12-12-24 - 7am - Regulation, Debt & Inflation and Argentina

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I saw the supposed list of the ten people Time
was considering for a Person of the Year. I am
absolutely shocked that they chose Donald Trump. It is the
correct decision, but normally they don't make it very interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Don't get too excited about the selection of Donald Trump
as Times Person of the Year. Twenty twenty four will
be or is the seventh consecutive US election year in
which the winner of the presidential contest becomes Person of

(00:42):
the Year. So it's it's not a BFD. It's just
it's Time magazine just being Time magazine. I was going
to mention that earlier, and then I looked up and
saw that he's at the Stock Exchange and was making
comments about being chosen, And I mean, you know, who

(01:05):
wouldn't want to be Times Person of the Year or
a Man of the year or whatever they call it?
Now what should they call it?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Now?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Are you the man of the year? The person of
the year, the trends of the year, the unique of
the year. Wasn't Caitlin Jenner a woman of the Year.
I really don't know. I'm pretty sure because that's how
little I care now about I mean, I you know,
growing up always it was always kind of interesting or
at least curious for a nerd like me, like who's

(01:34):
going to be the person of the year or the
man of the year, you know, whatever it might be.
And didn't you reach the point where you realize it's
just bullcrap, just total bullcrap, So who cares? We have
three major economic problems, not in any particular order, but

(01:57):
these are the three problems that we have. And quite frankly,
I would say that most of the Western civilization has
excessive regulation, government, debt, and inflation. And every single one
of those you can trace, you can trace back to
a bloated government. Well, there's one person in the world,

(02:21):
one person that has actually addressed all three and has
done so only one year after coming into office, and
that's Javier Malay, the President of Argentina. Let's go through
them in the same order. Regulation, deregulation is already bearing

(02:43):
fruit in Argentina, and that's crucial if you want to
maintain support of your voters, your followers, or just a
population in general. They have a new ministry deregulation and
state transformation, not exactly what DOGE is, but kind of

(03:08):
encompasses a little bit about what doge is. It's run
by someone by the name of Federico Strucchenegger, and he's
been particularly noteworthy in what he's done, including the abolition
of the country's rint control laws that led to to
a substantial and a rapid increase in the supply of housing. Now,

(03:33):
there is a story that Dragon put over here that
I haven't gotten to yet, but here's the headline, Denver's
modifying landmark greenhouse gas rules after landlord protests. Denver's climate
change and energy officials are modifying a landmark set of
greenhouse gas reduction rules for big buildings and after sharp
challenges from landlords. But trade groups say the updates don't

(03:56):
go nearly far enough. What do you think the objection was?

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Oh, costs?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, So here you had rent control which keeps rents
artificially low. It suppresses any sort of expansion or reinvestment
of capital because you know, you know what, my ROI
on this investment is going to be limited because of
rent controls. So they get rid of rent controls as

(04:23):
one of the deregulations that they did, and suddenly there's
a rapid increase in the supply of housing. The monthly
average rent for an average flat in Buenos Aires fell
by thirty percent in real terms between November of last
year and July of this year, all just as retal,
just of just getting rid of rent controls. That you

(04:46):
might say, but oh but mytyl for the people that
are renting that went up. Yes, their rent went up
because they were paying a government mandated rate or regulated rate.
But now don't forget the other part of the equation.

(05:08):
Now that rent controls have disappeared, and even though the
monthly rent the average rate has fallen by an average
of thirty percent, the lack of regulations and the lack
of rent control has now spurred a boom into building
of new apartments. Now, let's think about debt. Malay announced

(05:32):
this week, after one hundred and twenty three years of
one hundred and twenty three years of deficit, his government
cuts have resulted in a surplus, a government surplus. Now
he speaks obviously in Spanish and Argentinian, but let me

(05:52):
just tell you what the what the sound bite says,
because it's closed captions with the stakes of all significance
defin there is no death, no issuance, and no inflation.
The day we have sustained fiscal surpluses free of default
for the first time in the last one twenty three years.

(06:14):
This was thanks to being the largest adjustment in the
history of this and apply a tourniquet to monetary issuance,
issuing new money until it is brought to zero. Exactly
one year ago, a fiscal degenerate which I will not name,
came from printing thirteen points. We went an election with
no regard for the inflation that we generates today, monetary

(06:39):
issuance is a thing of the past. They were just
issuing money. They were just printing money. Oh what other
country does that to the tune of trillions of dollars?
We do so now after one hundred and twenty three years,
they have a budget surplus. The third point that I

(07:00):
made was about inflation. Malay's economic plans are proving enormously successful.
The country's inflation has plunged. Now, when you're dealing with
twenty three, twenty four to twenty five percent month inflation,
their inflation rate plunged to two point seven percent in October. Now,

(07:22):
I know that's the same rate that ours ticked up to,
but there's dropped by about twenty three percent. Down to
two point seven percent. Prior to Malay, the only time
Argentina did not have double digit inflation was going back,
going back to nineteen forty five. Was during the nineteen
nineties when the peso was pegged to the dollar. Maybe

(07:46):
we had to peg the dollar to go. The magazine
The Economist noted in June that Malay had quote slash
spending while the central bank stopped printing money to finance
the devil, adding that by most economic measures, mister Malay
is beating expectations. Argentina has had physical surpluses for five

(08:10):
months in a row. Now, of course they'll be backlash
because some services will be cut and some things will
you know, you that the population got dependent upon, may disappear.
But he says, the president does. Do not surrender to

(08:31):
the advance of the state. The state is not the solution.
The state is the problem itself. Long Live freedom. Ooh
sounds like Ronald Reagan, doesn't it. Now our regulatory state
is completely out of control. Now, our federal debt is
skyrocketed past thirty six trillion dollars. Inflation keeps et into

(08:53):
our standard of living, particularly since Biden took office. But
if hobby a Malay can fix Argentina after generations of
just stupid dumb assery. I think we can dig our
way out too. I think we need to look at
what he's done. Now, let's go back to when he

(09:14):
was running for office, because when he was running for office,
oh my gosh, it was the end of civilization, the
same crap you're going to hear in this country. The
economy crash, the markets, the markets will go into open revolt,
and he would be swiftly evicted from office by the
IMF and replaced by some grown ups, you know, some technocrats,
some of the you know, the professional class, the expert class.

(09:40):
When they elected Malay, the economic and the political establishment
confidently predicted that he would only last a few weeks
and he would be removed from what he would be
impeach and removed from office. And yet not only has
he managed to stay in power, all the evidence now
suggests that he is actually turning Argentina around. So the

(10:02):
real question becomes, will stagnant and more than Western countries
like this country pay attention to what he's doing with
inflation running at twenty five percent a month. When he
took office with the largest international monetary phone in an
international monetary fund known in history to pay back, and

(10:25):
with the currency in free fall. When Malay took over Argentina,
that country had become synonymous with mismanagement and decline. So
from abolishing subsidies, scrapping rent controls overnight, abolishing whole ministries

(10:46):
in this country, we would say, abolishing whole entire government departments.
He started out on a dramatic that's probably not strong
enough work. He started out on a rep evolutionary program
of shock therapy, and it was designed solely to do
this one single thing, dismantle government or state control. Now

(11:12):
he hasn't delivered on everything, but I don't expect, you know,
just like I don't expect Doege and Trump to deliver
on everything. But if they can deliver even a portion
of what Malay has delivered in Argentina, oh my gosh.
For example, in Argentina, the currency has not been replaced

(11:33):
by the dollar, for example, and he has yet done
far more than I think most people ever thought he
would possibly be able to do. As I said, inflation
has fallen slightly over two percent, two point seven percent,
and according you know, when you think about Argentinian standards
of you know, an average of twenty five percent a year.
I mean, that's pretty damn good. And the budget is

(11:53):
back into surplus. The credit rating agencies have started to
upgrade its it well, at the same time that Argentina,
Argentina's credit is beginning to increase and improve. In other words,
their credit score is going up. That's the best way
to put it. Argentinian credit score is approaching eight point fifty.

(12:16):
At the same time the credit rating agencies are downgrading
countries like friends, output domestic output is starting to expand again.
And at the same time that all of this radical
and I do mean radical change is happening, there's something

(12:38):
else that's happening that I think we need to remember.
So that when Trump and Doge and all of the
cabinet secretaries and all of the under secretaries start implementing
Trump's agenda, there will be I'll be looking up at
these television monitors and I'm sure even on Fox News,
I'll see the ringing of the hands and the sweating brows,

(13:03):
and oh my gosh, what are we going to do?
And just like I received I told you yesterday, I
received an email from a listener who is so concerned
because she keeps hearing and reading that Donald Trump is
going to eliminate her and her husband's social security. That's
the kind of crap that we're going to face. The

(13:23):
point that I want to make here is Malay faced
the same thing, except that his support started increasing. He
currently has a fifty two point three percent approval rating.
Now you think about the radical changes he's made in
that country, I would guess that, just like I kept

(13:47):
believing but didn't have any data to prove that this
country was still a right of center country. I've always
thought that Argentinians had kind of given up, and that
Argentinians had kind of become the not even useful idiot's,
just the down trodden. They had been so beat up
that they were just so accustomed to twenty five percent

(14:08):
annual inflation, budget deficits out the wazoo, over regulation of everything,
every aspect of their lives regulated, that they had just
given up. But no, once they found a leader that
was willing to actually lead, He's got an approval rating
of almost fifty three percent, having done all of this stuff,

(14:29):
and he just keeps on going. He doesn't show any
sign of losing his radical edge you and he did
this week. This week he fired the head of the
tax authority from trying to impose levies on digital influences
and streamers. Instead of telling the guy, no, you can't
do it, he just fired the guy. That's the kind

(14:52):
of radical change that we're gonna have to have in
this country. Not bureaucrests. Just say hey, I'm going to
do this and being told no, you can't do that.
Get rid of them, because in Malai's view, the last
thing governments should be doing is going after people just
trying to make some money for themselves. You'll at twenty

(15:14):
five million dollars I told you about at the end
of the last segment that government offices in Colorado are hoarding.
That's money that belongs to you. And you know, maybe
you I don't know what so what three? I said
five dollars, So maybe it's three dollars a person. Maybe

(15:35):
I should actually count taxpayers as opposed to population, so
it might actually be more than five dollars. Let's say
it's ten dollars. Let's just pull a number of outer
button and say it's ten dollars per taxpayer in Colorado.
That they're hoarding that ten dollars that gets returned to
that woman that sent me the email yesterday, who's fearful

(15:58):
because her husband's having to work because in retirement they
found that, you know, they for what other circumstances are.
I don't know, and I don't care, in the sense
that it doesn't make any difference. They find themselves relying
upon Social Security and now he's working a second job
at age seventy one or however old he is trying

(16:18):
to make ends. Meat Well, ten dollars to them is significant.
But do you think Jared Pois and all the other
department heads that are hoarding the twenty five million dollars
to give a rats ask about that couple. No, they
do not. If if what happened in Argentina happened in
the United States and in states like Colorado, I think that,

(16:44):
and I don't want to give Jared Polis any ideas here. No,
he's term limited. Anyway, their popularity would soar because they
see how good it is for everyone.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Good morning from South Dakota. It was reported that it
was an elderly McDonald's employee in Pencil that spotted the
supposed killer of that CEO. Does anybody really know where
Donald Trump was Monday morning? Cook a great day.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Cook fries. Just think you're a fry cook one day
in your Times Person of the Year the next fascinating.
Back to Argentina. I love Argentina. If you have a
chance to get Argentina. Go Buenos Aires. Is a wonderful city.
Mendozo over wine country up against the Andes as gorgeous old.

(17:36):
I mean, it's just a wonderful old place. You know,
we in the West spend too much time debating how
to reboot a stagnant economy. Now, part of that may
be because the techno class, all the technocrats, they know

(17:59):
what needs to be done, or they've been so brainwashed
by their Marxist theology that they are trying to find
other ways to just expand their influence and not really
do the basic economic principles that you need to do
to reboot an economy. We talk about things that are
so Marxist, like industrial strategies or stupid things like subsidies,

(18:22):
creating green jobs, developing you know, state and local partnerships.
God of hate state, I shouldn't say, you know, public
private partnerships. And then we assume we absolutely assume complacency
that the best we can hope for is just to
slow down the rate of growth of government or the
rate of growth of government spending, two separate things, although

(18:47):
they are tied intrinsically together. And then we talk about
actual spending cuts and conclude that, well, it's just politically impossible.
Why is it any different in Argentina than it is here,
other than they've been living in stagnation for so long

(19:10):
that anybody that comes along and says, hey, fix this,
they probably have enough political capital to do so. Now,
maybe that's what's happened with the election of Donald Trump,
and that's why many people, including in these quarters, think
that Trump's loss in twenty twenty was probably a blessing

(19:31):
in disguise, because that loss emboldened the Marxists to take
over the Democrat Party. And when you had a dotoring
old fool like Joe Biden who just became the mechanism,
the person who just rubber stamped everything, that the aocs
of the world won, and so they they got everything.

(19:52):
And then so suddenly, as opposed to being the frog
in the lukewarm pot of water, we were suddenly in
the boiling pot of water, and we saw what was
going on. They overreached and we jumped out. So then governments,

(20:12):
including ours, start looking around more and more desperately all
the time to do just the exact thing that harms us.
They want to raise taxes, they want to borrow more,
and they never ever consider any other options. Now, true,
Argentina was, and now it was. I'm not going to

(20:35):
say that it is because I think today is a
new day in Argentina. But Argentina was prior to Mulu
winning was probably a worse mess than any other country,
any other country in Europe. And I only I want
to use Europe because Europe is you know, when you

(20:56):
when you think about Western civilization, you think about the
United States, Canada, and Europe. You don't necessarily think about
South America, and in particular, you really don't think about Argentina.
But take France. I mentioned France earlier. France right now
literally doesn't have a functioning government. You might even say

(21:19):
that about us, Oh, we have a functioning bureaucracy. They're
continuing to collect taxes and to regulate and to limit
you know, oil and gas leases, and do all the
crap that they do at every level, federal, state, and local.
They're continuing to do everything. But France really has no government,

(21:39):
and in that sense, we don't really have a government either,
because Trump, through the sheer face, as I said earlier
this week, through sheer force of will, power and personality,
is getting things bent to his will. While in France,
Macron and his Party of Laws, the Prime minister has resigned.

(22:02):
There is no functioning federal government in France right now.
They got a huge budget deficit. Do you know they
collect forty five percent of gross domestic product in taxes.
Italy's beginning to slide into recession, and the United Kingdom,

(22:24):
where taxes on businesses have killed off any prospect of growth,
is heading the same way, you know. I want to
add a footnote real quickly about the UK, the presence
of Trump sitting down with Prince William, his father obviously

(22:47):
couldn't make the trip, I guess because of the illness
or something. At the opening of Notre Dame. The reopening
of Notre Dame, I've heard many people talk about how
that signals a new diplomatic and a new closer relationship
between the United States and the United Kingdom. The United

(23:07):
States and the United Kingdom are tied at the hip.
And that's why I often use the United Kingdom and
kind of Europe in general as an example of where
we're going to end up if we don't change our ways,
and if we don't change our ways and we do

(23:27):
end up like the United Kingdom or the continent in general,
we will at some point end up like Argentina. And
that's where France and the United Kingdom are headed right now.
They're headed into Argentinian territory. Unless you've spent any length
of time in Europe, including the United Kingdom, you don't

(23:53):
realize how it's just ugh, oh, don't get me wrong.
It's a wonderful place to visit, wonderful food in Italy.
I mean they're wonderful tourist attractions. And by tourist attractions,
I don't mean like, you know, tourist shops. I'm talking about,
you know, amazing historical places to visit. But when you

(24:14):
go beyond that and you get to know ordinary people,
ordinary Brips, ordinary Frenchmen, ordinary Italians, you realize that the
socialist mentality and the autocratic technocrats that rule the EU
and therefore actually overrule the country's sovereignty itself. Their lives

(24:41):
are miserable, their lives are just you know, just there
is no there's no American DNA that talks about, you know,
achieving and working hard and accomplishing more, and that there's
just not that same ethic. Well, go back to Argentina.

(25:03):
Just simply one year in Mulu is demonstrating that a
radically different set of solutions actually is possible. And who knows,
perhaps at some point the rest of the world and
I'm mostly concerned about the United States first, Europe second,
the rest of the world third, that maybe we'll all

(25:26):
start wondering if Chi maybe he's doing something right, and
more importantly, maybe it will give some of these Now,
you're never going to change the DNA of some of
the European leaders. They are Marxist socialists at heart, and
they're never going to change. But the people can change.

(25:48):
And if the miracle that's happening in Argentina can be
witnessed and understood by people around the world, Mulu may
end up being one of the abbas most amazing leaders
of the twenty first century that started a worldwide revolution.
Now I'm not talking about a violent revolution. I'm talking

(26:09):
about a worldwide revolution in how we approach and understand
government and how badly it affects our lives. And again,
think about this, he is a libertarian. He's not trying
to completely destroy the national government in Argentina. He's simply

(26:29):
trying to cut it down the size and just say,
you know what, there's just some basic functions that we
ought to be doing. And beyond that, all this other
stuff is bull craft. We ought to get rid of it.
We ought to be doing the same thing here. And
it started with even things like determining that, you know,
the Department of Education ought to be eliminated. Well, rather

(26:53):
than just keep talking about it, why don't we actually
do it? Why don't we actually do it? And you
know what I've heard from listeners on this program all
but Michael, you know, my daughter, my son whatever, is
a special needs student. And you know, the state gets
some money from the Feds to to provide for these programs.

(27:16):
And now what I'm what am I going to do
if that federal money disappears? Well, if that federal money disappears,
guess what your taxes are going to be lowered, growth
is going to occur, Revenues will probably increase at the
state level. The state can take that over and the
state can do it, and the state can decide how much,
how you know, how much and how broad is the program.

(27:39):
Doesn't mean that that program is going to go away.
It means that instead of suaking up all of that
tax dollars to send it right back to a school district,
that that middleman is going to disappear and you'll actually
have more control over those programs for your kids. So
I just wanted to spend a little time reminding people
that there's a revolution going on in South America and

(28:03):
what everybody told us could not happen is happening. Let's
see the same thing happen here, Mike.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Some of the smaller battery operated dildos are designed to
be used completely internally. Does the Texas law require that
a user of one of those get a concealed carrier
permit if they want to use it outside the house?

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Thanks, So let.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Me give you an example about the Argentinian revolution by
cutting regulations. I alluded to this article that Dragon had
laid on the console this morning about Denver's going to
modify the greenhouse gas rules because the landlord's protests well,
I started digging through it. Now. This comes from the

(28:48):
Colorado Sun about a third of the way through the story.
It says, although property owners had input all along the way,
at both the state and city level, they started their
legal pushback against the rules as soon as they went
into effect. Well, duh. Until a rule takes effect, you

(29:09):
probably don't have standing to challenge the rule, and all
you can do is object to it politically and try
to get it, you know, either modified or rejected or
whatever during the comment period. They still they have to
implement the rule, and you actually have to suffer from
the rule before you could challenge. But listen to this.

(29:31):
This is Dinnis Supple, president of the Denver chapter of
the International Facilities Management Association. Rents are already high enough
if you really there's the understatement of the year. If
you've got a multifamily apartment in the city of Denver
that say, has two hundred or two hundred and fifty units,
it's going to cost you anywhere between ten thousand to

(29:53):
fifteen thousand dollars per unit to bring them up to
standards that energized Denver has. There's quite a sum of
money that you're spending on a property that you had
not intended to spend, and the renter here going to
go any even higher. So I calculated an apartment building
with two hundred and fifty units fifteen thousand dollars per

(30:14):
unit to bring it up to these greenhouse gas standard
rules is going to cost that landowner, that building owner,
three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now is
he going to absorb those costs? No, those costs are
going to be passed on because when they built the

(30:36):
apartment building, they built it based upon the cost of construction,
including land, everything else, and what they thought their occupancy
rate would be. And so here's their profit margin. And
they've got to have that profit margin in order to
maintain and pay for whatever mortgage they have or to
return the investors for the investment they made. So rince

(31:00):
are gonna have to go up even more. This is
the kind of crap that has got to stop.