Are Musk and DOGE Violating the Constitution?

Before we get into today’s AMA, I want to take a moment to remind readers that I’ve got my big Crypto-AI Fusion event coming up.

I’ll be on camera next Wednesday to explain an opportunity I’ve got my eye on – at the point where artificial intelligence and crypto collide.

I write often about these two technologies, and with good reason. Both are going to have an immeasurable impact on our lives.

Crypto – having finally got its long overdue regulatory backing through President Trump’s positive crypto and blockchain initiatives – is going to completely transform our financial system as soon as it’s given room to do so.

We have a team of fiercely pro-crypto regulators, administrators, experts, and supporters working tirelessly to establish a clear regulatory  framework for blockchain technology and crypto integration into our modern financial system.

The White House’s new AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, has said we are entering a “Golden Age of Crypto,” something I’ve echoed in my own research.

Yesterday, President Trump issued a new executive order, Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile which you can see here. And today was actually a historic day in the industry as the very first White House Crypto Summit was held led by David Sacks, who is this administration’s Crypto and AI Czar with President Trump also present.

Speaking of AI, I’ve been research and writing on the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence for a decade now – and I was the first to pound the table on Nvidia as the foremost AI company to watch and recommended it to my readers in February 2016. Anyone who followed my advice then made an absolute fortune.

Bleeding Edge readers already know the impact it will have and the power this technology holds. AI will change how we communicate, research, transact, socialize, conduct business, and more. It’s going to affect nearly every industry you can think of – healthcare, computing, automation and robotics, biotech, on and on.

And yes, that means crypto too. Right now, as much as 75% of all market trading is conducted by algorithms. We’ll only see that number rise as AI further develops and becomes easier to integrate into the systems conducting those trades.

Which is why I’ve developed a strategy that puts our in-house AI to task tracking an asset class many consider too unpredictable to risk trying to trade…

Digital assets.

We’re leveraging all the pattern-spotting power of a neural network as well as its capacity to take in and retain millions of data points – far more than a human can possibly keep track of consistently – on the crypto markets.

I’m looking forward to next week when I get into the details. I really don’t want you to miss my Crypto-AI Fusion event, but even more than that, I want you to be prepared for this new era of blockchain innovation. I want you to be informed about the drivers behind the changes happening in the crypto industry and to feel confident in how to navigate it as more changes come.

That’s why I strongly recommend you also sign up for text alerts. (You can do so immediately after registering here.) We’ll make sure to reach out so you don’t miss a thing and reach out before I get started next Wednesday, March 12, at  8 p.m. ET.

But also, when you sign up, you’ll receive a special report – my Crypto Bull Market Roadmap – where I share what I believe lies ahead in the next few years for crypto and how we’ll play it.

And as a bonus – to complement the fast-paced nature of the crypto trades we’re leveraging AI to profit from – I’ll even reveal a cryptocurrency with the kind of long-term utility I think makes it worth holding for the long run.

You can go here to sign up.

Now, on to the AMA…

Back to the Gold Standard?

If the U.S. were really serious about out-of-control spending, we should get back to the gold standard. What say you?

– Charles M.

Hi Charles,

This is a very heavy question. An important one no doubt. On the surface, it feels like it should be a simple “yes” or “no” question; but that would be a mistake because there are serious implications related to a return to a gold standard.

I’ve always been partial to the Austrian economists.  I believe in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, limited government, and free markets. No system is perfect, but this approach has proven to be the best of all other possibilities and what led to the U.S. becoming the largest economy in the world and the number one country for investment and innovation.

It was a very different time when the gold standard was in place.  The goals were different. There was so much uncertainty in the world, as well as a period of major wars and conflicts. The primary purpose of the gold standard was for economic stabilization. A gold-backed dollar built confidence in the U.S. dollar. And a stable, asset-backed dollar, was also critical for stabilizing international trade.

A positive side-effect of the gold standard was it limited the U.S. government’s ability to manipulate the dollar’s value, or to just print more money for irresponsible deficit spending, and/or the kinds of fraudulent activities that we’ve been learning about over the last couple of months.

While I really like the idea of returning to a gold standard, or some kind of multi-asset-backed standard, there are some severe problems with doing so.

Under a gold standard, the government can only issue U.S. dollars based on how much gold it has on its balance sheets. So if it wanted to issue more dollars, it would have to increase the size of its gold reserves. In the dynamic world that we live in today, that’s not very practical.

Having a gold standard would severely restrict the government’s flexibility with regard to monetary policy. I know what you might be thinking – “That’s the whole point!” And you’re not wrong, but we shouldn’t confuse the problem of individual people abusing monetary policy with the ability to have flexibility with monetary policy. There are times when having this flexibility is a very important tool to avoid extreme and unwanted outcomes.

A new gold standard could also result in very severe trade disadvantages with the rest of the world.  There is one exception though, if the U.S. could source and manufacture everything that it needs domestically, then this wouldn’t be a concern. But that’s not realistic, at least not realistic anytime in the next 20 years.

In short, a return to a gold standard would be inefficient, limit the government’s economic flexibility, and impede economic growth. And we’re at a time where we have the greatest economic growth opportunity in history given the innovation that is happening now with technology in the U.S.  Impeding this growth would be a mistake.

With that said, I hope and believe that the U.S. can return to fiscal responsibility, and in a few years return to a balanced budget. Debts matter. Deficits matter. And we can return to strong fiscal and monetary policy without needing to implement something as drastic as a gold standard to get there.

Robots on the Graveyard Shift?

Hi Jeff,

I have a question on Robots. Can these high-tech Robots perform a task in the dark? In other words, could they perform in a factory on the night shift in a low-light setting or without lights at all?

– Ronald B.

Hi Ronald,

The basic answer is yes, absolutely.

Robots can be equipped with sensors that can “see” in the dark.  But if a robot is only vision-based with cameras, then it would have to be a low-light setting.

With that said, almost all use of robotics is happening when humans are there to supervise during work hours (which are sometimes around the clock), which means there are lights on.

But as robotic technology advances, particularly intelligent humanoid robots, this will change.  Fully autonomous humanoid robots will be well suited to work unsupervised and through the night.  As we saw in yesterday’s Bleeding Edge – Amazon’s Autonomous Workforce, when they get low on electricity, they’ll simply take a break, go to a charging station, and fuel back up.

Because there have been some great development with vision-based robotic systems, I suspect that low light conditions will be more common than “dark factories” with robots that have the extra sensors to be able to work in darkness.

Musk’s Role in the Federal Government?

Jeff, I am a Brownstone Research subscriber and I love your work, but I think you are being hoodwinked by the right, just as you think we are being hoodwinked by the left.

I am sure there is waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but to destroy the federal government and cruelly put thousands of federal workers out of jobs is not the way to do it. You cite all the “savings” that Elon Musk has uncovered, but the truth is that a lot of it is a lie because he and his dogebags don’t know how the government systems work.

For example that Social Security was sending out thousands of checks to 150-year-olds was proven to be false, as well as a lot of the so-called savings. And what about firing so many essential workers that they figured out they needed to rehire? Is that efficient?

Not to mention, although I will mention it, most of the firings are blatantly illegal. There is a process involved, by law, for firing federal workers which Musk, with Trump’s backing, is trampling.

Your political bias is staggering and I wish you would stick to what you are great at, which is analyzing stocks, especially in the technological field. I’m sure you won’t publish this, but I hope you read it. Thanks.

– William D.

Hi Jeff,

I like many people am happy that fraud is unearthed and exposed. However, I am very unhappy and displeased with the fact that you show no concern for the law, which is equally bad.

The Republicans, if you can call them that, control both houses and the presidency. They could create new laws allowing somebody like Musk and his young kids access without the requisite security checks if that’s what they want. I would not like it, but it would be legal.

You appear to have no concern for this. And that is disappointing.

– Gordon E.

Why should we trust what Musk says about where the money is going? I haven’t seen any verification of this anywhere.

I don’t trust anyone associated with Trump b/c he is the world’s biggest liar. Musk could be just interpreting the payments in a way suitable for his own political narrative. I think DOGE is overstepping the bounds of our Constitution.

– Michael S.

Gentlemen,

I appreciate you writing in, I know this topic is on a lot of people’s minds.

The extent to which I care about politics is how it relates to monetary, fiscal, and economic policy.  My bias is policies that are conducive to economic growth and opportunity. That’s great for job opportunities and it’s also great for investments. My wish is that we have healthy economic conditions for all of my subscribers.

While we can trade and invest in any kind of market environment, I’d prefer to have healthy or bull market conditions over bear markets.

Consistently running $2 trillion annual deficits is not a path to prosperity, and it robs our children and our grandchildren of their futures. And as we have painfully felt, it leads to inflation, and eventually hyperinflation. It is unsustainable.

The sad reality that we all have to accept is that we’ve learned that there has been massive fraud and misallocation of U.S. taxpayer dollars on the scale of hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars. It’s uncomfortable, it’s sickening, and it’s painful to learn about.

And it must be cleaned up. Whoever committed the fraud with U.S. taxpayer dollars, Democrat, Republican, or otherwise, they all need to be prosecuted according to the law.

I find the criticisms of Musk and his team at DOGE unsurprising. He has been attacked relentlessly for years. The media and critics predict that he will fail at every initiative and new project that he undertakes. I expected as much with the task that he had been given at DOGE.

The key point for us to understand is that Musk and his team at DOGE are hired as government employees. Their goal is to discover fraud, corruption, irresponsible spending, and misallocation of U.S. taxpayer dollars and make recommendations to the executive branch.

It is for this reason that Musk and the DOGE team are not violating the constitution.

It’s also worth mentioning that third-party consultants are regularly given access to sensitive government information related to social security and other divisions of the government. The government historically has extensively used consultants and contractors for various purposes.

I find it funny that no one was complaining about these 3^rd parties having access to sensitive information over the last 30 years, but now that Musk is uncovering massive fraud that has taken place at the U.S. taxpayer’s expense, it is suddenly a problem.

And William, I’m deeply sorry to say, but the U.S. government has been sending social security money to people who have passed. Just this January the U.S. Treasury recovered $31 million in payments that went to dead people and estimates that it will recover at least $215 million between now and 2026.

And this is just what the U.S. Treasury has discovered, I am confident the actual numbers of social security fraud are much worse.

And sadly, there are people on the U.S. government payroll that aren’t working and have been paid for years.

Serious question, are we really OK with those people not lifting a finger, not doing any work at all, and yet receiving a full salary at the expense of hardworking U.S. taxpayers? I’m not. And the sooner the U.S. government figures out who is actually showing up to work and who isn’t, the better.

And to put things in perspective, Musk and his team at DOGE have only been in place for 46 days.  Just 46 days and more than $100 billion of fraud and waste have already been discovered.

In just 46 days.

For example, we just learned about something called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was positioned as a $27 billion green program supposedly managed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

It has now been discovered that $20 billion of that money was sent to non-profit groups in the weeks that followed the November election, and these are some of the biggest grants to be given to individual organizations in history… and the money is not being used to reduce greenhouse gases.  The Department of Justice is already investigating this massive fraud.

And I won’t even get started on the massive fraud that has taken place through USAID.

While it’s sickening, we have to accept that what we’ve learned in just 46 days is just the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse. And it needs to be cleaned up.

The alternative is ever-increasing deficits, more fraud and corruption, restrictions on individual freedoms, and eventually hyperinflation and economic collapse.

And never in my life have I seen more transparency. If anyone hasn’t yet checked out the DOGE website – please do so here. Every day it is updated. There is a “wall of receipts.”  We can see the abuse and the absolutely absurd ways that U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent.

The receipts, the documentation, and the proof will continue to grow by the day, as will the realized savings to the U.S. taxpayer.

They are moving fast because they have a sense of urgency to address the $2 trillion deficit. That makes me happy because if we don’t get inflation under control and reduce the cost of living, things are going to get worse.

The current administration will make a few mistakes along the way, and as long as they correct them quickly, which has happened already, the U.S. has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return to a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility.

It has been 46 days, and the results have been just remarkable. Why not give Musk and the DOGE team the benefit of the doubt, let them do their job making recommendations on how to balance the budget, and see how much progress they can make in 2025?

I’d be willing to make a gentlemen’s bet that the team can affect at least a $1 trillion reduction in the deficit by the end of this year (for the next fiscal year). And that would be a very good thing for all U.S. taxpayers.

And just a note to keep things in perspective. If Musk and his teams can catch a rocket returning from space with robotic arms on a launch pad three times in a row (the third time was just yesterday), I’m pretty confident that he and his team at DOGE will be able to accurately discover and document fraudulent activity and waste.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for the questions and comments. Have a wonderful weekend,

Jeff