A Big, Beautiful, Abomination

Since 1999, the US empire has been doing the things that empires do when they get long in the tooth and short in the purse — with unnecessary military spending and unnecessary wars.

Wednesday, June 04^th, 2025

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore... This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination."

--Elon Musk on Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Budget Bill

He drove up in a BMW at great speed and skidded to a halt in front of the kitchen.

The door opened...out poked a cane with a silver handle. There unfolded a tall, dignified man in his 70s. Germanic in his stature. Teutonic in his bearing. Prussian in his manner.

His driver’s license had been taken away in his native Germany, so he moved to the South of France. Now he had come to visit us.

Dr. Kurt Richebacher walked with a limp, a souvenir from WWII. More important were his recollections of the war years in Germany.

“We all knew it was crazy,” the Wehrmacht veteran once told us, banging his cane on the table for emphasis.

“But the whole apparatus of the government, politics, the media, big industry — all of it — was lined up to support the war. Big business made its money from the war. Mothers had sent their sons off to fight the war. Politicians argued about the best strategies to win the war... but none really questioned it. You couldn’t oppose it, or you’d be a traitor.”

Kurt reminded us that money isn’t everything. And there are times when having a clear head about it doesn’t help much.

We feel fairly confident in our money outlook: For all intents and purposes Donald Trump’s MAGA program is going nowhere.

The ‘reciprocal’ tariffs were abandoned after the stock market began its plunge.

And Elon Musk’s efforts to identify ‘waste, inefficiency and fraud’ got the ol’ rug pull when Republican lawmakers failed to include any of the cuts he identified in their Big, Beautiful Budget Bill (BBBB)

The two programs — the trade war and DOGE — were already stuck in the mud. And then, federal courts have ruled them unconstitutional! Yes, after a 90-year nap, judges — appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats — suddenly seemed to wake up... rubbed the sleep from their eyes ... and realized that the US Constitution was still the law of the land.

So those money initiatives are dead in the water. So too is the most important part of Trump’s economic agenda (although Trump may not realize it), the Big, Beautiful, Budget Bill itself. Any hope of really making America great again depends on bringing federal spending under control. With the House and the Senate both in Republican hands, it seemed as though there was at least a chance that spending might be slowed, giving the economy an opportunity to catch up.

But no...that didn’t happen either. And Musk is right. Instead of tightening its federal belt, the BBBB, more than 1,100 pages of grift and grab, is ‘a disgusting abomination.’ It increases spending...deficits...and the US debt. It is essentially ‘more of the same’ that will bring us to a $60 trillion debt within ten years. If...all goes well.

In an historical sense, this is as it should be. Since 1999, the US empire has been doing the sorts of things that empires do when they get long in the tooth and short in the purse — with unnecessary military spending, unnecessary wars, and unnecessary deficits and debt. These ‘more of the same’ programs merely confirm and reinforce the Primary Trend.

But Kurt was warning us; there are worse things.

When people got sent to the death camps...or to the Eastern Front... they typically forgot to worry about whether they had paid the electric bill. They had other things to think about. Things more important than money.

And when things go really bad, few can say so. In WWII, Germany pursued a preposterously bad economic policy (directing at one point half the nation’s GDP toward the military), but economists mostly kept their mouths closed.

Kurt knew that from personal experience. He lived through it. Stuck in a military hospital for months...he took up the study of economics.

“The Nazis even threatened to put me in prison. But my father still had some influence. He got me sent to the Eastern Front. I’m not sure which was worse.”

And now that the MAGA economic agenda has been clarified, the financial future is predictable. Trade agreements will be renegotiated... court decisions will be challenged and resolved...and the House and Senate will blither and blather and ultimately keep doing what they’ve been doing for the last half a century.

Senator Rand Paul:

"If I vote for the $5 trillion debt, who's left in Washington that cares about the debt? The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this."

The money future is dark and depressing. But the non-money future may be the one to worry about.

Stay tuned.

Regards,

Bill Bonner