Money and the Lies You Are Told
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Okay, we’re going to talk about money and the lies that you’re being told all the time. This past weekend, I had a nice dinner out. Six of us out to dinner and again, you get the bill at the end of the evening and take a look. And it was another, you know, WTF moment. What the bleak.
Um, again, kind of threw me off a little bit again, took a look at, you know, what, what did we just order? How, why is it so much anyway? Let it go. You know, you don’t think about it. Um, next day I’m relaxing and I’m like, you know, I, I’m getting to the point in time where, you know, I, I didn’t want to go out and I, I enjoy restaurants. One of the things I enjoy, I enjoy spending time with my friends and, uh, you know,
love food and all that stuff. I, you know, I said to my wife, I said, you know, I don’t care. We’ll just have a party here every weekend. I don’t care. I’ll cook. I don’t care. I’ll grill. This is, this is getting ridiculous here. And you know, it’s so much just about the money. It’s the fact that I feel like that I’m getting ripped off. This is insane. How many people have had thoughts like that over the past several years? That curiosity.
Um, a movie that I go to, you know, I like to sub reference here on the program is 1980s film and was based upon a Stephen King short story, starring one of my favorites. You know, I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, the running man, running man and the bad guy, Richard Dawson from Family Feud in that movie. And the whole point is that.
Again, at the end is you want to get the truth out to the public about what’s really going on. And can I think about that and in the spirit of the running man and Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, Killian is lying to you. That was his the name of the bad guy, Richard Dawson’s part. All of these powers that be, you know, the pundits, the economists, the politicians, the members of the Fed.
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99 .9 % of them are lying to you. And we’ve used this podcast, I’ve used my radio show, in earnest to try to get the truth out to you. You feel like crap when you get those WTF moments when you see a bill, because you’re probably working your butt off at your business and your job and you’re doing the right thing and you’re saving and you’re putting away money and guess what? You’re even getting a raise.
You’re being told you’re being told, oh my God, you got a raise. Oh, the economists Paul Krugman and Alan Blinder. Oh my God, Bidenomics is awesome. Look at the wage gains that you have. But you don’t feel any better. You don’t feel any wealthier because the value, the value of what you’re receiving, your paycheck has declined.
If you just found the government numbers, which are wrong, has declined by 20%.
It’s by 20 % just over the past few years. We’ve talked about this hamster wheel here on the program. And now, you know, it’s the, it’s the, it’s corporations fault. It’s a shrink flation’s fault. It’s greed’s fault. And I told you, it’s going to be blame it on the monopoly man. When the reality of the situation is, is that.
It’s due to government spending. It’s due to the fact that the politicians that be have taken the money supply to insane heights. And again, again, I’m honest here, okay? Because they’re all lying to you when it comes to money. Joe Biden is lying to you and Donald Trump’s lying to you. Okay? They’re both lying to you.
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Okay, they tell different lies, but they’re lying to you. You want to talk about, let’s go back to the COVID lockdowns. What did the Fed, the Fed called on, our federal government called on the Federal Reserve to print money.
Print money, just print money and hand it out, which we’ve talked about this was essentially just telling people to shut the hell up, stay home, bribe people and to go out and spend your government bucks on alcohol or whatever the hell it may be. And that got things going. So you gotta understand something, the money supply, the money supply out there.
increased by 40%. This is between February of 2020 and February of 2021.
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Wow. Why I think about that for a second. The money supply has come down, come down from 5 .7 to 4 .7 trillion, but you still have a massive increase. 25%. Here’s 25 % of all of the dollars that have ever existed were created after 2020.
You want to know why I have a place that’s why I have inflation
What, what, they’re going to stop printing money? No, I mean, we’ve got deficits as far as the eye could see. And guess what do we also have? We’re going to have, we’ve got other issues that are out there. Again, the more the lies that you’re being told, how things are manipulated. I want to go off the beaten track, but it’s the same track. In essence, it’s about money. It’s about financial engineering.
all the problems that we’ve had over the years when it comes to big banks. There was a story today talking about, you know, how is it, you know, as he’s, gee whiz, we all know that the commercial real estate market is not doing well. We’ve got vacancy rates that are through the roof above 20 % at this point in time. How is it that rents are more expensive? Rents are more expensive because of
the liars and the powers that be that tell you that they’re doing things for you and looking to help you out when in essence they’re helping themselves. Again, we talk about the big club that you’re not in. This is interesting. The average asking for office rents right now in the United States, $35 .24 a square foot. That’s compared with $34 .92 in the fourth quarter of 2019.
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How the hell does that make any sort of capitalist economic supply and demand sense whatsoever? It doesn’t. Doesn’t. Again, you don’t think we run a capitalist system, do you? All right, you get the proud to be American types talking about free markets. Free markets? Where?
Where? These markets are manipulated by the powers that be in banks and the financial engineers that don’t allow prices to set where they’re supposed to because again, it hurts again, the too big to fail institutions which are tied in to everything we do at this point in time and everything that we’ve become as far as a nation. And I take you back in time.
This is early 1990s. And I was in New York and I was meeting with a friend of mine from high school, who was working at an accounting firm and was talking to me about his brother. His brother was working at the time, some sort of hedge fund. And he was trying to explain to me what he did in creating assets. Again, I was a kid, I didn’t understand. And
remember my friend explaining to me that his brother said that he could create an asset out of cockroaches racing on the floor. And then proceeded to try to explain to me how that’s possible. And again, I maybe I’m just not that bright or that smart to understand it. But I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get it. I’ve talked about this before. The fact that I don’t understand nonsense has helped me quite a bit over the years. Remember that line there, Tom Hanks in Big? I don’t get it. How is it toy fun? I don’t get it. How is this an asset?
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But anyway, that’s what we have now is we have securities with all of these mortgages in them. And these buildings are worth something. They’re said to be worth something based upon what they’re renting out their office space for, even if they’re not renting out the office space.
So these landlords would rather not rent out the space at a reduced rent because it can then blow up the covenants in their deals with the lenders and cause all sorts of problems. So we have a complete disconnect in the free market. It’s not a free market. This is financial engineering. It’s artificial. It’s not real.
And guess what? They’re all holding out now. You want to see how bad it is? Here’s some of the numbers. Businesses occupy 200 million square feet less than they did before the recession in 2020. Another 150 million square feet is expected to be added over the next two years.
Now, again, we’ll give you a little perspective here. The total negative absorption rate during the financial crisis was 50 million square feet. Much worse, much worse right now. The office delinquency rate on mortgages that have been converted into securities has soared to 6 .63%. That’s more than triple the 1 .87%.
in January 2020. And that’s a lie.
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It is extend and pretend right now. They are all hoping and praying, holding out for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, to lower interest rates, to see who can hang on a little bit longer. Oh, we’re gonna see, we’re gonna see defaults, we’re gonna see issues, but again,
We’re not ripping the bandaid off by any stretch and it wouldn’t surprise me at all that we get another bailout. Yeah, we had a bailout last year.
We had a massive bailout, taxpayer bailout last year of connected banks and we were told it was awesome, it was in our best interest. Right? Again, money and the lies you were told. Anyway, again, you want to think about why we’ve got all of these situations, why have we have those financial engineering? Again, look no further than what we’ve been talking about here for a long time.
They repeal Glass -Steagall. They do all sorts of crazy things in the 1990s. There’s stories reading today. You want to talk about the numbers? 10 ,000, almost 10 ,000, excuse me. I’m going to be right on the nose here. 9 ,830 banks have disappeared since 1985.
9830 megs, not them going out of business, it’s them being gobbled up.
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Yeah. Yeah, that’s that is the reality. We have 4587 banks remaining in the United States down from 14 ,417. Four banks right now control $9 .3 trillion in consolidated bank assets, which is close to 40 % of all assets, all bank assets out there. Too big to fail. Too big to fail means what? They can do whatever the hell.
They want do whatever the hell they want. Take on whatever risk they want. They can’t fail. I like to remind everybody go back to days of Barack Obama when Eric Holder. Eric Holder was asked. I don’t remember who was posing the question talking about going after some of the big banks and some of the things they were doing to customers. Basically, and I’m paraphrasing say, what am I going to do?
gonna cause a financial panic? I can’t do that.
These institutions have got, you know, they’re omnipotent, if you will. Let’s just be honest. Let’s call it what it is. We’ve allowed this to happen, but we’re told once again that it’s in our best interest. Again, money and the lies you are told. I’m, you know, people have been listening to this program for a while know I’m a big fan of economist Judy Shelton and Judy Shelton should be on
the Federal Reserve Board, she wasn’t allowed on, Congress wouldn’t let her allow on because she’s an independent thinker. And again, she’d be one of those people out there like Schwarzenegger. She has been one of those people like Schwarzenegger in The Running Man telling you that Killian is lying to you. Can’t have that. I actually was I was pointed in the direction of this story. So up the New York Sun, I didn’t I didn’t see this piece and I appreciate this.
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Judy put out a piece, what happens if amid an election, the Fed cuts key interest rates only to see inflation surge again? And in this piece, Judy Shelton talks about kind of like, well, she actually looks at, goes back to prior transcripts of the Fed and the things that were said behind closed doors and understanding money.
Um, what happens?
What happens if the Fed cuts rates and inflation goes back up? And again, I’ve said right here, there’s little that the Fed can do. We already had Jay Powell come out. He came out last week and said that his interest rate is likely at its peak. Okay. The Fed’s definition of price stability.
It’s not about delivering, this is from Judy’s piece, not about delivering sound money, money that retains its value, but rather something different. It’s about convincing you, convincing you that slow inflation, oh, we’re gonna manage this, it’s all good. We got our 2 % target, that’s our target, a 2 %…
We’re expected to accept that, that that’s somehow a good thing. Meanwhile, we’ve been beating the drum here on this program for years saying, oh, it’s not acceptable. Inflation is much, much hotter than they’re letting it onto. And you feel it, you know it.
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You know it deep down inside. You know it. You feel it in the bills that you pay, the hamster wheel that you run on. Again, it’s like I’m talking like Morpheus from the matrix here, asking you to take the red pill for crying out loud, to see things for what they are.
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Anyway, in terms of political philosophy, it’s the difference between empowering individuals versus government. How did the feds mandate to ensure stable prices transform into a monetary policy to generate 2 % inflation? What is, everything about this, this is brilliant. What is the economic rationale?
Would Congress have publicly approved the idea that targeting 2 % inflation was consistent with regulating the value of the nation’s money in accordance with constitutional and legislative intent? Now, she goes back again. I know some heady stuff today, okay? Follow along with it, it’s important. The Full Employment and Balance Growth Act, this is 1978, the Humphrey -Hawkins Act.
established national objectives for government policymakers that included stable prices, maximum employment, and a balanced budget. It called for the reduction of inflation to zero by 1988, provided that this goal would not interfere with its 3 % unemployment objective.
Does that mean the Fed’s inflation target rate should be zero? When we talk about price stability as a goal, setting aside the measurement problem, are we talking about price stability? Are we talking about zero inflation? This is Alan Greenspan, talked about this in 1996. And he said, we had a wonderful argument brewing. This is again, transcripts that Judy Shelton cites in her piece. Janet Yellen was a Fed governor at the time.
advocated for a 2 % inflation rate, but no lower saying that she called it the greasing the wheels argument. She suggested in a little inflation lowers unemployment by facilitating adjustments in relative pay in a world where individuals deeply dislike pay cuts.
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Since employees resist pay cuts, even when firms are experiencing losses, this greasy wheels theory inflation provides cover for achieving real wage cuts without imposing the blow of reducing nominal pay. She’s talking about dealing with the human psyche. Basically, what she’s saying is people out there are dumb. We’re so much smarter here. Okay. So.
We will allow for inflation, will allow for inflation to give people the idea, the feeling that they are making more money when they really aren’t.
when they really are not. This is Janet Yellen, this is the Treasury Secretary of the United States. It’s a transcript that Judy Shelton looked into, this is brilliant stuff. And Yellen, she cited a survey where she talked about Americans agreeing with the statement that if my pay went up, I would feel more satisfaction in my job, more sense of fulfillment, even if prices went up just as much. 28 % agreed with that.
21 % partially agreed, 27 % completely disagreed.
Uh -huh. And then you have another individual here, Time President of Federal Reserve Bank Cleveland, Jerry Jordan, challenged the money illusion. They that here, they call it money illusion. I call it a lie. It’s a money lie. That again, he says, in my view, businesses and households make their best decisions about the future, whether personal investment decisions or business decisions,
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when they expect the purchasing power of the dollar to be the same in the future as it is today.
I happen to agree with that. And then you had another Fed vice chairman that William McDonough say at the time that price stability had major sociological and therefore political benefits. And that formalizing a numerical definition for achieving it was something of such great importance to our society that it should be the American people who decide that through the normal legislative
process. He believed that monetary policy should not take a position. If we said price stability is 2%, if we were ever able to agree on that, we might set the Federal Reserve against the people. 15 years later, 15 years later, under Ben Bernanke in 2012, the Fed adopted a 2 % inflation target.
Disjustification, Ben Bernanke noted that a zero inflation rate would mean nominal interest rates at very low levels, which would give the Fed less room to cut interest rates to boost employment during an economic downturn. Which again, the Fed doesn’t need to boost the economy during an economic downturn. If we have sound money, it will take care of itself. Eventually, it’ll work its way through.
Again, Bernanke said anybody disagreeing with his statement, he said, well, their argument is weak. And he said this, unless you’re one of those people who does their lifetime savings in the mattress.
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And Judy called that basically the policy version of Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables. And she concludes her argument here. Upholding the nation’s monetary standard deserves more respect. The power granted to Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to coin money and regulate the value is in the same sentence that grants Congress the power to fix
the standard of weights and measures. She concludes her column. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1784, if we determine that a dollar shall be our unit, we must then say with precision what a dollar is. He believed America’s money should provide a dependable and constant standard of value worthy of self -governing people. I know this is a lengthy podcast today and we get into some heady.
topics, but I’m feeling it. You’re feeling it. We’re all feeling it. Okay. The powers that be, um, they’re lying to you again and again and again. Um, we’ve, we’ve talked about this. We talked about how to go about dealing with it. And actually the train is much more difficult. We talked about that.
in building wealth, it’s an uphill climb, it’s a rocky climb. But again, you have to do it. We don’t have really any sort of change agents right now waiting in the wings looking to tackle this or bring this up. We don’t. Like I said, we got…
The two leading candidates for the president that they’re not even discussing. We’re not even talking about lowering deficits, making any sort of financial sense. We’re placing blame. We’re pointing fingers and we’re continuing to ally to the American people. Again, people, a lot to digest here today. But this is what we’re dealing, this is what we’re going to continue to deal with.
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how you go about dealing with this, how you go about handling it, you know, invest wisely.
invest wisely, making sure that you have assets that are gonna be able to grow and exceed inflation. People, there’s no other way around it at this point in time, okay? There is no appetite. There’s no appetite on either the elephants or the donkeys to do a damn thing about it. And every single time I come out here on this program and I criticize,
I’m pooped by people out there. I Chris, don’t worry about it. Yo, you support Trump. He’s going to get in there and then he’s going to do something about it.
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What gives you that idea?
I’m just throwing that out there. What gives you that idea? I don’t see it. As far as spending is concerned, two sides of the same coin, guys, that’s the reality. And we’ve talked about the most, again, the national security concerns, our national debt.
where we’re at all of the issues that we have, this is the number one issue, should be our priority. Is it a priority? I don’t even think it’s on their list of things that they’re talking about right now. Money and the lies you are told. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.