagon this week and Hesgeth has welcomed them. I suspect that within a year they will have saved over $2 trillion.
It’s really simple and relates to the concept of marginal gains. Sure USAID is small compared to the total. But $40 billion here and $40 billion there, and you soon end up with well over a couple of trillion.
Have you considered “the fact that they aren’t” has to do with this effort being just a few weeks old? If the corruption in what you called small beer is so large, it is likely to be worse among the bigger agencies. They’ll be scrutinized as well.
And the Pentagon et al are far more entrenched and powerful. Trump/Musk are going after the low-hanging fruit first.
“Let’s all be straight – if Trump/Musk want to really deliver the promised $2 Trillion Federal expenditure reductions they’d be hitting Defence spending etc”
Perhaps they are refining their AI processes and procedures on the smaller fish first – Just a thought.
This is strange. I’m not sure what’s going on here. The Wall Street Journal reported on how Congress is taking this shutting down of the USAID and they are not taking it well. I mean Republicans too, not just Democrats. From that article and others I get the idea that there are a lot of complaints from Republicans to Marco Rubio and anyone else who will listen. One Republican congressman is quoted as saying we need to put away the wrecking ball and pull out a scalpel. (Mixed metaphors, I know.)
I sense a backlash building against Elon Musk. I don’t think this is going to end well for him. I think the USAID stays, and Elon Musk goes.
Your dead wrong. I say those congressmen and women who are complaining are likely to be successfully primaried. If they object to what is being done they are clearly corrupt and on the take.
People always complain when their sacred cows are affected. Repubs like spending, too, just on different things than Dems.
” But a manufacturing revival also requires a competent workforce and long-term research and development on a massive scale — tasks that have proved too big for any entity but the state.”
I’m not at all sure about that one.
I believe the author “doth protest too much”. So far Musk is doing a fine job. If that ceases, no doubt Trump will fire him. But so far so good. DC and the deep state need shaking out and the dreck and waste shaken out. There is no gentle way to do that.
Silly photo! When did America ever vote for the power brokers surrounding the President?
“There simply aren’t enough silly expenditures.”
Are you sure? I doubt people thought their tax money was going to private media outlets, or to teach Sri Lankan journos about “gendered” language, or a host of other equally dubious things.
There is no way the entirety of the federal budget is justified. It’s past time that it be reviewed instead of assumed that each department and agency wisely spends every dollar and requires annual increases.
I still don’t understand how people can stomach the words “billionaire” and “populist” in the same phrase… and then vote for it. It just makes no sense. Billionaires are not billionaires because they are populists; they do not get to where they are on account of a proven track record of adhering to populist views. They get to be billionaires because they choose over and over and over again that they want more power than you. Implicit is the idea that because they have this power, they deserve it more than you do… otherwise, what is the justification for taking it? That’s not populism, folks — that’s elitism.
The become billionaires because the provide good products that millions of people want to buy a acceptable prices.
CPBR can go…basic laws protect US consumers from discrimination. This bureau was Warren’s palything…
Actually, “basic laws” don’t protect you from being debanked for political reasons. There is no constitutional protection against that, since banks are private entities, unless . . . an agency like the CFPB* creates a rule like the one that has now been jettisoned.
Anti-discrimination laws apply to private entities, you know. Nothing stops anyone from adding a provision about personal beliefs to the ones about race, sex, etc.
We don’t need the CFPB to create a rule, just a Congressperson to draft a bill.
Sort of begs the question then of what in the Constitution gives the Federal Government the power to make such laws over private banks.
An everlasting disgrace was the way the US authorities “bottled it” over the 2008 ‘Banking crisis’.
They may have let Lehman & a few others ‘crash and burn’ but many more should have been crucified.
If it is any consolation the U.K. authorities were predictably even more supine, but we are almost inured to national disgrace.
This excellent essay should be republished in the NYT and other mainstream sites. Instead of just catastrophizing everything Trump/Elon does, it’s important to draw lines of good and bad, and why that is.
That’s cool, but I’d disagree. I think it’s a very shallow essay with a common structure: Such-and-such agency does good things (says whom?). We can’t just shut it down, Because Good Things!
Can’t disagree with much of this piece, but “parts of the federal government fell in thrall to the same whacky and unpopular ideologies taken up by professional classes in the private sector” seems to understate the depth of the problem with the institutional state.
The United States has a much stronger tradition in decentralized, court-ordered law than does Britain, notwithstanding the fact that one of great gifts of Britain had been … decentralized law, the common law process.
Contrast decentralized law to centralized, administrative law. Administrative law invests administrative agencies with the capacity to both make law and enforce that law. The entire concept violates the separation of powers.
The common law process operates autonomously and amounts to crowd-sourced law. Administrative law operates largely insulated from judicial review. Indeed, the entire concept upon which agencies like the CFPB had been established was to make them autonomous.
So, choose your poison: An autonomous caselaw process (common law process) that requires even the central authorities to make their case in front of a third party (the court). Or an autonomous administrative law process that affords almost no recourse to outsiders.
The latter enables the arbitrary rule of the administrative agencies. The former constitutes an answer to the question “Who guards the guardians?”
At least appointment to Britain’s highest Court doesn’t depend on one’s views on abortion.
Hold my hat NUANCE has entered the debate. Outside the raging my side or no side someone seeks truth. Thank you! Great article and why I am at UnHerd.
We’ve been through some horrifying and extreme political times in the last eight years. Washington (largely Democrats, but also some Republicans) turned on the public like a rabid pit bull, abetted by a supine media and a salivating tech sector eager to slurp up billions in government contracts. I think those extreme acts demand at least something in the way of an extreme response. When you’re clearing a jungle, you don’t use tweezers, you use a machete.
Also – You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. Elon Musk was willing and able to help Trump get elected. I’m willing to let him take this ball and run with it – for a while, anyway. To insist, after three whole weeks, that “AIEEE THE REVOLUTION HAS GONE OFF TRACK WE MUST STOP” seems unreasonable.
Test? My last comment disappeared.
OMG! Where did you last see it?
It’ll be in the last place he looks
I would suggest you write to UnHerd support demanding that they restore it. First, you will receive an automatic response and you need to send another mail,asking for a human to deal with your case.
The UnHerd moderation system is scandalous and, despite numerous complaints, nothing has been done about it.
Still, the more people complain, the better.
As I said earlier, we have absolutely no idea what Musk and his team have found and will find. Everything is opinion based on the scraps coming out piecemeal
If I were guessing USAID is a vehicle for some of the most pernicious fraud perpetrated on America. Plus it’s quite feasible it was the vehicle planned to be used to undermine Trump in the name of “The Resistance”. Otherwise why is the Left squealing so much.
No doubt USAID does some humanitarian work and does it well. How else would it have got away with its nefarious deeds otherwise. Yet even its so called “Good” is couched in questionable motivations and manipulations of sovereign states and its people. Not to mention the robbing blind of the U.S. taxpayer.
So why don’t we pipe down and wait and see, and have less of Democrats displaying their shrill and idiotic histrionics. So predictable and tiresome.
From what I have read, the USAID is the vehicle that was used to target Trump in his first term. I think that is why Trump directed Musk to start there. There are all sorts of links between USAID, Soros Organizations, CIA, and various Meddlesome NGOs that seem to be often working with the CIA to effect “regime change” around the world. So I would bet money that the Progressives were planning on using the USAID that way again.
What we are seeing is Trump, wiser now, going after the people that effected what amounts to a coup during his first term. It is unclear to me though whether the Covid pandemic was convenient for the coup or was a planned part of it.
“Pipe down”.
Now that’s an expression one doesn’t hear much these days, more’s the pity!
Let’s wait and see, Musk and Trump cannot be worse than the last 4 years. Too much FUD and he hasn’t been in office a month.
Banks are regulated by the Treasury. They can and should create a “debanking” rule. Congress should also include a legislative remedy that can’t be overturned in 2019.
The NLRB is a dinosaur agency that is long past its prime. The CFPB is an extra alphabet agency that isn’t needed – we already have the FTC, the SEC, and countless states attorneys and other agencies – and not much more than a vehicle to launch Senator Warren’s career.
The further you go, the more trash there is
Another nonsensical shill hit piece, this time by Mr. Ahmari. Decent premise, an Oligarch is only in this for greed. However, Musk is certainly not the typical cadaver looking Tech mogul, Amazon Clone, or Facebook guru. He actually loves that America promises freedom and opportunity, and he maybe even loves America. He did a very unOliarchy thing by buying Twitter and exposing the goverment/Tech/Media censorship collusion. Of course, they all went after him but it didn’t work and now they are doing a very Oliarchy thing, trying to suck up him to him.
The only negative I can see is he needs to tread carefully and be fair in the redesign of Federal Bureaucracy. I wish him well and when Americans actually see where their money has gone, it will be like waking a sleeping giant.
Mr. Ahmari needs to get his Oligarchs straight.
I think they are getting the big details correct. Cancel huge sections of the bureaucracy in mass. If it turns out 3 % of their budget was making a difference as a government expense, you can always add back some pieces.
Best place to cut is payroll taxes. I’d get rid of the whole agency.
For getting on for $300m Musk has bought the entire US government dataset to do with as he wishes for his own benefit. It’s the ultimate bargain for him (not for the American people who have been royally screwed). Not only that but it seems that he has got the government to pay him $7m per week for his team of 20 or so to do it!
So is Trump so stupid that he couldn’t see this happening with Musk given free rein to run the country for himself, or is he in on it? Even if (when) Trump gets rid of him, or tries to, Musk has still got the data.
Sohrab Ahmari, you’ve sold me. Full DOGE ahead.
The Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve failing to act as “lender of last resort” and letting 5,000 banks fail in 4 years. What does the NRLB have to do with that?
The Great Recession was caused by gubmint forcing low-down real estate loans, because racism, and then, when the bubble popped, Little Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve didn’t act as “lender of last resort” for Lehman Brothers and so the stock market tanked. CFPB has nothing to do with the case.
Reading project for you Mr. Ahmari. Lombard Street by Walter Bagehot, the guy that founded The Economist. Warning: you might learn something.
One little nugget from Walter: to have a healthy credit system you need loans properly collateralized and you need borrowers that can make their loan payments. If either goes south, it’s Houston We Have a Problem.
Test.
Nah. Chieftess Senator Warren set up the CPFB to be a domestically focused usaid: a slush fund for democrats. Only after Trump won did the begin to toss a few bones towards the victims of democrst suppression.
There’s too much packed into this article to unpack. The plethora of points obscures his point.
The author makes a few decent arguments, and I understand where he is coming, but he is advised to remember that “Less is more”.
I’ll add that the title is too “Yellow journalism” for my taste. How about:
Musk is a danger to Trumpism; or, A Sober Analysis of Big vs. Small Government
Don’t like the crude language–he can do better. But good ideas in this.
You shouldn’t try to fix the problems caused by one illegitimate government policy (say the privileges of the banking cartels) with another – government bureaucratic regulation. They always get coopted by the biggest players in the market to rig things in favour of those biggest players and against their smaller competitors and new entrants. For example, those big players like huge complicated rule books.
Take the banking system, for example. Its chief source of profitability comes from the way the Federal Reserve operates. It is also insulated from the normal rules of solvency, and shielded from liability by many “safe harbour” rules. In other words licensed banking is completely divorced from the marketplace of its nominal customers. Therefore there is no market discipline.
Banking should be treated like any other business – no special privileges. Then you wouldn’t need special government appointed “regulators”. The Federal reserve needs to go, too.
Musk is absolutely right to get rid of all these unconstitutional government bureaucracies. The other half of the job is unrigging the market place to restore market discipline.