Sometime in the early 1970s my family visited my uncle and aunt in Bethesda, MD. My uncle, who was a congressman from North Carolina, showed us the sights. We did all of the usual DC tours – The White House, the Capitol, and the museums, but he also took my father into one of the government office buildings. They got on an elevator and stopped at a floor covered with desks and no walls; there was a government employee at every single desk.
My uncle asked my father to guess what they all did. Of course, my father had no idea. My uncle told him, “They do nothing. This is where they send the troublemakers. They can’t be fired, but no one wants them, so they come here and collect their checks.” That is what our government had grown into 50 years ago.
I believe we all understand intuitively that within any organization as large as the United States federal government, there is a certain amount of waste and inefficiency. Corporate America has a profit incentive to be as efficient as possible and this still happens there as well. We all know it, and most of us have personally experienced it; thus, the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a popular one. However, in life it is often not what you do, but how you do it.
I’m reminded of a scene from “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” when Kingsley Shacklebolt said to Cornelius Fudge, “You may not like him, Minister, but you can’t deny Dumbledore’s got style.” Well, you either love him or hate him, but either way you have to admit Donald Trump has style…or at least a style. He doesn’t just build hotels; he builds hotels with his name plastered on them in huge gold letters. He has been this way his whole life. So, he is not just going to quietly go about the business of rightsizing government the way it has been done by multiple administrations in the past. No, he is going to appoint the most successful businessman in America today, who happens to be a divisive character himself, to go in with a gold-plated sledgehammer.
So, should we be scared? The administration’s opponents want us to be scared. The short answer is, of course not. My favorite fear tactic this time is, “The unelected billionaire Elon Musk has access to our most personal information.” This refers to DOGE’s review of Treasury operations, and it sounds really scary, but let’s break it down.
Unelected: That describes every single individual at the U.S. Treasury department. It does today, and it has since the beginning of the U.S. Treasury. Nothing scary.
Billionaire: Put another way would be, “Really successful person who in this case has built and run some of the most innovative companies in the world.” Don’t get me wrong; If one wants to point at Sam Walton’s children and say, “You didn’t earn that,” then fair enough. One could also point to a certain currency trader and say, “You did that by gambling with other people’s money.” Also, fair enough. Elon Musk, however, earned his by knowing how to build large, efficient organizations. This should be a compliment.
Access to our most personal information: No more so than innumerable other government employees. If one is afraid of government having information about the citizens of the country, then he or she must logically be in favor of reducing the power and scope of government. That is DOGE’s mission.
None of the fear mongering passes even the most basic scrutiny, but it is part of the chaos that follows Donald Trump. Theodore Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” Trump, on the other hand, carries a big stick and tells you that it is actually a huge, huge, fantastic, fantastically huge stick; he waves it around recklessly, and then finally sits down and talks softly. He doesn’t quietly go to our neighbors to the North and South and say, “Hey fellas, how about helping out with the fentanyl smuggling into the U.S.?” He announces a 25 percent across the board tariff and doesn’t even give them time to respond. Then he puts his stick down and starts to talk.
At the end of the day, DOGE is not doing anything that doesn’t need doing from time to time, and the tariffs are mostly bark with little bite. Our history is full of examples of the pendulum swinging from government growing to needing to be trimmed back, and all administrations negotiate with other countries. This administration just does it all with style. You might not like him, but you can’t deny Trump’s got style. He is the master of chaotic flamboyance. At least that is my perspective.
Warm regards,
Chuck Osborne, CFA
