The Weekend Edition is pulled from the daily Stansberry Digest.

Elon Musk weighs in...

On Wednesday, CBS News shared some of the Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE") captain's thoughts on the "big, beautiful bill" sitting in Congress right now.

As part of an interview that's due to air in full tomorrow morning, Musk said he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit... and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing."

In a follow-up thought, Musk said...

I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion.

Cue the Truth Social post criticizing Musk in three... two... one...

In the meantime, the White House posted an article featuring a collection of quotes from supporters of the bill on President Donald Trump's social media page, and Trump defended the bill when asked about Musk's comments.

Musk is right, we think...

The tax and spending bill that has passed the House (and still awaits Senate approval) includes extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts, increasing state and local tax deductions, and adding about $350 billion in new spending to the budget, just to name a few items. It's projected to add $3.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

And here's the kicker, as we wrote in the May 22 Digest...

As for how to pay for all this, here's the plan... Just raise the federal debt limit again...

The bill proposes raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion...

If that doesn't happen, the federal government will be unable to pay its bills as an already $36 trillion in federal debt continues to snowball. Several analyses project the bill, as written, would add $3.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

Turns out, the once-promising Department of Government Efficiency's projected $150 billion in cuts for fiscal 2026 is nowhere near enough to make a big difference. We, the taxpayers, will bear the inflation burden in the future.

Some things, it appears, will never change.

Also on Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump for his reaction to Musk's comments during a media event...

"Our reaction is a lot of things," Trump said. "No. 1, we have to get a lot of votes. We can't be cutting... We need to get a lot of support... I'm not happy about certain aspects of [the bill], but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it. That's the way it goes."

On it goes.

A "big, beautiful" breakup...

DOGE came in with a bang... ran roughshod through Washington... and is now going out with a whimper and disappointment. In an interview published on Tuesday, Musk told the Washington Post that the federal bureaucracy situation is "much worse than I realized."

For his part, Musk probably could have gone about his "chainsaw" policy a little smoother.

Mass e-mailing federal employees asking them to list five things they accomplished in the previous week seemed to be a tipping point for D.C. bureaucrats, and at least a few Trump department heads pushed back publicly on the efforts.

But the main point is that this situation sure looks like a "big, beautiful" breakup between Musk and the White House.

The U.S. Keeps Piling on Debt

It's the same old story, dressed up...

As for what this means for your portfolio, it speaks to something that won't change: The same debt and fiscal problems that have defined the U.S. financial system for decades will just keep snowballing.

The dollar's value has been dwindling for decades – since the currency went off the gold standard. We don't see anything from Washington changing that course.

Financing its debt has also become the government's largest expense. The government is already paying more interest on its debt each year than it spends on national defense... and national defense spending is due to rise in the new bill. And tariffs aren't going to cover the tab.

This is why we advocate for alternatives to Treasury bonds. The more debt Uncle Sam racks up, the more Treasurys the government needs to issue, and the less valuable they become.

It's why we question the effectiveness of the conventional "60/40" stock-bond portfolio... encourage folks to own "hard assets" like gold to safeguard wealth in the long run... and recommend shares of high-quality businesses that will make the most of their cash flows.

Consumer-Debt Delinquencies Are on the Rise

Here's a trend we've been watching for a while...

Folks are falling behind on all types of debt – from credit cards to auto loans and now student debt.

Just take a look at this chart from Bloomberg (based on the most recent New York Federal Reserve data):

In the first quarter of 2025, serious delinquencies (measured as 90-plus days behind on payment) rose across every category. Credit-card delinquencies hit the highest level since 2011, while delinquent auto loans hit a five-year high.

The student-loan risk is here...

On May 5, the Department of Education under the Trump administration began resuming collections of defaulted federal student loans. That follows a five-year "pause" on repayments that had begun in the depths of the pandemic...

This is a big deal that could lead to consumers and their credit scores getting dinged even more. According to a Department of Education statement from last month, more than 42 million borrowers collectively owe more than $1.6 trillion in student debt and...

More than 5 million borrowers have not made a monthly payment in over 360 days and sit in default – many for more than 7 years – and 4 million borrowers are in late-stage delinquency (91-180 days). As a result, there could be almost 10 million borrowers in default in a few months. When this happens, almost 25 percent of the federal student loan portfolio will be in default.

And that's just the start of it. Only 38% of borrowers are current on their federal student loan payments. And according to the U.S. Department of Education...

Most of the remaining borrowers are either delinquent on their payments, in an interest-free forbearance, or in an interest-free deferment. A small percentage of borrowers are in a 6-month grace period or in-school.

Something has to give, given the size of this issue. Younger Americans are getting into more serious debt problems right about now... And costs for just about everything are much higher than they were five years ago when the loan "pause" began.

Things could get worse...

So far, markets don't care about the state of the consumer. Investors have enough to keep an eye on with daily tariff headlines, the Federal Reserve's next move, and even earnings results of the huge tech companies propping up the market.

So they're looking past the broader impacts that growing consumer debt and late payments will have on the economy down the road. Remember, about 70% of U.S. economic activity is tied to consumer spending.

We don't know exactly how high delinquencies need to get this time before the market starts to pay attention. But at some point, this will send the market back into panic mode as talk of "recession" returns to the mainstream.

Good investing,

Corey McLaughlin

Editor's note: Government spending has spiraled past the point of no return – and according to our founder Porter Stansberry, it looks like America is heading off a financial cliff very, very fast. Millions of Americans are unprepared for what's coming. That's why, on June 5, Porter is sharing how he's preparing his own portfolio – including the one money move you should make immediately. Click here for the details.