The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - March 15, 2025


The Stone Zone ｜ 03-14-25

Topics
leaked classified information stock market corrections housing problem
Hosted by
Roger Stone Troy Smith Jake Novak
Mentioned
Barry Habib Donald Trump Scott Besson Joe Biden Sarah Bloom Raskin Rocky Rockford MBS Highway Elon Musk Ronald Reagan Robert Reich Ed Martin Kathy Castor Jamie Raskin Adam Schiff Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld Elise Stefanik Geraldo Rivera Eric Swalwell Pat Kashpatel and 15 more
The Stone Zone ｜ 03-13-25 The Stone Zone ｜ 03-17-25

Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

145.85

Word count

5,838

Sentence count

463

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Roger Stone, former White House strategist and adviser to Donald Trump, joins us in The Stone Zone to talk about the latest in politics and economics, including the latest on Black Friday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Plus, a story about a woman who bought $11 worth of Cheesecake and left it in her purse.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30.000 It was just another holiday party until Michelle arrived with a chocolate Basque cheesecake. 0.87
00:00:35.320 Two rich cocos, caramelized top, which Michelle claimed to have just whipped together.
00:00:40.660 But the evidence told another story.
00:00:43.040 An empty PC box, a receipt in her purse.
00:00:46.040 All right, Susan, I bought the PC chocolate Basque cheesecake.
00:00:50.000 It was just $11.
00:00:51.420 Can you stop true cramming me?
00:00:52.880 Can I have another slice?
00:00:54.540 Try the season's biggest hits from the PC Holiday Insider's Report.
00:01:00.000 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:01:13.780 People love him and respect him.
00:01:15.260 Roger Stone.
00:01:16.480 Now, get in the zone. 0.94
00:01:18.460 It's the Stone Zone.
00:01:20.500 Here's Roger Stone.
00:01:24.540 Welcome.
00:01:25.180 You are entering the Stone Zone.
00:01:29.440 And here we talk politics.
00:01:31.840 That's because I'm a veteran of 13 national presidential campaigns.
00:01:36.960 I spent almost 50 years in the corroded rectum of the two-party system.
00:01:42.000 I've seen it all.
00:01:43.420 Here on the Stone Zone, we criticize both Republicans and Democrats.
00:01:47.280 We bring you the stone-cold truth as we see it.
00:01:51.600 You may recall an interview we did recently with Naval Commander Rocky Rockford.
00:01:56.360 He ran for Congress in the 14th District of Florida.
00:02:00.880 Now, they hold a 218 to 215 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that's on paper.
00:02:10.380 Two seats are vacant.
00:02:11.580 That's because Congressman Matt Gaetz resigned, was appointed attorney general, then withdrew his name from consideration, and also the national security advisor also resigned from a seat in Florida.
00:02:30.140 That left two vacancies. 0.98
00:02:33.100 They will be filled in an April special election.
00:02:37.180 So right now, the U.S. House of Representatives really has a one-seat Republican majority.
00:02:43.340 Rocky Rockford challenged the outcome of his election because he was able to prove that 37,495 vote-by-mail ballots were improperly counted.
00:02:58.000 The reason they were improperly counted is because when you went to the voter registration, you found that there was no Social Security number, no voter ID number, and no date of birth, meaning those ballots were unlawful.
00:03:15.700 Rockford then went and challenged his election before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration.
00:03:23.920 That's where election contests are adjudicated.
00:03:26.540 To my surprise, the House administration committee rejected the challenge by Rocky Rockford of the Democrat, Kathy Castor, who was declared the winner.
00:03:40.360 The House committee said that the filing deadline was not properly met.
00:03:47.860 The filing deadline was aligned to the state of Florida's certification of the election.
00:03:52.280 That date was never published by the state, issued to the public, or issued to the media.
00:03:58.720 In fact, Rockford had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to the Florida Secretary of State to finally get the date.
00:04:06.700 So I think the House administration committee has made a bad call here.
00:04:11.520 You would have thought Republicans would stand up for an honest election, would have unseated Kathy Castor and properly seated Commander Rocky Rockford, thus at least increasing their margin by one.
00:04:26.500 All eyes, of course, on the upstate New York district of Elise Stefanik, although Stefanik, one of the president's better appointments, one of his best appointments, was appointed U.N. ambassador.
00:04:39.260 She has not resigned from the House because of the pending special election in Florida.
00:04:46.920 That election in upstate New York is unset because there is no vacancy.
00:04:53.480 But normally speaking, when she does resign, New York State Secretary of State and the governor will declare a vacancy.
00:05:03.960 And most normally, the election would be held in 90 days.
00:05:09.180 All eyes will be on that upstate New York district.
00:05:11.900 It was, up until 2016, represented by a Democrat and the Democrat candidate, a farmer, doesn't seem to be featuring his party identification in his advertising.
00:05:25.740 His name is Gebeline.
00:05:27.560 He is talking about sealing the border and cracking down on waste, fraud and corruption.
00:05:34.960 Sounds to me like he's trying to sound like a Republican.
00:05:38.140 Americans got much welcome relief from inflation as the consumer price index unexpectedly declined to 2.8 percent in February after reaching a 3 percent level in January.
00:05:52.600 This follows five consecutive spikes.
00:05:55.940 More good news and prices, which liberals were going out of their minds about only days ago,
00:06:01.800 but seems to be the yardstick of the post-election inflation spike, dropped from over $8 per dozen at the beginning of March to $5.50 this week,
00:06:12.420 according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and their trading economics data.
00:06:18.460 Energy prices also dropped by 0.2 percent with both fuel oil and gasoline down.
00:06:24.100 Gasoline down 5.1 percent and fuel oil down 3.1 percent.
00:06:29.560 So in the scant two months President Trump has been in office, he's proving that he will indeed make America great again.
00:06:38.640 The left-wing Democrat congressman from Maryland, Jamie Raskin, is demanding an investigation into the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
00:06:51.080 Maybe this is because Democrat congressman, Jamie Raskin, and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin,
00:06:59.100 who was Biden's nominee to the Federal Reserve's top banking regulation job,
00:07:05.160 violated federal conflict of interest laws by failing to properly disclose stock shares that his wife received for her work at a Colorado-based financial technology company.
00:07:17.260 Raskin was required to disclose this in his filings with the U.S. House of Representatives, but failed to do so.
00:07:25.340 This is a violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act passed by the Congress.
00:07:32.500 Raskin is trying to cast aspersions on Ed Martin, who is the president's acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
00:07:40.640 Perhaps Raskin's failure to report these millions of dollars in stock gains is something that U.S. Attorney Martin should look into.
00:07:50.540 Raskin also said during the January 6th committee that he would provide proof of my involvement in illegal activities on January 6th,
00:07:59.300 when in fact he and his fugazi hearings produced no such thing.
00:08:04.420 I, for one, can only hope that Ed Martin, the new acting U.S. attorney, will look closely into Raskin's case once he takes his new post.
00:08:14.520 Now, if you were watching the Associated Press, you would get the incorrect impression that the recent elections in Greenland
00:08:23.640 trended against the possibility of Greenland joining the United States.
00:08:29.520 That's actually untrue.
00:08:31.800 The outcome of the towards self-determination by the island was clearly reflected in the recent elections.
00:08:42.360 In fact, in a landmark election, Greenland's right of center Democratic Party was merged victorious.
00:08:50.960 This is a pro-independence party.
00:08:52.960 The pro-business party, advocating for a measured approach to independence from Denmark, secured 30% of the vote.
00:09:01.440 In the previous election, they got 9% of the vote.
00:09:06.160 The pro-independence party's gains emphasized the development of Greenland's abundant natural resources,
00:09:13.040 particularly its rare earth minerals, which are crucial to modern technology.
00:09:17.200 Make no mistake about it, President Donald Trump is quite serious about the possibility that Greenland would join the United States.
00:09:26.620 He met recently with NATO General Secretary Mark Rutt and expressed confidence the United States would annex Greenland,
00:09:34.580 even suggesting the head of the NATO alliance should be a key player in facilitating that acquisition.
00:09:41.160 The president said, and I quote,
00:09:42.640 I think it will happen, that was what he told reporters when he emerged from his meeting with the NATO Secretary General.
00:09:50.680 Greenland's pro-business party, as I say, scored heavy, heavy increases in their most recent parliamentary elections.
00:10:01.100 The pro-U.S. independence party had the most shocking upswing, in fact, in recent years.
00:10:06.520 If I were betting man, I would say that Greenland will become part of the United States,
00:10:13.400 but I categorically deny that I will be a candidate for governor if they do.
00:10:19.900 Tulsi Gabbard, the president's new director of national intelligence, is cracking down on leakers within the executive administration.
00:10:30.180 On X, Tulsi Gabbard posted, and I quote,
00:10:35.060 Our nation's intelligence community must be focused on our national security mission.
00:10:40.780 Politically motivated leaks undermine our national security and the trust of the American people,
00:10:46.420 and they will not be tolerated.
00:10:48.920 Unfortunately, such leaks have become commonplace with no investigation or accountability.
00:10:54.360 That ends now, said Gabbard.
00:10:57.280 We know of and are aggressively pursuing recent leaks from within the intelligence community,
00:11:03.080 and those leakers will be held accountable.
00:11:06.840 Gabbard then provided an astonishing leak of lists that have already been caught.
00:11:10.760 The most memorable one that I can conceive of came from the inspector general of Biden's own Justice Department.
00:11:19.100 Just weeks ago, he determined that as congressmen, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell had both leaked classified information
00:11:28.320 regarding the Russian collusion hoax in violation of federal law.
00:11:35.400 No one is above the law.
00:11:37.220 That's what Congressman, now Senator Adam Schiff, told us repeatedly.
00:11:42.580 In her post, Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii, also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve,
00:11:53.720 cited specific leaks to the Washington Post, to the Huffington Post,
00:11:57.800 including members of the intelligence community sharing classified information regarding Israel and Iran with the Washington Post.
00:12:07.360 You're tuned in to The Stone Zone.
00:12:10.140 Don't go away.
00:12:10.900 We'll be right back with more of the Inside Skiddy on American politics right here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
00:12:34.220 This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:12:38.020 This shrimp and coconut sauce is divine.
00:12:49.460 What's your secret?
00:12:50.420 Goya coconut milk.
00:12:51.580 How does it taste so good?
00:12:52.940 It's all in that real coconut flavor and that rich, creamy texture.
00:12:57.020 What about thickeners and added sugars?
00:12:59.260 None.
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00:13:02.300 What can I make with it?
00:13:03.360 From curries to sweet treats like coconut flan?
00:13:06.380 The possibilities are endless.
00:13:08.800 Goya coconut milk.
00:13:10.000 Take your cooking to the next level.
00:13:11.620 No question about it.
00:13:12.720 Find it in the Goya section of your local grocery store.
00:13:15.040 If it's Goya, it has to be good.
00:13:16.800 This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:13:29.700 They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
00:13:33.480 And I'll say this in front of Roger.
00:13:34.940 He's no baby.
00:13:35.860 And right now he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
00:13:39.580 Now they treated him very unfairly.
00:13:41.720 Now, get in the zone. 0.94
00:13:43.900 It's The Stone Zone.
00:13:45.900 Here's Roger Stone.
00:13:50.040 And you're back in The Stone Zone.
00:13:53.020 Here we talk about all things political. 1.00
00:13:55.920 And, well, you remember that old saying, it's the economy, stupid. 0.99
00:13:59.840 Coming up a little later in the show, Barry Habib, the chief executive officer of MBS Highway, 0.99
00:14:05.300 an American entrepreneur, but more precisely, one of the most recognized experts on mortgages and housing,
00:14:12.940 as well as a keen economic analyst, will join us to talk about the stock market, the inflation numbers,
00:14:19.520 the job numbers, and much, much more.
00:14:24.960 Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and his, shall we call him, the immigration czar, Tom Homan,
00:14:34.700 who, trust me, is one tough customer, are showing results.
00:14:39.860 The internal Border Patrol data shows that the number of special interest aliens who crossed our border illegally in February is down massively.
00:14:48.240 In February 2024, the Border Patrol apprehended 599 Maniturians, just a 99.8% drop.
00:15:04.600 The number of Chinese down 96.
00:15:07.100 The number of Syrians illegally crossing our border down 85%.
00:15:11.240 The number of Turks illegally crossing our borders down 82%.
00:15:16.100 The number of Pakistanis illegally crossing our border down 61%.
00:15:21.560 The number of Afghanis crossing our border down 55%.
00:15:26.600 For all of this, there were 4,747 special interest aliens apprehended in February 2024.
00:15:37.880 So that number is down to just 302.
00:15:42.300 That's a 93% drop.
00:15:44.600 The Border Patrol's nationwide recorded gotaways have plummeted to a stunningly low daily average of just 77 over the last 21 days,
00:15:55.060 according to internal Border Patrol data.
00:15:59.360 Would you like to know how many Joe Biden averaged?
00:16:02.740 Biden averaged 1,837 gotaways per day in the fiscal year 2023 at the height of the crisis.
00:16:11.400 That totals 670,674 illegals who came into this country in Biden's last year.
00:16:24.300 Again, Donald Trump keeping his promise to seal our border.
00:16:30.120 Promises made, promises kept.
00:16:32.300 A left-wing terrorist was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a Tesla showroom.
00:16:40.560 Tesla has become a flashpoint for the radical left.
00:16:44.600 We learned that your tax dollars were being funneled through USAID to various pop-up nonprofit organizations
00:16:55.180 that, in turn, using this money to fund the protests and, yes, the wave of attacks against Tesla,
00:17:04.020 against Tesla's vehicles and their showrooms, their stores.
00:17:10.840 Elon Musk called this out only days ago.
00:17:14.320 Attorney General Pam Bondi announced yesterday that someone had been arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Tesla showroom
00:17:22.480 and warns that the Department of Justice will come after those who perpetrate and fund this recent wave of attacks against Tesla vehicles.
00:17:31.620 The arrest criminals face up to 20 years in federal prison.
00:17:37.380 There is also a new phenomenon.
00:17:39.380 It's called swatting.
00:17:40.320 That's when someone calls the police and reports that there's a dangerous situation,
00:17:46.080 maybe even a hostage situation at the home of a number of influential conservative commentators and influencers.
00:17:54.440 Unfortunately, that's not the case.
00:17:56.260 This is very dangerous.
00:17:58.020 Pat Kashpatel, the FBI director, has announced that he will be investigating and cracking down this swatting
00:18:04.980 against prominent conservatives, a dangerous, life-threatening situation.
00:18:10.840 You look at the police.
00:18:12.460 They are merely responding to the call.
00:18:16.060 When we come back, Barry Habib, the CEO of MBS Highway,
00:18:22.440 probably the most respected mortgage and housing expert in the country,
00:18:27.020 but a keen economic analyst is going to talk to us about how the economy is really doing in the early days of the Trump administration.
00:18:36.760 So whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
00:18:39.440 We'll be right back in the Stone Zone with the latest economic scoop.
00:18:43.720 We'll be right back in the Stone Zone.
00:19:14.400 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:19:27.260 I'm not your stepping stone.
00:19:40.060 I'm not your stepping stone.
00:19:42.420 This is the Stone Zone.
00:19:44.960 Now, get in the zone. 0.94
00:19:46.880 It's the Stone Zone.
00:19:48.920 Here's Roger Stone.
00:19:53.900 And we're back in the Stone Zone.
00:19:57.280 Joining me now, Barry Habib.
00:19:59.880 He is the chief executive officer of MBS Highway.
00:20:03.300 He's an entrepreneur, but more specifically, he's widely recognized as one of the country's foremost experts on the housing market and mortgages.
00:20:14.060 He founded and created the certified mortgage advisory certification, which is widely accepted as a standard within the mortgage industry.
00:20:23.880 He's also a number one Amazon bestselling author for his book, Money in the Streets.
00:20:29.460 And he is an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve.
00:20:34.700 When I want to know what's really going on in the economy, I turn to Barry Habib.
00:20:41.040 Barry, welcome to the Stone Zone.
00:20:44.000 Hey, Roger.
00:20:45.960 It's great to be here with you.
00:20:47.520 So, Barry, the president's critics have been flipping out about the stock market as if the stock market is the best indicator of how the economy is doing and how the president's use of tariffs to try to get fairer, more equitable trade agreements with our trading partners is working.
00:21:11.900 I'm not sure the stock market is the best indicator.
00:21:15.100 In fact, I saw Americans got much relief from inflation.
00:21:19.420 The consumer price index declined to 2.8 last month after reaching a high of three points in January.
00:21:28.680 That follows five consecutive monthly spikes.
00:21:32.000 Egg prices are down, going from $8 per dozen to $5.50 a dozen.
00:21:36.920 Energy prices down.
00:21:39.300 Gasoline down 5%.
00:21:41.060 Heating oil down 3%.
00:21:45.720 Tell us how the economy is doing from your point of view.
00:21:49.840 And then I want to get into the inflation rate and how it's being calculated.
00:21:55.400 So, Roger, great points on everything.
00:21:57.940 And when I hear people talk about the stock market and this and that, let's remember, the stock market was at extraordinarily expensive levels, very, very high multiples.
00:22:08.100 In fact, it was overpriced and it's healthy to have a correction.
00:22:12.100 You know, a bunch of crybabies looking at the stock market never goes in a straight line.
00:22:16.460 A 10% correction happens almost every year.
00:22:19.440 You know, where were all these critics were under Joe Biden?
00:22:22.380 We had a 10% correction at the end of 2023.
00:22:24.720 Was anybody saying, oh, my gosh, this is the president's fault?
00:22:27.480 This happens with stock market corrections.
00:22:29.780 They occur when the market gets ahead of itself.
00:22:32.120 It's part of a healthy process.
00:22:33.620 You know, project analogy is if you start working out, if you're completely out of shape, you're going to have some soreness.
00:22:40.580 You know, it's going to be very difficult initially.
00:22:42.600 But the idea is to get healthier.
00:22:44.600 And that's what President Trump is trying to do.
00:22:46.520 Every single move that President Trump is trying to do is to make the economy healthier, to make these trade deals more equitable.
00:22:53.320 And as you said, in the long term, these all work out really well.
00:22:57.040 The president inherited a very faulty economy.
00:23:01.080 Treasury Secretary Besson said, listen, it'll be our economy in six to 12 months.
00:23:05.060 But right now, we're just they're trying to clean up the mess.
00:23:07.460 And the term that he used was we're trying to detox.
00:23:10.420 Those are his words.
00:23:11.320 And I think they're appropriate because it was quite toxic.
00:23:14.340 And we're just trying to detox it, which means some short term pain when things are better eight months from now, six months.
00:23:21.860 Are they going to say thank you?
00:23:23.440 You were right.
00:23:24.060 I'm sure they won't.
00:23:25.260 Point well taken.
00:23:26.440 We've talked a lot on this show about the jobs numbers and how they have been habitually manipulated to appear when Biden was president far better than they really were.
00:23:39.100 You've been very articulate on this point.
00:23:40.860 I want to come back to inflation, though, and how the rate of inflation is calculated by the Fed.
00:23:46.680 You wrote a very thoughtful letter to the president, which you shared with me and I shared with him, in which you raised this point regarding the Fed.
00:23:56.840 They believe inflation is too high because their favorite measure of inflation, the core PCE, the personal consumption expenditure, sits at 2.6 percent, much higher than their 2 percent target.
00:24:09.120 Explain to us what you mean here.
00:24:10.600 So that is precisely right, Roger.
00:24:12.880 The Fed has a favorite way of gauging inflation.
00:24:16.000 It is akin to the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, but this is called personal consumption expenditures, as you've outlined.
00:24:23.240 And you are 100 percent precise.
00:24:25.580 The most recent data shows it's at 2.6 percent, but the most recent data is for January.
00:24:30.060 Here we are, Roger, mid-March.
00:24:31.600 So we're a couple of months behind, but that's the nature of the reporting.
00:24:34.240 There's a lag.
00:24:34.780 Now, the Fed does want it to get to 2 percent, which, by the way, that's a whole different discussion we could have.
00:24:39.820 It's kind of a made-up number anyway.
00:24:41.600 But the problem that we're looking at here is that we may very well be at 2 percent if we were using more real-time data.
00:24:48.680 The problem is that the Fed is using numbers from the BLS or the BEA, and the way they aggregate the data is arcane.
00:24:56.640 It's based on 40, 50 years ago, and they haven't changed the methodology.
00:25:00.340 So what they do is, number one, think about the largest portion of the personal consumption expenditures, as well as the CPI, is something called shelter.
00:25:10.900 That's the roof over your head.
00:25:12.020 Now, most people think maybe that's a mortgage, maybe that's the home value.
00:25:14.620 None of that.
00:25:15.320 It is considered a service.
00:25:16.920 So they take the housing, and they convert it into a service.
00:25:19.900 So rents is easy.
00:25:20.980 What are you paying rent?
00:25:21.860 But if you own a home, what they do is they ask you, if you would rent it, how much we'd rent it for.
00:25:26.780 So obviously that has some potential biases because everybody thinks their home might be worth more than it is or might be rented for more than it's worth.
00:25:34.140 But that aside, the problem that we have is when they're surveyed, it could be reflective of a lease that was signed 6, 8, 12 months earlier.
00:25:42.380 So what if the market's changed in the last 6, 8, 12 months?
00:25:45.300 That's not captured.
00:25:46.880 And the final portion of this delay is that you have a Herculean effort of measuring the whole country.
00:25:54.140 The BLS and the BA is incapable currently of doing that.
00:25:59.200 So they take the country, and they divide it into 6 bite-sized pieces. 0.62
00:26:03.020 But that means they only look at one portion of the country every 6 months.
00:26:07.040 So think about it.
00:26:07.800 If you're looking at a portion in January, that means you're not going to look at it again until July.
00:26:11.720 A lot could have changed in those 6 months.
00:26:13.820 Now, we used AI for this.
00:26:15.800 And we said, okay, let's take a lot of historical data.
00:26:18.200 Between what the government is reporting on shelter and real time, how long is the delay?
00:26:22.560 17.3 months.
00:26:23.740 What this tells us, Roger, is if we were to use real-time data, which we have at our fingertips,
00:26:28.420 Realtor.com, Zillow, 4Logic, ApartmentList, RentIt, we have it.
00:26:33.220 It's showing that there's an enormous difference.
00:26:35.760 And that currently, that 2.6%, if you were using real-time data, it should be 2.1.
00:26:41.840 Listen, Roger, the analogy is like football got a lot better when we started using instant replay.
00:26:46.560 And all sports did as well.
00:26:48.420 Now, once we started using more accurate, real-time information, which became available,
00:26:53.380 things got better.
00:26:54.800 But the government is still not doing that.
00:26:57.140 If we make this change, Roger, think about what happens.
00:26:59.300 Number one, we wind up getting the right information.
00:27:02.560 The Fed's friendlier.
00:27:03.420 Interest rates come down.
00:27:04.480 Homeownership's better.
00:27:05.180 Everything's better.
00:27:06.740 And also, think about how much money the government saves because they spend so much
00:27:10.040 in Social Security based upon cost-of-living adjustments that are tied to these flawed indices.
00:27:17.460 Excellent point.
00:27:18.600 During the most recent presidential campaign, I give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. credit for identifying
00:27:26.080 a huge issue in the country, which is the lack of affordable housing, whether it is buying
00:27:31.920 a home or whether it is renting a roof over your head, it is just out of reach for many
00:27:37.700 Americans.
00:27:38.820 So what, in your opinion, is the, what's the solution to the affordable housing problem?
00:27:45.400 Well, here's what it is in a nutshell.
00:27:47.140 When you take a look at our demographics, and there's a saying, Roger, that you're probably
00:27:50.920 familiar with called, demographics is destiny.
00:27:53.340 And it truly is.
00:27:54.860 We are forming 1.9 million households per year in the United States.
00:27:59.840 But at the same time, we're only constructing, that's the supply side of the equation, 1.4
00:28:06.700 million households per year.
00:28:08.200 So if you need 1.9 and you're constructing 1.4, you have a shortfall.
00:28:12.820 So what happens?
00:28:13.500 The natural law of supply and demand, it drives prices up.
00:28:17.900 And because we have that problem, some people have said, hey, let's attack this, like the 0.96
00:28:22.700 Biden administration wanted to do something extraordinarily foolish.
00:28:25.600 So did Kamala Harris when they said, let's give people $25,000 free money to buy a home 0.87
00:28:31.120 to help them.
00:28:31.720 That exacerbates the problem because that even creates greater demand.
00:28:35.720 That was tried by the Obama administration with unbelievable failure as it fell on its
00:28:40.640 face in 2010.
00:28:42.700 Now, that's not the problem.
00:28:44.640 It's not the demand.
00:28:45.600 It is supply.
00:28:47.160 The solution to the housing problem would be, let's get rates lower, which Scott Besson is
00:28:51.940 keenly aware of and trying to do.
00:28:54.620 And secondarily, it is builders build more homes for that to ease the supply crunch.
00:29:01.480 And that's what we need to do.
00:29:02.860 So unfortunately, that has not yet been the focus.
00:29:05.980 But Scott Besson, at least, is trying to bring rates down.
00:29:08.340 And you know what, Roger?
00:29:09.120 He could do it.
00:29:09.720 There's ways he could do it that are very interesting and that I believe he could be
00:29:13.740 successful at.
00:29:15.460 We've got a little bit of time.
00:29:17.340 Give me a couple of examples.
00:29:19.540 So one is the Treasury General account.
00:29:21.460 That's like the government's checking account.
00:29:23.160 Before the pandemic, they kept it at $300 billion.
00:29:25.500 Now it's $600 billion.
00:29:26.520 They could use some of that money to pay some of the bills instead of borrowing it by issuing
00:29:31.020 Treasuries.
00:29:31.740 Less Treasuries, they go at a premium, higher price, lower yield.
00:29:35.660 Secondarily, Scott Besson also, when he issues Treasuries, can issue less 10 years, making
00:29:41.760 them more scarce.
00:29:43.740 They go for a premium.
00:29:44.680 It brings rates down.
00:29:46.000 Scott Besson can also take advantage of the efficacy of Doge.
00:29:49.300 If Doge eliminates some of the spend and some of the waste, that's less Treasuries, lower
00:29:54.480 rates.
00:29:54.860 And finally, the most important, I think, which we may hear from, perhaps as early as
00:29:59.560 next Wednesday, is if the Fed says, we're not going to cut rates yet, but if we stop
00:30:04.740 the runoff of the balance sheet.
00:30:06.480 Roger, this is the one linchpin here.
00:30:08.640 If the Fed says, hey, we're allowing runoff of our balance sheet right now, $45 billion
00:30:13.020 a month, they told us and promised us by mid-year they would stop that.
00:30:17.320 If they tell us they stop it sooner, what happens is that now the Fed would have to repurchase
00:30:23.160 $45 billion of Treasuries in conjunction with Scott Besson.
00:30:26.800 Scott Besson can use that money to buy more 10-year Treasuries.
00:30:29.900 10-year yields come down.
00:30:31.340 Mortgage rates come down.
00:30:32.560 Housing becomes more affordable.
00:30:34.040 And you've got this whole thing working beautifully.
00:30:36.420 What we've learned, Roger, is one thing.
00:30:37.940 We don't need 4% mortgage rates.
00:30:39.940 Back in August and September, we got to 6% and the housing market was vibrant.
00:30:43.960 If we get just to 6% and we're at about 6 and 3 quarters, we just get about 3 quarters
00:30:48.620 of a percent, you have a very functional, fluid, vibrant housing market.
00:30:52.880 Yeah, I'm thinking back to the Reagan days.
00:30:55.180 I remember the panic in the early days of his presidency within the first year when he
00:31:01.920 cut taxes.
00:31:02.840 I saw Robert Reich, who I actually went to high school with the other day, claiming falsely
00:31:07.620 on X, that deficits, our massive deficit and inflation were caused by tax cuts.
00:31:15.180 But in fact, every president who has cut taxes, whether it is JFK, whether it is Ronald Reagan,
00:31:22.100 whether it is Donald Trump, the country has experienced a sharp increase in revenues when
00:31:29.380 in fact it was spending and borrowing, but spending that caused our inflation problems.
00:31:36.500 Once again, I think Robert Reich is wrong.
00:31:39.940 We've got about a minute and a half.
00:31:41.140 Barry, what say you?
00:31:42.700 Well, I completely agree.
00:31:44.240 Robert Reich has made a fool of himself so many times they stopped putting him on CNBC. 0.57
00:31:48.680 I remember during the Bush administration, he would scream, literally scream, where's 0.87
00:31:53.440 the jobs?
00:31:54.220 Where's the jobs?
00:31:55.120 Well, guess what?
00:31:55.900 Two months later after he's screaming, the jobs came in.
00:31:58.420 He failed to understand that there are lags in these policies.
00:32:01.680 You're precisely correct that typically tax cuts lead to more investment.
00:32:05.580 It leads to the private sector using money more efficiently than the public sector.
00:32:11.180 Doge is proving that.
00:32:12.360 So yes, it is much better in the long term.
00:32:15.240 And yes, during the Reagan administration, we had higher inflation.
00:32:18.260 We had some pain initially.
00:32:19.740 But just like we said, you go on that diet, you feel some sort, you go exercise, you feel
00:32:23.920 some soreness, you feel some discomfort, but longer term it works.
00:32:27.380 This is like a bunch of spoiled brats that have been giving candy, candy, candy to shut 1.00
00:32:32.040 them up, which makes them sick and worse instead of an adult saying, hey, you're going to have
00:32:36.840 to eat your vegetables, do the right thing, and then you will be long living, healthy human
00:32:40.880 beings.
00:32:41.540 That's what the government is trying to do right now under an adult president in Donald
00:32:45.420 Trump.
00:32:46.440 All right.
00:32:46.740 We're talking to Barry Habib right here in the Stone Zone.
00:32:49.920 He is an economic guru.
00:32:51.900 That's what I like to call him.
00:32:53.000 One of the country's foremost experts on both the housing and the mortgage market.
00:32:56.980 And we'll be right back with more of Barry Habib in just a minute.
00:33:00.520 So whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
00:33:02.500 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:33:26.980 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:33:30.860 They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
00:33:34.640 And I'll say this in front of Roger, he's no baby.
00:33:37.040 And right now he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
00:33:40.620 Now they treated him very unfairly.
00:33:43.240 Now get in the zone. 0.99
00:33:45.060 It's the Stone Zone.
00:33:47.100 Here's Roger Stone.
00:33:50.500 Welcome back.
00:33:51.680 You're in the Stone Zone.
00:33:52.880 We're talking to Barry Habib, the chief executive officer of MBS Highway, probably the country's
00:33:59.740 foremost expert on the housing market and mortgages, but also a keen economic analyst in his own
00:34:07.580 right.
00:34:08.080 And we're talking about those lemmings who are running off the edge of the cliff watching 0.57
00:34:13.160 the stock market as if that is the correct indicator of how the economy is doing.
00:34:19.060 It was tickled me to see AOC in an interview this morning, I think it was on MSNBC, talking
00:34:25.280 about how strongly she opposes the coming cuts in Social Security and Medicare, which, of
00:34:31.960 course, President Trump has said repeatedly he has no intention or plan to do.
00:34:38.080 These people put up straw dogs and then try to knock them down.
00:34:42.840 We try to knock them down.
00:34:44.400 But watching her was almost comical.
00:34:46.960 She memorizes these talking points exceedingly well.
00:34:50.640 Barry, I'm kind of interested in the fact that gold is at an all-time high.
00:34:57.060 And I was also interested to see that Elon Musk and his DOGE, the government efficiency
00:35:04.900 panel that he heads, is demanding to inspect our gold reserve, not only at Fort Knox in Kentucky,
00:35:13.220 but also at the New York Federal Reserve.
00:35:16.400 Incredibly, no one has inspected our gold reserve since 1974.
00:35:23.200 Now, this has led some to speculate that, well, maybe the gold is not there or maybe it's been
00:35:29.180 dissipated in some way.
00:35:31.260 Perhaps this is going to turn out to be like Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone's safe.
00:35:36.720 Lots of hype.
00:35:37.520 But then they popped it open and there was nothing there.
00:35:40.200 On the other hand, since our dollar is no longer backed by gold, since we essentially have a
00:35:47.020 fiat currency in which your paper dollar, the money in your wallet, is backed by the full
00:35:52.960 faith and credit of the U.S. government, I'm not sure how it would impact the economy.
00:35:57.980 So I guess two-part questions.
00:35:59.660 Barry, do you have any theory as to whether our gold is intact?
00:36:02.840 And if it wasn't, how would it affect the economy?
00:36:07.160 So, first of all, there's a lot to unpack.
00:36:09.400 They said so many good and important points, Roger, as always.
00:36:12.800 So, first of all, with regards to AOC, completely agree.
00:36:16.060 You got these people, these lemmings. 1.00
00:36:17.640 Another one this morning that I saw was Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.
00:36:20.540 Very childish, very unfair in his approach.
00:36:23.380 Joe Kernan tried to put him in his place.
00:36:25.620 But this is what you have.
00:36:27.360 And people hear this stuff.
00:36:28.920 With regards to gold, you know, Roger, you and I have talked about this.
00:36:32.880 As you know, I was very, very bullish on gold back at about $2,500 and telling you that in
00:36:37.500 previous shows that I thought that would do well.
00:36:40.520 I think it's got a long way to go because especially now, as we head into the season in
00:36:46.840 India where they are huge consumers during the month of May of gold, it probably will reach
00:36:53.580 even further heights, maybe $3,100, $3,200 on gold.
00:36:57.440 So, I think it has room to go, even in the short term.
00:37:01.420 You bring up an interesting question.
00:37:03.040 I don't know if there's a shortfall there.
00:37:06.120 But I think Elon Musk brings up a very good point.
00:37:08.620 Do we have that gold reserve?
00:37:10.480 You remember, Roger, you and I talked about the value of gold.
00:37:13.780 The storage of gold that the U.S. has is valued at, get ready for this, $29 an ounce,
00:37:21.980 okay, which is what it was, you know, way, way, way, way back.
00:37:25.820 However, we know it's now over $3,000 an ounce.
00:37:29.400 If it were to be properly marketed, since we have over 800 metric tons supposedly of gold,
00:37:35.400 that's the amount that's supposed to be there in our reserve, this would amount to about
00:37:39.020 $900 billion that we would have of gold.
00:37:43.800 If we don't have it, what happens to the economy?
00:37:47.500 I don't know that anything really happens to the economy.
00:37:50.980 What does it do for the U.S.?
00:37:52.760 Well, I think that they, at that point in time, would have to properly evaluate it. 0.96
00:37:56.600 If they would have evaluated at $3,000 an ounce, it could be a world of crap that we'd be in.
00:38:02.820 But since it's valued currently at $29 an ounce, if you only had half of what was there,
00:38:09.580 let's say half the gold in Fort Knox is gone, okay?
00:38:12.600 And at the New York, it's gone.
00:38:14.780 You still could say we have $450 billion more than we thought we did, because it's valued
00:38:20.840 only at $29 an ounce.
00:38:22.680 That's the one thing that very few people know and understand about the gold market, which
00:38:27.220 even if this were to happen, I think that Elon Musk is right in wanting to investigate it.
00:38:32.020 All right.
00:38:32.640 We have about two minutes left.
00:38:34.460 Here is my favorite question.
00:38:37.080 President Trump has talked about the possibility of doing away with the federal income tax.
00:38:41.560 As you know, until 1913, the country was completely financed by revenue from tariffs.
00:38:49.660 Is this a realistic possibility, particularly if we had deep spending cuts caused by the Doge
00:38:55.020 investigations?
00:38:55.700 The best thing we could do would be go to a VAT tax.
00:38:58.860 I am a huge fan of a VAT tax.
00:39:02.260 This would solve so many problems with taxation, with tax cheats, because you can't cheat a VAT
00:39:09.040 tax.
00:39:09.460 This is an area that we need to move towards, because this would be something that would
00:39:14.020 generate so much revenue.
00:39:15.560 You could give people on the lower end, like a middle class would say, you know, we are fine
00:39:22.500 with this because they can have virtually, I don't know, tens of thousands of dollars more
00:39:29.600 to spend with.
00:39:31.480 It would make buying a home so much easier, so much better.
00:39:35.360 Think about the percentage of your income that is confiscated through income tax.
00:39:40.220 Think about what could happen with that additional money as far as investment goes.
00:39:44.420 This would be a fair consumption tax.
00:39:46.840 It is exactly what we need.
00:39:48.740 Let's get rid of the income tax.
00:39:50.380 Let's go to a VAT tax system. 1.00
00:39:52.100 That's something that should be on President Trump's radar.
00:39:54.580 All right.
00:39:55.020 There you have it.
00:39:55.780 Barry Habib right here in the Stone Zone.
00:39:58.460 Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.