The Great America Show - BIDEN ECONOMY SLIPPING INTO RECESSION

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Great America Show. It's great to have you with us.

00:00:06.380 Thanks so much for joining us today. The world is in shambles. America's in shambles. I mean,

00:00:11.380 everything is out of control under this Biden-Harris administration. This week, we find out

00:00:15.800 Border Patrol agents are going to revolt if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, well, I should say

00:00:20.460 just Kamala Harris, win the 2024 election. They're going to get the hell out of there and take 1.00

00:00:25.800 retirement early because they can't deal with four more years of what's been going on in this

00:00:29.900 country. Another big issue here at home is the economy. And as you hear me often say on this

00:00:34.660 show, it teeters. And the economy was something Lou took great pride in and attention to on this show

00:00:43.900 because it affects all of our daily lives, whether it be the inflation that we deal with every single

00:00:47.940 day, us Americans who have 401ks, Americans who are trading in the stock market, or just simply

00:00:54.240 Americans who go shopping every single day who can't afford a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk,

00:01:01.180 the bare necessities we need, laundry detergents. The Biden administration under this president has

00:01:07.640 made it impossible for almost all of us to live. But President Trump, it seems, is on the horizon to

00:01:13.300 victory in November, on November 5th. At least we can hope for America. He was at the Chicago Economic

00:01:20.620 Club this week, meeting with a not-so-smart man. He's a Bloomberg News editor-in-chief,

00:01:26.240 and he completely owned this man. I want to bring in our guest today who knows a little bit about

00:01:30.460 economics. He's John Lonsky. He's the founder and president of the Lonsky Group. John, first of all,

00:01:36.200 thanks so much for joining us here on the Great America Show.

00:01:39.460 Well, thank you, John.

00:01:40.560 I want to begin with first a clip for the audience on how this interview with President Trump and

00:01:46.400 John Micklethwaite, I think is how you say his name, the Bloomberg News editor-in-chief. How their

00:01:52.460 conversation started, take a listen.

00:01:54.620 You said, President Trump, at the moment, there is a thing called the Trump trade in the markets.

00:01:58.640 Do you know what that is? The Trump trade is very simple. People are betting that your policies,

00:02:03.520 they're going to drive up debt, they're going to drive up inflation, so they're going to drive up

00:02:07.900 inflation, interest rates. Are the investors wrong?

00:02:11.020 Yeah, I had four years, no inflation. I had four years, no inflation.

00:02:15.480 But that was, that was when you had much.

00:02:17.480 I had four years. It's better than that. And Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is,

00:02:23.320 okay, Biden went two years with no inflation because he inherited from me. And then they started

00:02:29.960 spending money like drunken sailors. They spent so much money. It was so ridiculous, the money they

00:02:35.280 were spending. They were spending on the Green New Scam, the Green New Scam, the Green New Deal, 0.93

00:02:41.660 you know, it was conceived of by AOC plus three. She never even studied the environment in college.

00:02:48.020 She went to a nice college. She came out, she just said, the Green New Scam, she just named all these 0.97

00:02:54.280 things.

00:02:54.800 President Trump, the issue of the moment, the markets are looking at the facts. You are making all these promises.

00:03:00.340 Latest one was car loans. You're flooding the thing with giving giveaways.

00:03:04.720 I was actually quite kind to you. I used $7 trillion. The upper estimate is $15 trillion.

00:03:11.820 People like the Wall Street Journal, who's hardly a communist organization, they have criticized

00:03:16.380 you on this as well. You are running up enormous debt.

00:03:19.600 What does the Wall Street Journal know? I'm meeting with them tomorrow. What does the Wall Street

00:03:22.720 Journal know? They've been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way.

00:03:25.640 You've been wrong about everything. You're trying to turn this. You're trying to turn this.

00:03:29.180 You've been wrong about everything. No, you're trying to turn this into debate.

00:03:33.000 There are business people.

00:03:34.700 No, but you're wrong. You've been wrong. You've been wrong all your life on this stuff.

00:03:38.440 John Lonsky, Trump taking his latest victim. I can't seem to understand, John, why these people

00:03:46.800 do this to themselves. They're nowhere near as smart as President Trump or the advisors he had

00:03:52.640 around him. I can understand if we're back in 2015, John, where President Trump had no economic

00:03:59.060 record to run on. But we saw what President Trump did in four short years. I mean, and some people say

00:04:05.620 it's something short of just a miracle. Your thoughts on that brief exchange between the

00:04:11.320 Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief, John Minklethwaite, and President Trump?

00:04:16.800 Well, the Bloomberg Editor, I think, overlooked the importance of deregulation and tax cuts

00:04:24.960 to facilitating rapid economic growth without faster price inflation. That's his big mistake.

00:04:35.620 And in fact, if Trump had maintained the presidency following the 2020 election, we would be in much

00:04:44.540 better shape today. We would have had a continuation of his policies that were being guided by a team

00:04:55.880 that I consider to be significantly brighter than Team Biden or Team Harris.

00:05:03.180 And we might well be looking at solid economic growth without a budget deficit that is now just over

00:05:11.200 6% of GDP and without rapid price inflation.

00:05:17.120 You know, it's interesting, John, is this Nimrod, John Minklethwaite. I hope I'm saying his name right. 0.96

00:05:24.420 He wants to talk about spending money. He didn't bring up the Green New Deal, which would have 0.83

00:05:29.740 dumped trillions and trillions of dollars of wasteful spending. That would have absolutely

00:05:33.660 done nothing. The money I think President Trump has touted that he will cut on Americans is money

00:05:41.680 that will be made back through tariffs, through people spending more money. What people don't

00:05:46.620 understand is if it's very simple and you know this better than anybody, John, and you can attest to

00:05:51.360 it and give me your thoughts on after. But if people have more money in their pockets and

00:05:55.660 it's a stable economy, right? Because that's a very key factor. It's a stable economy where

00:06:01.180 inflation isn't rampant. If people have extra money in their pockets, John, they're going to go out and

00:06:05.920 they're going to buy that car that they wanted. They're going to go out and they're going to go

00:06:08.840 shopping. They're going to your wife's going to buy that pocketbook she wanted. The kids are going to

00:06:13.260 go out and they're going to get that new baseball mitt, that new baseball bat. That's the thing that

00:06:17.760 these people don't understand, John. And it's something that I learned, I think, in probably

00:06:21.540 eighth grade. And it's embarrassing to me, in my opinion. And I'm sure in yours as well,

00:06:26.900 because you're an economist. This is what you do for the Bloomberg News editor in chief to sit there

00:06:32.360 and say something so stupid. Yeah, he doesn't really understand the fellow from Bloomberg that 1.00

00:06:39.960 the stimulus we supply to the economy can differ regarding whether or not it promotes an

00:06:47.420 increase in the work incentive, an increase in the labor supply, as well as an increase in investment

00:06:54.660 spending. You know, with more investment spending, with more people wanting to work, we can get away

00:07:00.680 with an increase in spending that does not put unwanted upward pressure on prices. And, you know,

00:07:09.240 the Green New Deal, my goodness, energy policy has been nothing less than an unmitigated

00:07:16.780 disaster for the Biden-Harris administration. Not only has it caused a lot of problems for the U.S.

00:07:23.960 economy by limiting the supply of energy and thereby making the whole production process

00:07:32.000 costlier than otherwise, let's not forget that the Biden-Harris energy policy has been a complete

00:07:41.160 disaster for foreign policy in the United States. My goodness, it was by going ahead and pushing fossil

00:07:49.240 fuel prices sharply higher that we enriched the belligerent states of Iran and Russia, and we're

00:07:57.220 paying for that dearly today. So energy policy is very important for the domestic economy, international

00:08:06.820 economy, and for world peace. I don't think I could have said it better myself, John. I'm by no means an

00:08:13.860 economist. I'm just a guy who reads the Wall Street Journal every now and then or every day. You mentioned

00:08:18.940 foreign policy. I want to take a quick break here. But when we return, tariffs, they're a big issue, and they've

00:08:24.000 been talked about now since 2016, since President Trump. It's almost like tariffs didn't exist before 2016

00:08:29.980 because our leaders didn't know what they were doing. But everyone has touted tariffs as such a

00:08:34.900 bad thing. Well, I shouldn't say everyone. It's the Democrats. The Marxists left. They don't like

00:08:39.060 tariffs because they know they work, and no Democrats will have the, I don't know how to say this, the

00:08:44.040 gojones to go ahead and go to China and say, you guys are going to pay for this, or Mexico, you guys are

00:08:50.960 going to pay for that. I want to take a quick break here. When we return, we got more video footage from

00:08:55.560 that meeting with President Trump and the Breitbart News, Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief, Arne

00:09:01.300 Tariff. You've guessed it, President Trump owned him once again. We're going to take a quick break.

00:09:05.300 We're coming right back with John Lonsky of the Lonsky Group. Folks, are you tired of supporting

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00:09:24.980 enough is enough. Why should we as lovers of this country continue to support these

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00:10:56.480 We're back. We're talking with John Lonsky, the founder of the Lonsky Group, a brilliant

00:11:00.880 economist, one of Lou's favorite. Lou had favorite guests on this show, as you probably imagine,

00:11:05.980 and John was one of them. John, President Trump was asked about tariffs and the destruction

00:11:11.440 it's going to do on this country and everything that comes with it. I'll let the audience take

00:11:16.260 a listen. Take a listen.

00:11:17.120 So they're taking a tremendous advantage of us, $350 billion on trade, and we're then supporting

00:11:25.500 them. In other words, it's not sustainable. You can't keep doing this. You can't have that,

00:11:30.060 China, all of these countries. And stupid people made these deals. I saw trade deals that were so 1.00

00:11:38.340 stupid. That you'd have to be, excuse me, that were so bad that you'd have to be an idiot to sign 1.00

00:11:44.880 them. And we signed them for years. We had, we had, I could tell you trade deals that I have never 1.00

00:11:52.120 seen of them. I said, who would agree to this? They had to be corrupt. They had to be corrupt. To

00:11:57.820 make those deals, they had to be corrupt because there's no way a rational human being, I always say 1.00

00:12:04.200 either corrupt or extremely stupid because there's no way a rational human being would ever sign the 1.00

00:12:10.400 trade deals that this country signed. And I got out of many of those deals. 1.00

00:12:15.400 What are your thoughts, John, as you, you got to witness President Trump, Obama before Trump,

00:12:21.080 and the distinction between the trade deals that were made under President Trump and the trade deals

00:12:26.540 that were made under Obama and the trade deals now that were made. I don't think there's any notable

00:12:31.180 ones that were made under Biden and potentially ones under a Harris administration. Well, John,

00:12:37.340 I think you hit on a very important word, and that is deals, trade deals. Trump views tariffs as a

00:12:48.420 negotiating tool in order to get the best possible deal for American workers and for American companies.

00:12:58.320 We also want to be sensitive to the fact that we may have become too complacent about the importance

00:13:07.560 of national security in international trade. I don't think it's a very good idea for the U.S. to become

00:13:17.020 too dependent on overseas sources of, say, pharmaceuticals, of critical metals, and so on. So there is, you know,

00:13:27.460 a strong justification for tariffs, if only to bolster, to improve national security in the United States.

00:13:39.760 And, you know, China is making a huge mistake. Let's face it, China's biggest customer is the

00:13:46.860 American consumer. And what you don't want to be doing is pointing a gun at the head of your best

00:13:54.120 consumer, which China appears to be doing right now. So perhaps through the skillful negotiations

00:14:02.260 pertaining to tariffs, we could help China lessen its degree of belligerence out of the realization

00:14:11.860 that China would be doing itself a lot of harm if it went ahead and shut off this very important

00:14:22.280 market for its exports. Right now, Chinese domestic economy is really hurting. And the only perhaps

00:14:30.100 bright light in the Chinese economy, as it was in the past, is exports. And if you take that away from

00:14:36.860 them, they'll be in big trouble. And I think that once he assumes a presidency, Trump should have a lot

00:14:44.400 of power when negotiating with China over tariffs. John, the old saying, kick the dog while they're

00:14:51.680 down, I think applies here more than any, because the truth of the matter is nobody holds China

00:14:57.220 accountable for anything they've done to us since, I guess, maybe the early 2000s of Belt and Road

00:15:02.700 Initiative, which we let them do. They unleashed COVID on the world, killed over a million Americans,

00:15:08.260 millions around this world, got away with it. No repercussions from the Biden administration. I do

00:15:14.680 think if Trump was to return to office in January of 2021, he would have probably hit them with more

00:15:20.460 tariffs as retribution for what they did to this country, because I think it's more than apparent

00:15:24.880 they released it on the world, not by accident, but they get away with everything, right? We're letting

00:15:30.740 them go now. Their economy's hurting. We should be hitting them now where it really hurts. We shouldn't

00:15:35.040 have to wait for President Trump to come back in on November 5th or sworn back in on January to hit

00:15:40.540 them where they hurt. Biden should be crippling these people for what they've done to us. John,

00:15:45.580 not only on the COVID side, but on the economic side, the fentanyl side, what they're shipping into

00:15:50.220 our country, fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with fentanyl. We let them get away

00:15:55.380 with it. But this guy, I can't get over it. This Bloomberg News editor-in-chief thought he knew about the

00:16:02.260 tariffs. Take a listen to President Trump. Take him to town on tariffs, because he's one of the

00:16:06.420 savants, this fellow from Bloomberg. Take a listen. You're also talking about 10, 20% tariffs on the

00:16:13.200 rest of the world. That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you're going

00:16:17.720 to find some people who would gain from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive.

00:16:23.360 I agree. I agree. It's going to have a massive effect, positive effect. It's going to be a

00:16:28.700 positive, not a negative. Let me just tell you. No, no, let me tell you. I know how committed you

00:16:32.920 are to this. And it must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and

00:16:38.040 then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong. It'll have a negative. It will have.

00:16:44.560 I'll go a step further. If you don't do this, this country has no chance.

00:16:48.680 40 million jobs is a lot of jobs to rely on trade. They're all coming back.

00:16:52.520 Those are 40 million jobs in America that rely on trade. Are you ready? John Deere,

00:16:58.640 great company, they announced about a year ago they're going to build big plants outside of the

00:17:04.620 United States, right? They're going to build them in Mexico. And you threatened them in Paris and

00:17:08.440 they stopped. That's right. I said, if John Deere builds those plants and not selling anything into

00:17:13.260 the United States, they just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants,

00:17:17.420 okay? I kept the jobs here. John, he literally contradicts himself at the end, this fella.

00:17:24.360 It makes absolutely no sense. The simple, simple thing, there's only tariffs on imports, John.

00:17:30.680 The people who are making things here in America and employing Americans are going to pay the regular 0.99

00:17:34.980 corporate tax that every other corporation in America pays, which President Trump gave a massive

00:17:40.100 break to in order for these companies to stay and come back to America, further stimulating an economy,

00:17:45.460 further stimulating jobs and helping out the American people. It's just mind-blowing to me,

00:17:52.200 John, that these people on the left are so deranged that they're willing to go on national television 0.80

00:17:57.840 and lie. Can you tell me one negative effect that the Trump tariffs had on this country, John?

00:18:03.800 Well, we don't know of any quite yet, can we? We don't know of any whatsoever. And inflation

00:18:09.220 remained low. I mean, inflation was less than 2% even prior to COVID and, of course, much less than

00:18:15.960 2% when Trump left office. What we don't want to overlook is that when we talk about a 20% tariff,

00:18:23.100 we're not stating that the prices of imported goods will rise by the full 20%. Let's not forget

00:18:30.680 that a lot of that tariff will be absorbed by the importer, by whoever is bringing that good into the

00:18:39.420 United States, and thus the price increase could be considerably less than 20%. Still, you've got to

00:18:46.140 be careful with tariffs. You've got to use them judiciously. You don't want to be protecting

00:18:53.400 industries in the United States that are not worthy of protection. I mean, you can get yourself into a

00:18:59.360 problem that if you reduce the competition faced by U.S. companies too much because of tariffs,

00:19:08.180 then you will not only pay the price in terms of significantly higher retail prices, you'll also pay

00:19:16.180 the price in terms of a loss of product quality. This is something that has happened in South America

00:19:21.240 that happened in Argentina. Do we need tariffs? Yes. Do we want to apply tariffs

00:19:29.340 blindly? No. Yeah. And I think you'll agree with me on this is that where Trump applied the tariffs,

00:19:37.020 they were very concentrated and they worked. We brought in money, John, that we'd never seen

00:19:42.020 brought into this country. The other thing that people don't miss is President Trump says he's

00:19:46.180 going to put the tariffs on. If you own a company, John, and you're down in Mexico and I tell you,

00:19:51.280 you know, it may cost up to 50% for you to come across the border. There's no doubt that you're going

00:19:56.300 to come back to America. So I don't even think in most cases the tariffs will be necessary. It's a 0.97

00:20:02.880 bargaining tool that President Trump very smartly uses as a New York businessman, you know, that

00:20:09.660 will try to get these companies. He did it with carrier air conditioning. He did it with Nabisco.

00:20:14.020 But, you know, he's right. These companies, John, you go over to Europe, you don't see any

00:20:18.300 American-made cars there. You're very few and far in between. You don't see American-made things over

00:20:23.040 in Europe, in China. You know, American manufacturing is dying and it's at the hands of the Marxist Dems.

00:20:31.560 I want to take one more quick break here. When we return, we're going to get your thoughts on that.

00:20:35.480 I also want to take up Jerome Powell and the Fed and where we go from here and where this market goes.

00:20:41.520 It seems we don't have a president right now, yet we have a very unstable market, in my opinion.

00:20:46.580 We're going to get your take on that. When we return, we're talking with John Lonsky of the

00:20:50.240 Lonsky Group. Stay with us. We're coming right back.

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00:21:57.940 We're back. We're talking with John Lonsky of the Lonsky Group, a brilliant economist. And John,

00:22:04.760 we were talking before we went to break about China. And the big issue that a lot of people miss

00:22:10.700 above the surface is the national security aspect of it. We go over to China, and I use Elon Musk. I

00:22:17.180 love Elon Musk, but I use him as an example all the time. He's over there building the batteries for

00:22:21.880 his cars. How much trouble are we in as a country, John, that we have Apple, Tesla, 90% of our

00:22:31.700 pharmaceuticals being made overseas, as you had mentioned before. How much trouble are we in as a

00:22:36.520 country? That's dangerous. I mean, I'm thinking about these critical metals for the development

00:22:42.660 of weapons in the defense industry. You have to have access to those metals. But right now,

00:22:47.860 a lot of those metals are found in China, or they're found in South America. But the companies

00:22:54.960 that now produce these metals in South America are owned by the Chinese. So we have to proceed 0.99

00:23:02.700 with a lot of caution in this manner because of geopolitical risk that could really become

00:23:10.180 amplified if we do have a conflict with China. I think I want to know, too, and I think this is

00:23:17.060 important. You can always make a strong case for tariffs when there is the very real danger

00:23:23.760 that a low-cost producer overseas may decide to dump its products on the U.S. market. Electric

00:23:32.580 vehicles right now constitute a prime example of this threat. Supposedly, China has more than a million

00:23:40.800 electric vehicles that it cannot sell. And China would love to go ahead and export these EVs to the

00:23:49.820 United States at prices that would be so low that it would lead to an immediate shutdown of EV production

00:23:58.160 facilities in the United States, Tesla, as well as at other companies. So how can you say that

00:24:06.520 there is no need for tariffs when, indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that without tariffs,

00:24:15.660 your developing industries would have no future whatsoever?

00:24:20.800 Yeah, it's John. You know, the problem is, is me and you are above the surface.

00:24:25.040 These people who are running this country, these people who are running Bloomberg, I mean, Bloomberg has

00:24:30.420 lost so much credibility over the last few years. And Michael Bloomberg, to his credit, he's a brilliant guy.

00:24:35.000 But these people he has running his organizations are just total buffoons. 0.73

00:24:39.460 I want to turn to some issues here at home. Should President Trump, and hopefully he wins on November 5th,

00:24:45.500 he has a big decision to make, and that's whether to keep or to get rid of Jerome Powell.

00:24:50.600 Here was his thoughts on it at the Chicago Economic Club.

00:24:53.700 You've gone backwards and forwards about whether you want to keep Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.

00:24:59.960 His term as chair runs on to May 2026. Would you seek to remove, remove or demote him?

00:25:07.460 Look, I think it's the greatest job in government. You show up to the office once a month and you say,

00:25:14.900 let's see, flip a coin. And everybody talks about you like you're a god. Oh, what will he do?

00:25:21.280 I mean, before, the guy used to walk into my office, he was like begging, he was fine.

00:25:27.800 But you did talk about, you talked about removing him once.

00:25:31.560 I did, because he was keeping the ridge too high. And I was right.

00:25:35.380 And you would do that again.

00:25:36.560 In fact, he actually dropped him too much when I did this.

00:25:41.300 Because I said, I was threatening to terminate him. There was a question as to whether or not you could.

00:25:46.700 And there was an article in the New York Times, two half pages. One page said, I can do it by lawyers.

00:25:53.040 One half page said, I couldn't. And that was enough for him. And he dropped the hell out of the ridge.

00:25:57.100 He dropped him too much. He went so, he dropped him actually too much. Okay.

00:26:02.820 Here's the story. I think that if you're a very good president with good sense,

00:26:09.680 you should be able to at least talk to him. I don't say make the decision at all.

00:26:13.880 But I mean, I've been a very successful businessman. I've done really good, much better.

00:26:19.220 Now people are understanding how good I've done because they're seeing it much better than the fake news wants to give me credit for it.

00:26:26.220 So, John, what's your thoughts on Jerome Powell?

00:26:28.540 You know, I'm sort of tied and torn because it seemed like he's played politics a little bit too much during COVID.

00:26:35.360 He was sort of playing games with the rates when they needed to be lowered.

00:26:38.060 President Trump, as he said, he had to almost threaten him to do something to stimulate the economy that was hurting so bad.

00:26:44.760 Now you've got an economy that's teetering and he's sitting there cutting rates and doing this.

00:26:49.560 And it's almost like it's to try to save face for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

00:26:53.540 What is your thoughts?

00:26:54.220 Well, you know, what you just mentioned is a real possibility that this latest rate cut,

00:27:01.060 the depth of the rate cut, was politically motivated in order to provide a boost to Harris.

00:27:06.640 You can't argue that that was not the case.

00:27:09.740 He's made a lot of mistakes.

00:27:11.560 I think that his approach to the job is absolutely missing.

00:27:15.220 And one very important point, back when Alan Greenspan was Fed chairman, he was not afraid to bring up the importance of a thought to be gargantuan federal budget deficit to the performance, long term performance of the U.S. economy.

00:27:33.060 My goodness, I can't believe it.

00:27:34.780 We even have a bigger deficit relative to GDP today.

00:27:38.720 It's more than six percent at this stage of an economic recovery.

00:27:43.500 The deficit should be no higher than three to three and a half percent of GDP.

00:27:48.280 It's one point eight trillion dollars with perhaps every chance of approaching two trillion dollars next year.

00:27:55.820 This is ridiculous.

00:27:57.240 And this should be brought up by the Fed chairman over and over again, like it was by Greenspan. 0.66

00:28:05.620 But no, Jerome Powell, not a peep out of them regarding the deficit.

00:28:10.820 And the deficit helps to explain why, despite this latest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, they cut Fed funds by half a percentage point.

00:28:20.080 Instead of moving lower, the 10-year Treasury yield and long-term mortgage yields have climbed higher.

00:28:27.780 I think the hardest thing to explain to someone these days is how you make more money on a bond and a yield in six months, leaving your money there than on a five-year.

00:28:40.660 It's sort of so asked back or a 10-year that it's like almost unimaginable to explain, to try to explain to someone.

00:28:47.700 But it's better to just let it go and go ahead and buy into your bonds and stuff.

00:28:52.800 The problem is, I was talking to my father, who's spent 30, 40 years on Wall Street.

00:28:58.180 The problem is, is Jerome Powell is not an economist.

00:29:00.280 He doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

00:29:01.420 I think if I trade, he's a lawyer.

00:29:03.180 And when you put somebody in who doesn't know what they're doing, look at Boeing. 0.99

00:29:06.320 David Calhoun has ran Boeing into the damn ground. 0.96

00:29:09.260 You put a businessman in to run an engineering company, and that's what happens. 0.99

00:29:12.480 It's just the truth of the matter.

00:29:15.040 And I think it's the same thing with Jerome Powell.

00:29:17.000 You have a guy who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

00:29:19.340 But, John, our economy here at home is in trouble.

00:29:21.480 7-Eleven, the convenience store giant, announcing they're closing 400 stores across America, 444 to be exact.

00:29:28.320 Walgreens this week announcing they're closing 1,200 stores.

00:29:32.140 Bank giants, though, J.P. Morgan, Chase, Bank of America, closing branches all across this country.

00:29:37.860 If this doesn't scream that we're in trouble right now, I really don't know what does.

00:29:42.200 What are your thoughts?

00:29:43.880 You know, good jobs are disappearing.

00:29:46.500 If we looked at the private sector jobs number for the month of September, we would find that the only substantial jobs growth you could find occurred in the industries of leisure and hospitality.

00:29:59.500 That's low paying, as well as health services.

00:30:02.880 And that tends to be low paying.

00:30:04.680 So, jobs growth has been skewed towards these lower paying occupations.

00:30:10.680 And thus, we shouldn't get carried away when we read that we had 254,000 new jobs created in the month of September that well exceeded expectations.

00:30:22.180 No.

00:30:22.360 Before it gets adjusted, John.

00:30:24.100 Before it gets adjusted down 200,000.

00:30:26.460 Yeah, before they revise it lower by 200,000.

00:30:30.540 But the fact of the matter is there is lack of quality jobs being created in this country.

00:30:37.140 And that is why that early October reading on consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan, close to a historical low.

00:30:47.300 And by the way, when we had consumer sentiment in the month of October, as low as it was this past early October, the incumbent party always lost the presidential election.

00:31:00.060 And I wouldn't be surprised if history repeats itself.

00:31:03.500 Also note, too, that a lot of these jobs being created are either directly or indirectly being funded by the government.

00:31:11.040 Government jobs are doing great, as well as jobs in health care that are, in effect, often funded by the government.

00:31:18.460 And let's not forget, some of those construction jobs are related to the subsidies provided to companies that are building with microchip factories, as well as other, you know, facilities that are related to green energy.

00:31:37.420 Yeah, you know, it's very odd, John.

00:31:39.320 And I do a lot of traveling.

00:31:41.500 Over the last few weeks, I was over on the West Coast.

00:31:43.820 I was in Vegas for a little bit for some meetings.

00:31:45.620 And one of the nights I went out for a rarely, a fairly expensive dinner with some friends at a restaurant at a brand new hotel in Vegas.

00:31:54.160 And it's a restaurant that on any day of the week, specifically a Friday or Saturday, especially a Friday or Saturday, I should say, is packed wall to wall.

00:32:02.080 You couldn't get in.

00:32:02.900 And I'm nobody special.

00:32:04.020 So I make regular reservations.

00:32:05.300 And I was able to get in on a Friday, Saturday night.

00:32:07.020 I go to this restaurant.

00:32:08.280 The place is completely empty.

00:32:09.440 When you see the richer stop spending, John, you know there's a problem.

00:32:13.020 I often go to a cigar lounge out here by my place talking to the guy the other day.

00:32:18.500 He said sales are terrible.

00:32:19.980 People are just not spending.

00:32:21.080 So now you've got the blue collar worker who's not buying cigars. 0.68

00:32:24.700 Restaurants all across the board, John, are getting killed.

00:32:27.620 I think people are very terrified of what's happening.

00:32:31.900 What are your thoughts as we wrap up here on where the economy sits right now?

00:32:35.940 So are you a little bit more optimistic than me, you know, that we're not on some sort of seesaw that can go either way at any point?

00:32:45.540 This economy is slipping into recession for the current economic recovery.

00:32:52.720 It's going to be death by a thousand cuts, if you like.

00:32:55.520 But I think the forthcoming recession is necessary to force a correction of the imbalances that we currently suffer from, the lack of affordability in housing.

00:33:06.720 Unfortunately, that's only going to be remedied by a decline in home prices.

00:33:12.480 And that may already be underway in states like Florida, Texas and California.

00:33:17.600 And moreover, at some point, we've got to do something about excessive government spending.

00:33:26.140 We've got to get taxes a bit lower.

00:33:28.940 You know, we've got to return to the economy that we had under Trump back in 2017, 2019,

00:33:37.500 when the young people were being encouraged to work as hard as they possibly can, gain these skills because they saw some upside for all of their efforts.

00:33:51.500 And it's enough to get there is going to take some macroeconomic pain for the United States.

00:34:00.240 And it's going to take someone with a brain to lead us there, John.

00:34:03.480 And I think that man is President Trump.

00:34:05.180 Thanks for all the good work that you do and the good work that the word that you get out there and the honesty,

00:34:10.240 because as we saw through those video clips from that fellow at Bloomberg,

00:34:14.300 there's not very many honest people out there who will tell the truth.

00:34:18.080 And, John, you're one of them.

00:34:19.140 We appreciate it.

00:34:19.820 John Lonsky of the Lonsky Group.

00:34:21.660 John, thanks so much.

00:34:22.900 Thank you so much, John.

00:34:24.580 Thanks to John Lonsky.

00:34:25.720 And thank you all for being with us today here on The Great America Show.

00:34:28.880 Please be sure to join us back here tomorrow for The Great America Show as our quest for truth, justice and the American way continues.

00:34:35.660 Thanks again for being with us today.

00:34:37.000 We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

00:34:38.720 May God bless you.

00:34:39.720 May God bless America.

00:34:41.100 And may God bless the great Lou Dobbs.

00:34:43.140 May God bless you.

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00:34:47.600 May God bless you.

00:34:49.620 globally.

00:34:50.560 May God bless you.

00:34:52.620 May God bless you.

00:34:55.500 May God bless you.

00:35:06.920 May God bless you.

00:35:07.540 May God bless you.

00:35:08.180 May God bless you.

00:35:08.800 May God bless you.

00:35:10.400 May God bless you.

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00:35:11.240 May God bless you.

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The Great America Show - October 16, 2024

BIDEN ECONOMY SLIPPING INTO RECESSION

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