Liberation Day
by Jim Buckley
A Golden Age is Upon Us (Fingers Crossed)
It’s probably good if you haven’t checked your IRA or 401-K. In fact, if you had not looked at it since before Election Day 2024, you’d be even better off. But then along came Thursday, April 3rd and Friday, April 4th.
I had no idea one could lose so much money so quickly.
But there you are and here we are.
Markets initially surged after the election of Donald J. Trump. As the realization of what needed to be done became clearer though, and that President Trump was probably going to try to do the impossible: what needed to be done, the markets began to get a little nervous. As the president got closer to implementing what had to be done, it got worse and finally, when he publicly announced his more-or-less full tariff plan on April 2 “Liberation Day,” the markets collapsed. You are probably in a world of hurt. I know I am. Right now, just in time to pay my 2024 taxes.
Ouch.
And, honestly, it may take a while to begin to feel better. I’d wager that we’ll come out of the doldrums by, say, November.
Maybe.
And that’s the good news.
The bad news is that we – the country and all us taxpayers – are forced to face the consequences of the bad – very bad – policy decisions that had been made over the past 30 years.
The Timeline:
1994: Newt Gingrich and some 48 Republican members of the House of Representatives swept into power in 1994, giving that party control they hadn’t experienced since 1946. Not long after, President Bill Clinton and newly elected Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich crafted a bold deficit reduction package that not only held back new spending but began to reduce the national debt. The nation’s budget was balanced for the following three years.
2001: The World Trade Center was felled by bloodthirsty teams of terrorists on hijacked passenger jets. Not only did the plane-bombs kill some 450-plus firemen, policemen, and other first responders, along with more than 2,500 innocent civilians, but the attack also initiated the unwinding of the balanced budget. George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” was launched and thereafter U.S. spending (and money printing) exploded, leading eventually to a housing market collapse and to what has been dubbed the Great Recession.
2008: In response to the housing collapse and ensuing recession, the Federal Funds rate dropped to zero, creating a 13-year zero-interest-rate environment that led to a rapid rise in the cost of a home, 3% mortgages, an enormous gain in the value of listed exchange stocks, and a collapse in the value of bonds. And, we must mention, an explosion in government money printing (so-called “quantitative easing”).
Both political parties can be held responsible for the crazy spending that ensued, pushing our national debt up from a barely sustainable $5.6 trillion in 2000 to an unsustainable $36+trillion-and-growing national debt, and one that was now expanding at a $2 trillion+ yearly pace.
The expense of handling that debt is more than what is spent on the entire military defense budget.
There was bound to be a reckoning, but until now and with this president, no one had been willing to take the medicine.
I for one am glad the inevitable happened on President Trump’s watch.
It won’t be easy, nor smooth, but we now have someone in the presidential suite who is not only willing to take the task on (as Thursday and Friday, April 3 and 4 have illustrated), but has – and has had – plans to make it work.
If there had been a Democrat (say, Kamala Harris) in office and there had been another $2-trillion-plus budget proposal that the rest of the world had decided was enough, causing the market to collapse, the Democrat plan would have been quite different from what President Trump is trying to put into place.
Any Democrat’s first reaction would have been – as it always is – to raise taxes. Especially on the upper 10% of taxpayers who pay approximately 90% of the budget. And, to go along with the tax hikes, there would no doubt be some sort of “austerity” plan.
Trump is doing exactly the opposite and instead has teamed up with Elon Musk and a small cadre of dedicated “assistants” to find and remove waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government. Success in this effort, they expect, will produce at least a $500-billion reduction in yearly spending, perhaps as much as one trillion.
Recent DOGE Efforts and Successes So Far
The following are what uninformed picketers, rioters, and sundry Democrats have been objecting to by “keying” and burning Tesla vehicles and trashing Tesla showrooms:
The Department of Veteran Affairs had been paying $380,000 for minor website modifications. That contract has not been renewed and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending… 10 hours/week.
Agencies terminated 80 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $203.6 million and savings of $139.1 million, including a $2.1-mllion management consulting contract for a “senior advisor in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
Each year, the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) receives $55 million in congressional (taxpayer) funds. Prior management would sweep excess funds into its private Endowment (zero congressional oversight). In the past ten years, USIP has transferred $13 million to its private Endowment.
For the past four weeks (3 March to 29 Mar) @SocialSecurity has been executing a major cleanup of heir records. Approximately 9.9 million SSN holders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked “deceased.” Another two million to go.
As of Friday, 29 Mar, $4.3 billion of Covid-era funds remained unused and mostly dormant. Thanks to the work of @SecretaryLCD and @Sonderling47@USDOL, $1.4 billion was recovered and returned directly to the Treasury general account, and team is moving urgently to return the remaining $2.9 billion.
On March 25, the DOGE team terminated 113 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $4.7 billion and savings of $3.3 billion.
The Doge boys canceled a multi-million-dollar government-wide consulting contract on “fitness center services.”
Musk and his team discovered that the Small Business Administration had issued 3,095 loans, including PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan), for $333 million o borrowers over 115 years old who were still marked as “alive” in the Social Security database, including a loan to a 157-year-old individual.
Who, other than a complete or malevolent idiot, could or would be opposed to righting such wrongs?
And, you know all about President Trump’s series of “reciprocal” tariffs that he hopes will lead to a more equal playing field for the U.S.A. in international trade.
Those unequal tariffs are left over from a post-WWII world and have outlived their usefulness (for the U.S.); they’ve also led to the “hollowing out” of many U.S. cities and towns by encouraging U.S. companies to close their plants and “offshore” their production. And, oh, lest I forget, those unequal tariffs have also allowed China to grow prosperous while at the same time enfeebling the U.S.
President Trump Needs Our Support
The President has a lot on his plate, and he knows that time isn’t on his side. If he doesn’t accomplish most of his agenda by, say, November of this year, the latest by February 2026, it will probably cost him the House of Representatives. His “Popularity” poll numbers will fall, and that would put an end to nearly all his plans to undo the Biden/Harris pile of identity crap the pair promoted over their feckless four-year reign.
The jackals are already out, smugly cackling on MSNBC, CNN, and in various daily newspapers, that Trump’s hopes and dreams – and frankly those of most of us who support him – are about to be dumped into the ashcan of history.
The president’s actions seem badly timed and have proven painful so far; certainly, this week’s stock market mayhem has crushed a big chunk of our savings and retirement funds.
But I’m hanging in there with him and pray this plan works and that the United States really does enter a “golden” era of prosperity. I believe his actions to close the border, reduce taxes and debt, deregulate and strengthen the economy, discipline the military, discard DEI, and end the identity and transgender nonsense, are necessary. We owe this to our children and their children.
I believe most of you feel that way too.
The President has never needed our support more than he does right now.
Let’s give it to him.
Good job, Jim. The left just hates facts and the truth. Yes, it will be a bit bumpy but I too think it needs to be done and support our president. We dodged a cannon shot. If Harris had gotten in it would have been business as usual. Not cutting waste. Millions still pouring in from around the world. Rapists and murderers having free rein on our streets. The market may have taken a hit but in the long run our taxes would continue to climb, get less in return and then watch our version of Rome burn.
Great article, Jim, on the decline of our country and the monumental job ahead of righting the years of mismanagement and corruption. It should be obvious to all that Trump will be the scapegoat for the Biden/Harris et al fiasco. Hopefully Trump and his administration can turn things around even though that might bother some of the Trump hating readers and the mainstream media.