Dear Reader,
$6.7 BILLION. That is what the government paid 140,000 federal workers to sit at home and do nothing.
Not for building a road. Not for fixing a bridge. Not even for shuffling paper in a cubicle. They paid them. To stay home. And now the GAO has the receipts.
Inside today's issue:
- The $6.7 Billion Trick: Musk sent one email. 140,000 workers accepted. The GAO just published the bill. This is what "efficiency" looks like when the government runs it.
- They Hired Them Back: The same government that paid workers to quit hired 20,557 new people into the same jobs by June 2026. You paid for the seat twice.
- The Deficit Nobody Fixed: Federal spending went from $7.1 trillion to $7.558 trillion under DOGE. The deficit is still $2 trillion. M2 money supply is growing 5.4% per year. Your savings are losing ground every single month.
- Larry Benedict: Oil Skimming: Larry Benedict just released a new presentation on a strategy called "Oil Skimming." It's worth a look. (Brownstone Research)
THE EFFICIENCY SCAM
In February 2025, Elon Musk sent what he called the "Fork in the Road" email to 2 million federal employees. Accept a deferred resignation, keep your full pay and benefits through September, then go home. 140,000 people said yes.
The GAO counted the bill. Administrative leave costs rose 435% from 2023 to 2025. The salary costs alone increased sixfold. Total? $6.7 billion. For people who were not working.
Now here is where it gets truly absurd.
The Partnership for Public Service tracked the agencies afterward. By June 2026, the government had hired 20,557 new workers into the same types of roles as the people it just paid to leave. You paid twice for the same desk.
OPM Director Scott Kupor says the program will save $20 billion per year going forward. That is the official line. Critics at Taxpayers for Common Sense put verified savings at less than $1.4 billion of the $215 billion DOGE claimed. That is a gap of $213 billion between the press release and reality.
Meanwhile, total federal spending rose from $7.1 trillion to $7.558 trillion. The deficit is still $2 trillion for fiscal year 2026. The M2 money supply is $23.3 trillion and growing at 5.4% per year. CPI is running at 3.4% annually.
They told you they were cutting the government. They grew it. They told you they were saving money. They spent more. And the currency they print to cover the gap is sitting in your wallet.
I have been watching governments do this for 50 years. It is always the same movie. New cast, same script. The performance is different. The result never is.
There is a number that ties all of this together. It is not the $6.7 billion. It is something Washington will never put on a press release. More on that in a moment.
THE NUMBER THEY WILL NEVER PRINT
The number is $36 trillion. The national debt.
While everyone is arguing about DOGE saving or wasting $6.7 billion, the real number grows by $1 trillion every 100 days. That is not a political opinion. That is arithmetic.
The only way out for the government is to print. They cannot cut their way out. They proved that this week. They cannot tax their way out. The math does not work. So they print. And every dollar they print makes the ones you hold worth less.
Rome did not fall in a day. But there was a moment when every Roman with sense stopped trusting the denarius and started holding land, grain, and gold. That moment is not coming. It is here.
My rich dad taught me one thing about governments and money: savers lose. Always. Not because saving is wrong. Because the rules are written against them.
You cannot fix the deficit from your living room. But you can choose what you hold. Gold. Silver. Real estate. Bitcoin. Assets that exist outside the system that just paid $6.7 billion to accomplish nothing.
The government is not your financial plan. It never was.
To your freedom,
Robert Kiyosaki
Author, Rich Dad Poor Dad
P.S. The question is not whether the government is wasting money. It is what you are doing while they waste it. If you want to understand how the wealth transfer actually works, and where the smart money is moving, start here.