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by _t9ow
475 days ago
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> I don't expect the US will default on our debt This is tangential to your discussion, but it seems like Trump might be setting the stage for defaulting on US debt: Forget Trump’s tariffs, the president’s bond market threat is worse (2025): https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/16/forget-trum... Excerpt: “We’re even looking at Treasuries,” the president told reporters. “There could be a problem … It could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought.” The fact that Trump is now talking about "very fradulent" activity in the treasuries increases the probability I assign to the event that his administration will default on US debt. He will justify it by claiming that many/most of these debts are not real, and the government therefore does not need to repay them. When Trump says something like that, take him seriously. |
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The timeline there corresponds 100% to probable fraud DOGE discovered at the Treasury and I'm fairly certain that's what's being referenced. They found something like $100 billion/year in entitlements being paid to accounts lacking a social security number or even temporary ID numbers.
EDIT: Ok yeah LLMs are actually good for some things. I found the 'transcript' (actually a video) here. [1] And yeah it's exactly what I thought. The media is lying as usual:
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Reporter: On spending you found some maybe questionable expenditures or Elon Musk?
Trump: Not some questionable, the whole country looks like it's a fraud. It's fraud waste abuse but it's a tremendous fraud. And what Elon and his group of geniuses have found is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And that's just in USAID. Soon we're going into education. You'll find the same thing but bigger. Soon we're going into the military and you're going to find a lot of bad things happening there.
Trump: You'll find it because our government has not functioned properly for many many years and we're going to make it function properly. We're even looking at treasuries there could be a problem. You've been reading about that with treasuries. And that could be an interesting problem because it could be that a lot of those things don't count. In other words that some of that stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent. Therefore, maybe we have less debt than we thought of.
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The thing the media ellipsed out is specifically him mentioning "you've been reading about", completely removed that the comment was in reference to DOGE, as well as that it was in the context of a laundry list of fraud discoveries. The context makes it clear that he was referencing the already publicized fraud DOGE found at the Treasury, which he then mistakenly called treasuries rather than treasury payments.
Note the reporter could have asked for clarification because his comment wouldn't make any sense when taken at face value (there was nothing written about fraudulent treasuries that people had been reading about, nor had DOGE investigated such), and this would have been a HUGE revelation if true. But she didn't want clarification, because she obviously knew what he was talking about, but wanted to lie with some plausible deniability.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShlwrxzXtQ (around the 20min mark)