The Great America Show - RFK'S LATEST MOVE HAS FOOD COMPANIES TREMBLING

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

00:00:05.780 us today. The big story of the day, RFK Jr. is taking a hatchet, an ax, a saw, whatever

00:00:11.200 you want to call it, to big medicine, to big ag, and to these big food producers who have

00:00:19.120 been putting poison in our food for quite some time. He's also going after the vaccine

00:00:23.560 companies. It's not just RFK. It's this entire Trump administration, the FDA heads, and people

00:00:30.920 who are in charge of making America healthy again. Marty McCary, who is the head of the

00:00:36.220 FDA, unleashing their new policy on petro substances in our foods. Take a listen to Marty McCary

00:00:45.560 on with CNN this afternoon. I don't think we appreciated the potential risks to human health

00:00:51.360 and child health when they were first introduced. Yellow dye number five, for example, was noted

00:00:56.820 to be a bright, vibrant yellow color as the byproduct of coal tar in the coal ash, and then people

00:01:03.140 decided to put it in fabric, and then they thought, well, we can put it in food. The studies have

00:01:07.860 caught up with the introduction of these petroleum-based chemical food dyes, and the data doesn't look

00:01:13.560 good. Studies have shown in association with ADHD, it also makes ultra-processed food look

00:01:18.800 more attractive for young kids, messing with their minds where they feel full, and they want more of

00:01:24.380 the food. And we've got an epidemic of childhood chronic diseases, so we are erring on the safe side

00:01:30.540 and moving to remove these from the U.S. food supply. Now, if you talk to any Marxist, Dan, they'll tell

00:01:36.260 you what they're doing to our FDA, what they're doing to HHS is terrible. Has nobody ever asked the

00:01:44.180 question on how these dyes made it into our foods in the first place. You heard Marty McCary there,

00:01:50.080 the yellow dye, which started going to coal ash, then went into clothing, is now in foods.

00:01:56.420 Nobody ever thought to ask how it made it in there in the first place. Now, while McCary is working

00:02:01.680 on that and RFK is taking lead in that, RFK is also taking lead in something, I think, way bigger

00:02:08.180 than that. And it's the fact of investigating autism in this country and why states like California have

00:02:14.980 rates that are exorbitant relative to every other state in the nation. And there's one common

00:02:22.140 denominator, and it's that California has the highest vaccine mandates in the country. So RFK, along with

00:02:29.900 the NIH, has now spearheaded an operation of looking into autism rates and what's driving them. Now, this

00:02:39.120 is the same thing that I had mentioned with the Marxist Dems having outrage about. Why would anybody be

00:02:45.240 against America, RFK Jr., the NIH, the FDA, HHS, looking into autism rates and why one in 36 are now born

00:02:56.080 with autism in this country? There's only one thing that I can think of on why anyone would be against

00:03:04.160 it, and it's big health, big pharma. The medicines that they put into our children who are born with

00:03:10.560 autism, the money the government makes off, the money these government contracts make off of it.

00:03:15.640 And it's something very simple. If you solve the problem, then it no longer needs to be fixed anymore.

00:03:21.140 And I think that's what these bureaucrats and you keep hearing me say big pharma are so worried about. And

00:03:27.880 these are things that you don't hear about on Fox News. You don't hear about on CNN or MSNBC. And it can only

00:03:34.200 be for one reason. And that reason is advertisers. You talk about this stuff when pharma, you can't turn on a

00:03:42.800 television show, by the way, without seeing an ad for Ozempic or seeing an ad for AstraZeneca or something or for

00:03:49.840 Pfizer or something. Take my word for it or go turn on a television set and see if you can get through

00:03:56.380 an hour long show without seeing one ad from big pharma. So the only thing I can think of is that big

00:04:01.400 pharma and you see what they've done when medical marijuana was introduced into society. When people

00:04:09.580 were told, maybe if you take marijuana or cannabis products, it'll ease your pain. You saw the blowback

00:04:17.820 from big pharma, from the makers of Vicodins and Oxycontin and Percocets, that something was

00:04:24.480 created that can take away someone's pain without the addictiveness of it. You look at the lawsuits

00:04:31.780 Purdue Pharma has settled over the last five, 10 years. I mean, numbers that we've never seen before

00:04:38.760 because they're dumping poisons into people, making it addictive, making people get hooked on it.

00:04:44.360 And now you've got this drug epidemic in this country that's spiraled out of control that nobody

00:04:49.520 really knows how to fix. So if you simply just follow the money and you follow the money trail,

00:04:56.220 most of it leads back to big pharma. And we'll leave it with that. President Trump says he's getting

00:05:02.300 calls from all around the world on trade. Everyone wants to make a deal with America. Take a listen to

00:05:07.340 president. They all want to be involved with America. And we have a lot of action going on.

00:05:12.700 We have we're making a lot of money. This country, this country is not going to be losing money on

00:05:17.320 trade anymore. We were losing two trillion dollars a year on trade. Now we're going to be making money,

00:05:23.300 a lot of money. So that's very good. Every country wants to partake, even countries that have ripped

00:05:29.200 us off for many, many years. China is an example, but it's not just China. European Union,

00:05:35.060 they ripped us off for many, many years. And those days are over. We're going to make a lot

00:05:39.580 of money for our people. We'll be able to lower taxes substantially. And we're going to be proud

00:05:44.880 of ourselves. I'm not going to be a laughingstock that got taken advantage of by virtually every

00:05:50.420 country in the world. Markets this week, rebounding, rebounding several thousand points

00:05:55.200 from Lowe's seen as Wall Street reacts to every single thing that happens, every single word that

00:06:01.080 comes out of President Trump's mouth to get a better sense on what's going on economically in

00:06:05.480 the world, what's going on economically here at home, what's going on with tariffs. I asked our

00:06:10.220 friend John Lonsky, the CEO and founder of the Lonsky Group, brilliant economist, to join us today

00:06:15.180 to give us a little update and an outlook on where we're going and where we are. John, it's great to

00:06:21.320 have you back with us here in the Great America Show. Last time you and I spoke, it was like the world

00:06:25.020 that was on fire. Nobody knew if the stock market was going to be there tomorrow or what it was going

00:06:30.680 to be doing tomorrow. It seems now, just a few weeks later, as anything in the Trump administration,

00:06:35.800 if they're able to do something and do it fast, if anyone's able to do it, it's them.

00:06:41.220 It seems the market's maybe now taking a little bit of a turn for the better, at least better from

00:06:47.160 what we've seen over the last few weeks. Give the audience a sense of what exactly is going on right

00:06:52.640 now. What is driving the markets? Well, the equity market has concluded that Donald Trump is not

00:07:00.500 an idiot. He is not going to allow his approach to tariffs drive the U.S. economy into a recession

00:07:09.300 that would also be accompanied, perhaps, by a short-term burst of price inflation. He will not

00:07:17.340 let that happen. He's going to be flexible. And for that, he deserves some praise. We want to have

00:07:24.040 leaders that are bold, but also flexible, that are willing to go ahead and take a risk. And if the risk

00:07:32.640 entails too much downside, then make needed adjustments. I think that's an important

00:07:39.640 consideration. I want to add one thing that's interesting. Everybody overlooked this. All the while,

00:07:45.000 we had all this equity market volatility and the stocks selling off, you know, some days two and a

00:07:50.680 half percent, three percent, whatever it might be. Throughout this entire period, the corporate bond

00:07:57.240 market was relatively calm. The corporate bond market has a measure of default risk. I'm not going to go

00:08:07.320 into it and explain it, but this measure of default risk never made it up to its long-term average,

00:08:14.040 despite the fact that we're getting these severe sell-offs on the equity side every now and then

00:08:19.580 that made it look as though recession was inevitable. So real quick, John, for the audience,

00:08:25.820 explain to them what that would mean if the bond markets did make it to that point.

00:08:30.900 If they became as nervous as the equity market, that would shut off credit to businesses.

00:08:37.580 And you'd have a seizing up of credit. And that seizing up of credit by itself perhaps would be

00:08:44.700 enough to help push the U.S. economy into a recession. The measure I'm talking about is simply,

00:08:51.860 it's called the junk bond yield spread. It is the difference between the average yield of junk bonds

00:08:58.560 and the yield of comparably dated treasury bonds, that particular difference. When we're going into a

00:09:05.940 recession, that difference will be at about seven percentage points. In other words, junk bond

00:09:11.340 yields on average will be about seven percentage points, if not more, higher than treasury bond

00:09:17.460 yields. On average, that's about four and a half percent throughout the cycle. I think maybe only one

00:09:24.380 day, maybe two trading days did we manage to barely top that average. And the last time I looked,

00:09:29.900 that particular spread was at four percentage points, which again is well under its long-term

00:09:35.700 average of four and a half percentage points. So the corporate bond market is worried about the ability

00:09:43.380 of companies to make good on their interest payments, good on their debt servicing obligations.

00:09:50.620 From what I can see, the corporate bond market never came close to panicking. If, you know,

00:09:56.700 anything, it behaved in a manner that was indicative of normality. And the corporate bond market was

00:10:05.760 assuming that Donald Trump is not a crazy man, he's not an idiot, and he's not going to let his

00:10:13.620 tariff policy drive the U.S. into a recession. If he did, that might destroy the rest of his presidency.

00:10:21.500 Yeah, of course. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the bond market sort of leads the way for everything

00:10:26.560 else, right? So once you see the bond market start to take a little bit of a turn, then you should

00:10:30.760 probably be a little bit more nervous for, say, housing markets, credit markets, for stock markets.

00:10:37.360 Is that a correct answer? Yeah. Ultimately, you know, if you're a shareholder, the last thing you

00:10:42.920 want to do is have your company go into bankruptcy, because in that event, the value of your common

00:10:49.600 equity is zero. It's nothing. No. OK. And if you find out that the bond market is not very worried

00:10:58.180 about a broad based rise in bankruptcies, well, that's telling you that maybe we should be able

00:11:05.480 to ride off the storm and that maybe some of these pundits on the equity side or economists have gotten

00:11:13.480 carried away with their predictions of a recession because those predictions were based on Trump

00:11:20.580 rigidly adhering to what early on was a dramatic increase by tariffs. He was only using that as

00:11:27.880 a negotiating tool. Yeah, but Wall Street doesn't ever take everything they do. They take for something

00:11:34.620 that's supposed to be based on such speculation as is Wall Street. They take everything pretty damn

00:11:39.220 literally. John, he puts these tariffs on and these people absolutely go into a tailspin.

00:11:44.420 They sell off. They sell off. They sell off. That's the thing that is really perplexes the

00:11:48.840 hell out of me is they know Donald Trump. They know Donald Trump from 2016 to 2020. They know his

00:11:54.620 economic policies. They know he know what he's doing. And they know now this time around that he

00:11:59.300 has a way stronger team and Scott Besson and Howard Lutnick doing his bidding on the trade side,

00:12:05.140 on the economic side. They know very well, why do the markets react to every little thing by the minute?

00:12:14.420 Well, part of that is because a lot of stocks are purchased on margin. They're purchased with

00:12:20.520 borrowed money. And when stocks begin to fall, you get a margin call. And so investors that find that

00:12:29.360 their debt finance stocks are falling in price, have to come up with cash in order to please the

00:12:36.020 lender, whoever made the margin loan. And that leads to some selling in the equity market. That

00:12:41.580 would explain part of it. It's just, you know, the equity market is very sensitive to news, much more

00:12:48.360 so than the less liquid corporate bond market. We do have momentum buying on the way up in the equity

00:12:55.620 market. And on the way down, we often run into momentum selling. There's a much also, you know,

00:13:01.080 a much greater presence of the retail investor, the smaller investor in the equity market than in

00:13:07.460 compared to the corporate credit market.

00:13:15.780 John, let's turn to the big picture of this all. And that's trade with nations who have taken

00:13:20.340 advantage of us for years. Take a listen to President Trump yesterday addressing that.

00:13:25.320 Clarify, Mr. President, on China. Are you thinking about, are you thinking about lowering

00:13:28.640 their tariffs? Fair deal with China. It's going to be fair. Are you talking to them actively now? 0.94

00:13:33.840 Actively. Everything's active. Everybody wants to be a part of what we're doing.

00:13:38.400 They know that they can't get away with it any longer, but they're still going to do fine.

00:13:42.820 And we're going to have a country that you can be proud of, not a laughing stock all over the

00:13:47.280 world for many years. You know, in 1913, they traded to the income tax system. We used to be all

00:13:54.600 tariffs and we had no income tax and we had the wealthiest country proportionately from about 1870

00:14:02.820 to 1913. It was all tariffs. And we did, we had more money than anybody. They had committees,

00:14:09.240 how to spend the money. They had so much money they didn't know how to spend. Then some brilliant

00:14:14.120 person said, let's go income tax. Let's let the people pay. Now we're going to be able to

00:14:19.140 substantially lower taxes when this is finished. He ended there with a banger, John. And if lower

00:14:27.540 taxes doesn't boom the hell out of the market, then I don't know what does. Let's talk about

00:14:31.860 this a little bit on the big picture scale on what President Trump really wants and his end goal. He

00:14:37.620 wants to cut taxes on, I think the number they said was people making $150,000 on less down to zero if

00:14:44.600 they could. He said yesterday, he's not in favor of any new tax. We've heard in the past that he may

00:14:50.720 be interested in upping the tax rate on the rich. He said yesterday, that's not the case. He doesn't

00:14:56.300 want to look at that. So big picture, John, he wants to level the playing field with trade and he wants

00:15:00.800 to balance a tax system so that the middle class American who's living on $50,000 a year isn't giving

00:15:07.640 away half their paycheck and isn't getting bludgeoned. Yeah, that's wrong. If the middle class 0.99

00:15:12.420 American who lives in New York State or California is giving close to 50 percent of their income each

00:15:18.160 year, which who knows that well might be the case, move it in the right direction. In that sense,

00:15:23.180 you want to get rid of unfair trade practices by foreign countries. China, unfair labor practices,

00:15:31.060 that's very bad. You want to have a situation where U.S. industry is protected from potential

00:15:38.620 dumping of overproduced goods in China. Remember, China isn't run by a market system. China's not a

00:15:45.580 democracy. I mean, China's a controlled economy. Right now, China has something like a million

00:15:51.320 more electric vehicles than they could possibly sell in that country at this point in time.

00:15:58.780 China would love to dump these EVs on the United States and Europe, but that would be horrible 0.55

00:16:04.300 because that would do a lot of damage to our nascent electric vehicle industry here in the United

00:16:11.740 States. National security, my goodness, this is of the utmost importance. What in the world are we

00:16:18.420 doing if we're so dependent on China, a belligerent country towards the United States for pharmaceuticals

00:16:25.620 and other important materials? It might be steel, rare earth metals, and so on. You know,

00:16:33.380 help take care of that problem. Tariffs are not going to do the trick. We also need tax incentives

00:16:39.220 here in the United States so that companies expand their production facilities related to drugs,

00:16:47.540 pharmaceuticals. It might be steel. It might be aluminum. We should also soften some of these

00:16:53.820 environmental restrictions that make it difficult to build manufacturing facilities, environmental

00:17:00.260 restrictions that make it difficult to mine for rare earth minerals. We have to do this

00:17:07.040 just for national security's sake. It goes all over the place.

00:17:14.300 Just as we're talking right now, a wire just came through. A dozen states sued Trump administration to

00:17:19.020 stop their tariff policy. I'm just going to read through this real quickly so we can get your reaction

00:17:24.860 to this. Trump sued, the administration sued in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York

00:17:29.920 on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it's unlawful and has brought chaos to the American

00:17:34.700 economy. We're not even going to talk about Joe Biden and what he did to the economy over the last

00:17:38.900 four years. The lawsuit said that policy put in place by President Donald J. Trump has left the

00:17:43.740 national trade policy subject to Trump's whims rather than sound exercise of lawful authority.

00:17:49.680 The states that are included are Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois,

00:17:58.100 Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont. Now, John, the common denominator in all

00:18:03.580 those are run by Marxist Dems. I'm sitting in Arizona right now as we speak. It's truly troubling

00:18:10.000 because with the exception of, I think, Arizona, Oregon has an absolute massive deficit, drug problem,

00:18:18.300 homeless problem. Colorado is another one. Connecticut, everyone knows Connecticut's

00:18:23.580 just a highway between New York and Boston. Delaware, Illinois, I saw yesterday the mayor of

00:18:28.880 Chicago has an approval rating of 7% as they look at a massive deficit that they can't afford to get

00:18:35.800 into. Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and New York of all people. Tish James, really? I mean,

00:18:43.360 why can't these people, John, just let this man sit back and do what he's going to do? Let him do his

00:18:49.140 job. We all dealt with four years of turmoil and chaos and embarrassment on the world stage.

00:18:56.480 This man's been in office, John, for three months, four months now, I guess, right? January,

00:19:02.320 February, March, going in April. Give the guy some time to fix this thing. It's not going to happen

00:19:08.240 overnight. The height of hypocrisy, my goodness. This is the same party that's responsible for

00:19:15.620 allowing 11 million illegal immigrants into the United States. Allegedly 11 million, John.

00:19:24.100 You know, I heard that. I think the entire, all the Democrats in Congress are headed to El Salvador.

00:19:31.360 Let him stay there. Great idea. It's such a joke. It's such a farce. My goodness. Give me a break.

00:19:38.740 New York is an absolute mess. I, you know, I would be shocked if the people of New York state

00:19:43.300 are stupid enough to return the Democrats to power after the mess that they made.

00:19:48.500 Here we have upstate New York. They're, oh my goodness, they're struggling. And yet in the

00:19:52.780 southern tier of New York, they have these vast deposits of natural gas that should be kept

00:19:58.660 via fracking to help reduce the sky high utility bills that you're paying to Con Edison. I mean,

00:20:05.460 this is just absolute nonsense. And also, you know, the horrible energy policy of the Biden

00:20:10.840 administration, whether you like it or not, helped to build up the coffers of Iran and of Russia.

00:20:17.940 And as Russia and Iran had more money, they could go ahead and finance what happened on October 7th in

00:20:24.300 Israel. They and Russia could go ahead and finance what they did to Ukraine. And now they're telling 0.73

00:20:30.160 the Ukrainians that, no, keep on fighting, guys. Keep on fighting. But we're not sending our kids 0.98

00:20:35.660 over there to get killed.

00:20:37.080 It's truly a disgrace. Not one of those governors. I think there's only one of them who's made money

00:20:42.620 on his own, and it wasn't even his. It was his daddy's money is J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. But

00:20:46.400 not one of those governors, John, can shine the shoes of anyone in this Trump administration,

00:20:50.840 nor do they have the IQ or brainpower that these people have. Scott Besson, I mentioned, who's running

00:20:57.640 massive amounts of things for President Trump right now in the Treasury, was over in speaking about the

00:21:06.020 World Bank, pretty much telling these people, we're done. You guys, with your woke policies of

00:21:12.320 green energy and all this nonsense is over. We're done writing bank checks. Take a listen to Besson

00:21:19.000 yesterday. The World Bank must be tech neutral and prioritize affordability and energy investment.

00:21:27.440 In most cases, this means investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production.

00:21:33.380 In other cases, this may mean investing in renewable energy coupled with systems to help manage the

00:21:41.500 intermittency of wind and solar. The history of humanity teaches a simple lesson. Energy abundance

00:21:50.480 sparks economic abundance. That's why the bank should encourage an all-of-the-above approach to energy

00:21:59.560 development. John, give me your sense on Besson going after the world, Brian, going after the

00:22:07.080 globalists. By the way, he's over there speaking to us. Klaus Schwab steps down from the World Economic

00:22:12.140 Forum, is now under investigation for financial crimes, possibly. But these are the people, John,

00:22:17.600 we've looked up to over the course of the last quarter century.

00:22:22.940 Look what we got for it, my goodness. Unaffordable energy, wars popping up here and there. What good

00:22:30.020 did it do? I don't know. And Scott Besson, what he's emphasizing is the need to conduct cost-benefit

00:22:37.940 analysis when looking at policy choices. And that's something that Scott Besson is very aware of when he's

00:22:46.220 looking at the role of tariffs as far as improving national security, as far as re-industrializing

00:22:54.920 the U.S. economy, and as far as getting a level playing field in international trade, believe me.

00:23:01.860 You know, as a brief aside, I've become interested in Greenland because Trump has spoken about annexing

00:23:08.500 Greenland. So I was reading about it, and believe it or not, you know, back in the time of Leif

00:23:14.260 Erickson, this is about 1000 AD, Greenland's climate was warmer than it is today. And that's

00:23:23.120 without fossil fuels. There's no burning of oil or coal. How could that be? So, I mean, that brings

00:23:30.480 us back to the point that we could be spending a lot of money trying to limit carbon emissions and

00:23:39.420 find out that that is not the only change taking place that's increasing carbon dioxide in the

00:23:46.140 atmosphere, that there may indeed be something else at work, may not be the only change taking place

00:23:51.560 that's raising the world's temperature. Yeah. Anything to, you know, I always thought it was

00:23:58.240 a scam, but you know when I really thought it was a scam and when I figured out it was a scam,

00:24:02.040 I said to myself, why should we have to spend millions of dollars and hundreds and tens of millions

00:24:06.520 of dollars into a year into a climate agenda? If you're going to cut your emissions, you're just

00:24:11.400 going to do it, right? You shouldn't have to pay into something called the Paris Climate Accord

00:24:15.220 or donate tens of millions of dollars to underdeveloped nations. And that's what I said

00:24:19.880 to myself, something doesn't seem right. If we're sitting here doling out hundreds of millions of

00:24:23.760 dollars a year to cut greenhouse gases, something doesn't make sense.

00:24:29.120 John, I want to turn to the U.S. dollar. It was something that Scott Besson also brought up

00:24:39.080 and the importance, obviously, for the powerful, the strength of the U.S. dollar. Take a listen to

00:24:46.200 to Besson. To me, the strong dollar means having the policies in place to deserve capital flows

00:24:55.160 and have confidence. But it doesn't mean the price on the Bloomberg screen every day.

00:25:02.180 And it also has different meanings in terms of bilateral prices.

00:25:09.660 Your thoughts, John, on the U.S. dollar. As we were talking before the show, the dollar up today,

00:25:14.220 about a percent, as you pointed out to me. The U.S. dollar remains the world's vehicle

00:25:20.160 currency, and that is of the utmost importance to the U.S. economy. You know, as long as the U.S.

00:25:26.680 Treasury bond market serves as the benchmark credit market for global financial markets,

00:25:33.040 we perhaps have no reason to fear that the U.S. dollar will soon be replaced by China's currency

00:25:40.320 or some other currency as the world's dominant currency. And to be quite frank about this, I mean,

00:25:48.640 if we ever come to that day where we find that the dollar has been toppled, given the fact that we

00:25:55.580 have these gargantuan budget deficits, we would quickly discover that our interest rates would soar

00:26:03.360 higher. But that really hasn't happened. People talk about the sell-off of the Treasury bond market.

00:26:08.340 My goodness, Treasury bond yields were higher in early January. There were about 4.8% for the 10-year

00:26:15.720 yield when it was thought that Trump's policies were going to fuel a very strong potentially upturn

00:26:23.120 by U.S. economic activity compared to the recent highs. The recent high for the 10-year yield

00:26:28.700 perhaps wasn't much above 4.5%, maybe as high as 4.6%, but well under that high of January 2025.

00:26:39.800 The important, I think, market watch to have been watching all the time on the credit side

00:26:45.160 wasn't so much a Treasury bond market. You had to look at the corporate bond market. And in that market,

00:26:50.920 there was simply no sense of panic. And by the way, a Treasury bond yield that's not setting new 52-week

00:26:57.760 highs does not reflect a Treasury bond market that is under a great deal of selling pressure and thus

00:27:04.460 is worthy of tremendous worry. Well, if you listen to MSNBC, everything you just said is not true.

00:27:11.540 But those people are far dumber than you. John, you're an economist, probably more qualified to

00:27:18.040 run the Fed than Jerome Powell is right now. Donald Trump is having a very big problem with Powell.

00:27:24.880 And we spoke about this last time. Before the election, before the election in November, John,

00:27:29.660 he played with the rates whenever he had to play with the rates. They dumped money and bought back

00:27:34.200 as much as they needed to buy back on Treasuries. Now Donald Trump's in office. He seems to not be

00:27:39.980 doing his job, doesn't care to do his job. Donald Trump's had enough of him. It's unclear if he

00:27:44.180 could fire him or not. But if there's anybody who can fire someone, it's certainly Donald Trump.

00:27:49.620 If you're the chairman of the Fed right now, John, what are you doing with rates? Are you holding tight?

00:27:54.700 Are you cutting? Are you looking at a short-term cut? Are you looking at something immediate?

00:27:59.980 What are you doing right now, immediately, if you're the chairman of the Fed?

00:28:04.220 Here's the problem. When I look at the data, this is what I see.

00:28:07.820 Consumer sentiment is down. Businesses are more jittery. But all the while, the economy continues

00:28:14.920 to grow. Jobs continue to surprise on the upside. Retail sales were very strong in the month of

00:28:21.740 March. So what do I do? I just sit tight. And I want to have some evidence that at long last,

00:28:30.880 business spending and consumer spending and hiring activity are following the path taken by

00:28:37.220 consumer sentiment and business sentiment. And that hasn't happened yet. I want to go back to

00:28:43.340 Powell, though. Prior to Trump, Jerome Powell was guilty of errors of omission. You know, we had a

00:28:52.160 gargantuan budget deficit before Trump took office. We had a budget deficit at nearly $2 trillion.

00:28:58.640 What does that mean? The U.S. government was spending nearly $2 trillion more than it took

00:29:05.060 in in terms of revenues. And there was an award going on. There was no recession. There was no

00:29:09.880 excuse for that deficit. That deficit was in large part, you know, reflective of this hangover from

00:29:17.200 excess COVID spending on the welfare side, the transfer payments, as well as, you know,

00:29:24.640 government support for green energy. We would throw that in, too. And yet, not a peep out of Jerome

00:29:32.020 Powell. No, I cannot criticize the federal budget deficit because I'm supposed to be apolitical.

00:29:38.480 But the minute Trump gets elected, he becomes a political animal.

00:29:43.620 This is trying to stop. These tariffs are horrible. My goodness, this deficit, we have to be worried

00:29:48.080 about this. Give me a break.

00:29:49.600 You know, it's the same. It was the same thing with Janet Yellen. You know, six years ago,

00:29:54.580 seven years ago, you'd almost think what you believe. Janet Yellen was when Lou Dobbs was asked

00:30:00.720 back under Trump's first administration who you'd have running the Treasury. He actually said Yellen

00:30:07.040 wouldn't be a bad choice. You now see this woman who's taken a complete. Now, thank God she's out of 1.00

00:30:11.760 government, but who took like a complete 180. She sounded level-headed seven, eight years ago.

00:30:16.660 She comes into the Biden administration, John, and this woman is as woke as, I mean, any of these

00:30:22.440 purple-haired, blue-haired people you see on the streets of New York running Teslas.

00:30:26.720 You know, that's so correct. And I can't help but be impressed that we get these reports of

00:30:32.180 disagreements between high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. They argue with each

00:30:38.580 other. Besson's arguing with Musk, and Musk is arguing with Rubio. They're having these fights,

00:30:43.860 you know, there's a little bit of, and that's good. There's some competition that we know about.

00:30:48.760 But on the other hand, with the Democratic Party, if whoever it is that runs a Democratic Party says,

00:30:55.700 you have to say this or nothing else, you must obey those rules, must obey those standards.

00:31:00.760 You have to agree with what we say about green energy, what we say about DEI, what we say about ESG.

00:31:08.220 You can't go ahead and stray from the party line. This is why I really don't have any respect for a

00:31:14.540 lot of economists who are sworn to the, you know, they're sworn allegiance to the Democratic Party,

00:31:20.580 because for all I know, they're basically, if you like, crippled by this need to be narrowly focused

00:31:29.260 on an ideology that you are forbidden to stray from. That's sad. That's undemocratic.

00:31:35.960 John, it's not just economists who have sold out over the last 10 years. It's lawyers. I mean,

00:31:42.060 it's accountants. It's priests. I mean, it's so many people, John, across the board that you're

00:31:47.580 absolutely right. The Marxist Democrat wing of the party has brought these people to a place that they

00:31:53.240 can't return. And people like Janet Yellen, it's a woman who ruined her legacy for what reason? For 1.00

00:31:58.100 Joe Biden, a man who was barely alive. John, before we wrap up, I want to get your take.

00:32:02.700 Give me some, you had mentioned indicators on where the economy is going. So last time we spoke,

00:32:07.980 you'd said it's possible we're heading towards a recession, maybe early midsummer. I want to give

00:32:14.040 you a chance to either double down or take a new stance on where your mind's at based on what's

00:32:21.420 happened over the last few weeks. And number two, are there any big key indicators, any big numbers

00:32:27.340 coming out, jobs, Fed numbers over the next few weeks that will give us a definitive answer on

00:32:34.480 where we're going? Well, Friday, May 3rd, you get the jobs report. You know, we keep hearing about all

00:32:40.620 of these layoffs in the federal government, but still initial state jobless claims remain at

00:32:46.280 historically low levels. We'll see what happens there. I don't really know of, you know, widespread

00:32:54.300 job cutbacks in the corporate sector, though occasionally you read about cutbacks here or

00:32:59.680 there. But a lot of these cutbacks are just a bit of normal part of, you know, getting rid of people

00:33:06.500 because they're underperforming or the business is headed in a different direction. You keep a close

00:33:13.120 eye on what's happening with consumer spending on retail sales. I just, you know, I just don't see

00:33:20.300 where retail sales are slumping in a manner that would significantly increase the risk of an impending

00:33:29.480 recession. And I, the flexibility again, exhibited by the Trump administration with tariffs, I think

00:33:37.760 is important. The minute they begin to believe that these tariffs are going to lead to sharply higher

00:33:44.480 prices, empty short store shelves, and a loss of jobs, I think that they will tone down their

00:33:53.800 approach to tariffs very quickly. They'll at least temporarily show more flexibility or maybe choose

00:34:01.060 to adopt a different strategy. For instance, why not go to China? If you want to send all of these 0.98

00:34:06.720 products to the United States, why don't you come here and set up factories like the Japanese did with 1.00

00:34:12.120 with automobiles so that not everything is made in China. As in the case of Japan, not all cars made

00:34:18.220 by Japanese car companies were made in Japan and so on. So there's, you know, there's room for, I think,

00:34:23.620 negotiations. There's different approaches you can take in order to try to mitigate imbalances,

00:34:30.940 unsustainable imbalances that come about because of chronically huge trade deficits.

00:34:37.980 So it sounds you're a lot more optimistic than the last time we spoke.

00:34:42.400 Yeah, a little bit more optimistic, I think so. I'm just, you know, I'm looking at what's going,

00:34:46.380 what's happening with the market. And as I said earlier, I was shocked that the corporate bond

00:34:52.280 market has yet to drive yields up to levels relative to treasury yields that otherwise might

00:34:59.020 warn of hard times ahead, economically speaking. Do I think we're going to have very strong economic

00:35:06.100 growth later this year? I don't think so. I think that's going to be hard to pull off,

00:35:09.980 if only because we already have a relatively tight labor market. If you don't have the excess supply of

00:35:18.040 labor, it's really hard to have the economy grow at something close to 3% indefinitely without risking

00:35:26.120 a significantly higher rate of inflation.

00:35:29.520 John Lonsky, it's always great talking with you, always insightful. The CEO and founder of the Lonsky

00:35:36.300 Group. Thanks for everything. Thanks for giving the audience some insight and hoping to sleep better

00:35:41.720 at night. I want to end with one point. Elon Musk is set to probably leave the White House and head

00:35:47.880 back into Tesla around May. If I were Donald Trump, I would give Elon Musk the ultimatum. I want the

00:35:55.140 federal government to no longer be the largest employer of American workers, and then you can go.

00:36:00.960 You cannot leave until the American government is no longer the largest employer in America.

00:36:06.920 That's important. And also, it's important that Elon Musk introduced modern technology to the

00:36:12.000 federal government so that they could operate much more efficiently. I think there's room for that.

00:36:16.800 They're perhaps using outdated IT systems and so on. And there's probably a lot of redundancies in

00:36:24.120 Washington. People that are basically performing the same task performed by somebody else in a

00:36:30.260 different federal agency. You want to get rid of that as soon as possible.

00:36:34.760 Redundance. Redundancies, to me, sounds like a waste of money.

00:36:38.380 Yeah. If you got a $2 trillion deficit, I think it's time for some belt tightening.

00:36:43.640 No question about that.

00:36:44.820 Tell me about it. John, we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for joining us today.

00:36:48.140 All right. Thank you, John. Take care.

00:36:50.320 Thanks to John Lansky, and thank you all for being with us today here on The Great America Show. We'll

00:36:53.940 see you back here tomorrow for The Great America Show, where our quest for truth, justice, and the

00:36:57.780 American way continues. Until then, may God bless you, may God bless America, and may God bless the 0.77

00:37:02.780 great, Lou Dobbs. We'll see you tomorrow.

The Great America Show - April 23, 2025

RFK'S LATEST MOVE HAS FOOD COMPANIES TREMBLING

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