Darrell Castle talks about debt and the Trump administration's effort to control it.

Transcription / Notes

DOWNSIZING TO STARVE THE BEAST

Hello, this is Darell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday, the 10th day of January in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about debt and the potential for disaster if it isn’t somehow tamed. Donald Trump is at least paying lip service to it with his creation of DOGE or the Department of Government Efficiency.

Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new department of government which he calls the Department of Government Efficiency. That is an attractive name but if flies in the face of the political trend  that has existed for at least 50 years. Before that time, the government had some accountability since its wars, its tax cuts, etc. had to be paid for and it had to have enough gold deposits to cover all of it.

Once the dollar’s ties to gold were removed in 1971, the government no longer had any restraints on its spending. A government of the people and by the people needs some restraints because without them human nature will control the politicians elected to serve the people. When a politician discovers that he can achieve reelection thus retaining power by spending the resources of others or promising to do so he will do it or at least that has been the trend since 1971.

A responsible government recognizes its limits and it spends only what it can raise in taxes. If the federal government were responsible the United States would not have the 36 trillion of debt that it has today. People are alarmed at the size of the debt but not many want their pet projects or their own largesse to be reduced so I wonder if DOGE will have an opportunity to succeed. It seems that the goals of Elon Musk and Donald Trump are headed on a collision course.

If Musk gets his way, at least the way as he has described it, then we should get some positive results. There could be lower deficits which should bring lower inflation, lower interest rates and a far less expensive and less powerful government. We might even expect a business revival with the return of manufacturing to the U.S. Mr. Homan’s efforts on the border would ensure the departure of many murderers, rapists, torturers, child molesters, terrorists and assorted lunatics who now reside here illegally at government expense.

The Republican elite, and now that includes Donald Trump, may just have a different agenda. Trump has just spent 9 years and a lot of money to gain power including a Republican majority in both houses. Those majorities will not want to become less powerful but instead they will want to use that power to take more power and wealth from the American people who are supposed to hold it. That is human nature and the prevailing political trend. The hearts of mankind are black and desperately wicked the bible tells us and when power and money are unrestrained the humans who have it will use and abuse it.

Right now, Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world and he seems to be enjoying it immensely. My guess is that he will not want to share the power with a billionaire from South Africa for very long, but I could easily be wrong and if so it wouldn’t be the first time. The President-Elect seems to enjoy conducting foreign policy even before he is inaugurated, but I suppose power abhors a vacuum and so somebody will execute foreign policy or at least that is the way he seems to see it.

He is a businessman and a negotiator and right now he has the power and he is trying to establish with friend and foe alike that business will be conducted differently in the future. Bloomberg tells us that he warned the European Union that its exports will get hit with US tariffs if European Union countries don’t buy more American oil and gas. He posted on Truth Social about that statement:

“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous de...