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Musk In Your Computers: Paul Krugman Interviews Nathan Tankus (cross-posted in GD)
I'm posting this separately, even though you can access it in the pinned post above.
It deserves to stand alone, I think.
https://www.crisesnotes.com/musk-in-your-computers-paul-krugman-interviews-nathan-tankus/
This is part of Crisis Notes, pinned in the Economy Forum.
Please check it for daily updates to Treasury Trashing.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/111699437
Excerpt of Krugman Interview with Nathan Tankus
Tankus: Friday, January 31st, I had just put out a big piece about how we already were in a constitutional crisis. I described a five alarm fire constitutional crisis. There had just been this implementation memo from the Office of Management and Budget directing a sweeping freezing of spending across the federal government until the Trump administration could review it. This caused immediate chaos. The Medicaid portals to send payments out through Medicaid went down. This had caused such an immediate disruption that they had to rescind the memo, but they hadn't rescinded the executive orders that were driving this memo. And so I wrote a long piece about why this is a big deal. Why, what's called impoundment, which is not spending what Congress directs or appropriates to be spent, is a big deal, why it's a constitutional crisis, why it is like a fundamental demotion of Congress's role in our constitutional system. So I was already focused on this issue and I was already pretty concerned.
You know, my newsletter is called Notes on the Crises. So, I'm paying attention to crisis. Crisis is, you know, when people are really reading my articles and when you're really getting a lot of them, that's when you know something's really, really wrong, you know? So I was already focused on this. And in an article in the Washington Post I had seen a headline about how a high level person in the Treasury had resigned in protest or is on leave or something, but related to the treasury's payment system. And as a payments expert, that headline was incredibly alarming. So alarming, in fact, that I put it aside and I couldn't get myself to read it for a few hours. I had gotten caught up with promoting my piece that day, so I hadn't eaten that day. So I was like, ‘I'm gonna go get something to eat.’
And my friend, colleague, the economist Stephanie Kelton at Stony Brook, when I told her that, she had already read the article and was already alarmed. She said, ‘I don't think that's the right order.’ But nevertheless, I hadn't eaten that day. So I went to go eat, and then I went to go read it. I mean, literally, four paragraphs into this article, I had a panic attack. It was possibly the scariest or one of the scariest moments of my life when I read that article. And it was so scary to me because what the article said was that the Fiscal Assistant Secretary, who's the highest civil servant in the treasury, where everyone above him are political appointees. You know, there's that top layer of every agency which are political appointees that, you might fire the old people, you fire the Biden administration or the Trump people, and you bring in your people. That’s a normal expected part of government. But everyone below them are supposed to be professional civil servants who were doing the job regardless of the partisan status of the executive branch, regardless of who is president. And the fact that this person had been pushed out because DOGE and Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency were asking to have access to the Treasury and this guy, a long time official, someone who'd been in the government since 1989, had been in this highest status position since 10 years ago had been widely credited as the person who has expertly managed the treasury and payments throughout the various debt ceiling crises where you're trying to squeeze every dollar and make sure payments go out without breaching the debt ceiling. I immediately understood how desperately serious and what the worst case scenarios could be and was overwhelmed by it. And I was also overwhelmed and alarmed as an expert in this area that so few people understood how serious this was that it was, and that it was going to be, that it's not just that this was so dangerous, but that there was very few people who were in a position to really say anything about this. And to be frank, my newsletter is called Notes on the Crises. I have 50,000 people on my email list, some already very high-powered, powerful people who—I'm not going to name names—but I know that they're there. And it might seem a little strange, absent context, but I knew immediately that this was basically up to me.
You know, my newsletter is called Notes on the Crises. So, I'm paying attention to crisis. Crisis is, you know, when people are really reading my articles and when you're really getting a lot of them, that's when you know something's really, really wrong, you know? So I was already focused on this. And in an article in the Washington Post I had seen a headline about how a high level person in the Treasury had resigned in protest or is on leave or something, but related to the treasury's payment system. And as a payments expert, that headline was incredibly alarming. So alarming, in fact, that I put it aside and I couldn't get myself to read it for a few hours. I had gotten caught up with promoting my piece that day, so I hadn't eaten that day. So I was like, ‘I'm gonna go get something to eat.’
And my friend, colleague, the economist Stephanie Kelton at Stony Brook, when I told her that, she had already read the article and was already alarmed. She said, ‘I don't think that's the right order.’ But nevertheless, I hadn't eaten that day. So I went to go eat, and then I went to go read it. I mean, literally, four paragraphs into this article, I had a panic attack. It was possibly the scariest or one of the scariest moments of my life when I read that article. And it was so scary to me because what the article said was that the Fiscal Assistant Secretary, who's the highest civil servant in the treasury, where everyone above him are political appointees. You know, there's that top layer of every agency which are political appointees that, you might fire the old people, you fire the Biden administration or the Trump people, and you bring in your people. That’s a normal expected part of government. But everyone below them are supposed to be professional civil servants who were doing the job regardless of the partisan status of the executive branch, regardless of who is president. And the fact that this person had been pushed out because DOGE and Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency were asking to have access to the Treasury and this guy, a long time official, someone who'd been in the government since 1989, had been in this highest status position since 10 years ago had been widely credited as the person who has expertly managed the treasury and payments throughout the various debt ceiling crises where you're trying to squeeze every dollar and make sure payments go out without breaching the debt ceiling. I immediately understood how desperately serious and what the worst case scenarios could be and was overwhelmed by it. And I was also overwhelmed and alarmed as an expert in this area that so few people understood how serious this was that it was, and that it was going to be, that it's not just that this was so dangerous, but that there was very few people who were in a position to really say anything about this. And to be frank, my newsletter is called Notes on the Crises. I have 50,000 people on my email list, some already very high-powered, powerful people who—I'm not going to name names—but I know that they're there. And it might seem a little strange, absent context, but I knew immediately that this was basically up to me.
The above link points to this:
https://www.crisesnotes.com/everything-about-the-trump-administrations-impoundment-putsch-you-were-too-afraid-to-ask/
Everything About the Trump Administration’s Impoundment Putsch You Were Too Afraid to Ask