Donald Trump and Elon Musk (only one of whom was elected, by the way) may be trying to engineer a “government recession” in a bid to win over Republican fiscal hawks who might otherwise oppose unfunded tax cuts.

That was one, among several, takeaways from this week’s installment of Michael Hartnett’s popular “Flow Show” series which, if nothing else, is everywhere and always fun to read. (Depending, I suppose, on your definition of “fun.”)

Hartnett can be abrasive, and sometimes he comes across as a partisan, but it usually feels unintentional. Even if it isn’t, I’m hardly in a position to judge as an abrasive partisan myself.

Trump and Musk (or Musk and Trump, to get the order right) are almost surely running afoul of the Constitution in their quest to subsume some of the powers reserved for Congress. It’s to the courts to adjudicate that, and the real test of Trump’s authoritarian mettle will be his willingness (or not) to ignore a court order.

Anyway, if you ask BofA’s Hartnett, Trump and Musk (Batman and Robin) “need a government recession to arrest the US debt spiral and persuade the deficit-hawkish Freedom Caucus to back tax cuts via budget reconciliation.” He noted (for the umpteenth time) that the cumulative 12-month cost of servicing the government’s “debt” pile is rising inexorably.

As the figure on the left suggests, the cost of servicing the country’s debt will probably rise anywhere between $100 billion and $300 billion over next 12 months, depending on the Fed.

The figure on the right shows the sharp upward trajectory of US defense spending. Trump campaigned in (small) part on continuing his efforts to end America’s involvement in “forever wars,” and happily for the Kremlin, part and parcel of that project (when you’re Trump) means extricating America from its mutual defense commitments to the extent possible given the GOP still has some powerful Reaganites left.

It’s possible the Pentagon’s massive budget could come under scrutiny by Trump and Musk, who may cite their aversion to violent foreign “entanglements” as a rationale for paring back defense spending.

Musk’s DOGE, Hartnett reminded investors, targets $1 trillion of public sector savings. Although BofA’s economics team doesn’t think Musk will get anywhere near that (their base case is between $150 billion and $300 billion), the bank said he might get halfway there if Trump can beat back “layoff-related litigation.”

Hartnett described the defense budget as “a tempting source of savings as ‘forever wars’ end.” To make the obvious joke: I don’t know how Trump’s “Mideast Riviera” idea factors into the math. He (Trump) variously insisted this week that his “plan” for “cleaning out” Gaza and rebuilding it as a gleaming, US-administered, Israeli resort town somehow won’t cost US taxpayers a dime, and won’t require any US military footprint, figurative or literal.

If you’re wondering whether Musk’s bid to shrink the federal workforce by attrition will impact headline hiring, the answer is probably “yes.”

The figure above, also from Hartnett, reminds you that as a share of the total, private hiring excluding the government’s “friends” — as he calls health and education — is at recessionary levels.

“[The] US public sector accounts for a third of US payrolls [and] created one of every four new jobs this decade,” Hartnett wrote, noting that while “government and friends” payrolls are growing 3% YoY, growth in private sector hiring (as he defines it) is less than 1%. Smaller government will mean fewer public sector jobs, which in turn suggests US payrolls will peak in the first half of this year, he went on.

As a quick, but important, aside, note that federal employees who take Musk’s buyout offer (and for our purposes here, I’m assuming the whole buyout charade holds up under any legal scrutiny it receives) will skew towards those with marketable private sector skill sets. I don’t think Musk understands that, or appreciates it. If you’re a VA doctor, you can get a job anywhere. You’re a doctor, after all. So if Elon offers you a paid eight-month vacation, you might take it, then just go be a doctor somewhere else. If, on the other hand, you answer phones for the government, you can’t so easily get another job. Because your only skill is answering a phone. So you might not take Musk’s offer. Simply put: Elon may end up forcing out the kind of people he needs to retain, and retaining the sort of people he wants gone.

Early Friday, during a disjointed barrage of posts on his TruthSocial platform, Trump shouted “BALANCED BUDGET!!!” There was no context. Just “BALANCED BUDGET!!!” out of the blue. Later, he said he’ll soon sign a new executive order rolling back an effort to replace single-use straws with more eco-friendly alternatives. “BACK TO PLASTIC!” Trump said.