Where Did All of That Money Go?

(The Economic Collapse Blog)—Apparently our government cannot explain how 4.7 trillion dollars was spent.  Are you kidding me?  A stack of 4.7 trillion one dollar bills would reach all the way to the Moon and part of the way back.  This is yet another example of why we desperately need the Department of Government Efficiency.  I realize that my articles about DOGE have caused some confusion in recent weeks, and so let me try to explain.  On the one hand, I have been arguing that we must crack down on  waste, fraud and abuse, but on the other hand I have been arguing that what DOGE is doing is going to cause a great deal of pain.

Some readers think that I have been contradicting myself, but I have not been contradicting myself at all.  There are times when we must do things that are necessary even though we know that they will cause a tremendous amount of pain.  We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the entire planet, and it really is an existential threat to the future of our nation.  But cutting down the size of the federal government and greatly reducing the flow of cash that is being spewed out of the giant money machine that we call the U.S. Treasury is going to cause immense chaos.  Honestly, I do not know if our society will be able to handle it.

On Monday, DOGE revealed that 4.7 trillion dollars in payments that have come through the U.S. Treasury are basically impossible to trace because they lacked a very important tracking code…

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.”

The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol, or TAS, an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as a “standard financial process.”

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” read an X post from DOGE.

This is inexcusable. We should be able to trace how every single penny has been spent.

As Eric Daugherty has aptly pointed out, if you do not accurately account for every single penny of income the IRS can come after you big time…

The government will audit you, track every single dollar that went into your bank account, and hunt you down to squeeze every last penny.

But once they get hold of YOUR money – they chuck it into a black hole of their choice with little to no accountability.

Two standards.

If you tried to tell the IRS that you have no idea what happened to $4,700, you would not get one inch of mercy.

But now we are being told that the government has no idea what happened to $4,700,000,000,000.

The good news is that from now on all government payments that flow through the U.S. Treasury will be traceable thanks to DOGE…

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, thanking the Treasury Department for its “great work” implementing the change.

Musk touted the change as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”

“This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve],” Musk tweeted. “Nice work by all.”

This is a very positive change.

And when good things happen in Washington D.C., we should all applaud.

Overall, reforms implemented by DOGE have saved U.S. taxpayers a grand total of 55 billion dollars…

Elon Musk’s DOGE revealed Tuesday that President Donald Trump has saved taxpayers a staggering $55 billion in less than a month.

It said the savings were found through a combination of detecting and deleting fraud, canceling contracts and leases, and selling assets.

The group – nicknamed the ‘nerd army’ – also ended grants, fired federal employees, changed some programs, and saved money with regulatory reforms.

So far, the biggest contract savings have come from USAID and the Department of Education…

So far, the DOGE lists the United States Agency for International Development as the number one agency for “total contract savings,” followed by the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture.

Sadly, the left is not applauding these efforts.

In fact, many on the left are acting like it is the end of the world.

Could it be possible that the reason why they are so upset is because they are the ones that are primarily benefitting from all of the waste, fraud and abuse?

Billions of dollars in payments have already been cut off, and DOGE insists that this is just the beginning.

And now it appears that Ft. Knox will be one of the next targets for DOGE…

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has his sights set on an audit of the U.S. gold reserve at Ft. Knox through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after it was revealed there is no yearly review for the world-renowned stash.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who invited Musk to review the gold reserve on X over the weekend, joined “FOX & Friends” to discuss the need for greater transparency about the massive reserve after trying to verify it himself for a decade.

If the DOGE team actually visits Ft. Knox, what will they find?

I don’t know, but I find it very interesting that “somebody” in the U.S. has been purchasing a massive amount of physical gold.  This is something that Glenn Beck recently commented on…

“Somebody here in the United States is buying a crapload of gold. We think (I hope) it’s the Treasury or the Central Bank,” he says.

Whoever is behind the purchases — “somebody with very deep pockets” — isn’t just collecting gold notes, either.

Whoever this mysterious somebody is, they’re “taking huge physical deliveries, and it’s causing shortages in London,” says Glenn.

I am just speculating here, but could it be possible that this physical gold is being used to replenish the reserves at Ft. Knox before an audit happens?

Hopefully we will soon get some answers.

Personally, I would love for the mystery of the missing gold at Ft. Knox to be solved after all these years.

Under previous administrations, the transparency that is happening now would never have been possible.

But now some of the U.S. government’s deepest and darkest secrets are being laid bare, and that is a wonderful thing.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.