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GLENN: The lead editorial in the New York Times today, how not to prevent foreclosures. I told you that we would have absolutely not a leg to stand on if you didn't stand up and say no bailouts. Listen to this. They are talking about John McCain and how he talked about the economy on Tuesday, blah, blah, blah. The nominee's view of the economy is skewed as is his view of the government's responsibility to protect and help aid its citizens. His suggestion that federal aid might wrongly reward undeserving homeowners sounded both mean spirited and economically naive." Mean spirited, hmmm. Standing up and doing the right thing, taking responsibility for your own. I say it about Bear Stearns. Let them fail.
"And then there's the double standard," quoting the New York Times. "He seemed less concerned about the government helping reckless bankers endorsing its role in preventing the bankruptcy of Bear Stearns." Reckless bankers? There was a run on Bear Stearns but now all of a sudden it's reckless bankers. I'm not throwing the big guys underneath the bus because it's popular. I say throw everybody under the bus. Anybody who had responsibility for it, you know what? Too bad! It's too bad for you. Now they want more regulation. Clinton is saying that they fear a Japanese style recession. Of course there's going to be a Japanese style recession. I'll lay out the comparisons of what -- remember that was a real estate bubble that popped in Japan. They paid way too much money on their real estate. So there was a real estate bubble. It popped; everything contracted. What they did in Japan is exactly what our Fed did here. They said, "Oh, we can get this out," and they opened up the valves. The difference is we're already in debt. The Japanese are not. The Japanese, their problem was they were sitting on their bundles of cash. They saved; we spent. They saved. So they took interest rates and brought them down to zero, they did everything they could. The Yen tanked. They sat there like that for ten years because they couldn't get people to spend money. Those people had money. Where's our money? Where's our money? We don't have any money. We spent the money. The Government doesn't have money. Everybody spent it, and it's bogus money. And as soon as the Fed understands -- they've opened up the valve almost as far as it can. There's another story today here: Busy Fed might need to reload. Concern emerging on hedge holdings and risky securities.
That's the other -- you've got that. You've got the equity in another story. You've got all these things that are like, uh-oh, wait a minute, there's this problem on the horizon. There's no more room for the Fed to open up. Remember the Fed always does two things. They either open up too far, they either overshoot it or they undershoot it. They never get it right. It's either too much or too little. They've opened up this thing almost to the point of no return. When you open up those valves, you start printing money and inflation goes up. You've got to close the valve at some point. At some point there -- because they didn't -- remember they didn't cut the rate entirely. They didn't open it up full bore. They were holding it back because they knew more trouble was coming. So we're going to hold a few, a little bit back and then we'll open it again. At some point they're going to open up that valve and just like you do when you're at summer and the water's off and you're like, oh, jeez, why isn't this working and you open the valve all the way and there's nothing there, when they open that valve up and nothing in the market moves, they're going to know, holy crap, and somebody behind them's going to say, shut the valve, shut the valve, shut the valve! It will be too late. It will mean they've printed too much money. And so how do they repair that? By jacking the interest rates up and shutting that valve down as tight as it can. I don't know what those interest rates will be but then how do you pay for the equity in your house? How do you pay for the equity loan? How do you pay for the mortgage? How do you pay for the variable rate? How does anybody do business in here because they are already sitting on the cash. We're going to make cash more tight? Don't be fooled. Don't be fooled by people telling you, "Oh, everything's okay" because that leads to panic when something goes wrong. Just be prepared. Let everybody else panic. You be prepared and everything will be all right.