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Oct. 14, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

50:56

Biden Is Full Of Ship | Ep. 1354

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	The shipping bottleneck continues as Joe Biden ignores reality and blames private companies.
	Inflation spikes while the White House downplays the problem.
	And Hunter Biden's email scandal starts to infect Joe.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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	Well, The Biden administration's economic woes continue.
	They are very, very dire at this point because it is patently obvious that inflation is no longer a temporary phenomenon.
	It is a near permanent phenomenon.
	According to the New York Times today, consumer prices jumped more than expected last month, with rent, food and furniture costs surging as a limited supply of housing and a shortage of goods stemming from supply chain troubles combined to fuel rapid inflation.
	This consumer price index climbed 5.4% in September from a year earlier.
	That's faster than its 5.3% increase through August.
	That is above economists' forecasts.
	Monthly price gains also exceeded predictions with the index rising 0.4% from August to September.
	The figures raise the stakes for both the Federal Reserve and the White House, which are facing a longer period of rapid inflation than they had expected, and may soon come under pressure to act to ensure the price gains don't become a permanent fixture, which means you would assume that the Federal Reserve is going to have to taper faster than they said they were going to have to taper.
	They're going to have to stop buying bonds.
	They're going to have to lower the overnight interest rates.
	They're going to have to do all the things that you normally do in order to tamp down inflation, which typically results in slower growth, at least in the moment.
	Because they have now created a stagflation situation in which economic growth is not proceeding as fast as it was supposed to.
	And we also have inflation.
	And the only way to cure that, we know from the Paul Volcker days, is to cut down on the inflation and then wait for the economy to catch up.
	On Wednesday, President Biden said his administration was doing what it could to fix supply chain problems that have helped to produce shortages, long delivery times, and rapid price increases for food, TV, automobiles, and other products.
	In remarks at the White House, Biden said the Port of Los Angeles would begin operating around the clock to relieve growing backlogs, and that the administration was encouraging states to license truck drivers more quickly.
	Companies including Walmart, FedEx, and UPS are also moving to work more off-peak hours, according to President Biden.
	We'll get to his shipping policy in just one second.
	Quick note on that.
	Remember that time that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was the greatest Secretary of Transportation of all time?
	And he was very focused on equity in the roads?
	And transportation was all about equity.
	And of course, Secretary Buttigieg was appointed to that position because he thinks that transportation is deeply romantic, and he has a long record of not fixing potholes in South Bend, Indiana.
	Well, you might have thought that maybe he might have spent the last few months, you know, boning up on exactly how ports work.
	Apparently not.
	So instead, we get a shipping bottleneck, the likes of which we simply have not seen in our lifetimes.
	We'll get to that in a moment.
	There are serious downstream consequences to the sort of inflation that we are seeing.
	So, for example, social security is pegged to inflation, right?
	It's price adjusted.
	That means that social security benefits are going to rise 6% in 2022.
	That is the most in four decades.
	Who gets to pay for that?
	You get to pay for that.
	Isn't that exciting?
	Benefits from Social Security, according to the New York Times, which tens of millions of retired Americans rely on to pay their bills, will increase by 5.9% in 2022, according to the Social Security Administration.
	It's the biggest boost in 40 years, as prices for food, cars, and rent keep climbing.
	The increase is known as a cost-of-living adjustment.
	It's the largest since 1982, when that adjustment was 7.4%, according to data from the administration.
	The average benefit would climb to almost $1,700 a month.
	The adjustment is a response to consumer prices in the United States that have jumped at their fastest pace in years.
	And all of this means that hourly wages are down.
	So for all of the talk about from Democrats, well, look at how much leverage workers have.
	They're not coming back because they have so much leverage because there's so many open jobs and isn't that great?
	Well, there's only one problem.
	If the idea is that workers are getting better wages and better working conditions because they are holding out, What if all of that is outweighed by the fact they are also paying higher prices?
	See, the economy has consumers and also producers, and they are the same people.
	You are both a consumer and a producer in the economy.
	So if you don't produce, but you do consume, it turns out that there will be bottlenecks, there will be shortages, there will be inflation.
	And your failure to work is going to end up hurting you.
	And then even when you go back to work, the prices are going to outrank exactly how much you've increased your pay.
	And that's exactly what's happening right now, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
	Is inflation still transitory, as the Federal Reserve and White House like to say?
	Not if you've been visiting the grocery store, gas pump, online retailer, or anywhere else across the U.S.
	economy.
	And not judging by Wednesday's report on consumer prices for September, which showed the same rapid rate of inflation that has been apparent all this year.
	This is the largest year-over-year increase since 2008 in inflation, and the details in the report add to the evidence inflation is likely to be persistent.
	Remember when used car prices popped in the spring and various progressive sages said inflation would vanish when those prices stopped rising?
	Well, in September, used car and truck prices fell 0.7%, but the increase in the cost of the other goods and services more than made up the difference.
	Used price vehicles are still up 24.4% in the last 12 months, by the way.
	The price of new vehicles rose 1.3% and are up 8.7% for the year.
	Try renting a car or truck, and assuming you can find one, you'll pay about 43% more than you did in September 2020.
	Beef prices are up 17.6% over the last year.
	Fresh fish and seafood are 10.7% higher.
	Major appliances are nearly 10% more expensive.
	Furniture and bedding are up 11.2%.
	And the September report includes omens of future inflation, notably the rise in housing costs.
	Actual rents rose 0.5% for the month, while owner-equivalent rents rose 0.4%.
	The latter is especially important because it makes up nearly a quarter of the Consumer Price Index, and the increase in housing costs show up in equivalent to owner rents with a lag.
	Housing costs have been soaring, with the Case-Shiller Index up nearly 20% in a year as of July.
	That increase will flow into the Consumer Price Index as of next year.
	Inflation is a monetary phenomenon and there's no question the Fed has been pursuing one of the most radical monetary experiments in history since April 2020.
	By basically just paying everybody to stay home and making credit free.
	The breadth of the goods and asset price increases suggests a monetary cause.
	Pick a financial asset or material commodity as prices climb.
	Real estate is booming.
	A plot in Johnson County, Iowa recently sold for $26,000 an acre.
	So much money is chasing assets that smart or manipulative folks have been inventing assets like non-fungible tokens for investment, some of which don't actually have any openly and obviously tangible value.
	There's a reason the Bitcoin has been rising over the course of the last couple of years.
	All this is good news for asset holders, but workers are paying the price.
	And here is the key for the manufacturing base that Joe Biden needs to win in 2024 and Democrats need to hold in 2022.
	Real average hourly earnings rose 0.2% in September.
	They are down 0.8% since a year ago.
	Real hourly earnings are down 1.9% since January, when Joe Biden became president.
	The White House knows this has become a political problem, which is why it's ignoring inflation and instead focusing on its frantic, if belated, efforts to fix supply chain bottlenecks.
	If they really want to help with supply, they need to forego their planned tax and regulatory increase on producers.
	So inflation is a problem.
	You got supply chain bottlenecks that are a problem.
	And the administration strategy here is basically to downplay the entire problem.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	All right, so the White House continues to downplay inflation, even though it obviously is a serious problem.
	Patrice Onwuka is the director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at the Independent Women's Forum.
	She writes for the Washington Post, Dollar Tree has already been testing prices up to $5 at its Plus and Combo stores.
	It resisted pressure from investors in recent years to ditch the dollar barrier in its traditional stores.
	a buck policy. Dollar Tree has already been testing prices up to $5 at its plus and combo stores. It resisted pressure from investors in recent years to ditch the dollar barrier in its traditional stores. But now they've gotten rid of those. And the fact is that people are paying the price.
	A demographic profile of Dollar Tree customers reveals discount store shoppers skew older in the 45 to 64 age range and tend to be black.
	Not surprisingly, people in those groups fall in the lowest income brackets, below $60,000 annual income, and are less likely to be college educated.
	Dollar Tree's announcement of its policy change suggests prices could hit $1.25 to $1.50, which might not sound like much, but if you are spending your last $10 or $15 a month on necessities, that could be the entire margin.
	In every inflationary period, the elderly are especially vulnerable because their savings are going down, right?
	As you devalue the dollar, people who have money in the bank, that money becomes worthless.
	It's a tax on people who save inflation.
	It's also a tax on hourly wage earners.
	So the people who are getting hurt the worst by the Democratic blow-money-through-the-door policy are exactly the people Democrats are supposedly standing up for.
	So the White House has to downplay all this.
	Jen Psaki over at the White House, she spent the day yesterday downplaying the inflation and gas prices.
	We are very well aware for a range of issues, and we should talk about those, that the American people are of course impacted by rising prices of gas in some parts of the country, not all, and also looking ahead to the winter season and looking at natural gas supply out there.
	Maybe they don't look at it exactly through that prism, but I would say we do.
	Okay, and then she continued along these lines.
	She's being asked about inflation, and she makes the utterly asinine and disconnected statement that people are not comparing prices to a year or two years ago, so she doesn't care about the inflation statistics.
	Um, let me just say, you know what people do care about?
	They care about whether their prices have inflated over time, and how much of their money they're spending, and whether their real hourly wages are going down or up.
	Like, that stuff does matter to humans.
	Not to Jen Psaki, of course, because she's a keyboard warrior, right?
	She spent her entire career in the warm, comforting arms of a government that pays her salary, or in a CNN air-conditioned studio.
	And she's lucky.
	I know she's lucky because I have a very similar job.
	I'm lucky.
	But for all those people out there who may be working on the margins, right?
	People who are working hardscrabble, blue-collar jobs.
	Or, frankly, people who just aren't making all that much money, no matter what their job is.
	You think that inflation doesn't matter to them?
	People who are struggling to get by, who have a lot of bills?
	Jen Psaki downplaying this thing just demonstrates how out of touch the elite Democrats are.
	We all understand the American people are not looking at cost-to-cost comparisons from this year to two years ago.
	They're looking at cost-to-cost comparisons to their checkbooks from eight months ago or twelve months ago.
	And even though factually, if you look back to two years ago, things may be comparative, that's not how people look at things.
	So our objective here is to tackle each of these issues with the approach that we think will help address it in the shortest term.
	Tell us how, tell us, Jen Psaki, how people look at things, how people look at things.
	They don't look at their prices.
	They just look at whether we are Democrats and then they decide they love it.
	It's like Nancy Pelosi yesterday saying that even if people don't know what's in the bill, they love the bill.
	That's not how you don't gauge public opinion that way.
	And Democrats are about to find out quite hard in 2022 that the American public does not assess these issues the way that professional politicos like Jen Psaki assess these issues.
	Meanwhile, one of the reasons that you are seeing price increases is not just the monetary phenomenon that has been created by the Federal Reserve over the course of the last two years and the Joe Biden plan to spend more money than God has ever seen, but also the problem with the poors, right?
	So we have these shipping bottlenecks.
	So let's talk a little bit about what exactly is happening with the shipping bottlenecks and why we have these shipping bottlenecks.
	So Dominic Pino, who writes for National Review, had a good piece in late September talking about this.
	He says, first, shipping is a global industry, but this crisis is largely an American problem.
	According to the 2020 World Bank HIS Market Container Port Performance Index, for example, not one U.S.
	port ranked in the top 50 global ports in terms of getting a ship in and out of port, according to Scott Lincecum, who writes for The Dispatch.
	The highest ranked U.S.
	port statistically was Philadelphia at 83, with Virginia close behind at 85, and New York, New Jersey at 89.
	Oakland ranks 332nd.
	L.A., Long Beach ranked a dismal 328 and 333, respectively.
	So why are our ports so far behind?
	Not because we don't spend on infrastructure, as the Biden administration would have you believe.
	The federal government could spend a quadrillion dollars on ports.
	It wouldn't change the contracts with longshoremen unions that prevent ports from operating 24-7, as they do in Asia, and send labor costs through the roof.
	According to Scott Lincecum, union dockworkers on the West Coast are making an average, an average, dockworkers, okay, of $171,000 a year, plus free healthcare.
	$171,000 a year plus free health care.
	Pretty sweet gig.
	And when you sign a crappy union contract on behalf of the Port of Los Angeles, which is a government agency, when you do that sort of thing, what you end up doing is incentivizing It turns out that rich union contracts, just like everywhere else in the American economy, tend to stagnate whoever the employer is and make it less effective.
	All the folks on the left who are big into unions, ah, unions are the bulwark of the middle class.
	Well, it turns out the union contracts are very good for the people who are members of the union and have jobs.
	And for everyone else, there are serious externalities and the ports are one of those casualties.
	The unions have been fighting automation at American ports for a long time because they are afraid that they're simply going to be replaced by machines.
	Also, according to this columnist for National Review, Dominic Pino, the pandemic is not the primary cause of the crisis.
	The pandemic merely immunitized a crisis that was long brewing.
	Much of the current mess in the United States was decades in the making, reflecting systemic labor and trade policies that decreased the efficiency and flexibility U.S.
	ports and the economy reliant on them enjoy in the best of times and desperately need in the worst.
	The problems we are enduring now will not be solved by a pandemic emergency stopgap measure.
	They require real changes to the way the industry works that will be difficult to design and implement and will encounter heavy resistance from interest groups that benefit from the status quo.
	So we've got real systemic problems in the shipping industry that are brought about by really bad trade policy and really bad union policy.
	And all of this is not fixable by Joe Biden saying words See, the way that shipping works, as Pino wrote back in June, is pretty complex.
	He points out that the global shipping industry is still behind from the pandemic and likely will be for quite some time.
	That is because there have been cancelled sailings and ships only like to ship when they are, the owners of the ships only like to ship when the ship is completely full because it takes like three weeks to send a ship from Asia to Los Angeles.
	It's not like a plane.
	If you have a cargo ship sitting in LA that's scheduled for Shanghai and the shipping line decides to cancel the sailing, that stinks for both the people trying to ship things out of LA and for people trying to receive things in Shanghai.
	But it also stinks for people trying to ship things out of Shanghai because the people running the Shanghai port were planning on using that same boat.
	They were planning on it being in Shanghai in three weeks.
	Now it won't be there.
	So you got three weeks worth of containers that pile up on the docks of Shanghai.
	So you might think they can wait for the next one, but every boat is scheduled to be full.
	So you end up with these giant backlogs.
	So, All of this is a serious problem.
	We have a serious shortage of longshoremen in the United States.
	There aren't enough workers to unload them.
	And also import volume from China.
	The ocean shipping is up 54% year over year.
	Exports have only ticked up by 4.4%.
	So a lot of containers are leaving Asia, but not enough have actually been returning there.
	And you need those containers in order to ship things.
	There are not enough ships.
	There are not enough containers to move more goods than ever before.
	Not enough workers to load and unload them.
	And that is going to drive up the prices.
	So Joe Biden's silly, silly plan here is that he's going to order the ports to stay open for 24 hours.
	We'll get to why this is a silly plan in just one second.
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	Okay, so the shipping shortages that are happening are not Only Joe Biden's fault.
	But they are certainly partly Joe Biden's fault.
	Because, as it turns out, when you drive prices up through inflation, and when you sign rich union contracts, and when you do all of these things, ignoring the realities on the ground, well, you end up with some bottlenecks.
	You have labor shortages because people are staying home from work.
	When you tell people not to go back to work, when you tell people you'll pay them to stay home, and then you have labor shortages on one end, bottlenecks in the system tend to pile up.
	It's sort of like how traffic problems happen.
	If you ever think about a traffic problem, you think, like, why are there traffic jams?
	Why don't all the cars keep moving?
	All it takes, studies have shown, is a couple of cars going on an on-ramp a little bit slower than the rest of traffic.
	And the downstream effects on a crowded freeway are pretty dramatic because people start slowing up behind and suddenly have a bottleneck.
	So Joe Biden's plan is that he wants to keep the Los Angeles port open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
	He pledged that this would relieve pressure on an overworked supply chain that has frustrated Americans and blossomed into a major economic shortcoming.
	There's only one problem with this plan.
	It is not going to do anything.
	Biden said that the announcement had the potential to be a game changer in unclogging the nation's supply lines.
	So here was Joe Biden trying to blame private companies for the shipping delays, as opposed to, you know, the bad policy at the ports.
	Today's announcement has the potential to be a game changer.
	I say potential because all of these goods won't move by themselves.
	For the for the positive impact to be felt all all across the country and by all of you at home, we need major retailers who ordered the goods and the freight movers who take the goods from the ships to factories and the stores to step up as well.
	So it's all about the private companies who aren't picking up their stuff.
	Okay, so here is the problem with what Joe Biden is saying, aside from the fact that the man is not with us.
	According to the Washington Post, no right-wing outlet, the extended hours the administration is touting represent something less than the full around-the-clock operations that are typical of the world's most advanced cargo moving facilities.
	That is what we've been saying.
	Our ports in the United States are operated idiotically.
	We don't have the automation.
	We don't have 24-7.
	We have longshoremen unions that are being paid an absolute fortune.
	The port of Long Beach, which makes up one half of the nation's chief import gateway, began a pilot program late last month of late night and pre-dawn work.
	An administration official said Tuesday Long Beach had already gone to 24-7 and LA would be meeting that effort.
	But here's the thing, that's a lie.
	Only one of Long Beach port's six container terminals works 24 hours a day.
	One out of six.
	It only does so Monday through Thursday.
	So it's not 24-7.
	Biden said the L.A.
	port would be open for 60 additional hours each week, but Philip Sanfield, port spokesman, said he couldn't say how many L.A.
	terminals will now be in operating around the clock.
	Gene Sirocca, executive director of the L.A.
	port, said on Twitter, operational details are being discussed and worked out with supply chain stakeholders.
	Some industry executives described the administration's latest initiative, which the White House billed as nearly doubling the port's cargo handling hours, as incomplete.
	Matt Trapp, chief executive of the Harvard Trucking Association, whose members service the port, said the measure will make a big difference only if terminals abandon requirements for truckers to return a specific type of empty shipping container before collecting a full one.
	The problem with that, of course, is that if you don't actually have the empty shipping containers that are being returned to the port, then those ships can't leave, so they just stay there.
	And Craig Grosskart, Senior Vice President for Global Ocean at Seco Logistics said, Indeed, the administration said an additional 3,500 containers each week would move through the LA port during the new nighttime hours, thanks to promises from Walmart, FedEx, UPS, Target, Home Depot, and Samsung.
	The port expects to process almost 80,000 containers this week.
	So in other words, this is a minute upgrade from what was already being shipped in.
	The administration says giant companies will set an example that will spur others to follow, but longer working hours at the neighboring ports, which operate as a single complex under dual management, will only matter if trains, trucks, and warehouses all do the same.
	And truckers are reluctant to show up at the Long Beach port from 3 to 7 a.m.
	because they have nowhere to take containers at that hour.
	Nothing's open.
	So basically, Joe Biden is trying to slap a tiny, tiny Band-Aid on a giant problem.
	That in the end is created by macroeconomic conditions that have been generated by the Federal Reserve and his work policies and bad union contracts and failure for years to upgrade the port contracts and how these things work.
	It turns out that bad policy has long tails, they have long tails, long downstream bad effects.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second first.
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	Okay, so as we say...
	The 24-7 talk by Joe Biden really means nothing.
	According to the Wall Street Journal back on September 30th, quote, a pilot program offering 24-hour container operations at the port of Long Beach hasn't attracted any truckers, any, more than two weeks since the extended hours began, highlighting challenges facing Southern California seaports as dozens of ships back up off the coast.
	Total Terminals International LLC, among the largest terminals at Long Beach, began September 13th to allow truckers to pick up containers between 3 and 7 a.m.
	Monday to Thursday.
	So far, we've had zero deliveries, TTI Chief Executive Bill Parrott said.
	Parrott said TTI is talking to local trucking companies to see if the terminal can attract drivers to pick up and drop off boxes.
	The extended hours are among efforts at the neighboring L.A.
	and Long Beach ports to cope with a flood of imports this year that has swamped the critical U.S.
	trade gateway and snarled inland supply chains.
	The backups have led to a record number of container ships idling offshore for up to three weeks for berth space, an armada that peaked at 73 ships on September 19 and counted 64 vessels as of the end of September.
	The congestion is exacerbating storing costs and shipping delays for U.S.
	manufacturers and retailers all across the country.
	Most terminals are closed at least several hours a day during the week, with more limited operations on Saturdays and Sundays.
	The shift to 24-hour operations at one of Long Beach Port's six terminals was encouraged by the Biden administration, but it really hasn't done anything.
	Mario Cordero, the Executive Director of the Port of Long Beach and proponent of 24-hour operations, says the Port has asked major retailers to direct truckers to use overnight gates, but it will take time to set up new work patterns.
	We need their buy-in, so they can direct their dreyage companies to move this cargo.
	Jonathan Gold, Vice President for Supply Chain at the National Retail Federation, said retailers have concerns about the program's restrictions, as well as a nationwide shortage of the truck chassis that are used to transport sea containers.
	Dreyage companies, which specialize in hauling cargo by truck from ports to local yards and distribution facilities, say the overnight system is burdensome.
	Truckers can only make an appointment to pick up a container if they're able to drop off a specific type of container and chassis during the same run.
	Getting everything to match up can be difficult, said Matt Schrapp, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association.
	Schrapp said, I commend TTI for what they're trying to do, but if you can't get the appointment in the first place because it doesn't line up, it doesn't make any difference.
	Herod said that the terminal accepts containers from seven ocean carriers, but truckers are limited by the type of chassis they're actually able to drop off.
	So this whole thing is a mess.
	You know who could have helped with this?
	Maybe Pete Buttigieg, but Pete Buttigieg was too busy speaking of the romance of airports, talking about how he likes choo-choo trains.
	Here's Pete Buttigieg announcing that we are seeing challenges.
	Yes, we've noticed.
	How bad are they going to get for Americans?
	And I'm talking specifically, you know, leading here into the December holidays, where people are relying on getting goods, on getting presents.
	Well, I think there's always been two kinds of Christmas shoppers.
	There's the ones who have all their list completed by Halloween, and then there's people like me who show up at the mall on Christmas Eve.
	If you're in that latter bucket, obviously there's going to be more challenges.
	It's so exciting.
	By the way, Pete Buttigieg, according to internal Democratic polling, is like the number two shot to replace Joe Biden behind Kamala Harris.
	What a world of joy they have over there in the Democratic Party.
	Meanwhile, the White House is saying, you know, we can't give you any answers as to the supply chain crisis and how that's going to affect Christmas.
	We're only the White House, right?
	So we're not UPS or the Postal Service.
	I mean, I noticed the Postal Service is part of the federal government, but here's Jen Psaki.
	Can this administration guarantee that holiday packages will arrive on time?
	We are not the Postal Service or UPS or FedEx.
	We cannot guarantee.
	What we can do is use every lever at the federal government disposal to reduce delays, to ensure that we are addressing bottlenecks in the system, including ports and the need for them to be open longer hours so that goods can arrive.
	Okay, except that this is a complicated process, and you guys can't just flip a switch and then suddenly open this stuff up.
	Not unless you're willing to go to war with the Longshoremen's Union, so it'll be interesting to see if the Biden administration is indeed willing to go to war with its union constituents over the port.
	Because this is one area where the United States has really been lacking for a very long time.
	And I guarantee you, the people who've been signing the contract with those union workers, I promise you, they all work for the Democratic Party.
	Meanwhile, the good news is that Joe Biden continues to not be with us.
	So Joe Biden did this little presser yesterday.
	He got tongue-tied trying to say supply chains.
	That was great.
	The commitments being made today are a sign of major progress in moving goods from manufacturers to a store or to your front door.
	I want to thank my supply-sane disruption task force, which we set up in June.
	And well, you know, he is supply-sane.
	That's good.
	And then afterward, could he answer any questions?
	No, he could not.
	He was just going to jet out of there, or hobble out of there, as the case may be.
	May God protect our troops.
	Thank you all very much.
	Back to the basement.
	Matlock rerun is on.
	Gotta get some pudding in there.
	Insurer.
	The insurer calls him.
	Meanwhile, the Fed is talking about tapering.
	So if you've thought that the economy was going to be a problem for Joe Biden, it is going to get a lot worse because the fact is that when the Fed tapers, you're going to start seeing spending drawbacks.
	And so that's going to tamp down on inflation.
	I mean, the Fed should never have been pursuing monetary policy this loose in the first place.
	But when they start tapering, get ready for the world of hurt to descend on the Biden administration.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials last month worried that disrupted supply chains were raising the risks of more persistent inflation as they firmed up plans to reduce their bond buying stimulus program next month and conclude it by the middle of next year.
	Under plans discussed last month, the Fed would reduce its purchases by $15 billion a month, divided proportionally between Treasury and mortgage bonds.
	Officials discussed starting the taper in mid-November.
	If they follow the schedule penciled out last month, purchases would conclude by June.
	That schedule for phasing out the Fed's stimulus program is somewhat faster than investors had anticipated just a few months ago.
	Officials don't want to be in a position where they feel compelled to raise rates at a time when they are still fueling monetary stimulus by purchasing assets.
	So, great.
	Everything is going great.
	The Biden economy is booming, guys.
	Everything is fine.
	And you know what would really solve this is if they spent more money.
	Probably if they spent more money on something, that would solve it.
	And also if they continued the paranoia about COVID, that would probably solve it as well.
	Solve labor shortages by COVID paranoia, and solve inflation by blowing out the spending.
	Probably this will all work.
	It'll be great.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	Right now, if you are a business owner, the fact is that you probably have some open jobs.
	Because there are 10.4 million of them in the United States, and it's hard to find the best employees.
	Frankly, at this point, it's kind of hard to find employees at all.
	What if you had a service that helped you do this and do so in excellent fashion?
	This is what ZipRecruiter does.
	They use a process called Invite to Apply.
	It gives you, as the hiring manager, the power to pick your favorites from top candidates.
	And right now, you can try Invite to Apply for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.
	So, how does Invite to Apply work?
	Well, when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, they send you the most qualified people for your job.
	Then, you can easily review the candidates and invite your top choices to apply for your job.
	Lauren Webb, SVP of Talent Acquisition for Mindula Health, raves about ZipRecruiter's Invite to Apply.
	She says, I love that feature because we have a much higher follow through rate if I invite candidates. It's easy for me. It's easy for them. In fact, according to ZipRecruiter internal data, jobs where employers use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply get on average two and a half times more candidates, which helps make for a faster hiring process.
	So, if you're a business in need of great employees, head on over to ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire, D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E, to try ZipRecruiter for free.
	That's ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
	ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
	Alright, we'll get to more on all of this in just one second.
	First...
	Not only did we have an awesome showing of Backstage at the Ryman this past Tuesday, we also dropped some awesome news.
	The Daily Wire has a bunch of new projects in the works that are going to change the way you stream because we are bringing you even more non-woke content that you literally will not be able to find anywhere else.
	I'm pleased to announce we have now officially dropped the teaser trailer for Shut In.
	This is Daily Wire's first original production.
	The film, which is just, it's a tight, awesome, tense thriller.
	It follows a young mother who's barricaded inside a pantry by her violent ex-boyfriend.
	She has to use her ingenuity to protect her two small children from escalating danger while finding an escape route.
	It really is, it's pretty riveting stuff.
	Here's a 60 second look into a thriller you're not going to want to miss.
	Laney!
	I told you, I need to see you at all times.
	Do you understand me?
	Well, I'm gonna take off tonight so the kids can sleep most of the way.
	Well, I'm mostly done.
	I just need to finish cleaning out the pantry.
	Laney?
	Lady? Lady?
	Mommy, someone's here.
	Ah!
	Mommy, I'm...
	Run! Get away from him!
	Please, let me out.
	I'm down.
	Mommy, you took the baby and won't give it back.
	Oh my gosh!
	Oh my god!
	Oh my god!
	You can smell the weakness from here.
	Yeah that's a real movie right there.
	And let me tell you, the performances are great.
	It looks great.
	And man, it is tense.
	We also want to share a message with you from the fearless Gina Carano about her new Daily Wire movie, Terror on the Prairie.
	We just started production this week.
	Take a look.
	Hi, Daily Wire members.
	This is Gina Carano.
	I'm coming to you from the set of Terror on the Prairie.
	We came up to Montana, and it is absolutely God's country.
	We're making new friends.
	We've attracted the most incredible cast and crew, a hell of a director.
	We're going to make a great, great movie.
	I'm in love with the script.
	I'm in love with the character.
	I'm living fantasy right now.
	So I can't wait for you guys to see it.
	We're going to work hard.
	After we announced our first project this summer, the Hollywood Union started debating vaccine mandates, forecast, and crew, and I wasn't into that.
	I don't believe anybody gets to make your medical choices for you, and I'm not willing to force masks and vaccines on anyone else.
	Thank you to all the Daily Wire members.
	You guys have been an extended family.
	Thank you to everybody for making this possible without you.
	I don't know where I'd be right now, and right now there's no other place I'd rather be.
	So I hope everybody is doing well.
	Keep fighting.
	Stick together.
	We got this.
	Never give up.
	And how do you not love Gina?
	I mean, Gina's just the best.
	This is all coming to The Daily Wire in 2022, so there's no better time to join us than right now.
	Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe, enter code 2022, for 25% off your membership.
	That's dailywire.com slash subscribe, code 2022, 2022, for 25% off a new Daily Wire membership, and stay tuned.
	We have a lot more updates and new content coming.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show on the nation.
	Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to talk about blowing out the spending.
	Representative Pramila Jayapal, who's become sort of the voice of the squad when it comes to spending because she doesn't sound quite as crazy as AOC or Ayanna Pressley or any of the other members of the squad.
	She's out there basically holding Joe Biden's feet to the fire, saying we want as much spending as humanly possible.
	Here she was on MSNBC yesterday.
	There are two people that still need to come on board, and the president is, in many ways, in my view, the best person to be talking to them.
	The real negotiation here is with the president, because this is the president's agenda.
	This isn't some, you know, agenda of 10 senators that was developed separate from everyone else.
	No, this is the president's agenda.
	So I think it's completely appropriate that those two holdout senators would talk to the president about what they believe.
	Okay, so she is attempting to hold the Democrats' feet to the fire on the left.
	The same thing from Bernie Sanders, right?
	So, the Democrats have been trying to get Manchin and Sinema to move, and they've not done a great job getting the progressives to move.
	And yet, they're still claiming they're not in disarray.
	So, good luck to them.
	Here's Representative Jayapal on that.
	For us, we've been very clear that 98% of all Democrats agree.
	So this idea that somehow Democrats are in disarray and there's terrible disagreement, it's not true.
	We're waiting for two people to tell us what they agree on, first of all, because they don't agree with each other, and then we'd like them to tell us what they want us to consider that is different Okay, it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out, frankly, because Manchin and Sinema have basically no incentive to make a deal with people like Pramila Jayapal.
	If you are a senator from Arizona in a very purple state, or from a very red state like Joe Manchin is, And you are seen as having signed off on a big spending plan.
	What is the upside for you exactly?
	Especially in the midst of a bad economic turn here.
	What exactly is the upside?
	And meanwhile, if you're Pramila Jayapal or Bernie Sanders, what's the upside for you in signing off on a fairly moderate spending plan, according to you?
	None of this stuff is moderate.
	Spending trillions of dollars.
	I mean, these numbers are insane.
	But it's going to be hard for Democrats to bridge this gap.
	If they finally do bridge the gap, I'm not sure they get much of a win out of any of it.
	And yet this is what they're spending their time on.
	And the American people are like, you guys are arguing amongst yourself over how much money we should spend when we are literally earning less month on month than we were the month before, thanks to inflation.
	And you're telling us that we can't go back to work.
	This is policy that is designed to make life worse for Americans.
	And Democrats are going to pay the price for this.
	They really, really are.
	Speaking of which, the utter discombobulation of the administration's COVID policies is the other half of all of this.
	We have always said from the beginning of this pandemic that public health experts have one job and one job only, right?
	Which is to try to minimize the amount of death that happens, the amount of health damage that happens in a particular society.
	But public health experts are appointees.
	They are not political officials.
	It is the job of political officials to balance all of the interests.
	This is true in all public policy, literally all of it.
	There's not a single public policy that does not have costs and benefits.
	There are public policy costs to setting a speed limit at a particular speed.
	If you slowed everybody down to 30 miles an hour, there'd be many, many fewer deaths on the roads.
	However, you would also ding the economy by a pretty significant margin.
	So we make that public policy trade-off.
	When it comes to COVID, the same has been true since the beginning.
	You were going to have to decide what the trade-offs were, whether the trade-offs were worth it, what sort of mitigation measures could be put into effect.
	And our public health officials were telling us lies.
	They were telling us that we could bring the pandemic to an end and eradicate the disease totally.
	And this has led the Democrats down the primrose path to hell here.
	So on the one hand, they want to spend as much money as humanly possible.
	On the other hand, they want to tell you you never have to go back to work.
	And then they wonder why stagflation is happening.
	Well, finally, Anthony Fauci is coming around to reality.
	So Anthony Fauci yesterday, he finally admitted, we're not going to eradicate this disease.
	Now, anybody who thinks that Anthony Fauci is a hero, you're just crazy.
	And there's this whole Disney Plus documentary about Fauci.
	And I have to say, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are hilarious.
	It's like 96% positive from the critics, 2% positive from the audience at Rotten Tomatoes.
	Because people dislike Fauci.
	People think that Fauci shifts his opinion day to day based on what the administration is telling him, which is true.
	Just a couple of weeks ago, he went on national TV and he said, it's not okay if you even get a breakthrough illness, which of course is very silly.
	Now, as the administration starts to realize that if they actually wish to save themselves, economically speaking, they have to get people back to work.
	They have to stop with the COVID panic.
	Now you hear Fauci trying to walk it back.
	So here he was yesterday saying, we're actually, for all the talk about how we need to get rid of the disease, it's not going to happen.
	We are seeing now a decline in acceleration and a turnaround of cases.
	Where do we ultimately want to be?
	As I mentioned, it is going to be very difficult, at least in the foreseeable future and maybe ever, to truly eliminate this highly transmissible virus.
	And again, as I mentioned, we've only eradicated one.
	Okay, so here's my question.
	Then why is all of your policy talk geared toward eradication?
	If you talk to anybody who's setting public policy these days, it's about eradication of the virus.
	This is why they're talking to you about masking your kids up in schools.
	There's no end point.
	They literally have no end point.
	If there are zero cases in a school, then they say, well, it must be because of the masks.
	And then if you say, well, okay, then when do we get to remove the masks?
	They say, well, never, because the virus is still out there.
	If you say, why aren't people going back to work?
	They'll say, well, you never know, somebody could get sick.
	You're like, yes, but people should go back to work.
	They say, yes, but somebody could get sick.
	They've created a pathological public.
	This is what the media and the Democrats have done.
	And Dr. Fauci and our public health establishment.
	They've created a pathological fear of a virus that should not be feared at this point by pretty much anybody other than people who are uniquely compromised, immunocompromised, or very, very elderly.
	There's no reason to spend enormous quantities of brain power worrying about COVID these days.
	Now that the vaccines are available, it's over.
	If the vaccines are available and you choose to get a vaccine, you shouldn't be worried.
	If you choose not to get a vaccine, you're probably not getting vaccinated because you're not particularly worried.
	So we're done.
	But for certain segments of the population, The paranoia has set in and the paranoia will not leave until you will get more mandates.
	You'll get more attempts to cram down, more attempts to control, even though you now have the government openly admitting you're not going to be able to eradicate this virus.
	So then what's the purpose?
	Really, what's the purpose of what you're doing at this point?
	The pathology is visible nearly everywhere.
	So Mark Cuban, he says that he's going to force his employees to be vaccinated.
	So here he was ranting about all of this.
	If you work for me, I require my employees to be vaccinated unless there's a doctor's reason where they can't be.
	You know, like you, I don't want my kids to be at risk.
	So, you know, the consequences of you not being vaccinated is I'm not going to shut up.
	I'm going to be in your mother.
	You're driving you mother crazy.
	What a hero.
	What a hero.
	Okay, there's only one problem.
	Your kids are not at risk, Mark.
	Your kids aren't at risk.
	The total number of children in the United States who have died over the course of this pandemic with COVID-19, not just from with, is under 600.
	During that same time, total number of kids who have died from pneumonia, closer to a thousand.
	According to Dr. Marty McCarry from Johns Hopkins University, total number of kids, total, in the United States, who have died from COVID-19 without a significant pre-existing condition is somewhere, he said this on the show last week, is somewhere between 10 and 20.
	10 and 20.
	And Mark Cuban is saying that he's going to yell at you and force you to get vaccinated and be in your MFing year because his kids are at risk?
	The only way you can believe this is if you've been propagandized to.
	Democrats have put that propaganda out there for too long.
	And now people are ensconced in it.
	And when they're called on it, they have no response to it.
	So Joe Rogan, who is, I mean, listen, I'm full disclosure.
	I'm very friendly with Joe.
	I think Joe's great.
	So Joe had on Sanjay Gupta from CNN, their medical expert over at CNN.
	And it just went so poorly for Gupta because if you are the public health expert over the last year, you look like a fool.
	You've done a terrible job, generally speaking.
	So Gupta was asked by Rogan about children vaxxing.
	And Rogan says something very simple.
	And what you're about to hear is a very simple logical point from Rogan that Gupta completely misses.
	And Rogan says to him, So here's the deal, Sanjay.
	You're vaccinated, right?
	And Gupta's like, yeah.
	He's like, and you don't feel afraid, right?
	And Gupta's like, yeah.
	He's like, you're 51, right?
	Gupta's like, yeah.
	He's like, well, um, your chances of dying from COVID are still higher than that of a child.
	So why are we supposed to be worried about kids?
	Should they be worried?
	You're not worried.
	Should kids who are at a lower risk than you, should their parents be worried?
	Here's Rogan just taking Gupta to the woodshed.
	Your attitude that you're not worried about catching it because you've been vaccinated and you're a healthy guy.
	That is the exact same feeling that people have about vaccinating their children.
	If they have healthy children and they know that statistically speaking there's so few children that have died from COVID.
	Well, yeah, there are it's like I think 500 or so out of millions and millions and millions of kids that probably have been exposed.
	Yeah, and but you know, it's again part of it is is not defining this in terms of life and death.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, okay.
	Okay, but by the way, Rogan didn't stop there.
	He also went after Gupta because he's on CNN and he was like, um, so I took ivermectin and people kept saying on CNN that it was horse dewormer and you guys are liars.
	Here is here's Rogan just shellacking Gupta over it.
	Horse dewormers, not a flattering thing, I get that.
	It's a lie.
	It's a lie on a news network, and it's a lie that's a willing... That's a lie that they're conscious of.
	It's not a mistake.
	Yeah.
	They're unfavorably framing it as veterinary medicine.
	Don't you think that a lie like that is dangerous on a news network when you know that they know they're lying?
	The thing is, we're like going so fast, like I feel like I'm missing... Do you think that that's a problem?
	That your news network lies?
	Well, I don't... Dude!
	What did they say?
	They lied and said I was taking horse dewormer.
	Yeah, it turns out that our media are really, really bad at their jobs.
	Okay, but here's the problem.
	A lot of people trust that media.
	A lot of people have been listening to that media.
	I don't see how Biden pulls out of the economic tailspin.
	I don't.
	I think that he has created a pathological paranoia in a significant percentage of the population.
	I think there are people who are going to be wearing masks four years from now, five years from now.
	Maybe forever.
	Because they've been told that the masks are protective.
	It's become a security blanket.
	I think the message of the last year, truly, is that for a new normal to set in, it does not take very long at all.
	Like, at all.
	I mean, you do wonder, over the course of human history, there have been some pretty massive changes in how people live.
	And you wonder, how did people just accept that?
	How did people just go along with it?
	And suddenly they were living a completely different life than they were like five years ago.
	And the answer is that the human brain is quite adaptable.
	People adapt to new circumstances very quickly.
	That is the great superpower of humanity.
	We can adapt to nearly every circumstance.
	It also means that we can reorient our brains to really bad ideas incredibly quickly and start living in line with those ideas to our own detriment.
	And it's very hard to shake us from that.
	After we get to that, unless there is good leadership, this is where leadership comes in and statesmanship.
	Unless you have people who are out there actively battling these pathologies, these mental pathologies that people now have about this, This is going to remain for a long time.
	And Joe Biden has, he helped create the pathology.
	He's got a problem.
	The only way the economy comes back is if Joe Biden says to people, you are now safe, go live your life.
	He won't do it.
	And the only way the economy comes back is if Joe Biden says to people, you need to go back to work and get a job.
	And meanwhile, he's trying to pay them to stay home.
	None of this is going to be conducive to a healthy economy or to a healthy presidency for Joe Biden.
	I think that he's locked himself in a box here, and he is like a mime now.
	He's just pushing at the invisible glass, trying to find a way out.
	And meanwhile, speaking of Joe Biden and being trapped in a box with somebody who's not great.
	So Joe Biden apparently is now going to become embroiled in the Hunter Biden email scandal.
	Remember that time that that was not a story, the Hunter Biden email scandal?
	Remember because the Hunter Biden email scandal was super stupid.
	It was dumb.
	Remember because the New York Post posted it and we weren't allowed to post it for a month and all that?
	Well, it turns out now that, yeah, it gets a lot worse for Joe Biden.
	According to the UK Daily Mail, President Biden could become embroiled in an FBI investigation of Hunter Biden's finances, experts say, as emails reveal the father and son shared bank accounts and paid each other's bills.
	Hmm.
	Remember all those emails about 10% for the big guy and all of that?
	Yeah, well, if they shared bank accounts, that gets a lot more suspicious.
	Emails recovered by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy Rosemont Seneca, show that Schwerin was working on Joe's taxes, discussing the father and son paying each other's household bills, and even fielding requests for a book deal for the then-Vice President, as well as managing the donation of Joe's Senate papers to the University of Delaware.
	It's unclear why Schwerin had this intimate role in the VP's affairs, rather than government officials in the office of the Vice President.
	Hunter's claimed that he and his dad shared a bank account also raised serious questions whether funds from the alleged joint account were used for Hunter's May 2018 week-long bender with a prostitute in a Hollywood hotel.
	Last December, Hunter admitted in a public statement he was under federal investigation over his tax affairs.
	But Joe Biden wants to look into your $600 transactions with the IRS.
	The rules do not apply to the specials like Joe Biden.
	All righty, coming up a little bit later today, we'll have one additional hour of content coming up soon.
	The Matt Wall Show airs at 1.30 p.m.
	Eastern.
	Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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