Posted on 02/25/2026 12:27:22 PM PST by Miami Rebel
Many Americans were skeptical of Elon Musk’s grandiose claims that DOGE would take a “chainsaw” to federal spending. One “tax nerd” was so skeptical he decided to “bet his life savings” on Musk’s promises being a flop — and it paid off big time, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Musk has seen his approval rating descend as he has taken a more publicly active role politically, plus ongoing criticism and litigation over his management of his social media platform X and support for far-right politics in Europe.
He jumped into his work with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, by waving around a chainsaw on the stage at CPAC in 2025 and then presided over a group of DOGE employees with little to no government experience who fired scores of federal workers, slashed budgets, and eliminated longstanding grants and programs. However, contrary to his promise to save $1 trillion, federal government spending actually went up.
It all seems somewhat predictable in retrospect, but would you have been willing to bet your life savings last year that this would, in fact, happen?
Alan Cole, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, took that bet, telling WSJ reporter Richard Rubin how and why he dropped $342,195.63 into a prediction-market wager on the Kalshi platform.
(Note: the WSJ called this amount Cole’s “life savings” and then later defined it as “effectively everything outside of his retirement accounts and home equity.”)
Describing himself as a a “normal, conventional Wall Street Journal-reading adult” — the WSJ identified him as a “tax nerd” in their headline — Cole said that he looked at the terms of the Kalshi wager and saw an opportunity, because he did not believe anything Musk would do would significantly curtail spending on interest on the national debt or entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, especially as America’s population continued to age.
The bet on the Kalshi site was simply that federal spending would go up, as it long has, and Cole interpreted the risk as lower than a standard sports bet or other prediction-market bets that can be gamed by people with insider knowledge (e.g., how long will President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech be, whether Lady Gaga would join Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, etc.).
Cole did diversify his risk somewhat, he told the WSJ, making multiple sub-bets so he would at least break even unless spending declined by more than $50 million.
When the federal government released its official 2025 spending figures on Feb. 20, it “wasn’t even close,” wrote Rubin. “The lowest spending quarter in 2025 was $66 billion above the bet’s target level,” netting Cole “$470,300, for a profit of more than $128,000, or 37%.”
Cole still has to pay capital gains taxes on the funds he withdrew from investments and taxes on his winnings.
His wife, Natalie Lynch, told the WSJ she got on board after understanding that the bet would be based on specific objective numbers. “She read comments on the Kalshi website from people on the other side of the bet and grew confident because they didn’t seem to understand what they were buying,” wrote Rubin.
The WSJ report noted that Cole sought advice from other fiscal policy wonks, including Brookings Institution fellow Jessica Riedl, who said the outcome of the bet “should have been completely obvious to anyone who knows anything about the government, the budget and public administration.”
Despite believing Cole would win, Riedl still didn’t make her own bet, saying she was ” nervous about liquidity, administrative loopholes, legality, making sure that I got paid.”
Riedl apparently was under the impression Cole had only bet a “few thousand dollars,” but after Rubin told her Cole had made a six-figure wager, she had a quick retort.
“Next time I have lunch with him,” she said, “I know Alan will be picking up the check.”
The question WHAT IS A BLACK SITE will help those who don’t know how to check headlines against reality.
bump
BLACK SITES, anyone?
It did not fail for Musk. He got all the government systems data he wanted for Grok. His wealth increase is guaranteed.
... he would at least break even unless spending declined by more than $50 million. When the federal government released its official 2025 spending figures on Feb. 20, it “wasn’t even close,” wrote Rubin. “The lowest spending quarter in 2025 was $66 billion above the bet’s target level,”Overall spending, especially over one year, is a stupid and entirely unrelated metric for DOGE success or failure. Some kind of scam going on here, or more PT Barnum games to get suckers to bet the other side -- which makes no sense.
Black sites are where the deep state cabal sets up their operations to launder money and continue child sex trafficking, drug operations and terrorism.
Hillary Clinton, anyone?
Obama?
Iran, Venezuela, the Ukraine, anyone?
One truly good thing did come out of it all: after decades of near total secrecy, Medicare spending is now being made fully public, which will make it a LOT easier for sleuths out there to sniff out the tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars of fraud taking place each year.
What is the number one takeaway from what DOGE found?
Nothing can stop what is coming.
Black sites are where the deep state cabal sets up their operations to launder money and continue child sex trafficking, drug operations and terrorism.
Hillary Clinton, anyone?
Obama?
Iran, Venezuela, the Ukraine, anyone?
But then Patel, Bessent, Blondi, Wiles, etc turned on it with a vengeance.
Please provide some direct quotes from the parties you mentioned to support your contention.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
“obvious to one who knows anything about the government, budget, public administration.”
What apparently is not obvious to many on the DOGE team and some here in FR is that the BIG FRAUD is not the Somalis, nor the poor who cheat. The BIG FRAUD is the big contractors in the SWAMP.
DELOITTE is the biggest fraudster in the swamp, I suggest. The EMPI Enterprise Master Person Index of its IES Integrated Eligibility System is in 25 states...MA, NY, PA, VA, IL, GA, FL, TX, CA...mostly the big states, not MN.
DELOITTE EMPI and IES fraud includes
1) Dead people known by computers to be dead who are in the database as alive and receiving benefits.
2) DUPs: Sue Smith, Susan Smith, Susan Jones-Smith have the same DOB, SSN, address and are the same person with 3 distinct IES/EMPI ID; each receiving benefits.
3) DELOITTE and other IT contractors, vendors, insurance companies, etc are paid a “capitation” for each IES member including the dead and dups.
4) Probably the biggest waste of another big vendor, Gainwell Technologies is in handling the dirty data it receives from DELOITTE.
5) Providers of Food, Medical and other benefits take advantage and are paid for services and goods rendered to the dead and DUPs.
6) Federal and State agencies spend much extra time and money due to the dirty data in the systems to contract to DELOITTE.
7) DELOITTE has other specific areas of fraud. But they are specific to a state (eg Pathways in GA) or much more complex to explain.
8) DELOITTE IES is a contract with a state approved by HHS with mostly HHS money, but also state money. So the fraud is on both the Federal and State taxpayer.
9) This fraud has existed and been known to exist since the Obama days. It was pointed out as design flaws in DELOITTE IES. DELOITTE consciously and specifically intended to have the design flaws in its IES. It is the SWAMP. It is not the fault of Biden, nor of Trump 2016.
10) What are the DOJ, HHS, RFK, DR OZ going to do about it?
11) DELOITTE is the #1 user of H1b. Many H1b work on IES. If that motivates some in FR, fine. But the problem here is not really H1b, it is the SWAMP.
I don’t consider DOGE a failure. It brought to light what the American people needed to know about their tax-dollars. The failure lies in Congress for not addressing the issue with respect for Americans and their hard work.
While I did not work for DELOITTE I worked for one of the others in the Big 6 days
Half were wonderful people
Half were...... not
It failed because CONgress doesn’t want to make any cuts! Or at least make them permanent. Congress is the problem.
Bingo
Con-gress passed the CRs, and Trump signed them. No matter how many times we give the R's the majority, they stab us in the back.
I’m tired of hearing about how DOGE failed when it didn’t.
Agree!
The thing to remember is that every, unnecessary, wasteful, worthless, poorly thought out USG contract is the most important thing in the world to some congresscritter. It’s one of his constituents and dragging back the pork to feed them is his\her main job. The sad thing is, keeping this pipeline active and fed are the only jobs in certain parts of the country.
Because they are corrupt and the Epstein class was cashing in. The ones who must not be questioned were getting US government money.
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