Is the Economy About to Return to 1970s-Era Stagflation?

After April’s dismal jobs report released, some experts started wondering whether America has entered a period of stagflation. But what does that mean? And should we trust the data? Financial expert Carol Roth joins Glenn to break it all down. Plus, she reviews “one of the most painful” videos she has ever watched, featuring Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein trying his hardest to explain why the Federal Reserve’s never-ending money printing is fine.

TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Carol Roth, the author of the book, you will own nothing. The former investment banker. Carol, yes -- or last Friday, I think it was. The jobs report came out. It was much lower than expected.

And I started seeing things like Bank of America saying, we're in stagflation now.

Are we? And if so, what is it?

And what does it mean?

CAROL: Well, let's talk about some of these data points, Glenn. And then we can go into stagflation. First, we've seen a couple of bad data points. And as we've talked about before. The data is garbage. So we're doing the best we can, what it is they're telling us, without any sense of the actual reality behind us.

We saw before the jobs report, that the first quarter GDP was down, about a percent lower than expectations. Down to 1.6 percent on an annualized basis.

Then we get the April jobs report. And that is also down. It's the slowest job gain. That we've seen in -- I think about six months.

Again, if you believe the data. And what that first is telling me, is that all of this money, that the government has spent to basically window dress the economy. To avoid the double-digit recession.

Remember, we did have a recession. Two quarters of negative growth back in '22. Then we popped out of it. Then we expected that it would employ it down. The government ran these massive deficits, about two times the historical average, on a debt to GDP basis.

That we would normally see. And they tried to prop up the economy. So it wouldn't show we were in a recession. At a very expensive cost, by the way. Normally, when you have an expanding economy, you would see a shrinking deficit. They have did you not opposite.

They ran a big deficit, to try to create this appearance. And with an interest rate. Financing that deficit. You know, at the largest point in 15 years.

GLENN: Right.

CAROL: So we know we are not getting a good return now, on this window dressing. And it is not creating these amazing outcomes for the economy.

You know, on the GDP front. On the jobs front.

Which again, could turn around. It's one set of at that time points. Would shift.

Stagflation is something that I talk to you about. I have been talking about for years. As a very possible outcome here.

And it's very much what it sounds like. It's when the economy stagnates. When you have a low growth number. But at the same time, you have inflation.

So you have sort of the worst of all worlds. You're not making gains of productivity.

You're not making, you know, gains in wages and things like that.

The economy is just hanging out. But you get this long-term sticking inflation.

Which again, we said was very likely, because the government continued to spend at these massive levels.

And they were working against what the fed was trying to do, to break down inflation.

So they are actually at this point, a likely cause of long-term inflation.

Because we have to continue to finance these massive deficits.

And so that's the reality of this sticky situation.

When you hear somebody, like JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon saying, I'm worried that the economy is going to look more like the 1970s, than anything else, this is something that they experience. Experience at that period of time. And he is seeing those parallels. Although, we're in a much worse fiscal situation from a fiscal foundation standpoint, than we were strangely enough in the 1970s.

GLENN: Because of our deficit and debt.

CAROL: Correct.

GLENN: Yes.

So this means that jobs, everything just is the same. It doesn't get better. It could get worse. But it doesn't generally get better for the individual. And prices continue to go up. Right?

That's what --

CAROL: Correct. You're not seeing your growth in wages. You're not seeing massive growth in companies.

The economy just sort of putters along.

You know, you're not seeing the massive layoffs. Or things you might see. With a recession.

Things are just kind of going along.

But not really growing at all.

You're not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But at the same time, we're encountering that bond, going sticking inflation, that we know destroys purchasing power and is really born, particularly by the middle and working class.

GLENN: All right.

So Carol, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. Because I have a couple of other things.

But you said, at the beginning of your conversation. You said, if you believe the numbers.

I don't believe the numbers.

CAROL: Correct.

GLENN: But the only reason you change and fudge numbers is not to stop them from looking so good. But stop them from looking so bad.

And the reason why I don't believe them. Is it's just too many times, where they've been adjusted. And there's always adjustments, but not like it's been in the last year or so.

And there's just contradictory information. If you're somebody who is listening now, and, you know, you don't -- you don't necessarily have that. You don't think that, you know, the administration would go that far, and fake numbers.

What leads you to say, if you believe these numbers?

CAROL: Well, like you said, there have been a lot of anomalies in the numbers. And, you know, if you -- you can kind of go back even further. You know, we've changed the method of calculation, of these numbers. At the governmental level, many times since the 1980s. One of the things you have to remember, for something like let's say inflation.

Inflation feeds into things like cost of living adjustments. The amount they have to increase Social Security payments by. So there is an actual reason why it is, that they would want to suppress those numbers.

Another piece of data which I think is very important. Is that entities and individuals no longer want to participate in government surveys.

So we have seen an absolute massive decline in the participation of the data that is being collected by the government.

Which means, when they don't have people in businesses, responding, there are more biases in the data, because it's a smaller subset of people who want to do it.

And it means they have to want to run it through their own adjustments. And seasonal adjustments. In the model.

And it's garbage in. Garbage out. You put bad data in, you'll get bad data out.

There are a lot of things. This isn't just the, hey. The numbers are adjusted massively. And we're seeing the numbers over and over again. Speaking to the bad data. There are some real structural issues as to why many of us think the data sort of isn't worth anything.

GLENN: By the way, we're talking to J.D. Vance in 15 minutes. Right now, we're with Carol Rother. I want to bring up something that is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. It's an interview where they're trying to make the case for modern monetary theory. Which is not modern. It's a very old theory. You can just print money, and no big deal. Nothing bad will happen.

And they talked to Joe Biden's economic adviser.

Now, I -- if you would, explain who Jared Bernstein is.

He is -- he is the chair of the council of economic advisers for Joe Biden.

But he's not just some schlub, right?

CAROL: Well, I mean, I will not opine on that. But what I will tell you, is that he's very powerful economically. This is Joe Biden's right-hand adviser who has been, by the way, since the Obama administration, he was Biden's adviser.

And this is the guy who analyzes and interprets economic developments.

He comes up with economic policies. He puts that forth to the president. He's been entrenched in think tanks. He's been a contributor to CBS. He writes op-eds. He was a chief economist, in economic adviser. You know, previously.

This guy is like from the left and far left standpoint. One of the people, who they hang their hat on, to be the economic adviser. And I don't know.

Are you going to play the clip.

It's one of the most painful things I've watched in my life.

GLENN: I want to get your comment on it. And I want to set up. This is a real player in the economy.

This is someone our government depends on.

Listen to him try to explain our deficit, and what's happening with our money. Listen.

VOICE: The US government can't go bankrupt, because we can print our own money.

VOICE: It obviously begs the question: Why exactly are we borrowing a currency that we print ourselves? I'm waiting for someone to stand up, and say, why do we borrow our own currency in the first place?

VOICE: Like you said, they print the dollar. So why does the government even borrow?

VOICE: Well, the -- so the -- I mean, again, some of this stuff gets -- some of the language that the -- some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money.

And it definitely lends that money, which is why the government definitely prints money. And then it lends that money, by -- by selling bonds. Is that what they do?

GLENN: No. No.

VOICE: They -- they -- yeah. They -- they sell bonds. Yeah. They sell bonds. Right. Since they sell bonds.

People buy the bonds. And lend them the money.

GLENN: No.

VOICE: So a lot of times. A lot of times. The language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing. But there is no question, that the government prints money. And then it uses that money to -- so, yeah.

I guess I'm just -- I can't really talk.

I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking about.

Because it's like, the government clearly prints money. It does it all the time.

And it clearly borrows. Otherwise, you wouldn't be having this conversation.

So I don't think there's anything confusing there.

GLENN: Oh, my God. This is -- would you feel --

STU: Wow.

GLENN: If that was your captain, and you got on to a plane, and he said, hey. We're going to be traveling at 40,000 -- 4,000 -- I can't -- how does this work again? Would you get on that plane?

CAROL: Okay. So I'm going to be generous here first, Glenn.

And then I'm going to be not so generous. The first generous thing I will say is that we've all been in the media for a very long time, you longer than me. And we've all had days, that are somewhat like this. Where we know something really well. And we just can't get it.

So I will -- it could be today for me.

There have been a few times. When I made absolutely no sense, on something I know very well.

So it does happen. That can said. Now that I've been generous.

This is sort of the chief architect of the US economy at this point. Going through a discussion about MMT. I call it magic money tree. I've heard that somewhere along the line. I thought that was great.

And their main thesis. Oh, you got the checkbook. You can just write checks. The question he asked. Which anyone who lives in Zimbabwe would probably know the answer to. Why can't the government just print as much money as it wants.

We all know it's highly inflationary. And we've been living through that for the past few years. That's the very short answer. Of course, there's nuance to this. Of course, there's wonkiness that we can go in and explain the Treasury and the Fed. Just very simple.

So it begs the question to me. Does he not know the answer? Or does he very much know the answer, but he doesn't feel like he could admit it.

And hasn't done the prep. Which, again, these are politicians. Politician mouthpieces. They could just talk around us. Which they do all the time.

I think the answer is that they are just entirely decoupled from reality. So they don't care.

They don't care what it is, Glenn. Money is something very discreet. Money has three definitions. It's a unit of account. It's a median of exchange. It's the value.

At the end of the day, putting it together, what is it? It's a proxy for productivity.

It's an estimation of the labor that you have. Because it used to be. If you were a farmer. You had apples. Somebody who was a doctor at doctor services. You would have to figure out that exchange. Now this creates something that is seamless. So it stands for something.

GLENN: Stands -- time is money.

CAROL: It is. It is your output. So if you don't have an increase in economic activity. An increase in productivity. And you put more dollars in the system. What are you doing?

You're putting in more sort of proxies for productivity. They're chasing the same amount of goods and services. It means that those goods and services have been inflated and valued. Because each one of those proxies are worthless. If you go to Congress. And you ask them, to give you that definition of money. That I just gave you.

Anyone who knows anything about economics. I guarantee you 99 percent of the people couldn't tell you that. And the people on the left do not care. Because it doesn't serve their purpose.

They don't care that this is a proxy of what you have worked hard for.

They want to inflate that away for their own power purpose.

So it is very inconvenient for them to understand reality.

And that's why he can't explain this.

GLENN: I think he knows what it is. But can't explain.

Because he doesn't. He doesn't want to take a position on it.

Because I think they're all in bed with MMT. So he can't -- he doesn't want to say, I am in bed with MMT. Because it's insanity. But I think he also extent can know how to bridge that gap. There's a huge gap between reality and insanity.

CAROL: There is.

GLENN: And I think that's what it is. He just doesn't want to be seen crossing that bridge. Because there's no sane reason to do it.

CAROL: No. And the fact of the matter is, you had all these MMT people, selling this fantasy. And up until a few years ago, there were a lot of people who bought into the fantasy. Although, many of us said no. This is something that stands for reality.

You can't just make it up. Just because you have a checkbook. You can't write unlimited amounts of checks. It doesn't work that way. We have now lived through the worst inflationary period in 40-plus years. And these MMT people have not gotten enough shame. They should be walked through the street and we should go, shame, shame, shame.

Because it's their BS they've been selling into the government, into schools, that has allowed this to occur. And has allowed this decoupling from reality. Because they want to believe in unicorns that, you know, fart rainbows.