Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the

emerging threat to the U.S. economy, Trump and his co-president Musk pose, following their disastrous

amateurism in trying to shut down the government to get their way, as we now face their

plans to abolish the debt limit to then give away the Treasury to their billionaire buddies,

blowing up the deficit when already the biggest item in the federal budget is servicing a ballooning debt.

Joining us is Robert Hawket, who has firsthand experience working at the International Monetary Fund

and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and continues to consult to a number

of U.S. federal state and local legislators and regulators. He drafted Representative Alexandria

Ocasia Cortez's Green New Deal resolution for the House of Representatives and officially

advises her on economic policy. He is the Edward Cornell professor of law and a professor of public

policy at Cornell

University, and his latest books are money from nothing or why we should stop worrying about

debt and learn to love the Federal Reserve, financing the Green New Deal, a plan of action

and renewal, the Citizens Ledger, digitizing our money, democratizing our finance, and most recently, spread the Fed,

distributed central banking for productive monetary policy.

Then we'll look into how our broken Congress is likely to be even more dysfunctional with

Trump and Musk in charge of both houses and speak with James Thurber, the University

Distinguished Professor of Government

and Founder and Former Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies

at American University, Washington, D.C. He is the author of numerous books and more than 80

...