Mad Money host Jim Cramer joined Glenn Beck on TV last night to talk about smart investments and his new book How To Get Rick Carefully.
WATCH:
Read the transcript of the interview below:
Glenn: All right, I want to bring a longtime friend onto the program, Jim Cramer. He’s the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, author of a new book Get Rich Carefully. Jim, welcome to the program.
Jim: Glenn, great to see you. Thank you for support all the years.
Glenn: You pioneered a lot of stuff that I watch.
Jim: You took it to where we should all go.
Glenn: You have a new book, Get Rich Carefully, and I want to talk about you’ve got seven things. I put them up on the chalkboard, seven things. I’m not comfortable talking to you without pacing.
Jim: Yeah, I mean, what are we doing? Let’s get our hands dirty.
Glenn: You talk about getting rich. I am concerned that we have printed so much money that the stock market’s bogus. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Jim: You know, that’s why I’ve always told people, put some in gold, please. Put some in gold. I believe in it. I have some. It’s the antidote to the currency. And when people say, you know, when I say put some in gold, people think he’s a gold bug. I am a believer that gold will retain its value, and so therefore everyone should have a good percentage.
Glenn: Right. Nobody should put everything in anything.
Jim: No, but I think that that’s the antidote, because I think, look, our grandchildren are going to be looking at this deficit and saying why didn’t dad buy some gold?
Glenn: We have $17 trillion in debt. At some point we have $40 trillion in debt, and the only thing that’s going to be worth anything is an asset, which brings me to number seven on your list. What is this list?
Jim: Okay, these are the big themes that are going to last far more than let’s just say far more than next year or next five years, probably ten years. The one I’m most proud of is the one that is most…it is still hard to find people who believe with me we are in an oil and gas revolution in this country. Because of American technology, we have found oil where we thought there wasn’t any, and this is our chance for greatness. It’s our chance for more jobs. It’s actually our chance for ascendancy back.
Glenn: Yeah, it’s our chance of survival, because if we don’t take it out of the ground, we have $40 trillion in debt at some point. China or whoever else is just going to say you know what guys, pay up. You’ve got nothing, and they’ll just take it.
Jim: Our trade deficit which is something that’s hurt all our workers in this country, right? I don’t want to say it gets 100% cured because we still take a lot of product from countries that won’t buy our products. Those are products of bad trade deals that we’ve made, but oil and gas is something that, it’s tangible. It creates jobs. The Keystone pipeline would create more jobs than any one project, but most importantly Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, wherever there’s fracking, there’s jobs.
Glenn: Pennsylvania and Ohio, think of that, it’s dying. Upstate New York, Kodak is a ghost town. All of that stuff is a ghost town, and you drive through upstate New York, and it’s nothing but anti-fracking nonsense.
Jim: The southern tier is filled with natural gas. The southern tier is probably one of the highest unemployment areas in our country, and this state, unlike Pennsylvania, this state doesn’t understand those are actually good jobs, especially pipeline jobs. You know that’s high-paying jobs for people who may not have graduated college. Is that okay to help them? You can even get, you know, truck drivers, you’re making $90,000 a year in North Dakota. We just don’t have enough people there.
Glenn: Okay, come here and talk to me about some of these. Okay, so we have oil and gas. Let’s go stealth tech. What is stealth tech?
Jim: Okay, stealth tech, we have a lot of companies, we think about personal computers, really haven’t done that much. Where I’m saying the real technology is being done in companies like Colgate. Now, I know that sounds boring.
Glenn: The toothpaste people?
Jim: Yes, but we have taken back huge amounts of the emerging world with our own technology making the best toothpaste much cheaper. You know, we should not minimize this. These are scientists from our countries doing good things. The one that is my favorite is actually Under Armour.
Glenn: Hold on just a second. You’re actually telling me that toothpaste may be something that we’re turning the country around with?
Jim: No, but at least we’re taking back some jobs from some foreign companies.
Glenn: We’re down to toothpaste, America.
Jim: I want to celebrate some of our ingenuity.
Glenn: No, I appreciate that, but it’s sad. It’s toothpaste.
Jim: No, we’re just not as bad as we think we are. That’s how I like to feel about us.
Glenn: Okay, so Under Armour, because you’re saying stealth tech because I don’t think of Under Armour as technology.
Jim: Well, I mean because they develop product that keeps you cool when it’s hot and keeps you warm when it’s cold, and that’s this guy, Kevin Plank, who’s really a great American. People don’t talk enough about him. He calls himself the world’s sweatiest man when he comes on Mad Money. He just decided you know what, I have to infuse apparel with technology in order to be able to take on a Nike, which is also a great American company that has terrific technology.
Glenn: Okay let’s go to number three, make money work in the new frugal environment.
Jim: When my father and his parents got out of the Depression, they never spent again the way that they did before that, okay? We have come out of a horrendous recession, not strongly enough, but we’ve come out. Well, we turned more frugal. I shop at TJ Maxx, which is very good. I belong to Costco. I like to shop there. Yeah, I like to buy the store brand. You know, I would go to Rite Aid, and I buy everything that’s Rite Aid. I don’t need to buy the fancy stuff.
Glenn: You don’t need to buy something from Colgate?
Jim: Well, I mean, they have good technology, but –
Glenn: Okay.
Jim: But I just think that we’re smarter about shopping.
Glenn: And that’s because, I mean, do you buy into, I looked through your book, and I’m looking at the pages in the book and the charts. And I’m like I don’t understand any of those charts. But do you look at the charts, as a guy who doesn’t understand all that stuff, I look at bad news, bad news, bad news, stock market up, and say there’s something wrong. Do you buy into this crap?
Jim: I think that a lot of what happens with the stock market is about profits, and a lot of companies are able to make more money by firing people or moving jobs offshore.
Glenn: But at some point that’s bad.
JimL Well, for societally, unless you can be involved in the stock market, it’s definitely bad because how do a lot of our companies make money? Okay, well they close their factories here and then move them to Mexico. And we have this thing called NAFTA which is universally loved by everybody except for the people who lost their jobs, the millions, and that is the way that companies make more money. I mean look, you build more cars in Mexico, that means you build fewer cars here, okay? And we bring them up. We don’t charge you any tax on that, and that’s how those companies are making more money.
Glenn: Is there any industry that you’re, I mean, there’s so many, and you’ve got to read the book to understand all seven of these, but is there anything, is it number seven? Is there anything that you see on the horizon that you’re like that’s your answer for America?
Jim: I think that when you look at where the natural resources, you know, we are a strong natural resource country. Now we have an anti-fossil fuel government, Republican and Democrat, but you know what, all that means is we export the jobs to countries that pollute far more than we do. And do you think that pollution stays in China? I mean, I’ve seen that map. It’s like, you know, my kids know, it’s like a big, big world. If we are able to exploit our natural resources unfettered in a very smart and reliable way, much better than almost every other country, by the way, then we can become a stronger and a self-sufficient continent.
Glenn: I will tell you that we were just talking about it, and you just said continent. I was just telling you that we were talking beforehand. I never thought that I would hear somebody say you know, Canada has a great government. And then I would go yes, it does. Two places to live, Texas, Canada. The name of the book, Get Rich Carefully by Jim Cramer. Good to see you.
Jim: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you very much.
