The U.S. Treasury Crisis: Unchecked Power and the Breakdown of Oversight

Note – this was initially a post on Facebook, copied and reformatted to this website.

A Government Payment System in Peril

In the span of just a few days, the U.S. Treasury Department—the system that processes every federal payment, including Social Security, Medicare, military salaries, and government contracts—has been compromised.

A 25-year-old Musk operative, Marko Elez, has been granted full administrative access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service’s payment system. He is actively rewriting its code in a live production environment—directly contradicting prior claims that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) only had “read-only” access.

Treasury officials who could have resisted or stopped these changes have been fired, placed on leave, or sidelined.

With no Inspector General overseeing Treasury and no transparency on what changes are being made, this crisis is escalating at a breakneck pace.

How Did This Happen?

Over the past several days, the Musk/Trump administration’s DOGE unit has systematically increased its influence over Treasury systems.

Escalation Timeline:

Initial Audit Access: Musk’s team was granted “audit access” to Treasury’s payment system.
Deeper Access Revealed: It became evident that their access extended far beyond audits—unvetted personnel were operating at an administrative level.
Removal of Treasury Officials: Those who pushed back were removed or sidelined.
Live Code Alterations Begin: Major changes to Treasury’s payment infrastructure are now being made without security clearances or institutional expertise.

The potential consequences are staggering, with no meaningful oversight remaining.

Breaking Every Rule in IT, Finance, and Government Operations

Beyond the legal and constitutional violations, this crisis also violates fundamental best practices in finance, IT, and business operations:

Mission-Critical Systems Must Never Be Altered in Live Production
- Any responsible company or government agency develops changes in a separate test environment, verifies them rigorously, and implements them only after multiple layers of approval.
Strict Access Controls Are Standard in Financial Systems
- Unvetted personnel with no security clearance should never be granted administrative access to a government payment system managing $6 trillion in transactions.
Removing Oversight Creates Catastrophic Risk
- Every major organization—whether in government, business, or the nonprofit sector—relies on oversight mechanisms to prevent fraud, abuse, and system failures. Treasury’s safeguards have now been dismantled.

Three Levels of Crisis

This crisis can be understood on three levels:

At Best: Naive Irresponsibility
- Allowing an unqualified 25-year-old to rewrite federal payment systems without proper oversight is recklessly dangerous. No private-sector company would tolerate this.
In the Middle: Arrogant Incompetence
- The assumption that an inexperienced operative can simply “optimize” a system controlling trillions in payments is both hubristic and irrational.
At Worst: A Deliberate Act of Sabotage
- If the goal were to cripple the U.S. government’s ability to function, this is exactly how it would be done:
  - Freezing payments to critical services
  - Deleting financial records
  - Rerouting funds without traceability
  - Destabilizing the system ahead of a critical migration

If any of these scenarios unfold, the damage could take months—or longer—to undo.

What Could Happen Next?

The risk is no longer theoretical. Without immediate intervention, these potential disasters loom:

Catastrophic System Failure
- Government payments could halt unexpectedly due to untested code changes.
- If the scheduled migration this weekend interacts poorly with these modifications, Treasury’s entire payment system could crash.
Targeted Financial Manipulation
- The code changes appear focused on “blocking payments”.
- Entire categories of funding—federal worker paychecks, Social Security, Medicare reimbursements—could be stopped for political reasons.
Data Exfiltration
- Treasury’s payment system holds the financial records of every federal transaction.
- If this data has been accessed or extracted, it could be used for blackmail, corruption, or outright theft.
A Deliberate Economic Shock
- If Musk’s team wanted to manufacture a financial crisis, breaking the federal payment system would be the most effective way to do it.
- The resulting chaos could weaken federal institutions and allow for an aggressive restructuring under the guise of emergency measures.

What Can You Do? Call Congress Now

Every member of Congress must be forced to acknowledge and act on this crisis immediately. There is no excuse for them to ignore this level of financial and national security risk.

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
- Ask to be connected to your senators and representatives.
Tell them this is an emergency.
Demand immediate action:
- Public hearings on the unauthorized personnel changes in Treasury.
- An emergency injunction to prevent further system modifications.
- The appointment of an independent Inspector General to restore oversight.

Final Thoughts: This Is More Than a Political Crisis

This is not just another political controversy. If this isn’t stopped immediately, the consequences will be severe, lasting, and potentially irreversible.

Treasury, the most essential financial organ of the U.S. government, is being rewritten in real-time without transparency, oversight, or accountability.

The time to act is now.