Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, luck and lude. So Michael
Verryshow is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hath promise and absolutely eloquent and elegant commentary by Greg
Guttfeld of Fox News after Kamala Harris was criticizing that
businesses are price gauging because she didn't read gouging. She
read gauging because she didn't come up with either notion.
(00:47):
She doesn't even know what that means. They give her
things to say that are meant to upset the peasants.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The rest people are getting all the money. I'm gonna
fight for you. They're taking all your money. Stuff costs
too much.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, Guttfeld had a wonderful piece where he pointed out
that price gouging is a weak phrase directed at weaker minds,
and boy is he ever right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
First, I want to point out something Jessica said that
Trump began as a millionaire and now he's a billionaire.
I think that makes him an expert in this I
would rather listen to somebody who began as a millionaire
and is now a billionaire than somebody who doesn't have
a damn clue about economics. I've never heard a candidate
today more unsure of themselves on a topic than Kamala Harris.
(01:41):
I think she's been burdened by the weight of expectations
put on her by the media. I've never seen a
better campaign ad for Trump. She's campaigning better for Trump
than Trump is. First, let's talk about the down payment
issue on the House. A lot of this stuff is
infuriating because they're treating the American public like idiots. She
makes a proposal that is only half an equation. The
(02:02):
first half is here's a nice.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Thing for you.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The second half is missing who pays for it? You
saw this with student loan fact described as forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Who paid for it? You paid for it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
You see with immigration policy, who's footing the billions and
all that free stuff? You're paying for it. Nothing is free.
Nothing is free. And the sooner or lady you figure
that out, the better off you're going to be. And
that's directed at Democrats who don't understand that these policies
are going to sink this country. You know, if you
cap prices, you increase scarcity by diminishing competition. People can
(02:37):
call her a communist, but you got to you gotta
explain this because the media won't ask the follow up questions,
how do you plan on doing this? Please give me
an example. Give me an example where industries got together
in a room they decided to drastically increase prices.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The only example they'll have is, oh, you know, a
Baudet erased prices on umbrellas when it rained.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
That's all they got.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There is no payoff for industries to increase artificially inflate
their prices because the people who drive the prices are
the consumers. That is, if you want to understand supplying demand,
it's the consumers who drive the prices. There is absolutely
no debate on this.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
There is not a.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Single economist who would agree that this is the right
thing to do. We can go and talk about Eastern
Bloc countries. You can look at the achieve terrible cars
that they made, in the appliances they made, but you
already know that story. So how do you keep a
debate alive if we know this is a fraudulent idea.
You don't talk to economists. You listen to politicians or
(03:47):
talking heads like me who have to do the research,
because I'm sick and tired of hearing people pretend like
they know what they're talking about on TV, but they don't,
so you won't see economists on other shows other networks
seeing these questions like can you give me an example
of how this is done? What are the major industries?
What is the right price? What is too high? What
(04:09):
is too low? Can the government set prices based on
not having a knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Of an industry?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What do you mean exactly by price gouging?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
How is that done?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Beyond unique exceptions? Price gouging is a weak phrase directed
at weaker minds.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
David Friedberg is the CEO and founder of the Production Board,
an investment holding company focused on innovations in food, agriculture, biomanufacturing,
and life sciences. He absolutely shredded Kamala Harris's claim of
price gouging.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I unequivocally hate socialism. Socialism destroys innovation, destroys productivity, and
destroys individual liberties. Agriculture and food markets have insanely competitive
dynamics because there are commodity markets, there are tons of competitors.
There is no monopoly in making food. There is no
(05:04):
monopoly making CpG products. There is no monopoly in retail.
There is no monopoly in grocery stores. It is a
small margin, highly competitive, highly fragmented, free market, and the
free market works in that everyone is always competing with
each other, creating new productivity improvements, and as a result,
over time, prices come down, except when the government intervenes
(05:26):
and gets involved. So I would argue that the real
cause of price inflation and food is not the supposed
price gouging by corporate players in the ag and food industry,
all of whom are deeply competitive with one another, but
rather is the result of the inflation associated with government
spending and stimulus coming out of COVID. Nick Exhibit one.
(05:50):
The Fed balance sheet from COVID to today, the Fed
balance sheet grew from four point two trillion to seven
point two trillion dollars, a growth of seventy percent. The
Federal reserve one out and they bought assets, and they
issued debt to banks and introduced liquidity into the system
if you go to the next slide. As a result,
the M two money supply increased from fifty to trillion
(06:11):
to twenty one trillion since COVID, a forty percent increase.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay, so now there.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Is more money in the system, so the cost of
everything should go up, which is exactly what we've seen.
We can walk through a couple of the other commodity
price charts from the Saint Louis fed Here is the
price of electricity as an example. The price of electricity
has gone out a little bit less of the M
to money supply. But the truth is when you start
to actually look at AG commodity prices over time, what's
(06:37):
happened is there was certainly a boost coming from COVID,
but the competition and the challenges in overproduction and the
AG markets has started to hit and started to bring
prices back down.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So here's the price of strawberry.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Strawberries today are selling for less than they were pre COVID.
Potatoes are now back to where they were pre COVID. Now,
let me give you some statistics on some of the
supposed price gouging companies in the industry. Craft Time stock
pre COVID was twenty nine bucks a share. Today Kraft
Tine stock is thirty four bucks a share. Twenty nineteen
(07:08):
revenue of twenty five billion, twenty twenty three revenue of
twenty six billion EBITDA on twenty nineteen of six point
one billion EBITDA on twenty twenty three of six point
three billion.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
There's not a lot of praffit cougy.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
In fact, craft times has not been able to keep
up with the inflation. Starbucks, which we just talked about,
their stock was at ninety dollars pre COVID and today
ninety three bucks. Twenty nineteen revenue of twenty six billion,
operating income of four point one billion, twenty twenty three
revenue of thirty six billion, but operating income only five
point nine. Margins have come down in Starbucks nick. If
(07:40):
you pull up the Mackenmsey chart, this is a study
of the grocery industry. The State of Grocery in North
America twenty twenty three by McKenzie. Accelerating pressures on profitability.
To cope with the pandemics upheaval, grocers have had to
dramatically increase capex increase supplies. As a result, they've seen
a significant impact on margins. Here's the margin profile pre
(08:01):
pandemic and today gross margin has declined by two points
from forty seven point six to forty five point six.
Ebitdam margin has declined by one and a half points.
And now let's just go to the final chart, which
is CpG companies the companies that make food and sell
it to consumers.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
As you can see.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
During the COVID era, the three year rolling TSR has
declined since COVID across the board, so food companies are
seeing food prices come down, so farmers they're really suffering.
Labor costs have trippled since the pandemic, but they're still
having to sell products at the same price. CpG companies
have lower margins and supermarkets have lower margins, So there
(08:39):
is nowhere in the ag or food supply chain that
we are seeing fundamentally price gouging or profit taking happening.
What has happened is the cost of labor, the cost
of moving stuff around, the cost of fuel, the cost
of electricity, the cost of goods has all risen with
inflation because of the increase in the money supply and
federal spending.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
This is so Michael.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Berrish, CNBC being an NBC product, has not been as
pro business as I would like them to be when
it comes to covering the Biden and now Harris campaigns,
which again makes this surprising. Megan Cassella over There says
(09:19):
that Kamala Harris tells donors one thing behind closed doors,
but then goes out and runs as a progressive. That is,
she tells business owners, investment banks, folks who depend on
a thriving economy that she'll be pro business, solid fundamentals
(09:42):
of economics, and then she goes out and tells the peasants, Hey,
those people I just spoke to over there, they want
to steal all your money. Well, we all know this
is happening, but the fact that CNBC's Megan Cassella is
calling it out.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This is.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Important.
Speaker 6 (10:05):
She hasn't stuck to any very clear set of ideological policies.
She's wavered a bit throughout her years in politics. What
was interesting to me today and seeing this plan is
that it's clearly very progressive. Regardless of what she's saying
to donors behind closed doors, she is putting a progressive
bent to her campaign at this point, and that's not
what a lot of people expected or hoped to see.
(10:25):
I've been talking to moderate Democrats who said she could
just run a vibes campaign. She didn't have to get
into policy details at all. They think the best way
for her to win is to do anything to just
distance herself from the far left. Regardless of whether or
not she dives into policy details, and she would win. Clearly,
she didn't take that advice. She is diving into policy
details that go more left. She might be saying other
things behind closed doors to make sure corporations are still
(10:47):
on her side as well, but clearly she wants to
sort of have this brand of the progressive candidate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Jade Vance was on Fox Business and he had perhaps
the best one liner about Kamala Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
The American people just don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris,
who has been Vice president for three and a half years,
is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a
way tomorrow that she hasn't for the past thirteen hundred days.
Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, It's like
giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The American people are much smarter than that.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
They don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a
fresh start.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
She is more of the same.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
It is doubling down on the failed policies of the
Harris administration. To give Kamala Harris a promotion rather than
to fire her which is what I think most Americans
are going to do on November.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
One of the things I liked about the Republican Convention
was that it reflected America. There were goalstar parents, there
were parents of children who don't want their child transitioned.
There were small business owners, veterans, there were teachers, there
(12:03):
were mothers, fathers, and I really liked that it represented America.
And that's why I'm very happy that President Trump has
been bringing people on the stage who represent the broad,
rich tapestry that is America, regardless what they look like,
(12:27):
people who share our values. Danielle compos is a Venezuelan
born pilot. President Trump brought him on stage in Pennsylvania,
and he spoke from the heart because he saw what
happened to his beloved Venezuela and he shared it.
Speaker 8 (12:46):
First of all, Hi, everybody, thank you for coming here
and supported the presidential I'm gonna say they first buired
off the speech of my story in English. Then I'm
gonna repeat in Spanish in order to allow our Latino
(13:06):
voters to understand and hear.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
What the situation is going on.
Speaker 8 (13:16):
First of all, as the President Ray said, I'm from Venezuela,
I left the country in two thousand and seven because
of communism. I still have family there. There's been family
that left my there has left even before me, or
continuously living little by little. But going further back, my
grandparents from my mom's side were from Cuba. They they
(13:41):
were at the university when the communist revolution was going on,
and they ended up leaving to Venezuela. They only have
the money they received for us their wedding present, and
they were living in a midhouse, going to school and
trying to move ahead. My granddad ended up becoming a
(14:02):
doctor and had a family, raising three children.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
My mom and my two uncles.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
In the early nineteen nineties, Chaviz did a military coup
and right after.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
He run for president.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
My granddad saw the similarities to what was happening.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
In Cuba, and he told.
Speaker 8 (14:21):
Everybody that would listen to him that he was coming.
And everybody was like, no, this is Venezuela, this is
not Cuba. This will never happen to us. And guess what,
it happened to us and has been happening to other
Latin American countries as well. So when they tell you
here it will never happen.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That's not true. We lived it now.
Speaker 8 (14:41):
Here we are so in two thousand and seven we
end up leaving because the socialist and the government started
changing the education system to make it more like the
Cuban education system.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
In my sad ring a bell to what's going on
here as well.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
So it's extremely important for everybody to keep this.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In breaks my heart to hear these stories breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Flashback to twenty twenty on CNN how Kamala Harris's campaign
unraveled before the Iowa Caucus.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
How Kamala Harris's campaign unraveled. They obtained the resignation letter
of the Harris campaign state operations director, who is now
joining the Bloomberg campaign. She wrote, it is unacceptable that
with less than ninety days until Iowa, we still do
not have a real plan to win. Our campaign for
the people is made up of diverse talent which is
(15:35):
being squandered by indecision and a lack of leaders who lead. Molly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That is rough stuff.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
You wrote a fantastic a cover story on Kamala Harris
about a month ago or so. I'm sure based on
what you're reporting, has been a lot of this isn't
really a surprise to you.
Speaker 10 (15:53):
No, what's the surprise is that she has failed to
turn it around despite literally months and months and months
of hearing this kind of frustration. And you hear you know,
it's reporters, it's people inside the campaign, it's people outside
the campaign. It's pretty much every voter that you meet
on the campaign trail who goes to see her, and
the common theme is people want to like her, and
(16:14):
then she doesn't close the deal. She's not able to
articulate a consistent and compelling message that makes those voters
who show up for her, who are interested in what
she's selling, that makes them decide, yes, this is the
candidate I can commit to. And the Time story and
a post story today have really laid out this frustration,
especially within her team, that she hasn't been able to
(16:35):
make those decisions.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
And she's been all over the place in terms of
the message. Here's a clip to show some of her
kind of hole over the place messaging.
Speaker 11 (16:43):
Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom. Our mother would sit up
trying to figure out how to make it all work.
That's something most Americans know all too well, and that's
what my three am agenda is all about.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He's tearing the support she will bring us together.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
This is Trump and in every possible way, this is
the anti.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Trump and now Tolu her One of the messages is
she's the one who can bring back the Obama coalition
in the way that Obama had and she doesn't say yeah.
Speaker 12 (17:17):
They've tried out a number of different messages over the
past several months and just tried to see what is stuck.
And it's been difficult to follow her campaign because there
have been so many different messages. And one of the
biggest debates that she's having internally is whether she wants
to be sort of the progressive left wing California liberal
or whether or not she wants to be more of
a moderate, and both of those lanes are currently clogged up,
and the fact that she's kind of vacillating between the
(17:38):
two of those makes it difficult for any voter to
stick to her when there are so many other options.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
And Julie, this was a policy heavy campaign, I think
in a way that some folks who got in didn't
necessarily predict and maybe weren't ready for. And then she
has hit the.
Speaker 13 (17:52):
Issues with some of her policies right, and some of
this goes back to the candidate herself. I mean they
have tried out a a lot of different messages and
a lot of different strategies. But as Molly said, it
is her lack of ability to stick to one policy prescription,
one set of policy issues that she really wants to
be her trademark that has put our.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Workshop Michael Arry Show.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Focus on the border of crime, inflation. That's where we win.
When the hearts and minds of people focus. You can't
scattershot fifty eight different things about Kamala just because they bother.
You focus on what matters. Ronaldus Magnus, as Russ used
(18:40):
to like to call him, eloquently and succinctly explained the
cause of inflation.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Mister Carter became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (18:53):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation. Government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I'm going to play that again because I want you
to learn it and repeat it because it's powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I'm mister Cardiby game. President.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Inflation was four point eight percent. It is now running
at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (19:14):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Let me tell you what that inflation did to people.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Because most of us aren't old enough to have been
professional at that time to understand the cost.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We were just children.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Nineteen eighty November of eighty, when Reagan was elected, the
interest rates were well above ten percent.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Because when you have.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Inflation, the only way with your monetary policy you can
suck the air out of the inflation balloon is you
have to constrict the cash the currency. So your monetary
policy has to be nobody can get a loan. How
(20:07):
do you keep people from getting a loan? You drive
the interest rate up high. That's what you do to
try to battle inflation, to bring the cost down, to
bring sorry, to bring the prices down. The cost doesn't change,
the price has come down, that's the goal. That's what
happened under Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris are
just Jimmy Carter three point zero Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama,
(20:31):
Joe Biden. These policies have the same damned effect every
time but there's a new audience with each new generation.
And when that happened, I was talking to Charlie Hartland.
Charlie is a well he spent most of his career
with inspirity, but before that he was a home builder,
And I said, why did you stop being a homebuilder
(20:52):
And he said, well, under Carter, the interest rates were
so high that nobody could borrow to build a new
to buy a new home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So what'd you do?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He said, Well, first I had a family to feed,
so I first started by instead of building new homes,
I would renovate the homes that people were in because
they couldn't afford a loan.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
To buy a new house.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And I still had mouths to feed and guys, you know, workers.
So that's what he did until he couldn't any longer.
Then he went to work for what was in administaff
and became inspired and had a great career. But he
was talking about how inflation had hurt him because the
response to inflation is high interest rates, which is why
we have had to have highest rates because of the
(21:39):
inflation that this government has cost. And I'll play it
again because I want you to understand, because Ronald Reagan
is absolutely right.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
When mister Carter became president, inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (21:54):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
We don't have inflation.
Speaker 14 (21:58):
Because the people are living too well. We have inflation
because the government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
The great Milton Friedman once called inflation the true tax.
Speaker 15 (22:13):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because that's.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
The true tax. Every budget is balanced.
Speaker 15 (22:23):
There is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget.
You're paying for it if you're not paying for it
through it in the form.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Of explicit taxes.
Speaker 15 (22:33):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The thing you should.
Speaker 15 (22:38):
Keep your eye on is what government spends. And the
real problem is to hold down government spending as a
fraction of our indo.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And if you do that, you can stop worrying about
the debt.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The problem is politicians want to make promises. They don't
pay for it. You do, but they don't make a
promise to say give me your money that I may
give it to someone else. They appeal to your heart.
(23:15):
It's the right thing to do that we spend this
money on this thing. I don't believe the American people
want so many billion dollars to have gone to Ukraine.
And the way this argument is couched is if you
(23:35):
can't afford dinner tonight, just remember vladimir' Zelensky sure can.
Instead of giving that money to Zelensky and Ukraine, we
could have given it to you. Government shouldn't need to
take your money to give it back to you. Government
(23:56):
shouldn't need to take your money to give it back
to you. Governments should let you keep your money. You
earned it, and when they tell you you're greedy, the
left will tell you you're greedy for not wanting to
give more of your money to other people and let
(24:18):
the politicians get the credit by collecting it first before
they hand it to them. If I wanted to give
my money away, I would give it to charity, and
I do, but I don't need to rout it through
the government.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's somehow that works.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But the government wants the credit for taking your money
and giving it to those people. That's not charitable any longer.
That's not an act of kindness, but in so doing
they harm you by taking that which you've earned, and
(24:56):
they harm the person they give it to because they
lose the ability. Like the bear they tell you not
to feed, because they'll they'll lose the ability to forage
on their own the zoo animals. If people don't have
to forage on their own to provide for themselves, they
will grow dependent on a government. And that is exactly
(25:21):
what the Democrats want, and that's where we are.
Speaker 16 (25:24):
Today Michael Berry's show, let's have.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
An economics lesson for a moment, because it's very important
people know they don't like inflation. Nobody says, I'm not sure, Michael,
I think I might be in favor of inflation. Inflation
to most people simply means they don't have enough money
to buy the things they want. So in a sense,
(26:01):
there is always inflation because we can never buy as
much as we want. Well, that's economics, the allocation of
scarce resources. We all have scarce resources. We don't have
as much money as we'd like. So we get our
(26:22):
first job. We're making fifty thousand dollars a year. We
start that job, we don't have anywhere to live, we
don't have anything to drive, we don't have clothes, to
wear to that job.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So what do we do.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
We go borrow money from someone else a bank or
credit card, usually a credit card, and then we're going
to pay them back as we start making money, but
we're going to pay them back what we borrowed and
then some and this borrowing becomes a crutch because where
we do then we go buy. Then we borrow money
(26:58):
for a car, we borrow money for a house. But
that's okay because we think about how much we're going
to pay him per month and not what we're going
to pay them overall. But it adds up, doesn't it,
And we never get out of that cycle of debt.
That's what's happened to our nation. And so eventually we say,
(27:20):
give me more. I want more money. So the government,
without producing more goods, the government just prints more money.
Nobody has spoken more eloquently in America's history on inflation
(27:41):
than Milton Friedman. He called inflation a disease, and it is.
It's a sickness. It's brought about by the collapse of
many nations, or it's brought about the collapse of many
nations in the past. It is a sickness. You didn't
(28:02):
cause it, only government can cause it. Listen, Inflation is
a disease. It's a dangerous disease for a society. It
is sometimes a fatal disease for a society. It's a
disease that, if allowed to rage unchecked, can destroy a society.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
And we have many such examples.
Speaker 15 (28:30):
The classic examples, of course, are the extreme examples of Germany,
of Austria, of Russia after the First World War, when
inflation really did reach levels at which the kind of
apocryphal story I told you was a literal description of
(28:51):
the reality. When inflation reached levels at which employers would
pay their workers three times times a day after breakfast, lunch,
and dinner so they could go out and spend the
money before it lost.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
All its value. That's the real extreme cases.
Speaker 15 (29:09):
But you don't have to go to such extreme cases
to see the enormous harm which inflation left unchecked can do.
You have the example in many examples in South America.
Brazil before nineteen sixty four was brought down by an
inflation that led to a revolution that toppled the existing
(29:32):
government in order to stem the inflation. In the famous
case of Chile, with mister Elea Yendi in power, he
produced an inflation, which was one of the major factors
that caused the economic catastrophe that led to the replacement
of his government by a military dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
We are nowhere near that stage in the.
Speaker 15 (29:56):
United States, but it behooves us as a nation to
pay at time atention to this disease, to ask ourselves,
what is the cause of the disease, How do you
cure the disease, what are the effects of the cure,
what are the side effects of it?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
And what will happen if we don't cure it.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Now, I want you to understand. You know you've got
this disease, what causes it? Spoiler alert, It's not what
Kamala Harris said price gauging, which she meant price gouging,
but she didn't read the word. She has no understanding
how this works. There is a cancer on this nation
(30:43):
that is inflation, and it's very important that we understand
how we got it, and how you treat it and
how you stop it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's go to Milton Friedman again.
Speaker 15 (30:55):
Now, the first step to our understanding the cause of
an is to recognize that it is always everywhere a
monetary phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
It's always an everywhere a result.
Speaker 15 (31:12):
Of too much money, of a more rapid increase in
the quantity of money than an output. Moreover, in the
modern era, the important next step is to recognize that
today governments control the quantity of money, so that as
(31:33):
a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And nowhere else.
Speaker 15 (31:40):
Of Course, no government, any more than any one of us,
likes to take responsibility for bad things.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Where all of us human.
Speaker 15 (31:49):
If something bad happens, it wasn't our fault, and the
government is the same way, so it doesn't accept responsibility
for inflation. Listen to people in Washington talk. They will
tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen, or
it's produced by grasping unions, or it's produced by spendthrift consumers,
(32:13):
or maybe it's those terrible Arab sheiks who are producing. Now.
Of course, businessmen are greedy, who of us isn't. Trade
unions are grasping who of us isn't. And there's no
doubt that the consumer is a spendthrift at least every
man knows that about his wife. But none of them
(32:37):
produce inflation for the very simple reason that neither the
businessman nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a
printing press in their basement on which they can turn
out those green pieces of paper we call money.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Only Washington has.
Speaker 15 (32:56):
That printing press, and therefore only Washington can produce inflation.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And since we're on the subject of the great Milton Friedman,
let's close with a quote we played earlier. It's important
people understand why we have inflation. Inflation is a tax
on the people by reducing your income to pay for
(33:22):
things government has already spent on it.
Speaker 15 (33:26):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because
that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is
no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying
for it if you're not paying for it.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Through it in the form of explicit taxes.
Speaker 15 (33:46):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should
keep your eye on is what governments spent. And the
real problem is to hold down government spending as a
fraction of our And if you do that, you can
stop worrying about the best
Speaker 5 (34:06):
M
It's that time, time, time, luck and lude. So Michael
Verryshow is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hath promise and absolutely eloquent and elegant commentary by Greg
Guttfeld of Fox News after Kamala Harris was criticizing that
businesses are price gauging because she didn't read gouging. She
read gauging because she didn't come up with either notion.
(00:47):
She doesn't even know what that means. They give her
things to say that are meant to upset the peasants.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The rest people are getting all the money. I'm gonna
fight for you. They're taking all your money. Stuff costs
too much.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, Guttfeld had a wonderful piece where he pointed out
that price gouging is a weak phrase directed at weaker minds,
and boy is he ever right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
First, I want to point out something Jessica said that
Trump began as a millionaire and now he's a billionaire.
I think that makes him an expert in this I
would rather listen to somebody who began as a millionaire
and is now a billionaire than somebody who doesn't have
a damn clue about economics. I've never heard a candidate
today more unsure of themselves on a topic than Kamala Harris.
(01:41):
I think she's been burdened by the weight of expectations
put on her by the media. I've never seen a
better campaign ad for Trump. She's campaigning better for Trump
than Trump is. First, let's talk about the down payment
issue on the House. A lot of this stuff is
infuriating because they're treating the American public like idiots. She
makes a proposal that is only half an equation. The
(02:02):
first half is here's a nice.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Thing for you.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The second half is missing who pays for it? You
saw this with student loan fact described as forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Who paid for it? You paid for it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
You see with immigration policy, who's footing the billions and
all that free stuff? You're paying for it. Nothing is free.
Nothing is free. And the sooner or lady you figure
that out, the better off you're going to be. And
that's directed at Democrats who don't understand that these policies
are going to sink this country. You know, if you
cap prices, you increase scarcity by diminishing competition. People can
(02:37):
call her a communist, but you got to you gotta
explain this because the media won't ask the follow up questions,
how do you plan on doing this? Please give me
an example. Give me an example where industries got together
in a room they decided to drastically increase prices.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The only example they'll have is, oh, you know, a
Baudet erased prices on umbrellas when it rained.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
That's all they got.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There is no payoff for industries to increase artificially inflate
their prices because the people who drive the prices are
the consumers. That is, if you want to understand supplying demand,
it's the consumers who drive the prices. There is absolutely
no debate on this.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
There is not a.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Single economist who would agree that this is the right
thing to do. We can go and talk about Eastern
Bloc countries. You can look at the achieve terrible cars
that they made, in the appliances they made, but you
already know that story. So how do you keep a
debate alive if we know this is a fraudulent idea.
You don't talk to economists. You listen to politicians or
(03:47):
talking heads like me who have to do the research,
because I'm sick and tired of hearing people pretend like
they know what they're talking about on TV, but they don't,
so you won't see economists on other shows other networks
seeing these questions like can you give me an example
of how this is done? What are the major industries?
What is the right price? What is too high? What
(04:09):
is too low? Can the government set prices based on
not having a knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Of an industry?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What do you mean exactly by price gouging?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
How is that done?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Beyond unique exceptions? Price gouging is a weak phrase directed
at weaker minds.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
David Friedberg is the CEO and founder of the Production Board,
an investment holding company focused on innovations in food, agriculture, biomanufacturing,
and life sciences. He absolutely shredded Kamala Harris's claim of
price gouging.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I unequivocally hate socialism. Socialism destroys innovation, destroys productivity, and
destroys individual liberties. Agriculture and food markets have insanely competitive
dynamics because there are commodity markets, there are tons of competitors.
There is no monopoly in making food. There is no
(05:04):
monopoly making CpG products. There is no monopoly in retail.
There is no monopoly in grocery stores. It is a
small margin, highly competitive, highly fragmented, free market, and the
free market works in that everyone is always competing with
each other, creating new productivity improvements, and as a result,
over time, prices come down, except when the government intervenes
(05:26):
and gets involved. So I would argue that the real
cause of price inflation and food is not the supposed
price gouging by corporate players in the ag and food industry,
all of whom are deeply competitive with one another, but
rather is the result of the inflation associated with government
spending and stimulus coming out of COVID. Nick Exhibit one.
(05:50):
The Fed balance sheet from COVID to today, the Fed
balance sheet grew from four point two trillion to seven
point two trillion dollars, a growth of seventy percent. The
Federal reserve one out and they bought assets, and they
issued debt to banks and introduced liquidity into the system
if you go to the next slide. As a result,
the M two money supply increased from fifty to trillion
(06:11):
to twenty one trillion since COVID, a forty percent increase.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay, so now there.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Is more money in the system, so the cost of
everything should go up, which is exactly what we've seen.
We can walk through a couple of the other commodity
price charts from the Saint Louis fed Here is the
price of electricity as an example. The price of electricity
has gone out a little bit less of the M
to money supply. But the truth is when you start
to actually look at AG commodity prices over time, what's
(06:37):
happened is there was certainly a boost coming from COVID,
but the competition and the challenges in overproduction and the
AG markets has started to hit and started to bring
prices back down.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So here's the price of strawberry.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Strawberries today are selling for less than they were pre COVID.
Potatoes are now back to where they were pre COVID. Now,
let me give you some statistics on some of the
supposed price gouging companies in the industry. Craft Time stock
pre COVID was twenty nine bucks a share. Today Kraft
Tine stock is thirty four bucks a share. Twenty nineteen
(07:08):
revenue of twenty five billion, twenty twenty three revenue of
twenty six billion EBITDA on twenty nineteen of six point
one billion EBITDA on twenty twenty three of six point
three billion.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
There's not a lot of praffit cougy.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
In fact, craft times has not been able to keep
up with the inflation. Starbucks, which we just talked about,
their stock was at ninety dollars pre COVID and today
ninety three bucks. Twenty nineteen revenue of twenty six billion,
operating income of four point one billion, twenty twenty three
revenue of thirty six billion, but operating income only five
point nine. Margins have come down in Starbucks nick. If
(07:40):
you pull up the Mackenmsey chart, this is a study
of the grocery industry. The State of Grocery in North
America twenty twenty three by McKenzie. Accelerating pressures on profitability.
To cope with the pandemics upheaval, grocers have had to
dramatically increase capex increase supplies. As a result, they've seen
a significant impact on margins. Here's the margin profile pre
(08:01):
pandemic and today gross margin has declined by two points
from forty seven point six to forty five point six.
Ebitdam margin has declined by one and a half points.
And now let's just go to the final chart, which
is CpG companies the companies that make food and sell
it to consumers.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
As you can see.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
During the COVID era, the three year rolling TSR has
declined since COVID across the board, so food companies are
seeing food prices come down, so farmers they're really suffering.
Labor costs have trippled since the pandemic, but they're still
having to sell products at the same price. CpG companies
have lower margins and supermarkets have lower margins, So there
(08:39):
is nowhere in the ag or food supply chain that
we are seeing fundamentally price gouging or profit taking happening.
What has happened is the cost of labor, the cost
of moving stuff around, the cost of fuel, the cost
of electricity, the cost of goods has all risen with
inflation because of the increase in the money supply and
federal spending.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
This is so Michael.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Berrish, CNBC being an NBC product, has not been as
pro business as I would like them to be when
it comes to covering the Biden and now Harris campaigns,
which again makes this surprising. Megan Cassella over There says
(09:19):
that Kamala Harris tells donors one thing behind closed doors,
but then goes out and runs as a progressive. That is,
she tells business owners, investment banks, folks who depend on
a thriving economy that she'll be pro business, solid fundamentals
(09:42):
of economics, and then she goes out and tells the peasants, Hey,
those people I just spoke to over there, they want
to steal all your money. Well, we all know this
is happening, but the fact that CNBC's Megan Cassella is
calling it out.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This is.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Important.
Speaker 6 (10:05):
She hasn't stuck to any very clear set of ideological policies.
She's wavered a bit throughout her years in politics. What
was interesting to me today and seeing this plan is
that it's clearly very progressive. Regardless of what she's saying
to donors behind closed doors, she is putting a progressive
bent to her campaign at this point, and that's not
what a lot of people expected or hoped to see.
(10:25):
I've been talking to moderate Democrats who said she could
just run a vibes campaign. She didn't have to get
into policy details at all. They think the best way
for her to win is to do anything to just
distance herself from the far left. Regardless of whether or
not she dives into policy details, and she would win. Clearly,
she didn't take that advice. She is diving into policy
details that go more left. She might be saying other
things behind closed doors to make sure corporations are still
(10:47):
on her side as well, but clearly she wants to
sort of have this brand of the progressive candidate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Jade Vance was on Fox Business and he had perhaps
the best one liner about Kamala Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
The American people just don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris,
who has been Vice president for three and a half years,
is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a
way tomorrow that she hasn't for the past thirteen hundred days.
Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, It's like
giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The American people are much smarter than that.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
They don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a
fresh start.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
She is more of the same.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
It is doubling down on the failed policies of the
Harris administration. To give Kamala Harris a promotion rather than
to fire her which is what I think most Americans
are going to do on November.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
One of the things I liked about the Republican Convention
was that it reflected America. There were goalstar parents, there
were parents of children who don't want their child transitioned.
There were small business owners, veterans, there were teachers, there
(12:03):
were mothers, fathers, and I really liked that it represented America.
And that's why I'm very happy that President Trump has
been bringing people on the stage who represent the broad,
rich tapestry that is America, regardless what they look like,
(12:27):
people who share our values. Danielle compos is a Venezuelan
born pilot. President Trump brought him on stage in Pennsylvania,
and he spoke from the heart because he saw what
happened to his beloved Venezuela and he shared it.
Speaker 8 (12:46):
First of all, Hi, everybody, thank you for coming here
and supported the presidential I'm gonna say they first buired
off the speech of my story in English. Then I'm
gonna repeat in Spanish in order to allow our Latino
(13:06):
voters to understand and hear.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
What the situation is going on.
Speaker 8 (13:16):
First of all, as the President Ray said, I'm from Venezuela,
I left the country in two thousand and seven because
of communism. I still have family there. There's been family
that left my there has left even before me, or
continuously living little by little. But going further back, my
grandparents from my mom's side were from Cuba. They they
(13:41):
were at the university when the communist revolution was going on,
and they ended up leaving to Venezuela. They only have
the money they received for us their wedding present, and
they were living in a midhouse, going to school and
trying to move ahead. My granddad ended up becoming a
(14:02):
doctor and had a family, raising three children.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
My mom and my two uncles.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
In the early nineteen nineties, Chaviz did a military coup
and right after.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
He run for president.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
My granddad saw the similarities to what was happening.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
In Cuba, and he told.
Speaker 8 (14:21):
Everybody that would listen to him that he was coming.
And everybody was like, no, this is Venezuela, this is
not Cuba. This will never happen to us. And guess what,
it happened to us and has been happening to other
Latin American countries as well. So when they tell you
here it will never happen.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That's not true. We lived it now.
Speaker 8 (14:41):
Here we are so in two thousand and seven we
end up leaving because the socialist and the government started
changing the education system to make it more like the
Cuban education system.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
In my sad ring a bell to what's going on
here as well.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
So it's extremely important for everybody to keep this.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In breaks my heart to hear these stories breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Flashback to twenty twenty on CNN how Kamala Harris's campaign
unraveled before the Iowa Caucus.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
How Kamala Harris's campaign unraveled. They obtained the resignation letter
of the Harris campaign state operations director, who is now
joining the Bloomberg campaign. She wrote, it is unacceptable that
with less than ninety days until Iowa, we still do
not have a real plan to win. Our campaign for
the people is made up of diverse talent which is
(15:35):
being squandered by indecision and a lack of leaders who lead. Molly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That is rough stuff.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
You wrote a fantastic a cover story on Kamala Harris
about a month ago or so. I'm sure based on
what you're reporting, has been a lot of this isn't
really a surprise to you.
Speaker 10 (15:53):
No, what's the surprise is that she has failed to
turn it around despite literally months and months and months
of hearing this kind of frustration. And you hear you know,
it's reporters, it's people inside the campaign, it's people outside
the campaign. It's pretty much every voter that you meet
on the campaign trail who goes to see her, and
the common theme is people want to like her, and
(16:14):
then she doesn't close the deal. She's not able to
articulate a consistent and compelling message that makes those voters
who show up for her, who are interested in what
she's selling, that makes them decide, yes, this is the
candidate I can commit to. And the Time story and
a post story today have really laid out this frustration,
especially within her team, that she hasn't been able to
(16:35):
make those decisions.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
And she's been all over the place in terms of
the message. Here's a clip to show some of her
kind of hole over the place messaging.
Speaker 11 (16:43):
Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom. Our mother would sit up
trying to figure out how to make it all work.
That's something most Americans know all too well, and that's
what my three am agenda is all about.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He's tearing the support she will bring us together.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
This is Trump and in every possible way, this is
the anti.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Trump and now Tolu her One of the messages is
she's the one who can bring back the Obama coalition
in the way that Obama had and she doesn't say yeah.
Speaker 12 (17:17):
They've tried out a number of different messages over the
past several months and just tried to see what is stuck.
And it's been difficult to follow her campaign because there
have been so many different messages. And one of the
biggest debates that she's having internally is whether she wants
to be sort of the progressive left wing California liberal
or whether or not she wants to be more of
a moderate, and both of those lanes are currently clogged up,
and the fact that she's kind of vacillating between the
(17:38):
two of those makes it difficult for any voter to
stick to her when there are so many other options.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
And Julie, this was a policy heavy campaign, I think
in a way that some folks who got in didn't
necessarily predict and maybe weren't ready for. And then she
has hit the.
Speaker 13 (17:52):
Issues with some of her policies right, and some of
this goes back to the candidate herself. I mean they
have tried out a a lot of different messages and
a lot of different strategies. But as Molly said, it
is her lack of ability to stick to one policy prescription,
one set of policy issues that she really wants to
be her trademark that has put our.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Workshop Michael Arry Show.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Focus on the border of crime, inflation. That's where we win.
When the hearts and minds of people focus. You can't
scattershot fifty eight different things about Kamala just because they bother.
You focus on what matters. Ronaldus Magnus, as Russ used
(18:40):
to like to call him, eloquently and succinctly explained the
cause of inflation.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Mister Carter became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (18:53):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation. Government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I'm going to play that again because I want you
to learn it and repeat it because it's powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I'm mister Cardiby game. President.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Inflation was four point eight percent. It is now running
at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (19:14):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Let me tell you what that inflation did to people.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Because most of us aren't old enough to have been
professional at that time to understand the cost.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We were just children.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Nineteen eighty November of eighty, when Reagan was elected, the
interest rates were well above ten percent.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Because when you have.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Inflation, the only way with your monetary policy you can
suck the air out of the inflation balloon is you
have to constrict the cash the currency. So your monetary
policy has to be nobody can get a loan. How
(20:07):
do you keep people from getting a loan? You drive
the interest rate up high. That's what you do to
try to battle inflation, to bring the cost down, to
bring sorry, to bring the prices down. The cost doesn't change,
the price has come down, that's the goal. That's what
happened under Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris are
just Jimmy Carter three point zero Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama,
(20:31):
Joe Biden. These policies have the same damned effect every
time but there's a new audience with each new generation.
And when that happened, I was talking to Charlie Hartland.
Charlie is a well he spent most of his career
with inspirity, but before that he was a home builder,
And I said, why did you stop being a homebuilder
(20:52):
And he said, well, under Carter, the interest rates were
so high that nobody could borrow to build a new
to buy a new home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So what'd you do?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He said, Well, first I had a family to feed,
so I first started by instead of building new homes,
I would renovate the homes that people were in because
they couldn't afford a loan.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
To buy a new house.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And I still had mouths to feed and guys, you know, workers.
So that's what he did until he couldn't any longer.
Then he went to work for what was in administaff
and became inspired and had a great career. But he
was talking about how inflation had hurt him because the
response to inflation is high interest rates, which is why
we have had to have highest rates because of the
(21:39):
inflation that this government has cost. And I'll play it
again because I want you to understand, because Ronald Reagan
is absolutely right.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
When mister Carter became president, inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 14 (21:54):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
We don't have inflation.
Speaker 14 (21:58):
Because the people are living too well. We have inflation
because the government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
The great Milton Friedman once called inflation the true tax.
Speaker 15 (22:13):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because that's.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
The true tax. Every budget is balanced.
Speaker 15 (22:23):
There is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget.
You're paying for it if you're not paying for it
through it in the form.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Of explicit taxes.
Speaker 15 (22:33):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The thing you should.
Speaker 15 (22:38):
Keep your eye on is what government spends. And the
real problem is to hold down government spending as a
fraction of our indo.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And if you do that, you can stop worrying about
the debt.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The problem is politicians want to make promises. They don't
pay for it. You do, but they don't make a
promise to say give me your money that I may
give it to someone else. They appeal to your heart.
(23:15):
It's the right thing to do that we spend this
money on this thing. I don't believe the American people
want so many billion dollars to have gone to Ukraine.
And the way this argument is couched is if you
(23:35):
can't afford dinner tonight, just remember vladimir' Zelensky sure can.
Instead of giving that money to Zelensky and Ukraine, we
could have given it to you. Government shouldn't need to
take your money to give it back to you. Government
(23:56):
shouldn't need to take your money to give it back
to you. Governments should let you keep your money. You
earned it, and when they tell you you're greedy, the
left will tell you you're greedy for not wanting to
give more of your money to other people and let
(24:18):
the politicians get the credit by collecting it first before
they hand it to them. If I wanted to give
my money away, I would give it to charity, and
I do, but I don't need to rout it through
the government.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's somehow that works.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But the government wants the credit for taking your money
and giving it to those people. That's not charitable any longer.
That's not an act of kindness, but in so doing
they harm you by taking that which you've earned, and
(24:56):
they harm the person they give it to because they
lose the ability. Like the bear they tell you not
to feed, because they'll they'll lose the ability to forage
on their own the zoo animals. If people don't have
to forage on their own to provide for themselves, they
will grow dependent on a government. And that is exactly
(25:21):
what the Democrats want, and that's where we are.
Speaker 16 (25:24):
Today Michael Berry's show, let's have.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
An economics lesson for a moment, because it's very important
people know they don't like inflation. Nobody says, I'm not sure, Michael,
I think I might be in favor of inflation. Inflation
to most people simply means they don't have enough money
to buy the things they want. So in a sense,
(26:01):
there is always inflation because we can never buy as
much as we want. Well, that's economics, the allocation of
scarce resources. We all have scarce resources. We don't have
as much money as we'd like. So we get our
(26:22):
first job. We're making fifty thousand dollars a year. We
start that job, we don't have anywhere to live, we
don't have anything to drive, we don't have clothes, to
wear to that job.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So what do we do.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
We go borrow money from someone else a bank or
credit card, usually a credit card, and then we're going
to pay them back as we start making money, but
we're going to pay them back what we borrowed and
then some and this borrowing becomes a crutch because where
we do then we go buy. Then we borrow money
(26:58):
for a car, we borrow money for a house. But
that's okay because we think about how much we're going
to pay him per month and not what we're going
to pay them overall. But it adds up, doesn't it,
And we never get out of that cycle of debt.
That's what's happened to our nation. And so eventually we say,
(27:20):
give me more. I want more money. So the government,
without producing more goods, the government just prints more money.
Nobody has spoken more eloquently in America's history on inflation
(27:41):
than Milton Friedman. He called inflation a disease, and it is.
It's a sickness. It's brought about by the collapse of
many nations, or it's brought about the collapse of many
nations in the past. It is a sickness. You didn't
(28:02):
cause it, only government can cause it. Listen, Inflation is
a disease. It's a dangerous disease for a society. It
is sometimes a fatal disease for a society. It's a
disease that, if allowed to rage unchecked, can destroy a society.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
And we have many such examples.
Speaker 15 (28:30):
The classic examples, of course, are the extreme examples of Germany,
of Austria, of Russia after the First World War, when
inflation really did reach levels at which the kind of
apocryphal story I told you was a literal description of
(28:51):
the reality. When inflation reached levels at which employers would
pay their workers three times times a day after breakfast, lunch,
and dinner so they could go out and spend the
money before it lost.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
All its value. That's the real extreme cases.
Speaker 15 (29:09):
But you don't have to go to such extreme cases
to see the enormous harm which inflation left unchecked can do.
You have the example in many examples in South America.
Brazil before nineteen sixty four was brought down by an
inflation that led to a revolution that toppled the existing
(29:32):
government in order to stem the inflation. In the famous
case of Chile, with mister Elea Yendi in power, he
produced an inflation, which was one of the major factors
that caused the economic catastrophe that led to the replacement
of his government by a military dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
We are nowhere near that stage in the.
Speaker 15 (29:56):
United States, but it behooves us as a nation to
pay at time atention to this disease, to ask ourselves,
what is the cause of the disease, How do you
cure the disease, what are the effects of the cure,
what are the side effects of it?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
And what will happen if we don't cure it.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Now, I want you to understand. You know you've got
this disease, what causes it? Spoiler alert, It's not what
Kamala Harris said price gauging, which she meant price gouging,
but she didn't read the word. She has no understanding
how this works. There is a cancer on this nation
(30:43):
that is inflation, and it's very important that we understand
how we got it, and how you treat it and
how you stop it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's go to Milton Friedman again.
Speaker 15 (30:55):
Now, the first step to our understanding the cause of
an is to recognize that it is always everywhere a
monetary phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
It's always an everywhere a result.
Speaker 15 (31:12):
Of too much money, of a more rapid increase in
the quantity of money than an output. Moreover, in the
modern era, the important next step is to recognize that
today governments control the quantity of money, so that as
(31:33):
a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And nowhere else.
Speaker 15 (31:40):
Of Course, no government, any more than any one of us,
likes to take responsibility for bad things.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Where all of us human.
Speaker 15 (31:49):
If something bad happens, it wasn't our fault, and the
government is the same way, so it doesn't accept responsibility
for inflation. Listen to people in Washington talk. They will
tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen, or
it's produced by grasping unions, or it's produced by spendthrift consumers,
(32:13):
or maybe it's those terrible Arab sheiks who are producing. Now.
Of course, businessmen are greedy, who of us isn't. Trade
unions are grasping who of us isn't. And there's no
doubt that the consumer is a spendthrift at least every
man knows that about his wife. But none of them
(32:37):
produce inflation for the very simple reason that neither the
businessman nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a
printing press in their basement on which they can turn
out those green pieces of paper we call money.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Only Washington has.
Speaker 15 (32:56):
That printing press, and therefore only Washington can produce inflation.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And since we're on the subject of the great Milton Friedman,
let's close with a quote we played earlier. It's important
people understand why we have inflation. Inflation is a tax
on the people by reducing your income to pay for
(33:22):
things government has already spent on it.
Speaker 15 (33:26):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because
that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is
no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying
for it if you're not paying for it.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Through it in the form of explicit taxes.
Speaker 15 (33:46):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should
keep your eye on is what governments spent. And the
real problem is to hold down government spending as a
fraction of our And if you do that, you can
stop worrying about the best
Speaker 5 (34:06):
M
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