Merry Festivus, Courtesy of Rand Paul – Swamponomics

Plus, the Philly Fed reports little job growth.

If billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy needed to air their grievances at the federal government and participate in feats of strength with the bureaucratic state, they could look no further than Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) annual Festivus Report. It is that time of year to highlight the absurd waste and comical abuse of taxpayer dollars. “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it.”

A Festivus for the Rest of Us

Did you wish you could spend $8 million to purchase an island? This is what one Florida man did with COVID-19 relief funds. Some influencers earned a lavish living on the taxpayer dime, receiving nearly $5 million from the State Department. Do bird-watching groups require safe spaces? The National Science Foundation believes so, spending $288,563 on “Affinity Groups.” Why does Ethiopia keep receiving US tax dollars? First, it was the free shoes, and now it is $500,000 for the US Embassy’s social media campaign.

If there is one thing the US government loves to waste money on, it is abusing animals. For whatever reason, the National Institutes of Health spent more than $1.5 million on spinning kittens for science and motion sickness. The Department of Defense allocated $10.8 million to cat experiments. However, the Interior Department yearned for forgiveness, choosing to provide nearly $721,000 on wetland conservation projects for ducks in Mexico.

After taking a look at your post-Christmas credit card statement, here are some Festivus report items to make you laugh:

• $32,596 for breakdancing (State Department)
• $7.026 million on magical projects (federal government)
• $123,066 to teach Kyrgyzstan youth how to go viral (State Department)
• $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq (Agency for International Development)
• $253,653 to Bosnia to fight “misinformation” (State Department)
• $3 million for “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil (State Department)
• $2 million to study kids looking at Facebook ads about food (Department of Health and Human Services)

The list is endless. Can the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) stop the madness, bring the chainsaw, and shout “fuera”? The Musk-Ramaswamy tag team is shooting for the stars.

Hey, Where’s the Jobs?

What are the odds that President-elect Donald Trump will be blamed for next year’s downward payroll revisions? This is an important question because the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia quietly released US state employment data in the second quarter that suggested significantly weaker numbers than the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures.

Preliminary estimates suggest that 25 states registered lower payrolls, two states experienced higher employment changes, and the remaining states observed little adjustment to their job numbers. Overall, according to the Philadelphia Fed’s early benchmark estimates, employment gains were down 0.1% compared to the 1.1% increase in the BLS’ non-farm payrolls statistics.

It is no secret that national employment data have been erratic, volatile, and subject to errors. Experts have attributed this to the poor response rate, while other observers blame it on poor data collection practices. That said, the regional central bank’s report comes a few months after the BLS published the annual benchmark revisions that confirmed the US economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.

Elon Musk’s War on the Fed

Is Elon Musk making Austrian economics great again? Musk has been espousing libertarian values on X, his social media platform. One of his latest musings is declaring that the Federal Reserve System has too much staff. “The Fed is absurdly overstaffed,” Musk wrote in a Dec. 23 post.

His comments were in response to a Mises Institute report that concluded 23,000 people work at the US central bank in Washington and the 12 regional reserve banks across the United States. What’s worse, the Eccles Building is highly politicized. In the 2024 election, 92% of employee donations were given to Democrats, up from 52% in 2000.

Perhaps next year’s Festivus report should place the spotlight on the Fed.