4-7-25 - 6am - National Debt & Spending

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's great. It starts with and earthquake, birds and snakes
and airplanes. Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Craig Google movie.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, I'm not quite sure what that was about, but whatever,
let's start with this, Jamie Diamond.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
It's the end of the world. I know you have
to know. That's how the song starts. There there, Michael, Well,
the great googlely Mooglie, Well that's his.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is that his tigeline?

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, all right, yeah, Let's see last night when I
went to bed, the NIEK was down seven uh Taiwan
was down nine percent. I did I wasn't quite sure.
I didn't wasn't quite sure about what China's markets were doing.
Uh so, so in the futures, the dal Jones industrial futures,

(01:00):
and in Nasadac and the S and P that all
those futures were down, and I'm kind of like, okay,
all right, We're going to go to Scott Send, the
Treasury Secretary in a minute, because he has he said
something in an interview with Tucker Carlson. In fact, we
may just go through the whole Tucker Carlson interview today
if we have time, in bits and bit bits and

(01:21):
pieces but I have a question, and it's a it's
a serious and it's a legitimate question, and you can
answer it if you want to, but I want you
to answer. Ask this question of every member of Congress,

(01:46):
of every past president, of every former member of Congress,
of every governor, of every yahoo, state representative or state senator,
or city council w in or county can missioner, or
any other elected official. What would you do? What would

(02:07):
you do differently? And the purpose of the question is this.
Someone said last night on x let me let me
pull up my ex account in the notifications I had.
I had asked the same question, and somebody had made
the comment that let me hang on. It's it's slow

(02:30):
this morning. Let's see. Oh yeah with pluble do Pelosi
sah blah blah blah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, ray mind ever
well blah blah blah. Yeah. There's lots of things going
on in here. The debt and unfunded liabilities have nothing
to do with trade wars, tariffs. Tariffs isn't tariffs aren't

(02:55):
the cure for overspending? Okay, then what's your answer? This
is from just one seven? What what? What? What is it.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
You?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Here's some positive ones but I'm not gonna talk about
the positive stuff yet. Well, let's see American male says this.
I'm just glad someone is finally doing something. Is it
going to be one hundred percent correct? Not a chance?
Is it likely to be multiples better than the bull
s word we've been dealing with for decage on all

(03:30):
these mental midgets can't see the potential upside? Yeah, all right.
I was just curious if anybody anywhere because I had asked,
oh here, Uh, I'm not this is from eleanor. I'm
not an economist. I think uncertainty is counterproductive to any solution.

(03:54):
But Trump likes that, but business doesn't, and neither do
working Americans. Well, I found that one interesting because uncertainty. Yes,
many people often say that the market doesn't like uncertainty.
It likes it likes stability, It likes nothing to change,

(04:18):
and that's the problem with the market. And then when
the market gets flooded, I mean virtually flooded with free money,
which is what we did during COVID our. The if
you look at the money supply and the speed of money,

(04:38):
and you look at what we did as a nation,
we just flooded this country with money and a lot
of that money flowed into equities, into shares of stock
and companies, and of course the more demand there was

(04:59):
for more of those, the more that the value of
I shouldn't say the value, because I think that's actually incorrect.
The price of those shares rose exponentially. Yeah, I'm not
bitching them at that, because I rode that wave too.

(05:19):
Some of some of the stocks that that I have
had long term and then some that I bought thinking
I would hold them short term, all of those have
just zoomed just well, with a few exceptions, have just
gone crazy. All of the precious metals that I invest in.

(05:39):
Gold closed. I haven't checked what today's price is, but
gold closed on some somewhere on Friday closed above thirty
one hundred dollars an ounce. The very first gold that
I ever purchased back in the eighties was three hundred
dollars an ounce. So over time, all of that has

(06:00):
own and these prices of these shares of stock on
all the exchanges have for the most part been overly inflated,
and people have been chasing the profits and then something happens.
What happens, Trump says, look for decades, decades now we've

(06:28):
been spending, spending, spending, spending, spending, spending, spending, and now
we have over the weekend. I forget, and don't hold
me to this number, but I said, we're thirty nine
trillion dollars somewhere between thirty seven and thirty nine trillion
dollars in debt. Dragon, if you want to check this
and see how close I am, you can't. But I said,

(06:49):
what if we were able to pay back that that
thirty seven or thirty nine trillion dollars at a million
dollars a day, three hundred and sixty five million dollars
a year that we had that we could find somewhere.
You know, three hundred and sixty five million dollars is
not a lot of money to find in a five

(07:11):
trillion dollar budget, four trillion dollar budget. So how long
would it take us to pay off if we just,
you know, every year just soalked away or every every
day salked away a million dollars in government spending and
redirected it toward paying off the national debt, it would
take us more than one hundred thousand years to pay
off the debt. So it's not sustainable. It is what

(07:34):
we're doing, and what we have been doing is not sustainable.
Now I could just stop there and say, okay, but
that's enough. That's all you need to know. It's not sustainable. No,
let's don't let let's let's keep going. Let's keep going
and pretend that we really don't do anything. We just
keep doing status quo. We just keep spending, we just

(07:56):
keep adding to the debt. We just keep deficit spending
year after year after year. And remember, the national debt
does not include the unfunded liabilities. Now, what's an unfunded liability?
Will you take?

Speaker 4 (08:11):
PAARA?

Speaker 2 (08:11):
The Public Employees Retirement Association, the retirement fund for public
employees in Colorado. The amount of money that it currently
owes and is going to owe current and future retirees.
There is a difference between what they can pay based

(08:33):
on today's investment, their expected rate to return on their investments,
the amount of payments that they get into the system
so that they can invest that so that they can
have a rate of return of whatever X is so
that they can pay these current and future liabilities. Is short.

(08:57):
There's not enough money. You'd have to have like thirty
five percent return. I'm just pulling numbers out of my
butt right now. But you have to have some you know, extraordinary,
un unrealistic rate of return in order to have enough
money to pay current and future retirees out of the

(09:19):
public employees' retirement system.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Just for fundsies here, Michael, I did find a number
for you Yahoo, financed from a couple of years ago.
So the state is a little old. The debt, the
national debt is a little higher now, but paid back
interest free at a rate of one million dollars an hour.
An hour. Okay, it would take three thousand, seven hundred
and fifty years.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
So my one hundred and one thousand years at at
three hundred and sixty five million dollars a year, million
dollars a day, that's not far off. Yeah, So let's
go back to the point that it's not sustainable. But
what does that mean. I don't think anybody's ever really
thought what does that mean? Think about them. If you

(10:02):
have any cash, or you have any money in your
checking account, or you have some ones and zeros in
your checking account, you really don't have any cash in
your checking account, but whatever you have, you've got one
hundred dollars in your checking account. And so we just
keep plodding along, doing the same mold feces over and
over and over and over and over, and then finally
one day. And in fact, we're already at this point

(10:26):
where we are spending just on the credit card interest
virtually all of our budget. So all of our revenue,
all of the tax revenue that we bring in, goes
to pay interest. Now, paying interest, except for those who

(10:51):
hold the treasuries or the bonds, doesn't benefit anybody. It
doesn't benefit you, it doesn't benefit me, It doesn't produce
any anything of value. It's just like I loaned you
one thousand dollars and you paid me, you know, one
hundred dollars a month plus interest. Well, that gave me

(11:12):
my principal back. So all I'm doing is getting my
own money back, plus a little bit of earnings on
that money from the interest that you pay, so that
allows me to go. You know, let's say it was
ten percent, So I made one hundred dollars on your

(11:32):
thousand dollars loan. That gave me one hundred dollars that
I could go in today's Well, yeah, because we had
dinner with some friends over the weekend and we had
some cheap Mexican food, and we all had drinks one
drink apiece, and for four of us one hundred and

(11:53):
sixty dollars one hundred and sixty dollars for cheap Mexican food,
so that one hundred dollars I might earn on in
interest on that thousand dollars loan I'd give you would
cover one dinner. So it's not very productive, not very
productive at all. So we get to the point where
this finally we're spending all of our money that you

(12:16):
and I pay in taxes, the excise taxes, the corporate
tax that you and I pay as consumers or users
of those goods and services of corporations, you and I
pay all the freight. So at some point everything we're
paying is not enough. We don't have enough to pay
for tanks AMMO, we don't have enough to pay for

(12:39):
Social Security, Medicare, medicate. We don't have enough money to
pay for roads, bridges, highways. We don't have enough money
to pay for anything. Because look at Colorado for example,
Colorado is they and I'm only using this is an example.
I'm not going to go off on a tangent here,
but over the weekend, Colorado pass taxpayer funded abortions. So

(13:04):
at the same time, we're going to use tax dollars
to pay for a woman to go have an abortion.
They're still grappling with how do we close a one
point five billion dollar budget gap? Well wait a minute,
how about you just stop spending the money? But they
can't do it. See, so this is the insanity that

(13:25):
we keep doing. Now again, let's go to the point
where what does it mean if we finally go off
the fiscal cliff. Well, we probably lose the dollar as
the reserve currency of the country, so people will start
trading in other currencies and we'll be left behind. You say, well,

(13:45):
what does that mean, Well, that means that money doesn't
flow into this country for investment. It flows into other
countries for investment. But it also means that go back
to your checking account, go back to your wallet, your purse,
wherever you keep some cash or some ones and zeros,
whatever you do. You know that essentially becomes worthless. It devalues.

(14:06):
Inflation zooms to pre Malay Argentine levels of you know,
one thousand percent a year, two thousand percent a year,
you get Weimar Republic kinds of inflation and suddenly you
can't buy anything. You got to have a wheek, you know,
for that, for that cheap Mexican food that costs US

(14:28):
one hundred and sixty dollars on Saturday night, I would
I'd need a U haul trailer to haul enough Benjamin's
up there to pay for that stupid meal. Because that's
how little value would be placed in that FIAC currency.
Because I want you to think about that fiat fiat currency.
In fact, let me pull one out of my wallet,

(14:49):
because I think this is this is worth looking at.
So here's here's a fifty dollars bill. Oh, it's a
Federal Reserve note. Now somewhere it used to say this
note here it is, this note is legal tender for
all debts public and private. Okay, why would you be willing?

(15:14):
Why are you willing to take this fifty dollars bill?
If I just gave you this fifty dollars bill today,
why would you take it? Because you know you could
take this fifty dollars bill, and you could. Although most
gas stations don't take cash anymore, I guess you could
walk in and say, hey, here, put fifty dollars on

(15:34):
pump two, and they would set the computer to allow
you to pump fifty dollars worth of gas, and you
could get some gas. But that's at whatever it is,
three nineteen a gallon for regular right now, Well, now
imagine this fifty dollars bill post economic apocalypse is really

(15:54):
worth about a buck just to make it extreme. So
now for the same fifthty dollars, where you could have
probably filled your car up, I probably couldn't have filled
the jeep up with this if it's close to empty.
It's closer to sixty five seventy five dollars for me
to fill the jeep, so I couldn't even fill the
jeep up completely. But now if this, if this fifty
dollars bill gets devalued, now remember it's it's it's it's

(16:18):
only valuable because it says on here that this note
is legal tender for all debts public and private. Okay, well,
what's it backed up by? Oh, the full faith and
creditor of the United States. But wait a minute, the
full faith and credit of the United States is in
the toilet. Because we can't pay our bills. We we

(16:41):
can't build tanks, missiles, ships, we can't build fighter jets,
we can't build roads, bridges, highways. We can't build, build airports,
we can't. We can't build schoolhouse buildings, we can't we
can't build squad we can't pay for anything. Because this

(17:02):
legal tender back by the full faith in tread of
the United States, this Fiat currency is now worth nothing.
So if we keep doing what we've been doing, that's
the cliff we're going to go off. So my question was,
what's your alternative. You know, the hands off protests occurred

(17:24):
over the weekend, and everybody was you know, you know Trump,
you know, keep Trump and Musk's hands off the government.
They're destroying our government. I looked at some of my
liberal liberal friends on Facebook last night before I went
to bed, which was a mistake because then I was
just like, Mary, we're angry all evening. But they were like, oh, yeah,
you know, we're out protesting. We're doing all this time,

(17:45):
And I thought, why, but what's your you know, I
so badly wanted to engage, but drag you to be
proud of me. I did not engage because I didn't
want to end up spending awake all night arguing with
these people. But I was like, you know, they're actually
trying to fix things. What are you trying to do? Literally,
what are you trying to do? You're trying to maintain

(18:05):
the status quote the status quote. I mean, I can't
believe the economic of literacy in this country. It's it's overwhelming,
it's mine numbing. So my question is, what's your alternative?
Keep doing the same thing we're doing, Try something like different,
like Trump, which apparently some people don't like. Okay, well,

(18:25):
then what's yours? It's not a rhetorical question, what's yours?
Because they haven't quit spending, they haven't reduced spending, they
haven't done any of that.

Speaker 5 (18:39):
I'm thinking there's a pretty easy solution to this whole
stock market thing that everybody's got some fear and loathing over.
All we gotta do is take a little bit of
our boys and go up north and enslave the Canadians.
This will drive down the price of Canadian bacon and
maple syrup, which will make every red blooded American happy,
and it'll solve the whole stock market issue.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
Easy piece.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Hey, we can just go ahead and annex Canada too,
and just go ahead and take all of that. Just
a technical note, many of you have sent us a
text messages and emails that you can't hear us broadcasting
all you're getting a static on the stream. Dragons check

(19:24):
the on air and he's confirmed that we do have
a broadcast signal issue, but streaming seems to be fine.
Which I don't know why I'm saying this, because if
you can't hear on the broadcast, then you can't hear
my advice to go to streaming. And if you're already streaming,
then you already know that and you don't care about
the broadcast, so it doesn't make any difference.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
I have attempted to submit a ticket. We're not going
to talk about that right now. I'll let you say
it if you want, but I have attempted to try
and submit a ticket with no luck. But I have
text messaged our chief engineer and our direct boss.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
I'm more than happy to tell you what Dragon told me.
Dragon told me something to the effect that he scanned
did you do the on air tech support things?

Speaker 3 (20:09):
I didn't scan the QR code. I just went to
the website.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
The website and that is currently not working. And then
he receives an error message of some sort that says,
if you're having problems, with this site and it's not working.
Remember this is for engineering technical issues. It says, reach

(20:35):
out to your sales contact. Yeah, we're as fed up
right now as the world. We're just trying to keep
pace with the world, is what we're doing. Yeah, that's
what we're doing. As I suspected, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond,

(21:04):
came out with his annual sharehold letter this morning and
he did, in fact address tariffs. I suspect that they
probably would do that, but there wasn't a lot of
urgency there. When you read through it, you really wouldn't
have any idea that the markets are going through this
upheaval that everybody's all apoplectic about. It shows that America's

(21:28):
CEO class, at least when they're publicly facing, is loath
to take on Trump directly. Consider this quote. Whatever you
think of the legitimate reasons for the newly announced tariffs,
and of course there are some or the long term

(21:50):
effect good are back good or bad. There are likely
to be important short term effects. As for the short term,
we are like lead to see inflationary outcomes not only
on imported goods but on domestic prices as input costs
rise and demand increases on domestic products. How this plays

(22:13):
out on different products will partially depend on their sub substitutability.
I got it, I got it, substitutability and price elasticity.
Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession
remains in question, but it will slow down growth. There

(22:36):
are many uncertainties surrounding the new tariff policies, the potential
retaliatory actions, including on services by other countries, the effect
on confidence, the impact impact on investments and capital flows,
the effects on corporate profits, and the possible effect on
the US dollar. The quicker this issue is resolved, the better,

(22:57):
because some of the negative effects increase cumulative over time
and would be hard to reverse in the short to run.
I see this as one large, large additional straw on
the camel's back. I am hoping that after negotiation to
long term effect will have some positive benefits for the
United States. My most serious concern is how this will

(23:17):
affect America's long term economic alliances. As I've written about
in the first section of the letter. Blah blah blah blah. Well,
that's that's kind of the interesting because that's kind of
a blase. I mean, for probably the most important banker

(23:38):
in the country. It's kind of like, yeah, there might
be some short term increases. You know, when Trump first
imposed tariffs on China in the first term, we saw
price increases of about one percent. Yes, so I think

(23:58):
the timing. I think that many investors knew. I mean they,
and I'm not talking about you and me. They have
money in a four oh one k or like me.
I'm not an active trader. I've got some investments in
a brokerage account that I check on occasionally, not very often.

(24:20):
I'm kind of curious sometimes when I hear about in
Nvidio or Apple or Vanguard or somebody doing a particular thing.
I might go look and see, you know what, what
has the CEO said about it, or you know what
kind of advice have they put out, or what some
of the other technical advisors are saying about that particular stock.
I may go check just out of curious because I'm

(24:42):
just curious about that stuff. But I don't buy and
sell every single day. In fact, I couldn't, oh I
think I In fact, I've got my dividends set to
reinvest in the stocks that paying me the dividends, So
I'm not a day trader. I don't do it lot trading,
but for those who are trading day in and day out,

(25:04):
for those who are act what I would call the
active traders versus the rest of us, they know, and
they have known for some time that the market's inflated,
that their market is way overpriced. And so while they
kept writing that trend upwards, they knew that at some

(25:25):
point they would have to start taking their profits. Because
what they don't want to do is make you know,
one thousand dollars worth of profits over you know, a
x period of time. And then because they're because they're
day traders, they don't want to suddenly lose all of
those profits. So they will sell at some point to

(25:48):
preserve that cash, to get the cat to take out
the profit, says cash and then put it in treasuries
or bonds or maybe even you know, they'll put it
in wherever. They'll put it in cash or precious metals
or something else. They'll move it around, they will take
it to where they think they can take those profits
and make some more profits. So why did they suddenly

(26:11):
start selling? Because Trump imposed the tariffs and that created
as one commentator on my timeline said they don't like uncertainty,
and it is uncertain. I've said many times, this will
work or it won't work. I tend to think that

(26:32):
it will work in the long run. And I think
we're already seeing some of these. I mean, Argentina has said, hey,
we just want zero terriffs between US. Israel has said zero. Vietnam,
which is really just a waypoint for Chinese goods, has
said yeah, we're going to do zero.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah. I believe roughly fifty countries have already contacted the
White House say hey, can we talk?

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Can we talk? Right, So it's already having the effect
that Trump to to have. Now they now have to do.
I mean, what they've done so far is the easy work.
Now they've got to do the really difficult work. But
who's in the driver's seat. Let me emphasize. We are
the largest economy in the world. We're the largest consuming

(27:22):
economy in the world. Some I don't hold me to
these numbers again because I'm just talking off the top
of my head right now, but something like thirty plus
percent of our GDP is consuming consumerism, and so all
of the stuff that people make, they know the easiest

(27:46):
place to sell that stuff is here. So if your economy,
if you're China, for example, and your economy is predicated
primarily on manufacturing of stuff, and you're about to lose
the largest market to sell your stuff, oh you may

(28:08):
try to, you know, thump your chest right now and say, well,
I'm going to retaliate and I'm going to start a
trade Yeah. Yeah, you know, you got enough problems. China's
got enough other problems besides us right now. So all
of that is bluster. And I think that eventually, after
the rest of the world, after these fifty countries that

(28:28):
Dragon says, after that number continues to increase, it gets
to one hundred countries that say we want to talk,
and the Treasury Secretary and the trade representative of the
Commerce Secretary and the president and the vice president and
all the advisors start, you know, sitting down with these
heads of state from other countries and we start working
things out. China will at one point be like, oh

(28:49):
wait a minute, we want to come and talk too.
We want to come and talk because I think China
and the EU, I think both of them will cave.
But in the meantime there's uncertainty and how bad will
it be today. Yeah, I don't know, but you know what,

(29:10):
it's been bad before. And it's not that I like bad,
but I go back to we have a problem in
this country. We've got a serious problem. We don't make
very much stuff of value.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
I do believe that information technology is important. I believe
that artificial intelligence is important. I believe that innovation is important.
I believe all of these kind of non tangible, these
these I'm not sure what word I'm looking for, but
these these kind of esoteric things that we do are

(29:49):
all important. They do bring value, and they will make
our country more efficient, more productive. It'll make us smarter,
it'll make us, you know, be able to work smarter,
not work hard. But at the same time, we still
need to produce things. And let's not forget this. Did
we not learn anything from COVID? Are we really such

(30:11):
useful idiots that we didn't learn anything When suddenly we
don't have access to markets because those those those manufacturers
shut down because of a stupid bug. Well, now imagine
that we enter into let's just say, because I still
think there's a good chance of a world war. History

(30:35):
shows that are repeats itself. And you know, if you
look at a timeline. It's kind of time again for
you know, it's just time again for us to get
pissed off in fight each other. I think it'll take
more than that. But one thing that could cause that
is the collapse of the Chinese economy. And that's why
Xijing Ping is throwing back higher tariffs at us because

(31:00):
he can't capitulate right now because he's he doesn't trust
his own military. He has a horrible economy. And so
when he's caged as a dictator, what's his easiest way
out Take his country to war, Invade Taiwan, take over
the South China Sea, you know, draw Japan and South

(31:24):
Korea and Australia and New Zealand and the Philippines into
a war, which would then drag US into a war.
And what does that do? Well, that resets everything. And
one thing I think Trump really is trying to do
is to reset everything.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
Well, we listened to the mainstream news media and Democrats
trying to gaslight Americans by telling them car prices might
go up by six thousand dollars under the Trump tariffs.
Keep in mind, under the Biden administration, car prices actually
went up eight thousand dollars, so interesting comparison when you

(32:03):
take a look back seat to Biden.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
You know, that's that's a great point. By the way,
we know, we're off the air. We're trying to fix it.
So if you're listening on streaming, you're good. You're in
good shape. You've been ever sixty five twenty five. In
line with what Alexis said with respect to the market,
it's what we're seeing is the long overdue correction as
America gets out from under the Fiat currency. The world,

(32:28):
including America, has been hustling for several decades. People need
to have the intellectual integrity to dig deeper than the headline. Well,
let me take that one step further. I think what's
causing people to be so apoplectic is the mainstream media,
the cabal, because this is you know, they thought that

(32:48):
what was kind of the first controversy. Uh oh, this
is the signal gate. They thought signal gate. You know, Oh,
we'll get rid of Pete Heggess, we'll get rid of
Mike Wallas, We'll do all of that. It's it really
is that regardless of how much Trump won the election by,

(33:09):
regardless of how much good that he does, the media
is going to try to taint you as much as possible.
They're going to try to blind you, They're going to
try to color your vision. They're going to try to
make certain that you hear nothing but negative. And of course,
in this eighty h world that we live in, no

(33:29):
one takes the time to really sit down and contemplate.
I mean, gosh, does he may even know what the
word contemplate means, to contemplate the whole of everything going
on in the world, as opposed to, Oh my god,
the Dow Jones industrial averages down five thousands of mankind.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Much more important than any of that. I got a
couple of text messages and I can confirm through the
transmitter here we are back on the air.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Oh well, then I guess I should actually start being
serious about it.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
Put your pants back on.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
I'll put my pants back on now. Well, glad, we're
back on the air. But in all seriousness, stop, stop
and don't listen to just one source, and ask yourself
why are they telling me this? And is anybody really

(34:26):
telling me why this is happening? And then keep asking
yourself what is the alternative? Because I see the alternative
as one you can stick with the status quo. And
I've been saying for twenty years on air, well almost
twenty years on air, that we're going to go off

(34:47):
the physical cliff, and that's a lot worse than what
we're going through right now. And then ask people, well,
what you just want to keep doing the same thing
we're doing right now, because that's not sustainable. That takes
us into Vaimar Republic territory where suddenly those benjamins are,

(35:07):
that one dollar bill you have in your wallet is
literally worthless.