Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal |
GLENN: We've been talking about George Soros. George Soros is dumping another $50 million into a
PAT: Antifree market think tank.
GLENN: Yeah, well, it's Democratic, you know, like Chavez is Democratic. It's a Democratic antifree market think tank.
PAT: He's hoping to put together $200 million to explain to people the economics of failed, this paradigm has failed.
GLENN: Yeah. Well, it only made him $9 billion last year.
PAT: Yeah. And, you know, had it been for if this was a socialist system
GLENN: He would have been
PAT: How much more could he have, I mean
GLENN: Right.
PAT: Look at those communists back in the Fifties, the lavish lifestyles they... didn't really lead. But let's not think about this too deeply.
GLENN: Deeply. Yeah, let's just
PAT: He could have been standing at cheese lines, but he wasn't.
GLENN: But he wasn't.
PAT: No.
GLENN: And you know what he could have done, he could have just got the new Russian system which is an oligarchy where we could just have a few people like George Soros ruling the entire world. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
PAT: Oh, wow.
GLENN: So anyway, he's putting this think tank together and quite honestly we went over the names and we have no idea who these people are. So I thought I would call one of the smarter guys that I know on the economy and that's Stephen Moore. Is he on?
MOORE: Hey, Glenn.
GLENN: Hey, Steve, how are you?
MOORE: Great to be with you. By the way, when I listen to your show, I never feel like I'm slumming it.
GLENN: You never? Sure. Okay, so Steve, I want to go through this list of names.
MOORE: Okay.
GLENN: And you tell me who these guys are because
MOORE: Before you do that, can I just say one thing about this project?
GLENN: Yes.
MOORE: I mean, the thing that I find so humorous about this, you know, a $200 million new endowment that he wants to build up to attack the ideas of free market capitalism. All I could think of is, Glenn, is he paying attention on what's going on in American academia? He doesn't have to spend $200 million on this. There's billions of dollars. Every academic stack virtually in the country, especially when you look at the liberal arts and, you know, sociology and psychology and stuff. They spend every minute of every day attacking capitalism.
GLENN: My daughter is dating a guy who's going for economics in college, and he said his professors are all saying the same thing: Free market system doesn't work, it's a joke, doesn't work.
MOORE: And most schools already have departments in Marxism and so the idea I mean, he should just visit the faculty lounge at Cal Berkeley or Harvard or Yale.
GLENN: Why doesn't he you know what? Why doesn't he just go ahead and take your $200 million and just send a bunch of people to Harvard.
MOORE: Well, but the point there is, you know, Harvard already has, what, a $6 billion endowment although the one good repercussion of the financial meltdown is Harvard's endowment isn't as big as it used to be.
GLENN: Yeah.
MOORE: But, you know, the other thing about Soros that's important for your listeners to understand is how he made his money. And Soros made a huge amount of his money as a financier by shorting the dollar.
GLENN: I get a lot of conspiracy notes, Stephen, from people who say that that's, that's what his real game is here, that he is one of the main instruments pushing all of this spending, you know, the Cloward and Piven thing, that he's one of the main instruments pushing all of this nonsense and he's going to short the dollar at the last minute and he'll clean up.
MOORE: Well, you know, look. I don't know if this is a conspiracy or not but I do all I know is the facts, and the facts are that he has made a lot of money shorting currencies of countries. He shorted the, you know, Russian Ruble, he shorted the dollar during the period of crisis in the dollar. So I wouldn't it wouldn't shock me at all that he is pursuing policies that will undermine the U.S. dollar and undermine the growth of the U.S. economy, and he has found a formula for making money off of that. So there is at the very least a conflict of interest here. I do not believe that he's just pursuing this out of righteousness.
GLENN: Is there a way to track how much he has in treasuries and being able to see if he sells and starts shorting the dollar?
MOORE: I doubt that because it's private information but, you know, I'll do some digging on that.
GLENN: Yeah, I'd like to see.
MOORE: We do know, though, as they said we know he's become a billionaire as a currency trader and he oftentimes goes into countries, destroys their economy with his advice and then he makes money off of it. And I think that
GLENN: Well, let me tell you something. If he loses on this effort, I think we should all pool our money together and bail him out because he's too big to fail.
MOORE: (Laughing).
GLENN: Okay. So help me out with a list of these names. These are the people that he's putting together. Give me the Pat, what's the first one?
PAT: Joe Stiglitz.
MOORE: Joe Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winner. He was the chief economist for Bill Clinton. He's moved consistently to the left. He was initially very, very free market oriented, but he has become very jaded in terms of his support for the free market. So he is one of the leading kind of left writers about all of the shortcomings about free market capitalism.
GLENN: May I switch gears here. I'm doing a thing on the dollar and the possible scenario that's headed our way and what they're going to do tonight.
MOORE: Yep.
GLENN: I want to ask you this question: Can you tell me, can you name off the top of your head anybody who is advising this president that is in his inner circle that is sincerely a true diehard believer that freedom and the free market is the answer?
MOORE: No. The only person I could think of that comes close to that would be the former Fed chairman let's see. I'm blanking out on his name, in 1980 the Fed chairman.
GLENN: Oh, Volcker.
MOORE: Paul Volcker, I was having a brain freeze there. Volcker is the only person in his entourage who even semi believes in the free market system. I understand by the way what you are going to be talking about on your show tonight about the disastrous fall on the dollar and how this is going to I call the Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico model we're pursuing right now in America.
GLENN: I've been told by somebody recently, somebody who I respect who, you know, has a lot, lot of money. They said that we are looking at Mexico 1995 possibly in the next three to five years.
MOORE: If we continue to borrow at this pace, I mean, I don't think it's going to be that bad but I do think we're going to see a continued devaluation of the dollar. I just did the calculations, by the way, Glenn. The dollar today versus what it was ten years ago, worth 62 cents.
GLENN: Holy cow.
MOORE: A dollar today is worth 62 cents. I mean, that's pretty bad. I mean, and this is and the dollar's falling every day. And the reason it's falling is because the debt is so enormous and it's going to be another $10 trillion over the next ten years. So I would agree with you. If we stay on the course we're on right now, the only way out of this crisis is by a continued devaluation of the dollar.
GLENN: Okay. I'll explain I'll explain this tonight, America, and please don't miss the first 20 minutes of the program.
Okay. So give me just the highlights because we're running out of time. Give me the highlights of the worst of the worst on this Soros council.
MOORE: All of these people, George Akerlof is a left wing professor at the University of California Berkeley, of course. He's hostile to the free market. He's written many, you know, tomes about how we need to regulate salaries, we need to regulate the free enterprise system. Michael Spence is also a big, a big leftist. They are all economists. They have many of them, by the way, have won Nobel Prizes in economics.
GLENN: What a surprise.
MOORE: But that tells you a lot about the Nobel
GLENN: Yes, it does.
MOORE: So that's what these guys are up to. He wants their qualifications and their credentials to give this new think tank to fight capitalism some gravitas.
GLENN: Stephen, on a scale of 1 to 10.
MOORE: Yep.
GLENN: 10 being, well, it's almost gone. With the things that they're talking about now with cap and trade.
MOORE: Yep.
GLENN: With healthcare.
MOORE: Yep.
GLENN: With this new regulation that's coming in that Barney Frank was talking about, the new, the expanded powers of the Fed, etc., etc. How close are we to losing the essential parts of the free market system?
MOORE: Oh, I mean, we are facing a jihad against the free enterprise system right now.
GLENN: How close, a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being we're there.
MOORE: See, this is the difference to you and I. I think we're going to bounce back. I think the American people are going to not tolerate this and I think they are not going to succeed. But right now I would put it at a scale of about a 6 or a 7. And that's, you know, that's very high on my scale because, you know, normally we're at about a 2 or 3. But these people are feeling full of their oats, there's no checks and balances right now. The only checks and balances are you and Rush Limbaugh and other people who they are trying to gag. So that's I think we are under assault. And by the way, I wanted to say one last thing, Glenn. I love your special you did on the war against small business, and you inspired me on writing a piece this week on exactly that theme for the Wall Street Journal.
GLENN: Really?
MOORE: The war against small business.
GLENN: Would you send it to me when you're done?
MOORE: Will do.
GLENN: Thanks. Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal.