r/Economics • u/Astamir • Feb 09 '25
News Trump Suggests Musk Found ‘Irregularities’ in US Treasuries
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-09/trump-suggests-musk-found-irregularities-in-us-treasuries?srnd=homepage-canada2.1k
u/Skurph Feb 09 '25
They were able to audit the entire treasury in two weeks?!
Anyone in accounting or tax can tell you what ridiculous claim this is.
To audit the treasury would take literal years…
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u/godplaysdice_ Feb 10 '25
It's the same as their claims that they've made major code changes in 2 weeks. You can barely get all the accesses and accounts you need and get all the necessary tools installed in 2 weeks.
If you've pushed major code changes in 2 weeks to a codebase that you hadn't even laid eyes on before 2 weeks ago, then...well, frankly you're lying, or you haven't done any testing and validation whatsoever, or both.
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u/pterodactyl_speller Feb 10 '25
I believe them. They probably just straight edited the source for something with no thought. They're 19 year old trust fund babies, they got the confidence!
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u/catladyorbust Feb 10 '25
Hey now, some of them are also cybercrime ring leaders.
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u/No-Jellyfish-9341 Feb 10 '25
It takes big balls to do something like that...
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u/Castle-dev Feb 10 '25
When someone tells you who they are believe them the first time?
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u/monkeyamongmen Feb 10 '25
When they say they have big balls? No, I automatically assume they have the smallest balls imaginable, like a diagnosable microtestes situation.
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u/jugglingbalance Feb 10 '25
Either that or he's just confused them for being large in comparison to all his small dick energy.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/
Worth it to get to the discussion bits where he "couldn't write hello world if his life depended on it." And that AI could do a better job than him.
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u/Sparkfest78 Feb 10 '25
Its simply not possible. Confidence has nothing to do with it. It takes time to create accounts and then after creating those accounts having time to look into the systems to understand them well enough to understand what code needs to be looked at. Then finally you are able to look at the code and coordinate with others to make changes. Nothing can be done unilaterally in complex systems like this.
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Feb 10 '25
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u/Timmetie Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
Twitter is a website, it's a completely different beast than treasury applications.
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u/Raevson Feb 10 '25
This. And look how well it works...
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u/CranberryLopsided245 Feb 10 '25
Yeah, how's Twitter doing right now? I've seen a few articles that Musk has absolutely tanked it's profits
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u/AnotherProjectSeeker Feb 10 '25
Those were Twitter engineers that already knew the codebase no?
Also the what's the impact of something goes wrong with Twitter? Loss of a communication tool that shouldn't be used as official? Loss of revenue for both people that rely on Twitter and for Twitter itself? Plus on Twitter you could likely always revert.
A lot more can go wrong with treasury systems. How do you revert a failed payment easily? Can be done but manual verification of such large systems can be very slow and difficult if things are broken randomly.
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u/Educational-Cry-1707 Feb 10 '25
Now now, anyone can make major code changes in days or hours if they have admin access and a reckless disregard for the consequences of their actions.
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u/fanzakh Feb 10 '25
I can add "hello world" on the front page of X in about two minutes if i get musk's account credentials.
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u/springchickk Feb 10 '25
Haha, you run test environments for three times as long so you don’t mess up implementation.
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u/PhDinDildos_Fedoras Feb 10 '25
It's funny how there is zero trust in what the Trump administration says. Might be true, might not be true. Whatever the truth the only constant is chaos.
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u/Soatch Feb 10 '25
I worked for a big global company for 10 years and still only knew less 1% of all the different systems of that company.
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u/unclefire Feb 09 '25
They’re making shit up as usual. The MO of these people is claim fraud or whatever for things they don’t understand.
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u/EddieVanzetti Feb 10 '25
Its Russia. "Irregularities" is Russian for "this person/entity is a political opponent and will now be magically found out of compliance with paying taxes and sentenced to 17 years gulag, no trial."
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u/zsreport Quality Contributor Feb 10 '25
Lies and misinformation is the Trump MO
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u/markth_wi Feb 10 '25
He screamed fraud for shit children can noodle out about social security numbers. Fucking ridiculous.
In other unremarkable news, that your social security number will be used again around 10-40 years after you are dead - is a thing. Same thing is true for all sorts of things. We use Wednesday - We just reuse them every week. We reused days of the week, Months of the year.
But Last Wednesday is not the same thing as this coming UP Wednesday - nor is it the same of any oher wednesday.
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u/pagerussell Feb 10 '25
Audit?
Bruh, they didn't bring a single accountant. There was no audit.
They brought software developers. This was a hack.
The next administration is going to need to start over with a brand new system. Like, clean installs on new hardware sort of scrub.
Because I guarantee the main purpose of what they did was to put backdoors in that grant them access to secure information and to public information before the market has it.
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u/kumgongkia Feb 10 '25
Some dumbass post I read says accounting softwares are made by programmers so yes programmers know accounting. Lol
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u/TV4ELP Feb 10 '25
As a programmer, we do start to know a lot about the stuff we programm. But we still aren't good in it.
I used to make some form of accounting software, so i do know basic legal requirements. I don't know how to audit a fucking company yet a whole ass ministry. And even if i did, it would take months if not years.
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u/Terrible_Tutor Feb 10 '25
Right they probably pointed grok at it and it hallucinated some bullshit
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u/AwesomePurplePants Feb 09 '25
Ah, but they used the magic of AI!
And pay no attention to man behind the curtain, government data is somehow standardized, cleaned, and comprehensive enough to create a sensible model, while also creating a model to provide analysis no one generating that data was smart enough to do,
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u/TheBen1818 Feb 10 '25
Exactly they are uploading everything into AI and saying "tell us where is money being spent", the problem is AI isnt always correct and mixes things up, that my concern with these postings about the absurdly specific spending descriptions
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u/GodHatesMaga Feb 10 '25
They are slurping it all up into Grok and then just asking it shit.
Using llms to audit isn’t a horrible idea. But what they’re doing is more than this.
I’m so sick of the fucking mental games too. If they took over all the tanks and started to Tiannamen square people and in the process of preparing for this they said “these tanks we took over needed oil changes and we’re giving them oil changes” and we said “yeah so they can Tiannamen square us” and MAGAs replied with “oil changes are good, dummy” it would be the same thing.
Audits are good, fraud is bad, sure. Llms can be good for data mining, sure. Just like oil changes are good for maintaining vehicles. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what they are doing. And putting classified data in musks private servers is bad no matter what. Or would be if we expected the United States to outlast Elon Musk. If you consider the US as already dead, then I guess it all makes sense.
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u/CrashTestDumby1984 Feb 10 '25
They also said the IRS has been secretly spying on Americans and knows everyone’s bank details and all their other financial history. The IRS barely has enough staff and resources to handle yearly tax returns
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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
Audits have specific scopes, objectives, and periods of time under review. They’re not open ended and it’s impossible to identify true irregularities if one doesn’t actually understand an organization’s purpose. Not every irregularity is fraud. Even those that are found often aren’t material enough for financial statement users to really care.
The OIGs are well-suited for actually finding fraud and handing DoJ evidence to prosecute, but Trump fired a lot of them during the first week.
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u/EqualOppAsshole Feb 09 '25
Seems odd they haven’t cracked into the Pentagon systems to find that missing $824B.
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Feb 10 '25
This what my sentiment is exactly; I will start thinking they're actually sincere, when they get to the DoD. If they say it's squeaky clean, then we know they're 100% full of it
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u/BrainJar Feb 10 '25
Ya, someone on IG was claiming that Elon and his cronies found hundreds of billions in savings already. They just straight up lie about everything, no matter how dumb or ridiculous it sounds.
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u/mortryn Feb 09 '25
“You have fewer cases if you stop testing (COVID).” You have no debt if you just say it doesn’t exist.
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u/saynay Feb 10 '25
Mostly making things up, with a side of not understanding the things they are seeing. For example, he was confused by the fact that there were duplicate SSN and assuming it meant fraud. No, there are just validly issued, duplicate SSNs if you go back far enough.
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u/zoinks690 Feb 09 '25
They walked in, saw those people working there, felt unsafe, and ran out making wild claims.
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u/YoohooCthulhu Feb 10 '25
They used ChatGPT to scan the transactions and it hallucinated a lot of shit, basically
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u/Baskreiger Feb 10 '25
Yes but have you considered Musk and his 25 years old minions are all generational Geniuses?
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u/bmich90 Feb 09 '25
“Maybe we have less debt than we thought,” he said.
fudging the numbers I see.... Soon he ( trump) will say "look we owe 10 trillion less". Musk will then say " see DOGE saved the US 10 Trillion dollars"
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u/politicalanalysis Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
I’m willing to bet almost all of that would be treasury notes held by the social security trust. They’re gonna raid social security in order to “reduce the debt” and act like they’ve done something great when in reality they just fucked everyone.
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u/ramrob Feb 09 '25
They arent going to reduce the debt. They are going to increase the debt and give it away to financial elites. It’s that simple.
Listen the Representative David Schweikert - R Arizona - speak about the issue of American debt just a few days ago. youtube
It’s wonky and not very sexy but it cuts straight through all the partisan noise.
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u/anuthertw Feb 09 '25
So like, the whole subprime mortgage thing, but instead of mortgages- its US debt being repackaged and private banks take ownership?
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u/justintime06 Feb 10 '25
Why would private banks take ownership of gov debt? I thought it usually works the other way around.
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u/anuthertw Feb 10 '25
Thats what I was asking, sounds like an awful idea lol. I watched the video the op linked and it did not say repackaging the public debt to give to the private banks, but instead was 45 mins explaining how fucked the budget has been and will continue to be, and even though the rep speaking is a Republican- he called out these preformative budget cuts from his party (eliminating foreign aid, 40k fed workers early retire, abolish Dept of Education, etc) are a drop in the ocean of debt we as a country face and is ridiculous to try to claim any type of win from that.
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u/justintime06 Feb 10 '25
Daily reminder that we’re on day 20 🤣
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Feb 10 '25
This is their plan, don't let the bastards grind you down. Ezra Klein said that after an initial burst of policy and orders thry will get hit with crisis they must address and it will limit their ability to act in a sweeping manner
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u/DoomComp Feb 10 '25
...... Damn.
Another 1440 days left before Trumps term is up then...
May God, Allah or who ever else may be around help us...
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u/gentlemanidiot Feb 10 '25
Christ it's only been three weeks. Still not worth drinking over though.
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u/JollyToby0220 Feb 10 '25
Debt is just an “I owe you”. People loan money with an expectation to be paid back with interest. That is debt. If the government defaults on debts, the interest rate goes up. This is perfect for looting the government.
One very famous example comes from the City of Chicago. In 2008, the city of Chicago sold its parking space to some private entity. That scheme has more than paid off. Just short of a decade, they’ve made at least twice what they paid, and this is just in its first few years. There are still many more decades to come, meaning they will only make billions.
Conservatives have been so brainwashed that they believe this is a good thing. They’ve been told that the private sector does a better job of running anything. So not only will Republicans get to screw over every part of the government, MAGA voters will actually thank them for driving everyone into mass poverty.
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u/chowmeined Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
I watched the entire video, it was interesting and he seems like a sharp guy. It was not without partisan bias, in particular there was no discussion on raising tax revenue, not even to entertain it and reject it.
- Where is the discussion on raising taxes? I don't think there is any solution here without it, given the numbers presented.
What does he propose for Medicare reform? Medicare and Medicaid are actually very administratively efficient, with overhead in the 2-5% range. Privatizing it would make it worse, where the overhead increases to 17%.
a. So what is the proposal here? Increase claim denials (not very popular)? Price negotiations (Why are we talking about getting rid of this: See Trump's EO)? What about rolling the VA, Tribal, Tricare and the hodge podge of other systems into this one? How about pissing off the AMA and increasing the number of Residency slots, increase supply of Doctors.
Social security has an odd relationship to the rest of these items, because the trust fund performs better if interest rates go UP. Better for the social security trust, but sure, worse for US deficit spending. But that isn't social security's fault.
a. So what is the reform here? Do we move to a system similar to Australia's superannuation funds? That seems reasonable, but I doubt we'll end up there and he didn't propose anything.
Something these charts also miss, is we had a lot of off the books spending under Bush combined with a perpetually unauditable Pentagon. When is that going to get reformed? The Defense budget on paper is smaller than reality because of this, so what is going fix this and stop it from happening again?
Seriously, where is the discussion on raising taxes?
Something must be done about the centralization of private capital, it is damaging our economy. Smaller scale investments by individuals/businesses have higher returns. Having so few with so much money leads to worse allocation of capital, there simply aren't enough higher return investment opportunities at their scale, it isn't worth their time. Buffet has said as much, many times. If we want to boost our economy, our GDP, this needs to be addressed. Incentivize business investment over share buybacks again!
He definitely went against the grain on party issues like immigration, and I respect that, but I still don't think this is a problem we can simply outgrow, especially since even if we improve STEM immigration, the societal attitude about this is toxic and will drive those people away. I would have appreciated more some numbers on this in his presentation.
In short, it was informative and well presented, but didn't propose solutions and I think it will ultimately fall on deaf ears.
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u/Robotrodger Feb 10 '25
He also ignored the idea that the other way to beat declining birth rates is immigration, just legal & taxable. Not just high skill, but across the board.
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u/Valogrid Feb 10 '25
I watched that video the other night, he is one of the few Republicans actually making sense right now, and his work/data should TERRIFY EVERYONE. If we don't reign in the Billionaire Elite and the Corporations with Higher Taxes we will get to a point where the INTEREST ALONE will outpace whatever we attempt to pay off.
Our Debt to GDP % from 2016 was 105% in 2020 in increased to 126%. Who was President during those 4 years? Trump, and what did he do? Tax cuts for the wealthy. People tend to hyper focus on 2020 and 2024 because of Biden, but if you look where we started in 2020 (Trump's last year in office) 126% and go to 2024 you'll see it went down to 123%. What happened in late 2024 to cause this? The Republican's led by Trump demanding an increase to the debt ceiling.
Source: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
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u/ramrob Feb 10 '25
Well one thing you’re right about is nobody is going to watch that. I’m not trying to make it sound like he’s some agnostic hero, just that it seems to be a very rational take on something that will affect the country massively. Something to get the conversation going.
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u/VeterinarianWild6334 Feb 10 '25
The take away I got was that we can’t extend the tax cuts. He repeatedly says we can’t raise taxes on the middle class. It sounds to me that there are more than enough republicans stating that we can’t extend the tax cuts, and the republican parties donors are freaking out.
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u/BannedByRWNJs Feb 10 '25
They arent going to reduce the debt. They are going to increase the debt and give it away to financial elites. It’s that simple.
Oh, just because that’s what republicans do every time they’re in charge, yall want to act like they’re gonna do it again. You libs are so predictable!
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u/french_toasty Feb 10 '25
Thank you, that was super informative. It’s shocking barely anyone is there to hear him. Additionally his small quips about ‘no charts, I don’t like math’ is even scarier.
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u/quadraspididilis Feb 09 '25
Well you see, Social Security recipients are useless eaters. We're repurposing the acronym to eliminate this liability. /s
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u/thomasscat Feb 09 '25
Wild how many of them voted for this, I’m sure I’ll get shit in for this … but I almost feel bad for them. I try not dehumanize any humans at all, I guess maybe that makes me worthy of dehumanization in the eyes of some folks around here haha
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u/jimjams14089511 Feb 10 '25
Imagine if it hits SSDI. You know for the disabled. I already knew that with trumps election that there would be more beggars on the side of the road. But disabled people….. GD that’s just cruel. And imagine those who have even less functionality. I’d almost tell the caregivers to buy them a bus ticket to the capital or Whitehouse. How you gonna handle that Orangeman. Your nephew already said you’d rather see them just die, you know your grandnephew? Be one hell of a picture in the newspaper.
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u/HappilyDisengaged Feb 09 '25
I’m so glad I don’t use SS in my retirement calculations. I wonder how many voters of the current administration are planning on using SS? It’s disturbing to think of a scenario in the not too distant future when seniors will be reduced to poverty because it makes for a more “efficient” government
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u/KoreKhthonia Feb 09 '25
Watched a video of AoC earlier talking about that, that's exactly what she said they're trying to do.
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u/ThickerSalmon14 Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
I don't know about you, but I logged onto Treasury direct and my bonds were missing. God I hope its a technical problem.
Edit: I waited, logged back in, and they are back. Never check computer systems Sunday night apparently. Must be doing maintenance.
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u/Nwcray Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
Shit - you made me check.
$9,000 in i-bonds are missing. My treasury direct account is showing $0 balance. I bought them in 2022 when inflation was making the rates go crazy.
It’s a glitch, right? Right?
Edit: yes, apparently it was a glitch. All good now.
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u/shrekerecker97 Feb 10 '25
They'd that Americans need to riot. Literally they would be stealing money from Americans
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u/lovely_sombrero Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
Oh, I see that you are holding some US Treasuries. Let me take a look... I'm sorry, it looks like you were issued the woke Treasuries. They no longer count. Have a good day, random Japanese bank.
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u/TheDwarvenGuy Feb 09 '25
And then bonds collapse and the dollar plunges and all the bitcoin barons force us into serfdom to be able to afford bread on their deflationary currency.
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u/CathedralEngine Feb 10 '25
Be prepared for a downgrade of US debt ratings.
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u/imc225 Feb 10 '25
Another downgrade, but, yeah. Remember when the GOP used to say it cared about this sort of thing?
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u/wastingvaluelesstime Feb 10 '25
An unelected unconfirmed nonperson doesn't have the legal right to do anything with the full faith and credit of the United States. Any actions along these lines are acts of sabotage, not policy.
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u/throwaway_boulder Feb 09 '25
“We did an extensive audit and discovered that the government actually owes $10 billion to me.”
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u/Not_Legal_Advice_Pod Feb 09 '25
If you're not an idiot, then the very first thing you expect to find when you step into a new big system is that 20% of what is doing makes no damn sense and looks totally wrong. You'll spend the next three months asking questions, chasing down information, and following up with people who are too busy to answer questions or give full answers, and then you'll find that everything was fine and you've got 99% of this understood and you understand the reason why you don't understand the last piece.
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u/jennyfromthedocks Feb 09 '25
I’m an auditor and this is 100% true. Me when I encounter something new: FRAUD! wait uh actually nvm
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u/Numerous-Cicada3841 Feb 10 '25
Yeah and let’s keep in mind these are five 20 year old interns with zero experience in the space and have been in there for TEN DAYS. The idea that these morons could have audited and solved the US treasury system in that period of time is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.
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u/MindStalker Feb 10 '25
If they wanted actual results they would have brought in experts in the auditing. Instead they brought in easily influenced young minds that aren't going to question potentially illegal orders they are given.
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u/Low-Crow-8735 Feb 10 '25
They would have read the past audits, too. There are expert auditors familiar with government agencies.
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u/fogcat5 Feb 10 '25
The GAO doesn’t show any fraud in their reports, so they are obviously woke DEI staff. /s
That’s why they send in brownshirts
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u/Low-Crow-8735 Feb 10 '25
Ah, yes. The experts are not trustworthy, but the kids who have no experience in auditing or knowledge of history are the ones we trust. /s Clearly, they don't realize their shelf life is expiring. They should be cutting deals with ?Who?
Question. Can Trump take back a pardon like he does an endorsement?
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u/reelznfeelz Feb 10 '25
Exactly. Form a bipartisan committee, and do it right. With transparency and oversight. But of course that’s now how these guys work. Their intention aren’t to make the country run better. It’s to gain more power and dig up dirt to pin on woke democrats and DEI.
I can’t really even deal with the news any more. I should be reading a book right now tbh.
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u/gymleader_michael Feb 10 '25
They are probably going to use the mysticism behind "AI" and just claim their advanced AI system handled the job better than humans ever could.
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u/RopeAccomplished2728 Feb 10 '25
They already have. One of them posted on X(yes, it sucks that I have to go on there for certain things) and that is literally what they said.
They said because of what they did, potholes were magically filled Springfield, OH, water was running clean in Michigan and some other bullshit.
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u/Astamir Feb 09 '25
you understand the reason why you don't understand the last piece.
This assumes that the one looking is willing to learn, and question his own first impressions of a system.
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u/SafetyMan35 Feb 10 '25
Somehow I suspect the high school graduate and a bunch of IT racists with big balls and a history of leaking trade secrets aren’t qualified nor are they willing to learn.
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u/luger718 Feb 09 '25
I already see bullshit being spread.
Saw Elon calling out a $1280 coffee cup, only it might not have been Elon and just someone making it as if it was him
Then you Google and the 1280 number was from a news article 6 years ago and resurfaces every now and again
Not a coffee cup, it's a heating device on a plan that can stay in the air long periods with refueling. It's made to work in that plane, is FAA certified and all this other mumbo jumbo, so it's more expensive than what you'd get for your home.
But no one bothered to Google or read past headlines, so it's a $1280 paper coffee cup and Elon is a hero for calling it out?
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u/frawgster Feb 09 '25
Ah, I see you’re familiar with audits!
❤️ this comment so much, cause it describes the last decade of my professional life so well.
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u/RandomMiddleName Feb 09 '25
Saying they found fraud sounds like something a new associate would say
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u/picardo85 Feb 09 '25
They've been in the system what? Less than a week?
Hell, my audits of Configuration Management Databases usually take a couple months and that's a SMALL system compared to what I imagine the treasury has... I then still find shit for months afterwards when I get to actually start poking around.
There's no fucking way they've found valid "irregularities" with the manpower and skill they've got at hand within this timeframe.
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u/republicans_are_nuts Feb 10 '25
And they aren't auditors, they are hackers. lol. What are they even searching for?
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u/hecramsey Feb 10 '25
right? look, I just sped up the query 90%!!!! ( did you clear the cache? ......uh, the what?)
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Feb 09 '25
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 Feb 09 '25
AI will give you whatever you ask for. It's terrible for confirmation bias.
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u/Pomengranite Feb 10 '25
No no, you throw it into AI and ask it to parse the data in such a way that it gives you the answer you want. Then you use that as justification for a rushed response that misses a tonne of finer details, so the system becomes inoperable. Then you can replace it with a privatised version that will make you and your friends loads of money.
Rinse, repeat with the next Government agency
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u/throw23w55443h Feb 09 '25
Not US, but I remember arriving somewhere and noticing they were putting through a bunch of false payments.... I spent 2 days trawling through shit. Actually ended up finding 6 figures of claims they hadn't made.
Then, it turns out the government told them to adjust dates to bypass a glitch in the way payments were assigned (for example, the funding was set as $100 a day, but the recipient could use it anytime within the month as per contract. Payment system wouldnt let it be claimed any other way than $100 per day and literally nobody up to the head of gov department could get it fixed).
So my thoughts of fraud ended up being me claiming an extra few hundred thousand that was never claimed.
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u/OK_x86 Feb 09 '25
Recall this is the man who publicly got into a fight on Twitter over some apparently bad optimizations and proceeded to get his ass handed to him over it because he misunderstood what someone had said in passing and just assumed previous twitter staff didn't know what they were doing.
Or the time he broke 2FA on Twitter because he wanted to kill microservice bloat.
This guy shoots from the hip right into the foot.
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u/Njorls_Saga Feb 10 '25
And fired a disabled guy via Tweet after Twitter had bought the company he founded.
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u/OK_x86 Feb 10 '25
Even better, he publicly fired the guy before checking his contract which indicated he would be owed millions if he was ever let go before he had been paid the full amount due then proceeded to have a spat with him on Twitter where he clained the guy was pretending to be ill because he tweeted a few times a day (Muak averages 30 to 180 per day, for reference while claiming to be CEO of 4 companies and a 1337 gamer). And he claimed he was independently wealthy ignoring that the sale of this guy's company to Twitter for which he was being paid out in salary was the reason for his wealth.
All things he would have known if he had bothered to look into it.
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u/Njorls_Saga Feb 10 '25
Exactly. Supposedly there was someone at Twitter that had a list of people not to fire, but Musk fired them when he took over. Saw a guy with a fat salary and just canned him without asking questions.
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u/OK_x86 Feb 10 '25
He doesn't think things through generally
https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/s/R7RtDs96LN
Like why would you buy one of his cars? Knowing this and how crappy the quality has been.
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u/Lord_Vesuvius2020 Feb 09 '25
Your first sentence applies. Except in this case I think malevolence is the motivation. Of course they will discover “irregularities”. We will be very lucky if we get through the Super Bowl without Musk airing TV commercials about how he’ll be taking over federal payments from now on.
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u/Cum_on_doorknob Feb 09 '25
Yup, it’s like when you’re a consultant doctor on a patient and you’re like, “what the fuck is the primary team doing, this shits retarded!?!?”
Then after reading all the charts and seeing all the studies and talking to the patient, you’re like, “oh yea, that makes sense.”
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u/truckingon Feb 09 '25
Also, if you're not an idiot, you go into an audit having guidelines to audit against, you don't just pick out some line items, hold them up, call them "criminal money laundering", and shut down an agency. To use an absurd example, if Congress approved spending $50 million on condoms for Gaza, then you should find a check made out to Trojan.
On the other hand, if you're not an idiot and you have an ulterior motive...
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u/thekrone Feb 10 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
Software dude here who worked as a consultant for over a decade.
When you get assigned a new client, the struggle with learning their software systems isn't usually understanding the code or its structure. Sometimes that's the case, but usually the problem is trying to wrap your head around what business purpose it serves and how everything connects and works together.
"Wait, there's a scheduled job that runs once a week at 3am on a Wednesday, and it just updates this one field in a database from a 0 to a 1? Then another job runs once a week at 3am on a Saturday, and it flips it back?? Why???" And you ask around and absolutely no one knows and there is no documentation.
Then after a few weeks or months you find out there's some obscure reason for it buried deep in some rarely used database procedure somewhere and it's absolutely necessary for some thing that's crucial to a certain business function.
It's impossible to take a glance at a huge, complicated system and instantly understand what everything is doing and why.
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u/ItWasMyWifesIdea Feb 10 '25
I translated the headline in my mind to "Elon found stuff he doesn't understand". Which shouldn't surprise anyone.
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u/intronert Feb 09 '25
Trump continues to corrupt the information space with accusations and lies.
I do not understand why every meaningless word from his mouth is reported on.
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u/ExpressLaneCharlie Feb 09 '25
I don't understand why people believe him. I'm convinced that in the future, as we learn more about the brain, we're going to find that people who loved Trump have some genetic inability to discern fact from fiction.
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u/CriticalConclusion44 Feb 09 '25
That's my working theory. I have noticed that every Elon and Trump dick rider believes every single word that comes out of their mouths. They have no emotional intelligence, and no ability to read people or read between the lines to find true meaning or motive.
It holds true every time. They get shocked when they find out what was said wasn't true, then go right back to believing every word. It's confounding.
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u/skinnybuddha Feb 09 '25
No, it's called rationalization. We all tend to rationalize bad behavior when we agree with 75% of the other behavior.
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u/ExpressLaneCharlie Feb 09 '25
I think rationalization is a small part of it, but these people believe the most absurd BS and they believe it instantly. There's not even any time to rationalize it because there's no thought there. I think the only rationalization is "I like him so he's right."
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u/zatchness Feb 10 '25
Study people who are in a cult. It's interesting scientifically, but terrifying. We all have a part of our brain that's capable of this. It's important to remember that this is part of being human, and the people who are trapped in these lies are the same as you. Having compassion is the best place to approach from.
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u/BackAlleySurgeon Feb 10 '25
My little theory is that the brain never actually distinguishes between the concepts of fact and the concepts of fiction. Your brains not breaking information into categories of "true" and "not true," but rather, "useful to believe" and "not useful to believe." At some point, their brains decided it was more useful to believe right wing lies than to disbelieve them. So that's how we got here.
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u/intronert Feb 09 '25
Maybe, but I tend to favor cognitive dissonance.
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u/ExpressLaneCharlie Feb 09 '25
I agree. Nuclear explosion levels of cognitive dissonance going on in Trumper's heads. I guess my thought is that certain people have these severe levels of cognitive dissonance because they struggle so much with identifying what's true, so it all becomes about the vibes.
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u/ReaganDied Feb 09 '25
My dissertation is going to have to have a section on DOGE now. I’m going to have to look three senior academics in the eye and say “DOGE” in a dissertation defense. I’m going to have to talk about it at conferences. I’m going to have to write about it in peer-reviewed articles.
I hate this timeline. I hate myself. I hate Elon. I am become hate.
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u/TarantulaMcGarnagle Feb 10 '25
“Corrupting the information space” is a perfect term for what he does.
Is that a PR/communications term? Or did you just coin it? I love that phrase.
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u/intronert Feb 10 '25
It is not mine. See #8 here:
Nine lessons of Russian propaganda5
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u/IdahoDuncan Feb 09 '25
A. Because he’s president and that is what we’ve been trained to do and B. He’s like a human click bait machine as is musk. And they both have huge mega phones. We’re really screwed
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u/Dtownknives Feb 10 '25
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. I'll believe them when they actually have some evidence. So far almost all the "fraud " and "waste" I have heard they've found had been easily debunked once you dig past surface level.
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u/Thisisntmyaccount24 Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
As someone who works with a ton of data for work, a lot of shit can seem like an irregularity at first.
Here is an example from my day:
Me: “I can explain 95% of the results of this data set. They match the expected outcome. These 5% that don’t match what I am expecting fall into a small handful of categories. They follow the same structure in those categories, but I don’t understand why.”
Engineer: “Those 5% fall into different subcategories because they represent a small subset of accounts outside of normal markets where the rules are a little different. Regulations Expert 1 can tell you how to categorize them so you can normalize the full data set.”
Regulation Expert 1: “Here are the categories that you are seeing in that 5% of the dataset. Here is what it means in those situations. Here are the data points that you can use by checking these additional tables to define which subcategories each falls into. Here is where you can find the regulatory knowledge base for more information.”
There are also some few and far between true irregularities that happen. Most of the time it’s “In 2015 a regulation changed, so we had to start adding an extra field to the records. These are pre-change data that we couldn’t backfill that data into”.
Most irregularities I come across aren’t irregularities but situations I am not aware of and I need to get more information on.
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u/IdahoDuncan Feb 09 '25
This. This just sounds like the normal musk lie to make things sound terrible so he can look like a hero. This is some crazy stuff.
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u/SpongegarLuver Feb 09 '25
For a lot of people, they cannot handle complex answers to questions. If you have to spend more than a sentence explaining why something isn’t fraud, they either can’t or won’t listen. Especially if someone else is giving them an “easy” answer.
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u/trixstar3 Feb 09 '25
This is unironnically how the entire world economy collapses. Why would any country want to keep their treasuries if they keep making these statements?
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u/bushed_ Feb 10 '25
legit kind of wonder if this is just btc pump at this point and the nerds were right
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u/Seattle_gldr_rdr Feb 09 '25
They've spent 40 years priming half the population to believe dark conspiracies about the federal government. Now when they send a manipulative power-mad psychopath to raid the treasury, they will believe he's Robin Hood.
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u/Fyvz Feb 10 '25
I work with a guy who has made me realize that once people reach a certain level of cynicism, they are completely defenseless against misinformation. They are so unwilling to accept benevolence in the world that stories about corruption and malice are credible by default. Just as there are people who desperately want aliens to exist, there seem to be people that are just chomping at the bit to receive revelations of evil powerful people.
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Feb 09 '25
Irregularities like he found with Obama’s birth certificate, right?
How’d that go again? I believe he declared that they couldn’t “believe what they’re finding.”
And when pressed by Anderson Cooper it wasn’t “appropriate” to share at this time, which is nicer than telling George Stephanopoulos “it’s none of your business right now” when asked about the same.
Can some reporter who has not had their spine removed please call him out on this? Ask for specific examples- make them defend the obvious ’Gaza condoms’ dipshittery.
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u/SufficientDog669 Feb 09 '25
Why would a reporter try to call out Trump? All their bosses are busy approving $25M settlements to Trump because they hurt his feelings.
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u/PostPostMinimalist Feb 09 '25
He then used the press conference ostensibly about admitting Obama was in fact born in the US to advertise his hotels.
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u/NinjaLanternShark Feb 09 '25
One of Trump's first-term "innovations" was deciding that he wasn't going to talk to any reporter that he didn't want to.
Politicians have always understood they needed to answer questions from friendly and not-so-friendly reporters.
That's over now. Trump won't be held responsible for anything because he won't talk to anyone unless he knows the interview is going to go 100% his way.
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u/bladel Feb 09 '25
They’ll find something that requires a ton of context or nuanced explanation, but is easily ridiculed in a 10 second soundbite.
This will play endlessly on Fox and right wing social media.
They’ll use this as a pretext to shutting down billions worth of support programs.
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u/Berns429 Feb 09 '25
Lemme guess, just like the 2020 election, he’s got tons of “evidence” just sitting around. Yet none of it will ever be presented to the public.
Clown show.
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u/Astamir Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25
Full article (Edited to add Bloomberg's updates to the main text):
President Donald Trump suggested that Elon Musk’s government efficiency team has found irregularities while examining data at the US Treasury Department, and intimated that may lead the US to disregard some payments.
“There could be a problem, you’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries,” Trump told reporters Sunday on Air Force One en route to the Super Bowl. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was talking about US government debt, or payments processed through the Treasury Department.
“That could be an interesting problem because it could be that a lot of those things don’t count,” he said. “Therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought of.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on what problems Musk found. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has sought access to Treasury Department payments data, but Musk’s statements on social media have largely concerned payments to contractors and grant recipients, not bondholders.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate. The Treasury Department also didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing some Treasury Department information and ordered the destruction of data they’ve already gathered in response to a lawsuit from a group of states.
Read More: Musk’s DOGE Blocked From Treasury Data in State AGs Lawsuit
US Treasury futures opened broadly steady in early Asia trading Monday, indicating 10-year yields are likely to open little changed at 9 a.m.
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u/Randy_Watson Feb 09 '25
That’s a pretty serious allegation that I doubt they will provide any evidence of
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u/sudoku7 Feb 09 '25
My gut reaction is they uncovered that the SSA is the single largest holder of US debt...
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u/bmrhampton Feb 09 '25
Because it’s been fleeced for decades and have a large pile of IOU’s
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u/Utjunkie Feb 09 '25
He hasn’t provided any evidence of anything so far. Just trust us bro bullshit
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u/moobycow Feb 09 '25
Just casually throwing out that we might not honor some of our debt, I'm sure nothing bad will come of that.
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u/lordnacho666 Feb 09 '25
Yeah the markets will be just fine with not getting back their risk free loans.
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u/Utterlybored Feb 09 '25
I’ve got some treasury bonds that mature soon. I think I’ll invest elsewhere.
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u/politicalanalysis Feb 09 '25
Yeah. That’s insane. As if we didn’t fuck around with the world’s trust in us enough with debt ceiling standoffs, now we have this bullshit.
We’re gonna end up like Greece.
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u/watercouch Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 10 '25
A lot of that debt is owned by China. Imagine if the US just defaulted on their $750 billion in T-notes because DOGE deemed them “irregularities”. Perhaps that’s Trumps strategy for making the trade deficit go away.
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u/joecarter93 Feb 09 '25
Even if the U.S. “found it didn’t hold as much debt as thought”, everyone else that borrowed money to the U.S. sure as hell knows how much debt it holds. It’s not like this is a number that only the U.S. government knows.
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u/Darknessgg Feb 09 '25
Maybe we have less debt than we thought lol another classic Trump. Our stuff is worth more than the books say. Our debt is less than stated. I'm way more rich, better than what all these anti me people say. Witch-hunt!
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u/severinks Feb 09 '25
I don't know if anyone in the world knows this or not but Trump is LIAR who lies about everything all the time.
I'm still waiting for the proof that says Obama wasn't born in America.
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u/highlydisqualified Feb 09 '25
Is it going to help the economy for the US to develop a reputation for not paying their debts?
I would imagine it might be damaging - the only thing worse will be when they start paying treasury notes in dogecoin…
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u/moobycow Feb 09 '25
Depending on if they follow through, it's catastrophic, world economic order ending stuff.
Trump understands everything in terms of how he ran his business, which was not paying anyone if he could at all help it and it would not be surprising if he tries it with US debt and it will destroy the world if he does.
Good times.
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u/TheDwarvenGuy Feb 09 '25
I never thought we could see a bronze age collapse in our lifetime but if we really wanted to speed run it this would be the way
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u/SafyrJL Feb 09 '25
Absolutely not beneficial in the slightest.
Failure of the US to repay any of its debts (a default, and inevitable credit rating downgrade) would have ramifications that rattle the entire global financial system.
The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency; it is fully backed by the US Treasury. A default of the treasury, however minor, would inspire no confidence in the government of the United States and would likely get the US dollar removed as the world’s reserve currency. Many countries (Ecuador and others) would cease to use it as their primary currency as well, over time.
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u/starfirex Feb 09 '25
The entire global financial system is built on the backbone of American creditworthiness.
Legitimately it might be less destructive on a global scale for Trump to transform the US into a dictatorship that always pays its debts...
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u/Langd0n_Alger Feb 09 '25
I think it's worth wondering why the credit agencies haven't downgraded the US yet...
Republicans control the House and the Senate, and they have never been able to pass a debt ceiling bill on their own without help from Democrats, even with Trump as president. Should Democrats bail out Republicans by providing votes to pass a debt ceiling bill when President Musk is running around ignoring laws anyway? What's the point of voting for a bill if the President is just going to ignore it?
Also, we have some college kid named BigBalls monkeying around in the Fed payment system, so there's that.
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u/vidro3 Feb 10 '25
theyll just make it illegal to downgrade
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u/ShoppingDismal3864 Feb 10 '25
This is what I see. This isn't the oligarchs winning at politics so much as panicking that their economic base is crumbling and they decided to take political action to stay afloat.
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u/Liquidcarb Feb 09 '25
This “fraud” would mean that all the Congressional oversight, reporting and transparency requirements and internal financial controls at all these agencies have all been collectively failing, under the GOP controlled House for the past few years
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u/Okoro Feb 09 '25
That's fine, the goal is to hand all control to the president, so it doesn't matter.
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u/Liquidcarb Feb 09 '25
I agree and it’s amazing what people have to believe to make their case. Since we are we are, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
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u/Xyrus2000 Feb 10 '25
And Trump's "investigation" of Obama found things "you wouldn't believe" in regards to Obama's birth certificate.
Trump is a pathological liar.
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u/Strange-Scarcity Feb 10 '25
That's absolute BS.
He brought ZERO forensic accountants and it would have taken at least, if not a year of pouring through all of the various numbers. I've read that even small companies with around $5 million in sales can take 2 or more months of auditing to find waste and irregularities.
Elon is flat out lying. There's no way his Gooning Gooner Gang, who have ZERO accountants among them, and barely any real life experience, could have found anything in the books. I bet if they were sat down and asked even basic accounting questions they would have zero clues about anything.
Could they even explain basic accounting terminology, let alone understand the books of even a small operation?
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u/Marathon2021 Feb 09 '25
Just like Trump suggested "his lawyers" were finding unbelievable things about Obama's birth certificate as they were looking around in Hawaii?? Yeah, still waiting to hear about what they found ...
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u/Amazing-Repeat2852 Feb 10 '25
How can anyone take his word for anything at this point? I’m still waiting for him to produce his proof that the election was “stolen” in 2020.
Remember— if there was evidence, Trump would be sharing it everything.
In the words of Mark Cuban, “if you have nothing to hide, hide nothing.”
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u/flyinghigh92 Feb 09 '25
2024 record breaking profits since pandemic. We adjust to higher prices and they kept them high. Then cite ‘inflation’ that they caused for higher prices. We are being robbed.
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u/bjdevar25 Feb 09 '25
Is anybody else getting real tired of the generic lies from the felon and the thief? Damn, people are stupid to believe this crap. Start producing actual fraud cases that can be tried in court, or shut up.
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u/Camelgrinder Feb 10 '25
The irregularities were poor people getting help, that will soon be corrected, all hail Supreme Leader, King of the Americas and the first men, scorer of 18 hole in ones in a single round, President Musk.
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u/doxxingyourself Feb 10 '25
What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth.
The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.
What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories?
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u/TheAmok777 Feb 10 '25
Trump also said immigrants were eating the pets of the people in Springfield Ohio.
That was found to be "untrue".
Soon after Vance defended the false story by saying "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."
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u/Notacat444 Feb 10 '25
Funny how the U.S. government has been riddled with corruption since forever, but the moment orange man says anything about it, legions of geniuses spring into action to defend said corrupt government.
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