 Comrade Glenn checks in with the latest from the western front... |
GLENN: Comrade!
STU: Yes, comrade.
GLENN: Great news from the Western front.
STU: It is great news today, comrade Glenn.
GLENN: We've eradicated first names, comrade.
STU: I know.
GLENN: We're all alike.
STU: We are.
GLENN: Great, great news.
STU: And we all live in concrete buildings with no architectural design.
GLENN: It's fantastic, but everybody has one.
STU: Everybody has one.
GLENN: Because we nationalized all the mortgages.
STU: Oh, comrade.
GLENN: It doesn't get any -- it just -- aye-yi-yi-yi. I want to -- I'll give you two examples. I want to show you this because this is why it's important for you to know what's happening with the economy for a couple of reasons. One, so you can prepare. Just know. Just don't do stupid stuff. Get out of debt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and prepare. We can survive anything. I firmly believe it. We can survive anything. My concern is we cannot survive -- remember my whole theory is we have Seventies stagflation unless there's downward pressure, massive downward pressure on the table that is holding this little spiderweb of all this greed and debt and everything else, it's all interconnected, it will hold unless there's downward pressure. So what is that downward pressure? Well, I'm beginning to believe that downward pressure is going to come from the Government itself. The downward pressure.
For instance, may I give you -- read this to Stu yesterday and I have been saying this downward pressure thing and Stu's been a skeptic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This goes into -- do you remember when I said to you, Stu, 18 months ago or a year ago about Carroll Quigley?
STU: Oh, yeah, you've been talking about him for a long time.
GLENN: And do you remember what the point was on Carroll Quigley on tragedy and hope?
STU: It was more of a war point in that the economies are so tied together, no one would want to attack each other anymore. That was the theory behind it anyway.
GLENN: Correct. Except it doesn't work if?
STU: If there are terrorist groups, there's no flag on the plane.
GLENN: If there he's no flag on the plane, then the whole thing that's set up from the beginning to not get us to go to war with each other falls apart. That's been a theory forever. Well, that is the table theory. Something, downward pressure to push all this stuff down. All these safety things, we'll survive anything unless there's this big downward pressure. At the time that I told you that it was possibly terrorists, look out; if they strike, this would be bad, shoot oil up, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm beginning to think it's not necessarily terrorists, and yesterday this op-ed was in. And it's a story against people like me that's a bear. "The bears stampede again. Notes on the latest crisis ever. And it talks about all these people including George Soros who say this is 1929 all over again in the past. And they have said, you know, this is the worst crisis ever, this is the worst crisis ever, this is the worst crisis ever, yada, Y da, yada and we always got through it.
Now, the end of the article says this may be the worst crisis ever because we haven't ever seen these conditions, but there's always periods of hope that are the psychological link that takes us away from fear and panic. Experience in theory show us quite clearly that profit-motivated individuals tend to keep capitalistic economies expanding.
I agree with that. Would you agree with that, Stu?
STU: Oh, absolutely.
GLENN: Fantastic. That's --
STU: It's the basis of anything smart in economics.
GLENN: That's why we will always survive. Everybody always says, CitiBank can't fail, it can't fail, it can't fail, how could it possibly, we can't afford it to fail.
Next line: Profit-motivated individuals tend to keep capitalist economies expanding, while nobody apart from unreformed Marxists or Al-Qaeda terrorists has comparable incentives to push the economy into a prolonged slump or collapse. Except for those two, except for Al-Qaeda terrorists and unreformed Marxists.
Comrade!
STU: Oh, comrade.
GLENN: Comrade, good news from the Western front a couple of weeks ago. Can you tell me what happened to that big bank in Great Britain?
STU: Oh, comrade, they nationalized it!
GLENN: They nationalized it. Comrade, can you tell me about the story that I gave you yesterday about how England was going to be the economic center, it was overtaking Wall Street and London was going to be the financial hub of the world?
STU: Yes, comrade.
GLENN: What happened?
STU: Well, they started putting in the policies that we designed, the motherland.
GLENN: Wait a minute. You also had the mayor of London who has jacked taxes through the roof.
STU: Those policies.
GLENN: By the way, what party is he? He's a socialist!
STU: What a shocker, comrade, one of our own.
GLENN: Great news. So now the people in London, all the big finance people are looking for a new home. They are running away from London. What a surprise, that wouldn't work.
Now, I told you when GM was negotiating, I said, I'll bet you that they're going to try to get the unions to take all of this pension money. The pensions, it will help GM but the unions won't be able to bear this on their back just like GM can't. Nobody can't. And they will try to shove it off to the state. Why is everybody in business so eager for universal healthcare? "Oh, let's get all this healthcare, let's save these pensions." They want it off their back. They're trying to create what they have in the Soviet Union and China, which is this weird nationalized capitalist, communist, weird system that the world has never seen before.
Today in The Wall Street Journal you have, seeing red, the largest unfunded liabilities in public pensions." These are pension funds, exactly what I was talking about. "California pension, $29.1 billion. Illinois teachers, $22 billion. California teachers, $19 billion. Ohio teachers, $14.5 billion. Texas teachers, $12.5. These are the largest unfunded liabilities in public pension plans. This should tell you two things. One: The teachers unions are out of control! But who needed me to say that.
The second thing is how do you fund these? The story goes on to say while all of these states are in trouble, look at New Jersey. "New York Times," by the way, would like you to learn a lesson from New Jersey and maybe raise taxes. All of these cities, all of these states, all of these unfunded promises that we have made, we just had the City of Vallejo, California go bankrupt. They can't afford the, what was it? Was it 10 firemen that they now pay $2 million a year to? 10 firemen? So they have to have a part-time firehouse because the unions went out of control and so now they can't afford any of their services. Well, when these things start to collapse and they start and they say, "We can't pay for it," somebody's going to have to pay for it. Who's going to pay for it? How is that going to happen? Who's going to be there at the end saying, we can't let people suffer."
Comrade!
STU: We're always in the right place at the right time, comrade.
GLENN: Right place at the right time. Boy, this is fantastic. Should we talk politics? Let's look at the people who are running. They've got their arms wide open.
STU: Comrade, they're there to save the people in the Western front.
GLENN: They cannot allow these banks to fail. They cannot allow these pensions to fail. They will not allow the hungry to go unfed or the nonhomeless to go homeless. They'll take care of it. They're there because they love you. And money? Heck, we can always print more.
