Politics

DOGE’s math problem: “Musk has no knowledge about it at all. He’s an undisciplined and reckless leader. So it’s just completely insane right now”

Harry Kraemer has said that DOGE’s figures cannot be believed.

Harry Kraemer has said that DOGE’s figures cannot be believed.
Kent Nishimura
Joe Brennan
Born in Leeds, Joe finished his Spanish degree in 2018 before becoming an English teacher to football (soccer) players and managers, as well as collaborating with various football media outlets in English and Spanish. He joined AS in 2022 and covers both the men’s and women’s game across Europe and beyond.
Update:

Elon Musk, the unelected head of the Department of Government Efficieny, is coming under fire from all sides after his slash-and-burn tactics on federal government departments are being met with huge concern from those who know just how much the American people rely on their services.

As the South African cuts your family’s medical care and retirement money, Musk claims to be writing all this down for the public to see. The DOGE website says it keeps an open and transparent record of all the cuts, but still some think that the numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt the size of, let’s say, Greenland.

Recently, it was found that Musk’s purported $8 billion saving was in fact a ‘typo’. The real number was $8 million: a difference in magnitude of 1,000. A multitude errors are constantly being spotted by many in the world of finance and business, and one professor has had his say on the murky situation being led by the son of an emerald mine owner.

Illogical cuts causing ‘complete bedlam’

Harry Kraemer, an executive partner with Madison Dearborn Partners and a clinical professor of Leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, was asked by Fortune what he thought of DOGE’s figures. Simply put, he said that they could not be relied upon and, in his opinion, the savings were overstated by up to 80%.

“Where they’ve claimed to have taken up to a billion dollars, some of the specific items are really like a couple hundred thousand or a couple million dollars. My guess would be from what they’ve said they’ve eliminated, no more than 10% to 20% of the numbers are actually important,” Kraemer said.

He also questioned the methodology of Musk’s work, calling it illogical. “The insanity of all this is, they basically said we’re just going to start the cutting without any logic as to what they’re cutting, no plan as to what they’re cutting. And the reality is, it’s complete bedlam. Every CEO in the United States would do a thorough analysis of: Where can we cut? How are we going to do it? What is the process? What’s the plan? How do we treat people? What training does he have to figure out what to cut, where to cut, how to cut? He has no knowledge about it at all. So it’s just completely insane right now,” Kraemer concluded.

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On Wednesday, DOGE wrongly claimed it had saved approximately $15 billion in savings from 4,083 contracts that had been slashed. However, according to analysis done by Fortune, the figure was more than $4 billion short. At least 14 errors were found on the site, and the investigating team concluded that Musk’s warriors may even be going full-Orwell and removing details to Make Fact-Checking Harder: MFCH is the new MAGA, it seems.

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