The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 112 ｜ The Government’s Plan to DESTROY Small Business ｜ Carol Roth ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.140 Goliath is on a winning streak.

00:00:02.720 Today's guest fights for the little guy, the David, except David is a her. 0.96

00:00:08.480 She got her start in investment banking and quickly rose in rank.

00:00:12.360 She calls herself an investment banker in recovery. 0.97

00:00:16.300 She's worked as an investment banker on Wall Street, where she specialized in corporate finance, which basically means she helped big companies become bigger.

00:00:24.380 She's now a New York Times bestselling author who advocates for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

00:00:31.720 And she is very alarmed throughout the pandemic.

00:00:34.740 She watched as cronyism replaced capitalism, as power became centralized and everyday Americans lost their livelihoods, their business, even their freedom.

00:00:45.040 All as a result of powerful elites willing to betray our American values for profit.

00:00:51.700 Today's guest examines this in her latest book, The War on Small Business, How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America.

00:01:01.200 It's a book about freedom, but it's also a book about power, government power, corporate power, and the strange and terrifying power that merges when the two combine,

00:01:12.400 which is exactly what led to the enormous transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.

00:01:18.220 Small business is, as American baseball and cheeseburgers and the Fonz smack in the jukebox.

00:01:27.180 Small business represents the possibility for freedom, a realistic chance at the American dream.

00:01:33.220 It's what built us in so many ways.

00:01:35.680 Today's guest has a powerful message.

00:01:38.240 This is America, the land of the little guy. 0.94

00:01:41.480 Today, on the Glenn Beck Podcast, Carol Roth.

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00:03:05.460 Welcome, Carol.

00:03:06.480 I want to start with the black swan.

00:03:11.480 What is a black swan, first of all?

00:03:14.360 So, a black swan in the financial world is an unpredictable event, something that comes out of nowhere and takes over everything.

00:03:24.060 And it really became popularized by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, who was a former quant trader.

00:03:30.660 And he made this big argument that we really need to be paying attention and worried about these things that we can't see because we're always kind of heads down in things we can't see.

00:03:39.940 So, when 2020 came around, everyone said, oh, the pandemic, it's a black swan.

00:03:46.880 And it's absolutely not the case.

00:03:49.080 I mean, in 2019, there had been a set of drills called Crimson Contagion that were run for this exact scenario.

00:03:55.720 People have been talking about preparations for a pandemic for a long time.

00:04:00.540 So, that was not the black swan.

00:04:02.940 But a black swan did happen.

00:04:04.720 The black swan was the government reaction to the pandemic.

00:04:08.620 There was nobody who was sitting around going, you know, I really think that the government is going to shut down large swaths of the economy in reaction to this virus that came out.

00:04:19.640 We, we, what happened to us, you would have said just a couple of months before, never, no one, A, the government would never do it, and no one would accept it.

00:04:32.780 Both of those things happened, and it is crushed.

00:04:36.800 I think it has fundamentally transformed America, possibly for at least the foreseeable future, but possibly a knockout punch on getting back to where we once were.

00:04:50.660 Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that.

00:04:52.640 I remember being in February 2020, and the news had come out of Asia, and everyone was trying to process what was going on.

00:05:00.100 And my husband and I were having, you know, one of those dinnertime conversations going, you know, like, what if this actually became something?

00:05:06.800 I hear what would happen.

00:05:08.320 And I said, well, like, just hypothetically speaking, what if you could just lock everybody down for two weeks?

00:05:14.460 Like, do you think we could do that?

00:05:16.600 And we sat around the table, and we, like, we, you know, played it all around.

00:05:19.540 We're like, nah, there's no way that you could do that, that people would stand by and allow for that to happen.

00:05:25.300 And so, what was very clever about what happened is that they actually didn't pursue that.

00:05:31.780 They pursued partial lockdowns.

00:05:33.740 This idea that we had a lockdown, that we were all in this together, that everybody had the same fate, was completely not true.

00:05:41.940 I mean, we had the government picking winners and losers.

00:05:44.740 We had them deciding who was going to thrive and who was going to fight to survive, not based even on data or science, but based on political clout and connections.

00:05:53.980 So, this concept of us all being in this together, if Wall Street hadn't been propped up, if the big businesses had been shut down too, I mean, I'll ask you, do you think that we would have lasted two or three weeks?

00:06:05.940 No, we wouldn't have.

00:06:06.960 And it was a massive transfer of wealth.

00:06:11.440 But also, what happened that nobody's talking about is small businesses, and you talk about this a lot in your book, small businesses account for over half, sometimes 75% of all job growth in recessions and depressions.

00:06:28.980 It is the way that America fires back up, and they have done and are still doing everything they can to kill the small business.

00:06:40.080 Yeah, and it's so interesting.

00:06:42.020 I think when we talk about the concept of small business, people think, oh, it's small, it must be niche, it must not be that important.

00:06:49.400 But if you look at the economy, like on a spectrum or a pie chart, and you just slice it down the middle, about half the economy, half the GDP, and about half the jobs are in the hands, before COVID, of 30.2 million small businesses.

00:07:03.420 And that is a group that's a free market, right?

00:07:06.300 They're all very decentralized, different industries, different sizes, and that's what we want to see more of.

00:07:13.960 We want to see more of that decentralization.

00:07:16.040 The other half of the economy is in the hands, depending on how you want to count big or medium businesses, about 10,000 to 15,000 big or medium businesses.

00:07:25.480 So think about that imbalance of power when you divide the economy in half, and then you can understand why the politicians want to align with the side that's easier to control and easier to get lobbying dollars from and have the financial wherewithal.

00:07:40.620 So for those of us who believe in free markets and capitalism as that best path to prosperity and believe in economic freedom and wealth creation opportunities, we want to see more of the 30.2 million.

00:07:53.940 We don't want to see more of that economy going into the hands.

00:07:57.020 And you hit the nail on the head.

00:07:58.600 This was the biggest transfer of wealth we have ever seen in history.

00:08:03.560 Explain that.

00:08:04.480 So from Main Street to Wall Street, we had two different things happen.

00:08:11.260 One, I think most people understand, and one, people don't understand at all.

00:08:16.080 The thing for people that's easy to get their head wrapped around is the government shuts down small businesses.

00:08:22.620 And if you're going out and you still need to spend, you're going to be spending at Walmart.

00:08:26.380 You're going to be spending at Target.

00:08:27.620 You're going to be spending at Amazon.

00:08:28.920 So those were the companies that were the beneficiaries of the dollars that were spent in the economy last year.

00:08:35.280 And Amazon had blowaway quarters. 1.00

00:08:38.380 I mean, for the first time, December 2020, first $100 billion quarter ever.

00:08:42.900 Same in terms of revenue.

00:08:44.060 Same thing happened in the second quarter.

00:08:45.820 I mean, it really boosted their revenue.

00:08:48.260 So from a financial perspective, that's what happened.

00:08:52.180 Then there's the monetary policy piece.

00:08:54.640 And this is the opaque piece, which seems a little wonky, but that's why I went into it in the book in a very sort of Sesame Street sort of way, so people can better understand this.

00:09:04.500 But the Fed came in and decided that they were going to further intervene in a market that they had already been intervening in basically since the Great Recession, disrupt risk, take interest rates back down to zero, and just inject trillions of dollars of cash.

00:09:22.380 And it's not like they have this cash.

00:09:25.120 This isn't like a pile that they're like, oh, we're going to put it in.

00:09:28.160 This is made up out of nowhere.

00:09:29.760 People say it's very different because they're not printing it.

00:09:33.260 They're digitizing it.

00:09:34.260 No, they're digitizing it.

00:09:34.900 Right.

00:09:35.080 So if you and I went into our accounts and we changed the numbers and we said, now we have trillions of dollars and we're going to go buy securities, that would be called counterfeiting.

00:09:42.640 Correct.

00:09:42.980 For whatever reason, when the Federal Reserve does it, this is monetary policy.

00:09:47.340 So they went in and they injected trillions of dollars to the point that they now have more than $8 trillion on their balance sheet.

00:09:55.400 And this enabled these big companies who already had access to capital and weren't the ones being hurt to continue to grow.

00:10:02.940 There were seven tech companies that gained $3.4 trillion in value in 2020.

00:10:09.960 It was a record year for IPOs.

00:10:12.040 It was a record year in terms of the value that was created through SPACs, these highly speculative special purpose acquisition companies, which is basically a hybrid of a private equity company and an IPO.

00:10:24.920 So if you had access to capital, this is a bonanza for you.

00:10:30.220 At the same time that hundreds of thousands of small businesses had been completely murdered by the by the time June had come around, millions more were struggling to survive.

00:10:41.480 And then you have the sort of imbalance of your small business just trying to find your footing and your competitors have access to additional capital, additional value.

00:10:51.820 I mean, just an insane transfer of wealth and value.

00:10:55.020 I've been watching this happen since 2008 and, you know, people were upset in 2008 when we bailed out the banks.

00:11:07.280 They don't have any clue as to what has been going on since 2008.

00:11:13.420 It is much worse.

00:11:14.800 They've made everybody bigger.

00:11:16.240 And, you know, I was watching something.

00:11:19.740 I'd love to hear your opinion before.

00:11:24.040 Let's see.

00:11:24.840 It was probably in October, right before the pandemic.

00:11:29.500 And the bank started, you know, at the old discount window that doesn't exist anymore, just started giving money to the banks overnight.

00:11:38.140 And I think it got up to, what, $100 billion a night or $150 billion a night.

00:11:45.100 And then they started saying, you know, you can keep it for 30 days and it's unlimited on what you can take.

00:11:50.500 Something was wrong.

00:11:52.060 And I don't know what it was, but something was very wrong.

00:11:55.900 And now we don't hear anything about that.

00:11:58.820 And now the banks seem to be fine again.

00:12:03.120 I mean, what happened?

00:12:04.860 Do you have any idea?

00:12:05.960 All right.

00:12:06.500 So there's a lot to unpack in this, Glenn, because this is a big thing.

00:12:10.420 Can you explain it to me like I'm Elmo?

00:12:13.960 Because I practically am.

00:12:15.320 I sure can, Glenn.

00:12:17.060 So two pieces of this.

00:12:18.500 The first thing I want to hit on is the whole idea of too big to fail versus too small to matter and too small to control.

00:12:25.480 Because I'm glad that you brought up the Great Recession.

00:12:28.860 What happened then is the banks took on too much risk.

00:12:32.640 And financial services companies adjacent to banks took on too much risk.

00:12:37.400 That disrupted the entire financial system and we all paid the price.

00:12:42.000 And so this was the outcome of something they had done.

00:12:45.280 But they were still deemed too big to fail.

00:12:47.880 They still got a taxpayer bailout.

00:12:50.240 So they did not learn a lesson.

00:12:52.480 They learned the wrong lesson.

00:12:53.880 Well, it goes even further than that.

00:12:55.300 So the slap on the wrist that they got, Dodd-Frank, the big regulation, we're going to come in, we're going to rein in the big banks.

00:13:03.060 Have you seen this movie before?

00:13:04.220 Do you know what happens?

00:13:06.160 For those of you who haven't seen the movie before, what happened was because these regulations were so onerous, it ended up killing the formation of small business lenders and community banks.

00:13:19.180 A lot of them went under.

00:13:21.620 And as you can imagine, those who have smaller capital pools can lend to smaller businesses.

00:13:26.620 So small business lending just went completely off a cliff.

00:13:30.480 At the same time, because the Fed's still intervening in the market, which is the second piece that we'll get to, the big banks now have fewer competitors.

00:13:38.600 They have access to all of this capital.

00:13:41.000 They went crazy.

00:13:42.260 Big business lending went through the roof.

00:13:43.740 So let me ask you, was that, do you believe that was intentional?

00:13:48.820 Like when FDR in the Great Recession or Great Depression, he went to the big three automakers and said, will you help us make the rules?

00:13:57.500 And of course they helped to make the rules to keep the three big, you know, putting everybody else out of business.

00:14:03.100 Do you think that happened or is this just bad policy?

00:14:07.560 So it's interesting, the people who advise on policy, the lobbyists that get in there, the experts, they're coming from industry.

00:14:17.180 They're far more intelligent and, you know, perhaps a little bit more nefarious than the folks who are elected by our popularity contest that we have in there. 0.99

00:14:28.140 So I think it's likely, it's likely outcome that the people who are lobbying knew what was going to happen and the people who were writing the legislation were just too stupid to know. 0.88

00:14:42.680 But there is a bigger thesis that I talk about, which again, is that when you look back to our spectrum of the decentralized economy versus the centralized power, that is the big battle that's going on. 0.92

00:14:54.960 And so, you know, to the extent, whether it's intentional or it's like, hey, if that happens, like we just don't care, they want to be in bed with these big companies.

00:15:07.220 They want to, it's that unholy trifecta of central planners and government, big business and special interests.

00:15:14.420 So, you know, they might craft something that's a little bit more favorable.

00:15:18.900 And if a few small guys get hurt, you know, that's just the price we have to pay.

00:15:23.380 We are living the same thing that our grandparents live through in the teens and the early 20s and the early 30s before fascism was known as a bad thing.

00:15:39.280 We're just not calling it that.

00:15:40.980 But this is a fashion that there is a love from the government and from big business of fascism.

00:15:49.300 They just don't call it that.

00:15:50.480 No, and that's why I've used the phrase central planning to, if you look at the spectrum, people get so caught up in capitalism versus socialism, communism, democratic socialism, pretty social, like whatever you want to call it.

00:16:06.200 I look at capitalism as just freedom, choice, transparency, surrounded by the guardrails of property rights.

00:16:13.100 That's it.

00:16:13.680 That's all it is.

00:16:14.520 And so if you believe in freedom and choice, you believe in capitalism.

00:16:18.020 So central planning, and again, I don't want to have a, like a discussion about which one you want to call it, but it's a handful of people that make decisions on the behalf of everybody else.

00:16:28.100 They're using force, coercion, control, and usually opacity.

00:16:32.320 So it doesn't matter which, you know, format or which name you want to call it.

00:16:36.160 And I think that's where the debate always gets derailed because people want to say, oh, well, this hasn't been tried.

00:16:40.480 Well, does it look like this?

00:16:42.280 Does it look like force and coercion?

00:16:43.780 Are a few people making the decisions?

00:16:45.880 And that's the spectrum that we've moved along.

00:16:48.060 We have moved away from capitalism.

00:16:49.980 We've actually exported capitalism around the world to our detriment.

00:16:53.560 And we have imported central planning.

00:16:55.940 And that's kind of the big battle that we're seeing, which has allowed this to happen over the last, you know, call it 17 months.

00:17:03.260 And, you know, even in the days when we're having this conversation with the eviction moratorium coming back in place, oh, well, the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional.

00:17:13.280 Well, that's okay.

00:17:14.120 It doesn't matter.

00:17:15.000 We'll just go ahead and have the CDC talk about economic policy.

00:17:20.000 Like, where did this come from?

00:17:21.640 Like, is the Treasury now going to make food pyramids?

00:17:23.900 I don't know what's happening.

00:17:26.940 I mean, can I make an edict out there?

00:17:30.860 Because it seems like it doesn't matter who you are.

00:17:32.720 We have, like, multiple branches of government that I didn't know existed.

00:17:36.400 Just a quick thought.

00:17:38.240 I don't know if you know who Stuart Chase is, but he was the guy who came up, coined the term, the New Deal.

00:17:43.380 He was a big central planner.

00:17:45.600 And he wrote a book called The Road on Which We're Traveling.

00:17:51.260 And it was a synopsis of 1941 to 1946.

00:17:56.820 And at the end of it, he says, you know, we thought fascism might be good, authoritarianism, but now we're seeing the lies of that.

00:18:07.180 But we've begun to build what we'll just have to call now System X.

00:18:12.200 And he lays out everything we're doing right now, everything we're doing.

00:18:16.660 And he says, it's too late to turn it because the forces are already in and the rail has already been put in.

00:18:25.680 And it'll be a good thing.

00:18:27.160 But it was hard for me to get my arms around that when I first read that in the 90s.

00:18:33.140 Yeah.

00:18:33.380 But that is, whether that's the same rail, that is, we have System X.

00:18:40.300 You know, when I know people have heard really good economists, capitalists say, you know, China, 20 years ago, China is the future.

00:18:52.380 China is the future. 0.90

00:18:53.640 And they didn't mean that China would be dominant, per se.

00:18:56.960 They meant we're going to be doing things like China.

00:19:00.200 Yeah, it is staggering.

00:19:02.380 And it's one of the reasons I included the chapter on China and called it Trading Places, because I do feel like there are so many times when it's like we're holding up a mirror and the things that come out of the United States sound like policy that would be coming out of China and vice versa.

00:19:20.640 And it's very staggering to sit here and to say, wow, this is what we've become.

00:19:25.940 And all of this has come out of central planning and their missteps.

00:19:30.940 And the Fed has accelerated it.

00:19:33.460 I mean, the reason why this didn't seem like it was such a big deal for so long is because the Federal Reserve, even though they were interfering in the markets and slanting the playing field, they weren't doing it at the level that they did.

00:19:47.160 And after the Great Recession, all bets are off the table.

00:19:51.140 And this thing has just been.

00:19:53.240 Is this it?

00:19:55.000 Do we really have?

00:19:56.640 I mean, I have my money in the market because it's going up.

00:20:01.700 I don't have all of my money by any stretch of the imagination in the market because at some point it's going to come down.

00:20:08.640 But.

00:20:08.800 Will it because you can't really look at a company's earnings or what they're doing it?

00:20:16.500 Nothing makes sense anymore.

00:20:18.920 And the Fed is just printing up money and giving money to people who are buying who are like minded and buying more stock.

00:20:30.980 There's no.

00:20:32.140 Is there is there a real market anymore?

00:20:34.800 I mean, it's definitely not a capitalistic free market.

00:20:38.660 I mean, not that you can make the argument that there's always been some element that was slightly less than capitalistic.

00:20:45.500 But when I got into investment banking, I consider myself a recovering investment banker.

00:20:51.000 When I got into it a little bit more than a quarter century ago, we would run analyses.

00:20:56.620 There would be valuation metrics.

00:20:58.240 And you could say for most companies, you know, this is kind of the standard multiple of cash flow or multiple of revenue or multiple of earnings that we would expect.

00:21:07.980 And sure, there were some outliers in technology or biotech that were harder to suss.

00:21:13.240 But there was at least like some semblance of rules that were agreed upon.

00:21:17.020 What's happened when the Fed comes in and they say that, you know, interest rates are zero, they're basically saying like there's no compensation for taking risk.

00:21:27.120 Like you're taking on risk and you get nothing in return, which is the whole point of taking on risk and sort of the principles of economics.

00:21:35.860 And when you have that scenario, it's impossible to use valuation metrics and everything becomes sentiment and momentum.

00:21:45.520 And so, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, as somebody who is asked to continually commentate on the market, it's kind of like, I don't know what to say.

00:21:53.960 I saw a research report that came out today on Robinhood, this trading app that's, you know, supposed to democratize investing, but is backed by, of course, the big guys.

00:22:06.620 And at this point in time, the research analyst is like, I don't know what to tell you.

00:22:11.360 Like, this is too risky.

00:22:12.300 I can't tell you whether you should be long or short.

00:22:16.180 Like, I've never seen that in the history of Wall Street.

00:22:19.020 And is that just because?

00:22:19.940 Because there's so much manipulation that's going on in the market because there's so much cash that's been brought in because risk has been disrupted because all of these factors just don't know what to make of it anymore.

00:22:34.600 So I've been watching the economy since 2004 and ringing the bell on the collapse of the banks and nobody would listen and I was crazy and yada, yada, yada.

00:22:45.860 And I have been shocked at the amount that this country and our financial system, the beating it can take.

00:22:59.440 It has just taken a beating, you know, for the last 22 years.

00:23:05.180 It's just been nonstop.

00:23:07.120 And we're still standing.

00:23:11.200 But it.

00:23:14.560 Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that said, you know, it was about the gods of the copybook headings with with the blood and terror.

00:23:24.620 The truth returns in the end.

00:23:26.520 And and it has to.

00:23:30.280 I mean, right.

00:23:31.760 I mean, what are we headed for?

00:23:34.020 Yeah.

00:23:34.200 This is the debate that we're having on, you know, amongst financial folks every day.

00:23:39.500 And the reality is that when you take actions, they ultimately have consequences.

00:23:45.000 And I can't tell you, you know, over time what happens.

00:23:49.340 The crazy thing that we have going on, which makes this so hard to peg, is that we are the world's reserve currency and we are what I call the skinniest kid at fat camp.

00:23:59.740 Yes.

00:24:00.400 Yes.

00:24:00.840 So if you look around the world and you say, well, OK, you know, the dollar tanks, the financial market tanks, this whole thing unravels the amount of epic devastation that that has for the rest of the world and the lack of somebody else to be able to step in and take our place.

00:24:22.280 I mean, I know a lot of people like, oh, China is going to be the reserve currency.

00:24:25.420 I mean, nobody's going to let a communist country be the reserve currency other than maybe like if you're Iran and, you know, nobody else is giving you money.

00:24:33.280 I don't know. We seem to love communist countries right now.

00:24:36.980 It's it's a fair point.

00:24:38.460 But, you know, in an intellectual standpoint, you know, if you're France, if you're the, you know, the UK, if you're, you know, any of these Germany, like, are you really going to trust the financial system that keeps producing financial frauds?

00:24:51.200 I mean, the number of companies that we've had to pull off U.S. exchanges because of financial frauds, because nobody can trust the number system that's coming out there.

00:25:00.560 So the good thing we have going is that everyone is like invested in this scheme.

00:25:06.600 And I use the word scheme intentionally.

00:25:09.260 So they kind of can't afford to let it collapse.

00:25:12.300 So, you know, I've been playing around with like wild concepts and talking to people and I'm finding out that there are other people who are playing around with the same wild concepts.

00:25:21.260 Like, could there be a situation where everyone just agrees that we're going to just cancel a bunch of debt and there's going to be no consequence because the consequence of doing it on everyone ends up being worse?

00:25:34.040 Like, I don't know. I mean, this is all so outside of the realm of just, you know, basic economics and markets.

00:25:42.480 It could be any spectrum of outcomes.

00:25:45.420 It could be like massive deflation to massive hyperinflation.

00:25:50.180 I've been pushing, at least in the interim, that we probably will have some stagflation.

00:25:54.760 But the ultimate outcomes, at least for some period of time until somebody fills that void, are huge.

00:26:02.360 And frankly, that, you know, that's why the whole crypto thing has become big.

00:26:06.660 I remember reading the first time 20 years ago about rehypothecation, which scared the hell out of me.

00:26:16.720 You know what I mean?

00:26:17.580 You get to a point, I've said to the audience several times, if you ever read that in the Wall Street Journal and they're seriously talking about rehypothecation, run.

00:26:28.900 The idea is that really nobody owns anything because everybody owns a little of something.

00:26:36.520 If this thing starts to fall apart.

00:26:41.100 There that's.

00:26:43.120 I mean, that's reality.

00:26:44.860 Nobody really knows who owns what, because everybody kind of owns a little bit of everything.

00:26:49.480 Right.

00:26:49.780 Isn't that exactly what they're trying to do?

00:26:51.500 This is, you know, the whole concept of wealth creation opportunities and economic freedom has made the United States the most successful country in all of history and has drawn people from all over the globe to want to come here to pursue that.

00:27:12.020 What they have been doing is making it impossible for you as an individual to create wealth.

00:27:20.000 The war on small business is the war on wealth creation opportunities, because how do you get wealthy in the United States of America?

00:27:27.060 You get wealthy through ownership of assets.

00:27:29.660 I mean, it's not just it's not income.

00:27:31.520 It's really the asset ownership.

00:27:32.960 So it's owning a business, it's owning a home, it's investing in stocks, it's, you know, maybe having options in a company that, you know, you own privately.

00:27:43.440 All those kinds of things.

00:27:44.620 That's what creates wealth.

00:27:46.880 And that's what everybody should have available to them.

00:27:50.360 So they're making it more difficult.

00:27:52.300 And for you to have to think really hard about whether you want to own a small business, that's a wealth creation opportunity.

00:27:59.280 They're making it harder for you to own a home.

00:28:03.120 And oh, by the way, they're giving basically free capital to private equity firms to go and compete with you for those homes.

00:28:10.360 They're just...

00:28:11.000 Hang on, just explain that.

00:28:12.200 Because a lot of people don't know this.

00:28:14.800 Yes.

00:28:15.220 Home prices are through the roof.

00:28:17.320 Yes.

00:28:17.720 Explain what's happening.

00:28:18.640 So there are a lot of dynamics, obviously, coming out of the Great Recession.

00:28:24.220 There were a ton of foreclosures.

00:28:26.240 So there was a lot of supply in the market.

00:28:28.660 And because of that, there was a lot less building that was happening.

00:28:32.520 But as that kind of got cleaned up, you then rolled into this, quote unquote, government created crisis.

00:28:41.560 And so not only do you have what I call government inflation, the cost of a new home has $94,000 added to it, according to the National Association of Home Builders, for every new home based on government regulations.

00:28:57.760 That doesn't even get to your property taxes.

00:28:59.800 So you've got the government inflation piece.

00:29:01.740 And then you have this capital bonanza.

00:29:06.460 Interest rates are next to zero.

00:29:08.360 So people want to take out mortgages.

00:29:10.780 But it's more sinister than that.

00:29:12.980 Because there's all this capital in the market at these very low rates, these big firms, biggest investors out there, BlackRock and some of the other really big names, they're trying to find a return on investment for their investors.

00:29:28.960 And they're out of options because all of these sort of other options have been exhausted.

00:29:34.680 But they've got all of this capital.

00:29:36.520 Oh, and they can borrow cheaply as well.

00:29:39.060 So that has allowed them to set their sights on the housing market and the individual housing market.

00:29:46.600 So we have these big companies over the last 12 to 16 months who've been going out and competing for neighborhoods and for individual houses with you as a homeowner.

00:29:57.880 Like, it's hard enough to have to compete with all the other people who want to go out and buy them.

00:30:02.860 Now you have to compete with big companies that are getting free money because the Fed has completely disrupted risk in the market.

00:30:09.620 It's insane.

00:30:10.240 So that's taking away a wealth creation opportunity.

00:30:13.500 And then just the normal investment in the market.

00:30:16.280 If you're coming into the market now as an individual investor, you are taking on more risk to get the same return.

00:30:22.720 And, you know, God forbid, you're a saver or a retiree or somebody who wants to retire.

00:30:28.300 So you're basically earning nothing.

00:30:31.360 And all of that capital, all of that money is being given to these big companies who are going out and, as we talked about, increasing in value.

00:30:40.820 Like, that's not capitalism.

00:30:42.860 That's central planning.

00:30:43.980 So we are not a capitalist country anymore.

00:30:48.800 I would say we are a hybrid right now.

00:30:52.500 We've been a hybrid for a long time.

00:30:54.480 We are a hybrid that is moving closer to central planning.

00:30:57.380 Absolutely.

00:30:58.340 And this has been accelerated over the last 16, 17 months.

00:31:03.460 So can I get some would say conspiratorial, but there's conspiracy theories and then there's conspiracy facts.

00:31:12.600 Right.

00:31:13.120 This is a conspiracy is hidden.

00:31:15.440 This isn't hidden.

00:31:16.460 You know, the London School of Economics just issued a paper on the central planning and how it is the future.

00:31:24.480 You have the Great Reset from the World Economic Forum, which is being denied everywhere, except Boris Johnson uses Build Back Better.

00:31:37.260 The prime minister of Japan uses Build Back Better, which is the phrase from the World Economic Forum.

00:31:47.600 And everything that is happening just happens to be coincidentally following the same structure.

00:31:57.500 Yeah.

00:31:57.760 For anybody who hasn't seen the video, there's this, like, really crazy kind of, like, teaser for the Great Reset that says, here are predictions of what's going to happen by 2030.

00:32:08.420 So, like, not even that far.

00:32:09.760 Not, like, 2075.

00:32:11.680 Like, we're talking, like, less than a decade from now.

00:32:13.760 And two of the key points was, like, people will, like, own nothing.

00:32:19.120 And be happy.

00:32:19.760 And be happy.

00:32:20.780 And that people will rent instead of own.

00:32:23.720 And it's.

00:32:24.340 But wait a minute.

00:32:25.140 I keep saying after they say, you know, you won't own anything, you'll be happy because it's going to be a renter's thing.

00:32:30.400 Well, first of all, who are you renting from?

00:32:33.680 Right.

00:32:34.060 You may not own, but somebody does.

00:32:36.740 And they're going to be, they're absolutely, that's the, that's the, the, the lords and the serfs.

00:32:43.960 Right.

00:32:44.180 And as I said, like, I'm, you can go through my stuff.

00:32:47.340 Like, I'm very grounded in facts and numbers and data.

00:32:52.100 But, like, yeah, they pretty much said it.

00:32:54.580 And while I don't necessarily think that all of the governments are joining together to do it globally, but maybe they're doing it on a one-off basis.

00:33:02.240 Maybe they're like, hey, here's a good plan.

00:33:03.880 Why don't you try and roll it out individually?

00:33:05.820 We're all in the, we're all in the same boat.

00:33:08.540 You know what I mean?

00:33:09.280 We're all in the same boat.

00:33:10.380 So it's, it's not, you know, I don't think you have to, they're not calling each other at night going, okay, now step two.

00:33:17.020 That's, I don't think that's happening.

00:33:18.480 Well, the hilarious part is that they're doing it under the guise of, oh, inequality is so bad.

00:33:24.620 I mean, is there anything that creates more unequalness than a few people who are in the club absconding all of your property and saying to the rest of you, you will own nothing and be happy.

00:33:35.960 So, so help me out on this.

00:33:38.780 How did, how did suddenly everything switch to where I've never been one who says, ooh, big companies.

00:33:50.240 Tech was the first time I ever said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.

00:33:53.880 Um, uh, and we've given them everything.

00:33:58.080 Yeah.

00:33:58.360 And now it is so apparent to half the country.

00:34:03.080 These companies are sharks and they are going to eat everything, all of your rights and everything.

00:34:10.680 And the, the half that, at least I used to go relax, they're all in, they're all in, they're, they're, how did that happen?

00:34:24.260 Why did that happen?

00:34:25.240 It's, it's a hard thing to sort of like get the nuance on because a big company in and of itself, as you said, throughout history, isn't a problem.

00:34:34.160 When you have something that resembles freedom and choice and people compete themselves into a position where they're doing better, that's a good thing.

00:34:43.800 And we want that to happen as long as they're doing it on a fair, a fair and level playing field and it's not being tilted in their favor by their government cronies.

00:34:54.180 So you look at throughout history, even if you look at the Dow Jones, I mean, there's like, maybe like a handful of two or three companies that are even still there that were there 50 years ago.

00:35:04.980 Right.

00:35:06.180 So I don't have a problem with big companies, but I have a problem with cronyism.

00:35:12.820 Yes.

00:35:13.180 And that is the direction that we have been moved towards.

00:35:17.180 And I do think that has something.

00:35:18.840 All the while being told we're moving against it.

00:35:22.880 You know, they, they'll say these big companies and these big people are getting richer.

00:35:27.620 No, the millionaire, the guy who's a millionaire, he may or may not be getting richer, but the billionaire absolutely is.

00:35:38.000 This is so fascinating.

00:35:39.060 So I don't know if you know the stat, but the top 1% in the United States, do you know what number you need to hit from a wealth standpoint to be in the top 1%?

00:35:49.800 Two or 3 million?

00:35:51.340 4.4.

00:35:52.000 4.4.

00:35:52.880 Based on, based on the last set of data.

00:35:55.340 So there are a lot of people who are at that range, but there's like a handful of people that are hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:36:03.300 Yeah.

00:36:03.880 There is a truck that you can drive between the difference between 4.4 million and 200 billion.

00:36:10.040 Yeah.

00:36:10.520 A much smaller gap between zero and 4.4.

00:36:14.180 Right.

00:36:14.460 And so when we're focusing on the 1%, it becomes this distraction.

00:36:19.740 It becomes the, oh, eat the rich and eat the economic opportunity.

00:36:24.080 That's the call to action.

00:36:25.580 Right.

00:36:25.980 And that gives them the cover for that handful of people to keep growing and growing.

00:36:31.680 And then the funny part is I call them like the terrible capitalists because so many of them want to pull the ladder up behind them and say, oh, we're in late stage capitalism or there's something where there's a different version.

00:36:45.420 There's no different version of freedom, choice, transparency, property rights.

00:36:49.440 It just is what it is.

00:36:51.460 There is no version of that.

00:36:52.640 We've just moved further away.

00:36:54.360 And you're telling us that we should continue to move towards central planning because you know that it's going to benefit you.

00:37:01.140 And I go back to the concept of monetary policy, us going off the gold standard and then the changes in terms of the Fed's reaction, that has just like exponentially grown the capital base,

00:37:17.420 which means the differential just by compounding is becomes bigger, which means that those big companies become more powerful and better allies.

00:37:27.120 So it's kind of this like one, two punch.

00:37:30.560 And it's like anything else.

00:37:31.820 Like once you lose the key principle, everything starts to spiral out of control.

00:37:36.700 And so as we have started giving up small principles, they end up with these big consequences.

00:37:42.880 Little baby steps at first, but then somebody comes in and is like, oh, well, I think we should keep interest rates at zero for seven years.

00:37:50.640 Oh, yeah, that seems like a good idea.

00:37:52.840 We are.

00:37:53.680 This one's going to leave a mark.

00:37:55.940 This one's going to hurt.

00:37:56.980 And like normally I'm so funny and such a delight to be around.

00:38:00.580 And I keep like, you know, talking about this, these things.

00:38:03.640 And I wish I had like this bright, shining, like optimism.

00:38:07.300 But like this is the reality.

00:38:08.480 And I think people need to educate themselves and understand these things that are intentionally opaque, because only when they understand that can we move forward.

00:38:19.760 I mean, I don't know anybody who like there's no big call.

00:38:22.900 Like call your representatives.

00:38:24.120 Tell them to reign in the Federal Reserve.

00:38:26.160 Like, have you heard anybody call for that?

00:38:27.800 But that's potentially one of the most important things that should be done.

00:38:30.580 By the way, I can relate to, I used to be fun and funny.

00:38:37.080 I went to a party, a friend of ours was having their 50th birthday party and my wife, and they were all, they were all finance people.

00:38:45.400 And she said, don't make anyone cry.

00:38:51.140 I'll try.

00:38:52.400 I'll try.

00:38:53.180 But it was somber.

00:38:54.460 They were asking questions, because I see the world differently than the people who are trained to trust the system.

00:39:01.640 But I don't think that's the case anymore.

00:39:04.440 I think, you know, when you look at these big companies, and they are bashing America, and they're bashing their clients, they're calling half of their clients racist, bigots, dangerous, etc.

00:39:21.020 That doesn't make any sense, any sense, unless you're playing for a different game, and you're playing for a much larger market.

00:39:34.200 Yeah, and it's interesting, because, you know, I tried to do the gymnastics in my head, too.

00:39:39.520 And these are supposed to be the smartest and sharpest people.

00:39:43.120 But if you're trying to get rid of, you know, small businesses, which are huge customers, if you're trying to take away wealth from these small guys, yeah, I get the fact that you're going to be the only ones left standing, and that you're going to have the monopoly power.

00:39:58.000 But nobody's going to have any money.

00:40:00.560 Like, we're going to destroy prosperity.

00:40:03.420 Like, we've seen how this works out in other countries.

00:40:05.920 Like, whether you're the UK or France, or you're Venezuela or Cuba.

00:40:10.800 Like, we've seen how, like, the options.

00:40:12.880 I still can't understand, like, why they think that would be a good—

00:40:17.680 Universal basic income.

00:40:18.960 Oh, I know.

00:40:19.600 This has been a trial run.

00:40:21.000 Yeah, this entire set of policies have been a trial run for universal basic income.

00:40:27.640 It is the most clear and obvious thing.

00:40:31.420 You know, stimulus checks under both administrations, the extended unemployment benefits, the early child tax credit, like, they're conditioning.

00:40:41.540 Don't go back to work.

00:40:42.940 Yeah, the government will be there to take care of you.

00:40:45.560 They're basically telling people there's no dignity in work.

00:40:48.860 They're killing that spirit.

00:40:50.120 They're conditioning them to think that work is a bad thing, and the government is a good thing.

00:40:56.000 It's mind-boggling.

00:41:00.120 I have tried to think of—I used to believe that people were just mistaken, or they had a different understanding, or maybe I was lacking some information.

00:41:12.800 And you could sit down and talk about it, and you could figure it out, because people are generally good and honest.

00:41:18.740 I don't believe that—I don't believe that they're just making mistakes.

00:41:25.500 You couldn't—you—you—this couldn't happen by accident.

00:41:31.200 All of these things are designed for a different system entirely by the end.

00:41:40.480 You would know you can't take people out of school for two years.

00:41:46.480 You can't destroy small businesses and then beat them over the head with all kinds of new regulations.

00:41:54.680 You'll never get that spirit back.

00:41:57.200 We are being trained, and I'm afraid that we are—I think there's a lot of people that are willing to go along with that, that are willing to go, why do it?

00:42:07.700 Why work?

00:42:08.620 Why work?

00:42:09.100 I mean, listen, in Illinois, if you're getting, between all the different programs, $51,000 a year not to work, yeah, I mean, it's hard to blame them, you know, other than just the personal dignity of it.

00:42:22.400 But the whole concept of, you know, whether this is intentional or not is a really interesting one.

00:42:27.660 It's one I get a lot with the book.

00:42:29.200 And I tell people when they read it, like, I don't care if you think it's intentional or it's incompetence or, eh, it's just a cannon fodder.

00:42:40.060 The outcomes are still going to be the same.

00:42:44.020 And that's the issue when you have central planning.

00:42:47.180 And, you know, central planning is about human nature, as is capitalism.

00:42:51.280 If you think that greed exists—because this is something we hear, right?

00:42:54.780 It's like, if you really think that people are greedy, which, by the way, they are, which is fine—capitalism, free choice harnesses that greed to everybody's benefits.

00:43:06.520 Central planning pretends that it doesn't exist.

00:43:09.380 So I think there are a lot of people who buy into unicorns and fairies and think, ah, you know, this is all going to work out okay.

00:43:17.040 And because we don't have the economic literacy in this country, they can't even see those chess moves ahead.

00:43:25.620 Like, they can't see the average person.

00:43:28.480 Oh, well, you know, we'll be able to make this up or we'll get this person.

00:43:31.860 Of course, people go back to work.

00:43:33.520 Or my favorite one, they'll create art.

00:43:36.320 You know, like—

00:43:37.520 Oh, my gosh.

00:43:38.200 Thank you for remembering that.

00:43:39.520 Right, right.

00:43:40.180 Thank you.

00:43:40.740 Like, I mean, we just disproved UBI, right?

00:43:43.340 We didn't have, like, a bunch of Banksy's that were coming out of 2020, right?

00:43:48.260 So we know that that's not the case.

00:43:50.920 But there are lots of people, because we've had it so good for so long in this country, that just believe everything's going to continue along at that pace.

00:44:00.300 And people are mostly good and unicorns and fairies, and we need to take care of things.

00:44:04.680 And I'm all for good intentions.

00:44:07.640 Like, I think it's great that people want to do these things, but they have to understand that good intentions don't lead to good outcomes.

00:44:15.880 And when you don't understand economics, that can create severe disaster.

00:44:21.220 I mean, even just the discussions around minimum wage and the, like, everyone I know wants people to get paid as much as the market will bear.

00:44:29.580 People want people to pay well, they want them to get in the game, but they don't want people to pay $23 for a slice of pizza and have that wage raise not be meaningful because your dollar is worth less.

00:44:40.880 People don't understand the concept that your dollar is worth less, and that begets the problem.

00:44:46.620 So let's talk about the dollar being worth less.

00:44:51.340 You mentioned cryptocurrency.

00:44:54.000 They are doing everything they can to kill cryptocurrency.

00:44:59.220 I thought it was more safe because some of the big boys got into play, but Yellen is not helping the cryptocurrency world.

00:45:11.840 And, you know, in their own documents, they are looking at a DUSD, a digital U.S. dollar.

00:45:17.340 First of all, do you think crypto remains and grows, or do you think the governments of the world are going to just choke it to death?

00:45:29.920 Yeah, this is a great intellectual exercise.

00:45:32.500 I think cryptocurrency is fascinating.

00:45:34.960 The reason it got so many people to buy into it is because there are enough people who see what you and I have just been talking about

00:45:41.620 and what the governments and cahoots with the Federal Reserve has been doing to the dollar and to our monetary system.

00:45:49.860 And so that's been a driving force in terms of it.

00:45:53.340 As well as I think another part of it is seeing the writing on the wall of tracking and controlling every aspect of your life.

00:46:06.240 It's a great, excellent, excellent point.

00:46:08.460 Yes, and that's the difference between a cryptocurrency, which is, you know, transparent on the blockchain and is not owned by any entity,

00:46:17.160 versus a digital currency, which is, you know, tracking 101.

00:46:22.340 In fact, China said that they have their own digital currency that might expire after a certain amount of time.

00:46:27.800 Like, we'll give you some dollars, but three months later, I mean, yeah.

00:46:30.720 So having them be able to take the money away is like a whole other permutation.

00:46:37.340 So when I look at cryptocurrency, you have to look at the currency aspect of it, as well as sort of the asset side of it as an alternative asset.

00:46:49.380 So when you think about crypto or think about currency, a unit of account, a medium of exchange, a measure of value, a store of value, it's not there yet, right?

00:47:00.220 We're still talking about things in dollars.

00:47:02.100 It's still pretty clunky to exchange.

00:47:05.400 I will have crypto people argue that it's a great store of value because it keeps going up, but the volatility implies that it hasn't quite found its place yet there.

00:47:14.640 So I think as a currency, all the things we've been talking about, the people who are in charge of the monetary system do not want to give up that power,

00:47:23.920 and they will do everything that they can as a currency to make this, you know, cryptocurrency not be something that people go to and use as a medium of exchange.

00:47:36.040 However, then there is the asset side, which is kind of like collectibles, you know, wine, art, beanie babies, anything like that.

00:47:49.060 And pretty much everything that we have is just a social contract, right?

00:47:52.420 If you think about gold, it's a long-term social contract.

00:47:55.580 We've ascribed some value to it.

00:47:57.280 We all agree that there's some store of value, which is why we used it for so long to back the dollar.

00:48:02.540 It's useful value is a fraction of its current market cap.

00:48:07.660 But socially, we've kind of all said, okay, this has some value, and we think it's going to have some value.

00:48:12.400 And that's what people do with art.

00:48:14.240 And that's, you know, like why is like a splatter paint on a piece of paper from Jackson Pollock worth millions,

00:48:18.800 and I spill on a piece of paper, and it's not worth anything?

00:48:22.380 Social contracts, just what we've decided.

00:48:24.060 So there are a bunch of people who've decided today that there is a social contract around cryptocurrency,

00:48:31.100 Bitcoin being the leader, as well as some others, and some just for fun.

00:48:35.660 And do I think that something like that will continue?

00:48:39.040 I think it's very possible.

00:48:40.940 I mean, it's very nascent.

00:48:43.020 But, you know, from a decentralization, they have a weird problem that you've alluded to,

00:48:48.180 that a lot of the concentration of the ones that exist right now are held by a handful of people,

00:48:53.520 which means a handful of people move markets, which means it doesn't quite look like a free market.

00:48:58.840 So does that mean a different one comes into play?

00:49:02.140 I mean, this is like so early on.

00:49:04.440 Like imagine us having this conversation about the internet, right, like 25, 30 years ago.

00:49:10.260 And you'd be like, yeah, like I don't know.

00:49:11.660 Like social media, yeah, I don't know.

00:49:13.400 So I think there's a good possibility that there's a social contract around something digital that people agree has some value.

00:49:22.780 Which one of these things it is, I couldn't tell you, but it's a fascinating study.

00:49:27.580 So I just look at what the Federal Reserve and what the federal government is doing now.

00:49:33.260 You know, you know, the Federal Reserve is looking into a digital U.S. dollar.

00:49:39.540 They already have the plans to open a bank account in every Fed bank.

00:49:44.980 Well, at least we'll know who the Fed banks are.

00:49:48.020 But and everybody will have one and you just go pick up your cryptocurrency.

00:49:53.320 They'll put cash in it at the beginning.

00:49:54.880 And the the fact that we have ESGs becoming a reality, the who was it?

00:50:07.100 The federal government just said, oh, it's Elizabeth Warren's little thing in the Treasury Department. 0.90

00:50:12.980 Consumer protection.

00:50:14.600 They now want to take on credit ratings.

00:50:18.640 The government giving credit ratings is the scariest thing I think I've heard.

00:50:24.320 And we we've seen in in China, this concept of social credits.

00:50:30.480 And there is a lot of concern that the rhetoric that we're hearing and the actual fundamental steps, as you've laid out, is leading to that.

00:50:41.040 And if you think that did platforming is bad now, imagine when the government has a digital currency and you can only transact with that.

00:50:51.000 And they can manage every move that you make.

00:50:54.380 I mean, we've seen what they've done to other countries.

00:50:57.780 They certainly could do that to individuals.

00:51:00.160 We know they have no qualms in terms of overstepping their bounds and stepping on our individual rights.

00:51:06.420 So, you know, you as an individual should really hope that cash sticks around for as long as possible.

00:51:11.700 Yeah, yeah, it's it's very and it's not just reporting to the IRS tips.

00:51:16.220 It goes much further than that.

00:51:17.960 But this concept and it goes back to the broader discussion we're having around central planning and wanting to have a few people who are making these decisions and controlling everything.

00:51:27.580 I mean, social credit is terrifying.

00:51:31.020 Terrifying.

00:51:31.520 Terrifying.

00:51:31.740 I know you talk about inflation, stagflation and hyperinflation.

00:51:38.160 Can you explain those to people?

00:51:41.680 And, you know, when you think of printing this much money, I mean, we've printed more in the last 18 months than I think we've printed, you know, in the in the run.

00:51:55.220 Yeah, you would think that that's going to go to hyperinflation because that's what happened in Zimbabwe.

00:52:02.900 That's what happened in Germany.

00:52:04.580 But that's not necessarily what's going to happen.

00:52:08.120 Explain the three of them and what they all look like.

00:52:12.660 So in terms of inflation is when you have more dollars that are chasing the same amount of goods and services.

00:52:19.320 So it inflates their prices.

00:52:21.000 It means that you're paying more to get the same goods and services.

00:52:24.280 So, in effect, on the flip side of that, each dollar that you have becomes worth less.

00:52:29.600 And that is usually an impact of monetary policy, although in this particular case with government stimulus and adding to the money supply in that way, at the same time as crazy monetary policy, you know, that's something we can see.

00:52:44.800 So the easy way for you to see inflation is if you've been to the grocery store lately, are things costing more or what we're seeing with shrinkflation that you're actually getting.

00:52:54.820 It's the same headline price, but you're getting a smaller box or fewer items or whatnot.

00:52:59.800 And you can see that direct relationship in housing or lumber or, you know, drying a piece of plywood.

00:53:05.940 But it's not necessarily that there's a shortage of plywood.

00:53:09.580 There's just so many people with money that want to buy plywood right now.

00:53:14.600 Right. So you've got you've got all this money that's out there chasing and the money supply right now is just at historic levels.

00:53:21.120 It's insane, as we talked about, because they're creating dollars out of nowhere.

00:53:24.920 And I should mention is that's sort of a distinction between monetary policy and just capitalism.

00:53:31.260 It's not like we've grown the economy and that means that we've created more value.

00:53:36.760 No, we've just poked more money into the same economy.

00:53:40.340 So that drives up prices and that becomes inflation.

00:53:44.020 And the big words that you're hearing now is whether that is transitory or not.

00:53:49.100 Explain.

00:53:50.200 Transitory means short term in nature.

00:53:52.300 Oh, it's just a blip because of covid.

00:53:54.920 And, you know, certainly elements of the supply chain, the fact that you've got shipping containers that, you know, are stuck all over the world.

00:54:02.200 And now it costs, you know, four times as much to ship something as it did a year ago.

00:54:07.920 Maybe that normalizes.

00:54:09.620 But I would contend on the wage front, you've got nine point two million jobs left to be filled.

00:54:16.160 If you have to continually put out higher wages to attract people, it's not like you're going back from that.

00:54:22.020 It's not like, well, we paid this guy twenty dollars, but like you that are coming in, like we're going to pay you twelve.

00:54:28.080 Right.

00:54:29.140 Maybe it happens.

00:54:30.200 I just don't really see it.

00:54:31.220 And how does Target?

00:54:32.120 I'm just read today.

00:54:33.000 Target is saying they will pay for your college and your books if you work at Target.

00:54:39.080 Yeah.

00:54:39.760 Well, OK.

00:54:41.400 What happened?

00:54:41.880 Where are you getting that money?

00:54:42.800 I mean, that that's obviously going to be passed on.

00:54:45.600 Passed on.

00:54:46.180 So that's the price of whatever they're selling.

00:54:48.760 Everything always gets passed on to somebody.

00:54:51.120 It gets passed on either to the vendors, who are usually a small business.

00:54:55.760 Right.

00:54:56.240 Well, sorry, we're not going to pay you as much for this.

00:54:58.880 You're going to have to bear some of the cost.

00:55:00.380 It gets passed on to the consumer.

00:55:02.240 Some combination of that.

00:55:03.620 But the company still wants to make its profits.

00:55:05.780 And so it's going to do everything that it can.

00:55:07.960 Or you're going to get smaller portions, as we said, stringflation.

00:55:11.060 So that becomes the inflation piece.

00:55:14.340 And a lot of times that happens, you know, not just with monetary policy, but it's also

00:55:17.680 accompanied by growth in the economy.

00:55:20.920 Stagflation is something that's sort of a rare occurrence that happens.

00:55:24.600 It happened, I think, last late 70s, early 80s.

00:55:28.260 And it's where you get this inflation in terms of wages and prices.

00:55:32.980 At the same time, the economy stagnates.

00:55:36.760 Stagnation and inflation.

00:55:38.920 Stagflation, right?

00:55:39.800 And given the fiscal policy that is coming out of the Biden administration and the amount

00:55:46.840 of things that they want to do, the killing of small businesses, half the economy, the

00:55:52.600 disruption of the labor force, the disruption of supply chains, I don't see anything that's

00:56:00.020 a pro-growth policy that we're all of a sudden going to have this great growth.

00:56:04.900 They will tell you that there is growth because there was such a fall off a cliff last year

00:56:12.140 that we are making up the difference.

00:56:14.580 But that's making up the difference.

00:56:16.040 That's not growth is going back to 2019 and saying, like, did we get more?

00:56:20.700 Right.

00:56:20.940 I mean, this whole like saying that somebody has we added jobs.

00:56:23.560 Yeah.

00:56:23.880 We did it.

00:56:24.520 Yeah.

00:56:24.660 We're still down like there was no heartbeat.

00:56:29.040 I know his heartbeat is 12 now, but that's not good.

00:56:33.040 Yeah.

00:56:33.360 So they're going to they're going to say that there's growth.

00:56:36.480 But the reality is when you get a real slowing of growth and you get that stagnation and inflation

00:56:42.860 happening together because of the monetary policy and all the cash that's in the system.

00:56:46.700 I think that's a very likely scenario that happens at least in the 12 to 18 months.

00:56:52.700 And why does that happen?

00:56:53.920 You have the money, but why doesn't think why don't things grow?

00:56:58.940 Because of the fiscal policy that comes out of the administration that they're they're

00:57:03.480 tamping, they're tamping down on growth.

00:57:05.420 Yeah.

00:57:05.540 They're looking to raise taxes.

00:57:06.840 They're looking to hurt small businesses. 0.92

00:57:09.200 They're keeping people out of the workforce.

00:57:11.100 They're forcing up wages in a way that isn't productive to pursuing growth because it's

00:57:17.760 not based on our free choice.

00:57:19.340 It's based on, you know, a couple of people going, oh, yeah, that seems like a good idea.

00:57:23.420 So I think in the short term, that's a possibility.

00:57:27.000 And again, there's so many variables that change every day that what causes hyperinflation.

00:57:32.460 So hyperinflation is what we talked about when there's just so much printing that the dollar

00:57:39.060 or the currency that you're printing has no value anymore.

00:57:42.220 And it's like, why, if you go on eBay, you can get like a trillion dollars in Bob Boydollard.

00:57:46.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:47.280 That was worth like nothing.

00:57:48.800 And we saw that happen in Venezuela.

00:57:51.040 And it's a really good study because, you know, in the mid 1900s, you had Venezuela as the

00:58:00.540 fifth largest economy in the entire world.

00:58:03.000 And then you saw between the decrease in economic growth because they nationalized all of the

00:58:09.740 industry.

00:58:10.280 And so growth was decreasing.

00:58:11.900 And to make up for that, they just started printing more money.

00:58:15.540 And the whole thing ends up, you know, where a dollar isn't worth anything or their own

00:58:21.260 currency isn't worth anything.

00:58:23.360 So that's, you know, one of the things that we could see happen here.

00:58:27.360 But again, given the fact that we are the reserve currency, we've got the market priced

00:58:32.200 in dollars, we have the IRS collecting, you know, trillions of dollars in dollars, we do

00:58:37.740 have some forces that may, at least for some period of time, call that back.

00:58:43.660 The issue that we're facing, and this will be interesting to see how it all plays out and

00:58:49.260 interesting and not a good way.

00:58:51.220 And part of the reason why the Federal Reserve hasn't raised interest rates is they've gone

00:58:56.340 away from their mandates.

00:58:57.880 So their mandate from Congress is two things.

00:59:01.620 One is to maximize employment.

00:59:04.180 Obviously, we can't get people back to work. 0.86

00:59:06.360 No monetary policy is going to get those people back to work. 0.88

00:59:09.920 So that's silly.

00:59:10.740 So the other part is to stabilize prices.

00:59:14.160 Well, obviously, we're seeing inflation.

00:59:15.580 They're not doing a good job at that.

00:59:17.680 And that's where they're getting cover of, well, that may be, but we don't have, you know,

00:59:22.660 maximum inflation.

00:59:23.680 So we're going to continue to intervene and whatnot.

00:59:27.040 And they're looking for anything they can to try to not raise interest rates, to try

00:59:32.700 to control some of this inflation.

00:59:34.460 And you have to ask yourself, like, why would they do that?

00:59:36.880 Well, they have what I call a secret mandate.

00:59:39.160 And their secret mandate, which is different than the dual mandate, is one, to prop up Wall

00:59:43.380 Street, because that's where all their buddies are, and to keep that as high as possible.

00:59:46.960 And as soon as we start raising interest rates, you're going to see the market do the opposite.

00:59:51.460 And you've seen that every time they've tried to raise interest rates, we're tapering on

00:59:55.880 their balance sheet.

00:59:56.780 It's called the taper tantrum.

00:59:59.000 The market does not like it.

01:00:01.980 And, you know, so right now they're trying to keep that as high as possible.

01:00:06.440 The bigger issue is that basically they have been monetizing the debt of the government and

01:00:11.700 allowing the government to continue to spend.

01:00:13.900 When we had all of this COVID relief that we needed to put out there, we had to pay for

01:00:19.960 it.

01:00:20.360 We had to issue debt.

01:00:21.400 It's not like all of these, there's these investors around the world, like, oh, I'm

01:00:24.280 clamoring to buy up trillions of debt.

01:00:26.860 So the Federal Reserve is the buyer of that debt.

01:00:30.400 And we have, at this point, close to almost $30 trillion of debt outstanding, 28.6, something

01:00:37.960 like that.

01:00:38.460 But they know what's going to happen is when they raise interest rates, then the rate that

01:00:44.680 we're going to have to pay to service the interest on their debt, on the debt that we

01:00:49.320 have outstanding, is going to continue to crowd out other spending, and they know they

01:00:53.740 can't pay for it.

01:00:54.940 So that's the reason why the Federal Reserve refuses to act, because they know if the interest

01:01:01.040 rates keep going up, how is our government going to service that debt?

01:01:05.480 We can't, without just completely either taxing everybody at, like, insane amounts, which I

01:01:11.960 still don't even think it would basically cover what we need to have covered, or cutting

01:01:17.140 out other spending, and you know how well that goes over.

01:01:20.600 So they're really between a rock and a hard place, and that's, you're going to look for

01:01:25.180 that point in time.

01:01:26.080 When the Federal Reserve starts saying, like, we've got to do something, that's when everybody

01:01:33.200 should go, okay, like, what's going to happen with markets, what's going to happen with

01:01:37.100 government, what's going to happen?

01:01:38.740 Is there going to be a war, because we need to, you know, have a distraction?

01:01:42.940 I mean, again, not to be conspiratorial, but this is the kind of thing that happens over

01:01:48.960 and over again.

01:01:49.200 Yeah, over and over again, you know, borders are redrawn, currencies are, you know, new

01:01:54.720 alliances are made because of war, and sometimes it's real, and sometimes it's just

01:02:00.560 convenient.

01:02:01.140 Yeah.

01:02:02.600 Let me go back to small business here, because your book is The War on Small Business.

01:02:08.040 My dad was an entrepreneur.

01:02:10.420 He was a small businessman, you know, not very successful, ran his own bakery, but it

01:02:14.980 was good enough for the family, you know, just, it made ends meet, and he was good at it

01:02:19.960 and loved it.

01:02:20.640 So he lived the American dream.

01:02:23.980 You know, I don't know, I'm a small businessman, I run this place, and

01:02:28.800 it's not friendly to do business right now, and it is terrifying.

01:02:37.800 For the first time in my life, I'm not sure how my career is going to end.

01:02:42.820 I'm not sure that it's, it's not going to, it may not come to a natural end, you know

01:02:47.040 what I mean?

01:02:48.620 Where before it was like, I'll make a mistake, or I'll, you know, whatever.

01:02:52.280 Now it's, I could just be deemed a loser, and I'm out.

01:02:58.520 With the government pushing unions, good union jobs, this is devastating, devastating to the

01:03:08.080 small business.

01:03:08.980 It is.

01:03:09.720 There's a piece of legislation they're pushing, and I saw on Twitter today, they're trying

01:03:14.540 to tie it to like, like, everything, ESG, automakers, everything.

01:03:19.340 It's called the PRO Act, and it takes the language that AB5 used in California to basically

01:03:25.540 kill the gig economy, and say everybody needs to be a worker and work for a union, basically.

01:03:32.740 And so we have 59 million jobs that are in the gig economy, and then you have small businesses,

01:03:39.620 which, because it is so cumbersome for a small business to hire their first employee before

01:03:45.240 COVID, of the 30.2 million small businesses I told you, 24.2 million were solopreneurs,

01:03:51.540 because they just use contractors for their businesses, or, you know, act on an individual

01:03:56.440 basis, because it is so hard.

01:03:58.480 The government has put up so many barriers to have that first employee, and it's not just

01:04:03.120 the minimum wage, it's insurance requirements, it's all different kinds of regulations.

01:04:07.940 So it is very difficult.

01:04:09.740 So this is just another piece of legislation that is meant to help big businesses and to

01:04:17.540 hurt small businesses, like the Dodd-Frank.

01:04:20.000 It sounds great.

01:04:21.240 It sounds like we're coming after Amazon and Walmart.

01:04:24.400 We're going to stick it to the big guys.

01:04:26.840 Oh, yeah.

01:04:27.320 That's happening.

01:04:28.220 But I didn't see any exemption for, you know, small gig workers or for small businesses.

01:04:33.560 No.

01:04:33.940 No.

01:04:34.040 And there was no, I don't know why I could go to Home Depot, but I couldn't go to my

01:04:37.520 local Ace Hardware.

01:04:38.620 Or why your dog could get its hair cut and its nails done at PetSmart, but you couldn't

01:04:44.920 get your own hair and nails done at the local nail salon.

01:04:48.000 It's a scary time.

01:04:50.120 It is.

01:04:50.480 Scary time.

01:04:51.120 Thank you for your honesty.

01:04:53.180 Thank you for all of your hard work and for being awake.

01:05:00.460 You know, I think that there are so many people that are blue-pilling it right now or just can't

01:05:10.320 seem to wake up.

01:05:11.540 And it seems the people who are awake are like, why isn't everybody seeing this?

01:05:18.360 You know what I mean?

01:05:18.940 I don't know what's coming.

01:05:21.220 I just know it's not good, whatever it is.

01:05:24.480 It's not good.

01:05:25.920 So thank you for the work you've done.

01:05:27.560 Thank you.

01:05:27.900 Thanks for this platform and for being a small business warrior and a champion of economic

01:05:33.340 freedom.

01:05:33.800 You know, that is our path to prosperity.

01:05:35.660 We need more people on that side.

01:05:37.380 Yeah, we do.

01:05:38.040 Thank you.

01:05:38.460 Just a reminder.

01:05:45.600 I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:05:49.980 can be discovered by other people.

01:05:51.220 We're all young.

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01:06:15.800 Please do.

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The Glenn Beck Program - August 07, 2021

Ep 112 ｜ The Government’s Plan to DESTROY Small Business ｜ Carol Roth ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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