John Berlau - Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Burlough joining US now senior fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute. John.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Good morning, Good morning to you, Bob.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Appreciate you joining us. HAPPI early Thanksgiving to you. So
let's talk about let's talk about people like Elizabeth Warren,
who is you know, she stops just shy of Bernie
Sanders and AOC and Zora Mamdani in calling herself an
actual socialist. But she certainly seems to be in the
same pool. And yet she is making millions on Wall Street.

(00:28):
A little bit of a conflict of interest, a little
bit of a contradiction there, Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I think, I think definitely she was one of the firsts,
although she may not call herselofosialists to endoor so on Montani,
so he's certainly comfortable with it. But as Paulsberry document
in the piece that in the Federalists and Real Player
Investigations in which he quotes me, she's been in practice

(00:54):
a capitalist and nothing as far as either flipping home
if for real estate or or investment is worth about
eight million dollars. Nothing really wrong with being a capitalist,
but you should in this case preach what you practiced
and not limit opportunities for others to become rich like
you are, as she has done in her public policy career.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, that's exactly right, John, and you are quoted in
this really extensive article tell us about the connections that
she has to Wall Street and her staffers actually taking
jobs at big wall Street Wall Street firms. That is
not accidental or coincidental.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I really don't think so. It's you know, she's created
the Consumer Financial Protection bureaucoriated it sort of deliberately to
be unaccountable to h to Congress then you know, designate
its appropriation from Congress, getting from the Fed. They issued
you know, crushing rules on community banks and credit union
to the force, pressing for everybody, but especially for community

(01:55):
basic credit union to force and talidation and lo and behold.
A lot of her staff the Polisparian story names them
have actually when they rested the the FEB gone to
work for Wall Street firms. There's a real revolving door
there then. So it's sort of like they create these
rules and to kind of get along. Wall Street has helped,

(02:15):
you know, as hire her guys and the you know,
like him read their mind. But the likely help that
you know, having Warrens staffers will might help the t
FBB go easy on them, And in the meantime it
also has helped in one sense of the big Wall
Street banks and that you know, it's crushed, you know,
some of their competition from the little guys.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, that's uh, well, the little guys don't matter too
to socialists. Sorry to be blunt about that, but it
is what it is. She even back to The article
also talks about housing, uh, and she supports uh mom
Donnie's Social Housing Project proposal to let New York State
government seize private properties and convert them into public housing.
It is literally the definition of the same UH policies

(02:58):
that have led to the deaths of countless numbers of
millions of people in countries like China and Russia, Venezuela
and Cuba, Cambodia and so on and so forth. How
on earth do they think this is going to work here?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
It's always, you know, well, we've never the socialist advice.
It is always to go, well, we've we've tried this.
It was never real socialism. Let's let's let's try let's
try this again. Never buy this socialism as it has
it worked anywhere, And that there's that in their own
lives they may know practice fined to be to be

(03:35):
a capitalist. But really, Warren, what goes back to what
you wrote in a law review article in two thousand
and eight and the Harvard professor that consumers have quote
cognitive limitations. She wrote that in the University of Pennsylvania
Law Review as a Harvard professor with a co author.
So that's why the government needs to make choices for them.

(03:56):
That's gg I was explicit in that belief before she went.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
In to follow it cognitive limitations. Did I hear that
correctly or what was that exact que Again.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was a quote, Yes, I've written, I've written about this,
h before you go to the Competitive Enterprises to do
rest website and CEI dot org and put in quote
war and we'll put war and cognitivementation. So that's basically
I mean she said, you know that she opposed like

(04:25):
exchange created funds for crypto even in that in some
way that you know, it takes away some of the
some of the risk the risks from that on not all,
and and also wanted to support Obama's maduciary rules to
work for really limited choices and limited access to investment.
Options for uh Middle clouds investors. So that's the thing.

(04:47):
The government, she's very much of the of the thing,
even if she's not an explicit social socialist, as the
government should protect you from yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Wow and your your your cognitive to protect you from
your own cognitive limitation. You don't know how to spend
your money, we will tell you how to spend your money,
because we know better than you do. I'm so glad
you wrote about it. I'm going to look that up
because I want to read more about it. This is
the first I've heard of that quote, so John, I
do appreciate that that's an early gift. John Burlough is
a senior fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute. John, thank you

(05:17):
for the analysis and that information, and once again, Happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Bob. Thanks so much for having
me on