The Great America Show - March 21, 2023


STEVE BANNON SAYS THE BANKING SYSTEM IS IN CRISIS, THAT THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS AND POSSIBLE MELTDOWN


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

164.81296

Word count

7,177

Sentence count

477

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Steve Bannon's War Room host Steve Bannon joins Lou Dobbs on the Great America Show to discuss the current economic and political crisis facing the United States and the world. Steve also discusses the Silicon Valley Bubble and the dangers of the $19 Trillion of deposits held by Silicon Valley banks.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and welcome to The Great America Show.
00:00:04.180 Delighted to have you with us.
00:00:06.040 You don't need me to tell you the country is in great peril.
00:00:10.140 The Marxist Dems managed to put two of the most feeble and inept people in the country
00:00:15.220 into the two most powerful jobs in our government.
00:00:19.240 And they've done what any rational would have expected them to do.
00:00:23.420 The impaired puppet president does as his Marxist masters tell him. 0.99
00:00:27.440 Can there be any doubt today that the Bidens are running a family business
00:00:32.120 that might as well be a direct subsidiary of Communist China?
00:00:37.100 Kamala Harris is simply lost.
00:00:39.480 She's talentless with her words always failing her.
00:00:42.300 The best she can ever do with her words is to make a salad.
00:00:46.620 Seldom does she make sense, no matter the setting.
00:00:49.680 These two are incomprehensible and inexplicable.
00:00:53.820 But they are the faces of our government.
00:00:56.400 Whether in domestic policy or foreign policy.
00:01:00.280 Foreign policy where they and their second-rate national security team flail and fail repeatedly.
00:01:07.380 With China's Xi Jinping and Moscow, with his great strategic partner Vladimir Putin,
00:01:13.600 both in hours-long meetings on how to extricate Russia from the jaws of death and defeat in Ukraine,
00:01:20.580 while creating a new anti-American, anti-Europe, anti-freedom world order.
00:01:27.100 With the emphasis on order in their authoritarian vision of a better future, so-called.
00:01:34.580 Biden and Harris are the officials who have no answers to Putin and Xi.
00:01:39.660 As more died daily in Ukraine and Xi and Putin plot the end of Western civilization,
00:01:45.020 without, it seems, resistance from Biden-Harris.
00:01:48.900 The two who have presided over America for the past 26 months.
00:01:54.500 A reign of what has amounted to economic and social devastation.
00:01:58.940 Open borders, rampant illegal immigration, raging crime rates, runaway inflation, massive government deficits and debt.
00:02:07.020 And all we hear about from the Biden regime is CRT, EID, and ESG.
00:02:15.620 And suddenly, the economy is also hit with a banking crisis.
00:02:20.080 A crisis caused, in part, by Biden-Harris' rabid federal spending and mindless policies, at home and abroad.
00:02:28.820 Our guest today is a great American and friend.
00:02:32.080 Our guest is Steve Bannon, the hugely popular host of the hugely successful podcast, Steve Bannon's War Room.
00:02:40.220 Steve, welcome.
00:02:41.620 Great to have you with us.
00:02:43.140 And let's start with the banking crisis that is now crippling the economy.
00:02:48.000 We've heard barely a peep from Joe Biden, who some credit as the author of this crisis,
00:02:53.340 with all of his mad spending and talent-free administration.
00:02:57.240 Lou, we got three minutes of Biden, what, at 9 o'clock Monday morning, to talk to us about the deplorables and MAGA essentially bailing out Silicon Valley Bank
00:03:08.760 and all $19 trillion of deposits throughout the nation.
00:03:13.520 And we had Yellen, I think, do some testimony this morning in front of the Senate Finance Committee.
00:03:20.540 And that's it.
00:03:21.960 Powell's been quiet, essentially.
00:03:23.540 He gave a little testimony the other day.
00:03:24.720 And the reason is, it's justified. 0.61
00:03:28.480 The banking system is in a crisis.
00:03:32.240 I would actually say it's melting down globally.
00:03:34.580 You've had the Swiss government, through Swiss National Bank, their central bank, put $55 billion to bail out Credit Suisse.
00:03:45.540 You've had the deplorables back up $19 trillion of deposits, including, I think, $5 or $6 trillion of uninsured deposits.
00:03:52.720 It's a crisis.
00:03:54.680 And they're looking for, basically, taxpayers in Switzerland and the United States to do the bailout.
00:04:00.800 And they're lying to people about what's caused this.
00:04:03.540 They don't want to really face any scrutiny.
00:04:05.800 And it's only going to get worse.
00:04:07.540 This is a rolling – and look, you've had Larry Fink, Ken Griffin, and Carl Icahn, three Wall Street oligarchs,
00:04:15.120 essentially agree with, Lou, with you and I over the last 48 hours.
00:04:19.040 They say this is a rolling crisis.
00:04:21.200 The system's collapsing.
00:04:22.520 And Ken Griffin sounds like a newborn fire-breathing in the populace about how these bailouts are totally unfair.
00:04:30.400 They're unfair, and there is division amongst the oligarchs, of course.
00:04:36.220 Those who are on the left side of the country, that is, at the epicenter there in Silicon Valley,
00:04:44.140 you know, that little community wants bailout after bailout.
00:04:47.500 They don't only want bailouts for the insured depositors.
00:04:51.320 They want bailouts for the big depositors beyond the 250,000 FDIC limit.
00:04:58.700 They want bailouts for ownership for these banks, Silicon Valley, Signature.
00:05:07.340 It's – and now the numbers are – you know, we're starting, as you suggested, going to Credit Suisse.
00:05:13.980 That $55 billion you're talking about that the National Bank of Switzerland put up,
00:05:20.520 that's money they were very reluctant to mention they had and would deploy for the benefit of Credit Suisse.
00:05:29.080 This is a peculiar moment in history, and Janet Yellen assuring everybody that everybody's going to be taken care of.
00:05:38.260 Moral hazard is at bay and fading quickly, isn't it?
00:05:43.580 Lou, you've been through a couple of these, including the big – you know, the Internet capital markets equity meltdown
00:05:51.600 in the late 90s, early 2000s, the – of course, the financial crisis, 2008.
00:05:57.540 I think this is going to – I think this is going to make those pale in comparison.
00:06:01.400 I think we're at the beginning of, as I've been saying, a financial crisis, capital markets crisis,
00:06:06.280 that's going to rival the late 1920s, early 1930s.
00:06:11.260 And the reason is we just – we had negative – we had free money for so long, right, after the –
00:06:17.600 but we never took care of the fundamental problems of 2008.
00:06:20.240 We just kept – the central banks just got together in a cartel and kept interest rates incredibly low for so long,
00:06:27.540 and we're paying the price on top of Biden's out-of-control spending.
00:06:32.680 The first two years of the Biden regime will go down like Herbert Hoover's administration.
00:06:39.360 I mean, remember, it's Biden's spending.
00:06:41.980 It's the over-the-top when we had aggregate demand back.
00:06:45.220 It's the insane $10 trillion that he went out and spent with collaboration as Republicans and Mitch McConnell agreeing with him
00:06:52.400 that we spent that started the inferno.
00:06:55.820 That didn't roll through – so I call it Biden's spending to Biden's inflation to get out of control to Biden's bonds.
00:07:04.040 What he did is he crushed government security.
00:07:06.760 So on the evening of 3 November of 2020, the 10-year Treasury was at 0.86 percent under President Trump, 0.86 percent.
00:07:18.040 That's blown through 4 percent here recently.
00:07:21.720 And as you know, the difference between going from 0 or from 0.8 to 4 is much bigger than going from, like, 5 to 9 or 10 to 14.
00:07:31.600 It's logarithmic.
00:07:34.420 It's insane.
00:07:35.820 And that's what's destroyed these bonds, which all these guys – the unrealized – and we can't get a straight answer.
00:07:40.560 But the unrealized losses on the balance sheet of banks were told by the FDIC of $600 billion on government securities.
00:07:48.920 There's other analysis out there that's over $2 trillion.
00:07:51.680 That's what took down Silicon Valley Bank.
00:07:53.420 Silicon Valley Bank was not taken down by its wokeness, although, trust me, on the margin that hurt in the bank – and it wasn't really a bank.
00:07:59.800 It was a country club hedge fund.
00:08:02.080 But what took it down was buying this inflation and the hot money deposits and that their portfolio was actually destroyed because they bought 10-year Treasuries at 1 percent, and now Treasuries are 4 percent.
00:08:16.860 And those bonds are half of their value.
00:08:19.700 So – and this is all over the country.
00:08:21.200 This is 1,000 percent not about wokeness.
00:08:25.380 It is about Biden's economic policies, his spending, his inflation, what he's done to interest rates.
00:08:32.880 And on top of it all, Lou, for him to present a $6.8 trillion budget last week just shows you how out of tune he is and how in your face he is about the financial crisis, economic crisis in front of us.
00:08:46.420 Yeah, that was a spending blueprint for a Marxist who means to destroy this country.
00:08:52.880 And everyone needs to understand what it is.
00:08:56.000 And nothing is a better – to me, a great avatar for all of this is Silicon Valley Bank.
00:09:03.960 It had only one member on the board who had investment banking experience.
00:09:09.900 Incredible.
00:09:10.060 We're talking about a bank that didn't even approximate, as far as I'm concerned, a commercial lending institution that had any concept of ratios.
00:09:20.320 You talk about the board and the superfired.
00:09:23.000 Their chief risk officer left a year before.
00:09:26.560 I think they understood what was happening.
00:09:29.020 The chief risk officer left a year before, sold a couple of million dollars' worth of stock, and went on their merry way.
00:09:34.280 They were without a senior risk officer in charge of any kind.
00:09:38.240 And, of course, all the other risk officers in London and everywhere else were totally woke about their selection, the diversity, equity, inclusion.
00:09:46.820 But your point about the board, I was actually shocked.
00:09:49.940 I mean the board – and by the way, Lou, it's not like the old days.
00:09:54.100 It's not that they just only had one banker.
00:09:56.260 It's the fact that they had – everybody else was like a flute player.
00:10:00.240 There were no industrialists.
00:10:01.940 There were no senior-level business managers.
00:10:03.940 I mean it wasn't a serious board.
00:10:05.600 It was a totally woke board.
00:10:08.240 I love the fact that one of those board members decided when becoming anxious about the crisis that was unfolding for the bank
00:10:18.280 and then subsequently for the country, made the decision to go to the Shinto shrine and to start meditating and praying,
00:10:29.780 which I guess would be one approach to crisis and strain that you have been at least partially culpable in creating.
00:10:39.640 This is a bank that is absolutely filled with – brimming over with diversity and ineptitude. 0.96
00:10:50.940 It is something, if you will, of a minor shadow of what the Biden regime itself is comprised.
00:10:59.180 This is a board that has no idea that it's responsible for a bank.
00:11:04.100 Well, no, fiduciary responsibility.
00:11:06.900 And look, here's the thing.
00:11:08.020 They mock and ridicule.
00:11:09.440 The thing that upset me about Silicon Valley Bank is that here are the people that deplatform and debank the deplorables of MAGA
00:11:17.740 in the entire Trump movement.
00:11:19.420 Yet when they panic, what do they want?
00:11:21.380 They want the deplorables.
00:11:22.360 They want MAGA to bail them out.
00:11:24.120 This is a taxpayer bailout.
00:11:25.320 Now, they hide it through saying it's going to be FDIC fees taken from member banks, which means it's just going to be passed through to the customer.
00:11:33.160 So everybody's got a checking account.
00:11:35.340 Everybody's got a savings account.
00:11:37.260 Any services you use at a bank at all, you notice the bank service fees are always going up.
00:11:41.360 That is to basically underwrite and backstop the deposits, the uninsured deposits at these banks.
00:11:49.020 So the people in the country, taxpayers, citizens in this nation, are underwriting these bailouts.
00:11:53.780 And that's why they go about it so willy-nilly.
00:11:56.340 But I think the arrogance – because remember, here's the thing.
00:11:59.820 When they talk about, oh, all these companies, these startup companies, they were all missed payroll.
00:12:04.080 That's all a lie.
00:12:05.480 Every one of those companies has a venture capitalist sponsor.
00:12:10.500 The venture capitalist could have easily given them a credit facility over the weekend.
00:12:15.420 They could draw down on to make payroll and to pay operations.
00:12:18.420 The venture capitalist didn't want to do that.
00:12:20.000 They want the deplorables.
00:12:20.920 They want MAGA to bail them out so that they don't have to put more capital in and get lower returns.
00:12:25.980 And the management doesn't want to do it because they'll dilute their equity interest.
00:12:29.140 It's a complete and total scam, 1,000% total scam.
00:12:33.140 It never had to happen.
00:12:34.420 When the hot money depositors left and they want enough money to make payroll for the bank to afford them, it's not important.
00:12:43.580 They had venture capitalist sponsors.
00:12:45.240 The venture capitalist – the venture capitalist could have extended additional credit lines, credit facilities, and taking care of their companies, which they have a fiduciary responsibility.
00:12:57.660 Absolutely.
00:12:58.060 The same venture capitalist that got on the phone call and took $42 billion out before they told anybody.
00:13:02.560 They took $42 billion out of this bank, and then they told the world, oh, everybody ought to go get their money out of this thing.
00:13:09.420 It could be shaky.
00:13:10.500 I believe they did that.
00:13:11.900 And I keep saying it, and they keep lighting me up, but I say they did that on material, non-public information.
00:13:17.820 And to me, that is just as bad as insider trading.
00:13:20.940 Yeah, I'm not sure that they could differentiate about insider trading, to be honest with you, Steve.
00:13:27.460 I think those people were so woven into the Silicon culture that they couldn't distinguish between a VC disbursement, a payroll, and a credit line.
00:13:40.800 Because in point of fact, it was one enormous, diverse, woke organism that is now bared and is all of its ugliness there in Silicon Valley and within the regional banking system itself.
00:13:56.500 Because we've seen 30 banks put on watch.
00:13:59.020 We've got six of them on, let's call it, careful watch.
00:14:02.620 We have seen the second and third largest bankruptcies of a bank in the country's history.
00:14:12.260 It is simply a massive dam, the gates of which have been raised by this administration, and money is flying through those gates, pouring through those gates, and flooding the economy.
00:14:28.440 We are looking at one of the most perilous moments, I believe, in the country's history, because of the condition in which we find ourselves, and the people upon whom we must depend to manage and guide us through it.
00:14:47.260 They're in a real dilemma right now, because you saw the ECB raised rates 50% to go after inflation.
00:14:54.600 The Fed, because of Biden's spending and them going along with it, monetizing this debt, is now jammed.
00:15:00.980 Inflation is still out of control.
00:15:02.760 Core inflation for how you live, core inflation is obviously killing people because it's 10%, 12% on food, on rent, those types of things.
00:15:11.220 And so they're going to have a decision next week, whether they go after inflation, or if they don't go on inflation and kick rates up, they're just going to destroy the bonds more, and they're going to expose more unrealized gains.
00:15:25.760 Because remember, the scam right now is they're lending against these bonds at face value.
00:15:29.460 When the bonds are trading at 30 cents of the dollar, they're trading at one-third, face value at best, which is another scam.
00:15:39.220 They are banking on right now, Lou, the Republicans not stepping up here, which they're not, and they're being kowtowed or they're being browbeaten by saying you can't say anything because you caused a bank run.
00:15:50.440 You can't say anything.
00:15:51.500 The Republicans here, I think, on this have been awful.
00:15:54.240 They have not come forward and laid out exactly why no taxpayer bailouts whatsoever can't happen.
00:16:01.040 And that would make the Biden administration come back and think through real – make decisions on real solutions and real remedies.
00:16:08.880 Right now they're playing with people – they're playing with house money.
00:16:12.200 They're playing with the taxpayers' money.
00:16:15.240 But the Fed's in a real jam.
00:16:16.620 They've got to make a decision to go after inflation.
00:16:18.300 Even if they don't do that, if they raise rates that go after inflation, they're going to kill these bonds even more and expose more of these zombie banks are going to start going belly up.
00:16:28.080 So this is all Biden's policy.
00:16:30.240 Remember, it went from Biden spending to Biden inflation to the Biden bonds, right, that crushed, that dropped in value, to the Biden banks, the zombie banks.
00:16:39.180 And I don't know how they're going to get out from under it.
00:16:42.420 And if they go down the path they've been going, the Republican Party shouldn't be collaborationists.
00:16:48.000 Mitch McConnell already is guilty with these 15 or 16 Republicans that passed the omnibus bill, that did bill back – every Republican that voted for any of these spending programs from Biden, which many of them did, the Republican Senate, are just as guilty as the Democrats in this.
00:17:04.800 We have a Federal Reserve, for crying out loud, that has a balance sheet still of $8.4 trillion.
00:17:11.300 They've been trying to run it off ever since Biden got into office.
00:17:16.040 And they can't move because of inflation, because of all of the dislocation in this economy and our markets.
00:17:24.120 And I want to remind everybody – and this is not a partisan statement, this is just to map what has happened under this puppet president and his Marxist acolytes – inflation was below 2% when Joe Biden took office.
00:17:44.820 And here we are, by the consumer price index, with inflation at 6% and well above, by 300%, the Fed's target for inflation.
00:17:57.420 Your thoughts about what that presupposes?
00:18:00.240 Let's go back even in 19, if you look because the – when Biden took office, including all the fiasco around the pandemic, if you go back to 19, the last full year of the Trump golden age economically, I think inflation was below 1%.
00:18:17.400 Wages were increasing by blue-collar workers 11%.
00:18:20.240 You had 10% – you had 10% wage – roughly 9% to 10% wage increases, real – not nominal – real wage increases for workers with virtually zero inflation, virtually zero interest rates, very low interest rates.
00:18:36.580 It was a golden age.
00:18:37.720 I mean, this is why –
00:18:39.240 And we sure point it out.
00:18:40.340 For people that hate Trump and hate the sound of his voice that said, hey, he gave you – he only gave you four years of peace and prosperity.
00:18:45.700 He ain't looking so bad right now.
00:18:46.960 I mean, the Biden thing shows you this – Lou, you and I have talked about it.
00:18:51.980 Just to pull the camera back for a second, people have to understand, what was the big shift?
00:18:55.740 One was a different philosophy.
00:18:57.340 This philosophy is called modern monetary theory, which deems that deficits don't matter, that you continue to run up, and that's what you saw here.
00:19:05.840 With Biden, with all this massive spending and now this budget he gave us the other day, 6.8, not that it will be passed, but it basically is worse than the CBO projected.
00:19:15.720 It would have $2 trillion deficits in perpetuity.
00:19:21.620 I mean, the insanity of this thing is not – these are not only not reasonable people.
00:19:27.380 What they're putting forward is madness, and you can see in the meltdown of the financial system that every day they just lie, it's the best economy in 40 years.
00:19:33.580 We're not – the economy is in meltdown.
00:19:36.140 Inflation is out of control.
00:19:37.860 Interest rates now are going to have to increase to take down inflation.
00:19:42.180 That means unemployment.
00:19:43.440 Or you're going to continue to crush government securities, and you're going to expose the weaknesses in the banking system.
00:19:49.080 And very quickly, the peasants are going to say, no more.
00:19:52.660 If you vote to bail out anybody, I'm going to turf you out of office in perpetuity.
00:19:56.320 You're gone.
00:19:56.720 So we're heading towards – as I said in my CISPAC speech, we have a convergence of a financial and economic crisis converging now with the geopolitical crisis on the Eurasian landmass.
00:20:07.960 And once those two – and they're kind of coming together, once they converge and conflate, we're at the early stages of World War III, and this is where things are going to spin out of control.
00:20:18.200 And it will be outside of the control of the United States to control events.
00:20:21.840 That's one of the things I think most people intuitively have thought since World War II and grown up, whether you're a baby boomer or even younger, that the United States can always control events.
00:20:31.360 Well, we're in a situation now that I think you're seeing that we don't control events.
00:20:35.820 And this is what happens when you have managed decline in a country driven by its elites.
00:20:41.240 Yeah.
00:20:41.880 I would only quibble with the word managed.
00:20:44.700 We're in decline, but I don't think managed is entirely accurate because we don't have anyone capable in any of our major institutions of managing even growth, let alone decline.
00:20:58.220 We are in a leadership crisis, whether – and it's showing up most vividly right now in our banking system and our banking regulatory system.
00:21:07.180 And certainly anyone paying attention to what is happening in this country with an open border to the south, wide open, the fentanyl crisis, the drug crisis, what we are watching as no longer a Cold War with China.
00:21:21.240 They are no longer an adversary.
00:21:23.160 They are an enemy killing hundreds of thousands of Americans with their export of fentanyl and other deadly drugs.
00:21:32.000 And this administration is in direct alignment with the Communist Chinese Party.
00:21:38.660 And they are hand in glove, managing to at least, I think, come to terms with the reality, the American people, that we have a puppet government.
00:21:52.780 We have a shadow government.
00:21:55.160 We have a puppet president, a shadow government, and immense challenges.
00:22:01.540 And we have an education – I mean, we can't even look to it – we can't even break this down to short-term and long-term because the Marxist Dems have destroyed public education.
00:22:12.020 They have indoctrinated an entire generation of our kids who are to step up and do what?
00:22:19.600 They don't even understand the history, the heritage, and the values of this country any longer.
00:22:24.420 This is a deep, dark place into which we've dug ourselves.
00:22:28.600 I mean, there's no doubt this is an inflection point in the history of this republic and for the American people, and it's not going to get solved overnight.
00:22:38.600 We've got – you know, we've got 10, 15, 20 years ahead of us that's going to take to sort this thing out.
00:22:45.480 It's going to be a long, tough struggle.
00:22:47.100 I'm very optimistic that we can get there and get this thing sorted, but it is going to be very tough, and we're going to go through some massive – we're going to hit some massive potholes and some massive speed bumps.
00:22:57.560 So I think people – particularly people who listen to your show and watch you, Lou, and have watched you over the last 30 or 40 years, War Room, people that follow President Trump, I think most of us realize this is not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick.
00:23:10.600 But it has to be done.
00:23:12.440 But every day gets a little darker, and it's because of – and it's right there.
00:23:17.260 And what I think gets most people – people the most upset, there is supposed to be a political party that's supposed to stand up to this, and you don't see it.
00:23:26.240 You really just see continued weakness, weakness, fecklessness, all of it.
00:23:32.120 And it's scary right now.
00:23:35.040 The Republicans have got to step up and take a stand on this stuff.
00:23:38.060 Well, let's talk about that because you and I have a difference of view on the debt ceiling discussion and whether a fragile majority in the House is the ideal group of people to take this on.
00:23:51.660 Speaker McCarthy is saying that we're not going to pass a clean debt ceiling and we have to spend less money.
00:23:58.420 Now, that's all fine and good.
00:24:00.760 But I am a conservative.
00:24:03.160 I am a capitalist.
00:24:04.860 And I want – I like prudent fiscal policy.
00:24:09.080 And I – but that seems to me like a long-ago dream that it would even be achievable under these circumstances.
00:24:15.960 And what is achievable is a resounding Republican defeat if they take on the issue of the debt ceiling and take another beating by the Marxist Dems as they have every time that they have challenged the debt ceiling.
00:24:32.520 I always have considered it too late to have the discussion about spending.
00:24:36.780 It's about authorization.
00:24:38.540 And the result, if they don't do it, will be, I think, another brutal beatdown by the Marxist Dems of the Republican Party, just as they are emerging as a powerful force of countervailing power against these destructive and anti-American Marxist Dems. 0.50
00:25:00.880 You and I are definitely in two different camps.
00:25:05.220 Let me explain my – no, because you've been doing this a lot longer.
00:25:09.000 You've seen many, many cycles of this.
00:25:11.100 I think that the – and let's go back to the $6.8 trillion budget.
00:25:15.220 I mean, and this is why I try to focus people – it's not the wokeness of SEB, although, trust me, on the margins that added to it and it was not properly managed, the control of the currency and the FDIC should have seen this bank was insolvent in last year, probably third or fourth quarter.
00:25:34.440 It had 185 to one leverage ratio.
00:25:38.100 A bank should have three to five times.
00:25:40.120 They had 185 times.
00:25:41.940 It was outrageous.
00:25:42.740 But the central part of why we're in this jam is Biden's spending that caused the over-the-top spending when aggregate demand was back.
00:25:50.640 It fueled inflation that didn't – fueled the spending, fueled inflation that then destroyed the government bonds that were all priced at low interest rates.
00:26:00.820 They had to get high interest rates.
00:26:02.260 They had to kill the inflation.
00:26:03.280 We're in a vicious circle.
00:26:04.920 If you – you said you like prudence.
00:26:07.700 You like prudent economic policy.
00:26:09.540 I would love to have prudent economic policy.
00:26:11.660 That train left the station, Lou, and I think the strongest argument I got against your position is they showed you what they are when they put up the $6.8 trillion budget.
00:26:22.160 There's not one thing they cut.
00:26:23.880 In fact, they gave the federal employees a 5.2 percent pay raise, and every program they increased.
00:26:30.020 They didn't try to meet you at all.
00:26:31.140 People – and I think it's incumbent upon us to make sure they understand the spending here is the problem.
00:26:36.380 The spending is the over-the-top government spending, and the deficits, and how the deficits are financed are the being part of the problem.
00:26:44.400 I am actually the hardest position, and I think the correct position.
00:26:48.200 Not one penny increase to the debt ceiling.
00:26:50.780 Not one penny.
00:26:51.600 And they're going to have to come forward, and they just said, by the way, in their budget, they have $3 trillion of taxes, okay?
00:26:59.100 What they don't – and they say it's going to cut the deficit.
00:27:01.560 The deficit in their budget, if you extrapolate it out, is $22 trillion in the next 10 years.
00:27:07.400 We're at $55 trillion, net $3 trillion they take out in taxes, right?
00:27:12.360 So we're over $50 trillion spending almost a trillion and a half dollars, $2 trillion a year in interest payments.
00:27:18.720 It's not sustainable.
00:27:20.080 It's not even close to being sustainable.
00:27:21.840 And what we have going for us, the best selling point we have to the American people is Biden's inflation is destroying you.
00:27:29.720 We've had 24 straight months of negative real earnings.
00:27:32.820 The harder you work, the less money you have.
00:27:35.600 You're being eaten alive by Biden's inflation.
00:27:37.900 The only way to stop it is to stop the spending, and the only way to stop the spending is use the leverage of the debt ceiling.
00:27:45.920 You know, I could – we could – with priority of payments because there's enough cash coming in.
00:27:50.400 There's five trading cash.
00:27:51.520 If you prioritize payments, Steve Bannon doesn't need to raise the debt ceiling a penny, and you can manage this country.
00:27:57.540 You can pay all the interest payments.
00:27:59.320 You can pay all the first amount what comes due.
00:28:01.640 You can pay all Medicare and all Social Security, 100 cents on the dollar.
00:28:05.900 And then you've got what's left over.
00:28:08.500 You've got defense.
00:28:09.340 And then you've got Medicaid.
00:28:10.460 You've got to make some tough calls.
00:28:11.980 And you're probably going to have a 5% or 10% cut to the budget.
00:28:15.340 But that's the way you do it.
00:28:16.280 The way you do it, you use the debt ceiling as your leverage.
00:28:18.940 And then you're forced to either stretch payments of things that are discretionary spending or you get into things like Medicaid that need to be – you know, you need to take a couple of trillion dollars out of these programs over 10 years.
00:28:30.460 It's the only way to get to a balanced budget, and the only way we're going to survive is to get to a balanced budget is you've got to make tough calls, and you've got to make them now.
00:28:37.740 And I think the American people would have you back.
00:28:39.880 You would not be able to demonize.
00:28:40.940 And here's why.
00:28:41.540 When this debt ceiling – when the debt ceiling negotiations really have to take place, it should probably be in June, July, August, the country's economy is going to be a dumpster fire.
00:28:52.380 And your solution is, hey, I can put out the fire, but here's how we have to put it out.
00:28:56.840 But you argue for a reason.
00:29:01.820 You argue for classic economics.
00:29:04.380 You're arguing with madmen because here's why, and this is why I – Lou, more of my friends and colleagues are in your camp than in my camp.
00:29:13.580 No, no, no.
00:29:14.380 The more of my friends are in your camp than my camp, and I say you guys assume that there's rational people across the other side of the table because you're rational and talking about rational economic policy.
00:29:24.920 It's not rational.
00:29:25.900 If you see what they've done to date, this – and that budget is a work of a madman.
00:29:30.780 So how do you – the only way to deal with the irrational is you take a very hard, almost irrational step, and that is, hey, guess what?
00:29:37.400 Not one penny increase in the debt ceiling.
00:29:40.020 We're going to keep the debt ceiling, and we're going to figure out how we're going to use that as the leverage to manage around it.
00:29:44.960 Now, it's a very hard position.
00:29:47.060 I understand that.
00:29:49.020 But, Lou, you know me.
00:29:50.060 It's a difficult position, but I think it's an impossible position.
00:29:53.780 And here's the reason, Steve.
00:29:55.900 When I said I believe in a prudent fiscal policy, believe me, I'm quite aware that the last half century have been problematic in that regard.
00:30:07.940 But we don't have a choice here.
00:30:10.300 This is a time when we are going to see people losing jobs, not adding to the coffers of the federal government through taxes and revenue receipts.
00:30:21.180 We have before us arguably the potential for the greatest – I truly believe this – the greatest economic setback, certainly since the Great Recession and possibly the Great Depression.
00:30:39.100 We have to understand what's at stake here.
00:30:41.900 We are looking at a – right now, geopolitically, a China that is on the march, and it means to move – what do you – let's do a thought experiment here.
00:30:55.680 Let's assume that we go to war with China tomorrow. 0.99
00:30:59.260 How comfortable is anyone in this country with an impaired puppet president as the commander-in-chief, with this assortment of bizarre personalities that make up his cabinet, 0.90
00:31:14.540 with secretaries of critically important departments like defense and energy and homeland security and justice?
00:31:26.220 Do we really want to go to war with those people in command of those departments, and what are we doing about it, and what is the Republican Party going to do?
00:31:36.560 Because they've been the go-along, come-along party for quite some time.
00:31:40.420 The only period of success for the Republicans in the last arguably 30 years was a four-year interregnum directed by President Donald J. Trump.
00:31:53.460 He's not there.
00:31:54.640 They spend more time, the Republicans, trying to destroy him and his candidacy for 2024 than they do strategizing on how in the world to compete with a political party that poses as the Democratic Party,
00:32:12.220 that has changed the rules for elections, for campaigns, and assuring the integrity of those elections, of which there is damn little.
00:32:23.880 We have to look at this holistically, I think, and holistically it says to get bogged down in a quibble over $3 trillion in the next 12 to 18 months is just a bizarre and perhaps a fatal blow to the Republican Party because you know the Democrats will beat them to death.
00:32:47.320 But here's the thing you assume.
00:32:49.940 You assume, by your argument of basically compromising, that the economy is going to get demonstrably better.
00:32:56.080 My theory of the case is that you're wrong.
00:32:57.820 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:32:59.080 I didn't, no, no, no, no.
00:33:00.700 I'm not, I think I said quite the opposite.
00:33:03.300 I said we are on the verge.
00:33:05.920 We are facing the potential disaster that will be the equivalent of at least the Great Recession,
00:33:11.320 and certainly the possibility, the Great Depression.
00:33:16.880 No, I agree.
00:33:17.480 If we compromise with them on the debt ceiling, and because remember, to compromise on the debt ceiling,
00:33:21.900 you're essentially compromising on their spending proposals.
00:33:24.360 If we do that, the country clearly is going to look at it.
00:33:26.960 What the hell am I compromising on?
00:33:28.860 I'm saying let's focus on the real issues.
00:33:31.200 No, but my point is you're prepared to give them, you're prepared to give them relief on the debt ceiling, correct?
00:33:38.700 Give them relief?
00:33:40.600 By the way, Mitch McConnell gave them relief.
00:33:46.260 No, Mitch McConnell gave them relief.
00:33:48.620 What they will be in the political position is, the Republican Party will be the party of reneging on.
00:33:56.340 What the audience is hearing now is Lou and I off-screen monthly argue about this behind the scenes.
00:34:02.920 No, okay, but if you, you, are you saying that you want and you would agree to a Biden increase in the debt ceiling?
00:34:11.100 To take it above the 30%?
00:34:13.500 What I'm saying to you is that money has already been agreed to by the Republicans in the Senate
00:34:19.800 and signed off on by Mitch McConnell,
00:34:23.000 and there is no way home from the fact that the Republican Party voted for that omnibus bill.
00:34:28.920 Those are now the obligations of the United States government.
00:34:32.520 Do I think there should be a negotiation where we could reduce spending?
00:34:36.780 I'm saying that we can meet those obligations.
00:34:39.660 Okay.
00:34:40.040 I cannot increase the debt ceiling one penny.
00:34:44.240 I will meet all those obligations and never default on a U.S. security or the defaults off the table.
00:34:50.680 It's impossible to default.
00:34:52.520 In fact, because here's why I ran this exercise with Russ Vogt, who was deputy OMB director.
00:34:58.600 We had planned for 100 days to force McConnell and Schumer and Pelosi's hand in 2017 in September when we had the debt ceiling issue then.
00:35:09.520 And you can pay all the security.
00:35:13.600 You can pay all the cash interest.
00:35:15.300 You can pay any security that's coming due.
00:35:17.240 You can pay it.
00:35:18.100 You can pay all Medicare and Social Security.
00:35:19.840 You can pay all Medicare and all Social Security, 100%, and I think most of the defense budget.
00:35:24.480 You get down to the discretionary part, and particularly Medicaid, which needs to be gotten into, you've got to make some tough calls.
00:35:30.740 You're not going to make all those payments.
00:35:32.020 But you can't do that.
00:35:33.240 You can't do that to the American people.
00:35:34.840 You right now cannot put the Republican Party in the awful political position of denying the people who are most dependent upon the federal government in the worst way.
00:35:47.900 Those people taking Medicaid, the elderly who are dependent upon their Social Security, the elderly who are dependent upon Medicare for their health.
00:35:58.160 Let me finish this.
00:35:59.840 Let me finish this.
00:36:00.480 Go ahead.
00:36:00.980 Because Republicans have bought into each one of these programs, and now the idiots, the idiot rhinos want to go after Social Security. 0.84
00:36:11.480 The Republicans will never win another damn election in this country if we let these fools proceed.
00:36:17.900 That's off the table.
00:36:19.200 Medicare and Social Security off the table.
00:36:20.620 I do think you have to get into Medicaid.
00:36:22.220 I do agree.
00:36:23.020 And by the way, this is the way you force decisions.
00:36:24.940 If you can take back the $200 billion and not put additional $200 billion in Ukraine, you're going to be able to make more Medicaid payments, and you're going to be able to keep the Department of Education.
00:36:35.400 My point is they're all tradeoffs.
00:36:36.980 Right now, we're never facing tradeoffs.
00:36:39.120 We have to start making tough calls.
00:36:41.220 I think the American people, seeing where the economy is and how it's not getting better and you just can't throw money at it, are prepared to have people step forward and say, okay, here's a plan.
00:36:51.820 It's going to be a tough plan, but here's a plan.
00:36:54.000 Because, Lou, remember, the budget he just gave you has a $2 trillion annual deficit in it.
00:37:00.580 The Fed, as you know, can't print that money.
00:37:02.900 You can't monetize the debt because you're seeing how they're having difficulty right now.
00:37:07.420 Here's my point.
00:37:08.360 The game is over.
00:37:10.260 All you're advocating is continue to play the game.
00:37:12.640 All my point is is that now's the time to step forward and say, no, you're not.
00:37:18.660 You keep doing that, Steve, and I admire the debating technique, but the reality is it's not what I'm saying.
00:37:24.800 What I am saying.
00:37:26.380 I'm going to propose a tour.
00:37:28.020 I think Lou Dobbs and I are going to go on tour.
00:37:30.180 It's the Dobbs-Bannon show.
00:37:31.440 No, I want to take it to a couple of live venues and have this debate.
00:37:37.260 Because, look, you've done this for many, many decades.
00:37:40.760 I'm essentially a newbie.
00:37:42.820 But I do believe that it's a new debate.
00:37:44.440 Essentially, to me what's fundamentally interesting, it would be a debate between great friends and people who have the same values, and we both want the same thing for this country.
00:37:56.180 What I also want is to be certain that the Republicans don't get so enamored with the idea of this damn debt ceiling that they destroy the party, which is very well what they could do.
00:38:06.740 When the party represents our last best hope for fixing these damn problems, along with the leader of the party, Donald Trump.
00:38:15.980 The people are seeing right now on this podcast, or my old and dear friend, before Donald Trump came on the scene, I spent many years trying to convince a younger Lou Dobbs that he should run for the presidency.
00:38:30.520 Well, wait a minute, Steve.
00:38:32.000 That younger remark, are you implying I'm too old now?
00:38:36.740 No, what are you talking about?
00:38:39.020 You're a kid compared to these other guys.
00:38:40.960 No.
00:38:41.340 In fact, after Trump wins in 2024, Lou Dobbs is my man for 28.
00:38:46.420 I don't need that.
00:38:48.620 God bless you, Steve.
00:38:51.120 You know what?
00:38:51.800 After all of the dust settles and everything, I think Steve Bannon has a nice ring to it for high office.
00:39:00.600 You keep overlooking the obvious talent.
00:39:04.660 No, no, no.
00:39:05.480 I'm much better on my show.
00:39:08.700 I'm much better on my show.
00:39:10.340 Well, you are great on your show.
00:39:11.960 Oh, I've got to say this too, Steve, because you mentioned it and I meant to say something.
00:39:15.580 You were talking about your speech at CPAC.
00:39:17.820 And I sent a note to President Trump saying that Steve Bannon is now the greatest surrogate and supporter of President Trump ever.
00:39:32.760 That was a magnificent speech.
00:39:35.160 And I know that the left went nuts because you were so articulate and compelling.
00:39:40.300 But I really mean this, my friend.
00:39:42.740 That was one hell of a stem winder, as we used to say.
00:39:45.680 And God bless you.
00:39:47.820 I thank you.
00:39:48.820 And, Lou, you and I have talked about this often.
00:39:52.240 Even – I keep telling people, I said, even if you don't like the sound of Trump's voice, when you just look at where we are today and where this country is rapidly headed, and you look at the four years under Trump, it's – there is no logical choice but Trump.
00:40:04.200 I mean Trump gave you four years of peace and prosperity.
00:40:07.200 And one of the reasons is that the criminals in Tehran and Beijing and Moscow, the KGB, the CCP, the Ayatollahs, you know, throw in Turkey, Pakistan. 0.82
00:40:18.760 And these people both respected Trump, but even more they feared it, and that's why we had peace.
00:40:24.680 And his prosperity was just unparalleled.
00:40:27.520 And this country is in such a crisis right now, and it's only getting worse, that the speech to me was pretty straightforward.
00:40:35.240 Lay out the crisis, the financial and economic and the geopolitical, and just go through some things that Trump accomplished.
00:40:42.080 And he's talking about getting more done in the future.
00:40:44.620 It's a pretty straightforward argument, but I appreciate it.
00:40:49.420 Thank you very much.
00:40:50.280 It was from the heart.
00:40:52.280 I didn't use notes, and I was very satisfied with it.
00:40:56.560 I think it laid out the president's case in 15 minutes.
00:41:02.340 It was absolutely even more terrific than what I've said.
00:41:06.500 It's just a great speech and in support of a great president at a time in which it was and is much, much needed.
00:41:18.420 Steve, we always give our guests the last word.
00:41:21.800 Your concluding thoughts, as I say, thank you for being with us here today.
00:41:25.560 We really appreciate it.
00:41:25.960 It's an honor to have you as a friend, colleague, and to come on to the War Room and help us out there.
00:41:30.640 I love your podcast and coming on there.
00:41:32.560 And I really got to think, here's the reason.
00:41:35.640 You are a – on political economy, you come from the classic school.
00:41:41.080 You've led this country for 40 years and explained it to people, both at CNN and at Fox.
00:41:47.100 And as you know, I'm a more right-wing populist nationalist, and I think – I really – I think we've got to think about doing this.
00:41:53.520 We go around to a couple places and do it live and then have the audience participate.
00:41:57.080 I think people would love it because your fan base is massive.
00:42:01.100 And I think that War Room Posse would love to see us together.
00:42:04.700 So we'll talk to your producer after as we've got to think about this.
00:42:08.600 A great idea, which I will automatically agree to.
00:42:11.980 Anytime we can get together and have a Coke or a hamburger or whatever and get a few ideas out there in front of the public, I'm all in.
00:42:23.840 Appreciate it, Steve.
00:42:24.920 Steve Bannon, the extraordinarily successful host of the extraordinarily successful War Room.
00:42:32.900 God bless you, and thanks for being with us here, Steve.
00:42:35.360 Steve Bannon.
00:42:36.880 Thanks, Lou.
00:42:37.620 I appreciate it.
00:42:38.240 Thanks for having me on.
00:42:39.400 Thanks for being with us, everybody.
00:42:40.920 Here tomorrow will be another great American, Mike Lindell, fighting for election integrity, battling for the country, spending tens of millions of his own money to expose what happened in the 2020 election and to assure it never happens again.
00:42:56.920 That's tomorrow.
00:42:58.180 Please be with us.
00:42:59.040 Till then, God bless you, and God bless America.
00:43:02.800 Thank you.