March 16, 2022 - Bannon's War Room
48:40
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
We in Ukraine want the same for our people. | |
| All that is normal part of your own life. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Americans, in your great history you have pages that would allow you to understand Ukrainians, understand us now, when you need it right now, when we need you right now. | ||
| Remember Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. | ||
| Just remember it. | ||
| Remember September the 11th. | ||
| A terrible day in 2001, when evil tried to turn your cities, independent territories, in battlefields. | ||
| When innocent people were attacked. | ||
| Attacked from air. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Just like nobody else expected it, you could not stop it. | ||
| Our country experiences the same every day. | ||
| Right now, at this moment, every night, for three weeks now, various Ukrainian cities, Odessa, Ankara, Chernihiv and Sumy, Zhytomyr and Lviv, Mariupol and Dnipro, Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death. | ||
| For thousands of people. | ||
| Russian troops have already fired nearly 1,000 missiles at Ukraine. | ||
| Countless bombs. | ||
| They use drones to kill us with precision. | ||
| This is a terror that Europe has not seen, has not seen for 80 years. | ||
| And we are asking for a reply, for an answer. | ||
| To this terror from the whole world. | ||
| Is this a lot to ask for? | ||
| To create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people. | ||
| Is this too much to ask? | ||
| Humanitarian no-fly zone. | ||
| Something that Russia would not be able to terrorize our free cities. | ||
| If this is too much to ask, we offer an alternative. | ||
| You know what kind of defense systems we need, S-300 and other similar systems. | ||
| You know how much depends on the battlefield, on the ability to use aircraft, powerful, strong air aviation to protect our people, our freedom, our land. | ||
| Aircraft that can help Ukraine, help Europe, And you know that they exist and you have them, but they are on Earth, not in Ukraine, in the Ukrainian sky. | ||
| They do not defend our people. | ||
| I have a dream. | ||
| These words are known to each of you today. | ||
| I can say I have a need. | ||
| I need to protect our sky. | ||
| I need your decision, your help, which means exactly the same. | ||
| The same you feel when you hear the words, I have a dream. | ||
| Then he said, if you cannot give us a no-fly zone, there is an alternative. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he asked for powerful systems, defensive systems. | |
| He asked for jets. | ||
| And then, Mika, he said, just as you know the words, I have a dream. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said, I have a need, and that need is to protect Ukrainian skies. | |
| In graphic detail and raw emotion, President Zelensky has one big ask. | ||
| Close the skies over Ukraine. | ||
| However, if you can't do a no-fly zone, then what else can you offer? | ||
| What aircraft, what war material can you offer that can protect the skies over Ukraine? | ||
| He brought us back to Pearl Harbor. | ||
| He reminded us of the black skies over Pearl Harbor. | ||
| He brought us to September 11th. | ||
| He tried to invoke the emotion of not knowing when the next bad act was going to happen, when the next attack was going to happen, out of nowhere. | ||
| And that's how Ukrainians are living every day. | ||
| He implores Americans, America and NATO to close the skies over Ukraine. | ||
| And I really think in a nod to President Biden very directly, saying being the leader of the world means being the leader of peace and being strong as being brave and ready to fight with your life for freedom. | ||
| And and Joe, finally, he said, you know, this is not just a fight for the Ukrainian people and for their land and their homes that they're protecting right now. | ||
| This is a fight for the world. | ||
| Yeah, really. | ||
| Navarro in here for Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| We've heard Zelensky now in England invoke Winston Churchill, where the Ukrainians will fight on the shores, fight in the streets, that famous speech. | ||
| Meanwhile, a lot of the Ukrainians are beating feet out of Ukraine rather than fighting in the streets and fighting on the shores. | ||
| I'm personally offended by Zelensky invoking the hat trick of Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and MLK. | ||
| Let's think about this for a minute. | ||
| Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. | ||
| There's nothing surprising about what the Russians did, and we've laid it all out on this show over many months. | ||
| This all started when the United States and NATO took away Ukrainians' nuclear bombs at the same time that they began to invite them into NATO. | ||
| When they invited him into NATO, the Russians understandably became concerned that that would be further encroachment up to their border of the NATO alliance. | ||
| There's no question that the Russians have reason to be concerned about it. | ||
| We also know that even as the European Union, NATO and the United States basically took Ukraine down this path. | ||
| They had no intention of having their back. | ||
| I mean, this whole thing about a no-fly zone. | ||
| Mika, do you friggin understand that imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be World War III? | ||
| That that would be World War III. | ||
| Is there any concept in your mind that a no-fly zone In Ukraine would be World War III. | ||
| The left wants to make this guy a hero. | ||
| I'm equally offended by Martin Luther King's speech. | ||
| It was one of the most beautiful and poignant speeches about civil rights that's ever been given. | ||
| Anywhere. | ||
| This is not that. | ||
| This is a territorial dispute catalyzed by bad geopolitics on the West side and a brutal dictator. | ||
| Let's be clear about this. | ||
| Putin is a brutal dictator in Russia. | ||
| So, I'm not sure what Zelensky's agenda was today. | ||
| Giving them an air defense systems, stinger missiles, javelins, those kinds of things can be on the table, but a no-fly zone? | ||
| I don't think so, Mika. | ||
| Let's go right now to our crack correspondent in Rome, Ben Harnwell. | ||
| What Ben, I'm going to ask Ben to do is first quickly review the four conditions that Russia's put out in terms of a possible treaty and see where those negotiations stand because Russia's been signaling that there's some kind of deal. | ||
| Ben, talk to me, talk to the audience. | ||
| What's going on in Rome, sir? | ||
| Good morning, Dr. Navarro. | ||
| Well, the four conditions that were originally offered by Vladimir Putin were that Ukraine ceases military action, that it changes its constitution to enshrine neutrality, that it acknowledges Crimea as Russian territory, and that it recognizes the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent territories. | ||
| Now, the sticking point seems to be, at this point in the negotiations, because this time, say last week, it was more to do with maintaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine. | ||
| Now it seems to be the sticking point of neutrality. | ||
| Now, three weeks ago, neutrality was being interpreted as Ukraine's Clear refusal of intentions of joining either NATO or the European Union. | ||
| Well, over recent days, Vladimir Zelensky himself has ruled out joining NATO, which is the significant obstacle and sticking point for Russia. | ||
| And what neutrality is meaning today is that Ukraine has to commit to no military installations, foreign military installations on Ukrainian territory. | ||
| So that's where we are today. | ||
| Now, interestingly, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, gave an interview to Russian television, and this has now dominated the English-speaking press. | ||
| Basically, it's been a whole sea change, because from yesterday back to the beginning of the crisis, the English-speaking press was drumming the beat for war and concentrating on the heavy humanitarian casualties throughout Ukraine. | ||
| From today, the headlines right across are that Ukraine and Russia are very close to some kind of deal. | ||
| Lavrov said that there's a business-like nature to the talks. | ||
| He says that they were close to agreeing neutral status. | ||
| And this has been picked up everywhere. | ||
| So that is where attention is being directed now. | ||
| Obviously there will be the usual warmongering voices continuing to push for them to arm Ukraine in its resistance. | ||
| There will be people in the West saying that we ought to be maintaining, or at least applying a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which you just correctly said in your monologue would be catastrophic. | ||
| So, against the drumbeat for war, at least now the world's mainstream media— Ben, let me—quick question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quick question here, Ben. | |
| question here, Ben. | ||
| Does the deal require Ukraine to demilitarize? | ||
| Would they be allowed to have a national defense force? | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| And number two, where does Odessa stand in that? | ||
| Because that's a critical port that Ukraine needs for its economy. | ||
| In terms of demilitarization, Russia has not formally said that it wants Ukraine to demilitarize. | ||
| What it has suggested, but I'm not aware that this nature of the talks has been released publicly, but what we know that Russia has said is that it needs to reduce its armed forces, but by what level we don't yet know, but total demilitarization hasn't been asked for. | ||
| Ben, what about joining the EU? | ||
| Is that part of the neutrality or is it just limited to NATO? | ||
| Do we have any insight on that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| From Russia's perspective, Ukraine has to rule out joining the European Union. | ||
| But it's not of the same level as ruling out NATO membership. | ||
| And it's presumably one of the poker chips down on the table that Russia might negotiate a way to head towards a compromise. | ||
| It won't be tomorrow. | ||
| It'll be probably one or two decades in the future. | ||
| But that is something I think Russia will move on. | ||
| Is there any sign that Russia has limited its advance now and reduced its assaults on Ukrainian cities in anticipation of negotiations, or is Russia continuing to move? | ||
| It's continuing to bombard cities like Mariupol. | ||
| quite heavily and the great fear is that they are about seven miles away now from the outskirts of Kiev and this is the big question because if Vladimir Zelensky is going to agree to Vladimir Putin's ceasefire terms he can still, there's still time to do that without totally levelling Kiev so that is an important consideration | ||
| As is, Dr. Navarro, I ought to say that if Vladimir Putin takes the Ukrainian capital, then he could sort of legitimately add an additional condition to a ceasefire, which is the removal of the Zelensky regime, if they take the capital. | ||
| That would be usual in a war of this nature. | ||
| To come back to your question, which I do want to respond to, because it is pertinent. | ||
| You've got 20 seconds here, Ben, and we're out. | ||
| 20 seconds. | ||
| OK. | ||
| As far formally as the negotiations go, Odessa and Mariupol are not part of Russia's terms for recognition, territorial recognition at this point. | ||
| All right, Ben. | ||
| Sir, you are a treasure over there for the War Room audience. | ||
| We appreciate that. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Pandemic. | ||
| when we come back, the great Steve Cortez will be up to talk about what peace in the Ukraine might mean for the U.S. economy. | ||
| We are in the War Room. | ||
| The Barrow sitting in for Bannon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
War Room, pandemic, with Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| Pandemic. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Tomorrow in for Bannon. | ||
| You are in the War Room. | ||
| This segment here, we're going to talk to our economics guy, Steve Cortez. | ||
| The big picture here is simply this. | ||
| What Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, and those Confederacy adunces at the White House are going to try to sell you is that the economic woes that we will be experiencing and are experiencing are Vladimir Putin's fault and fallout from the Ukraine situation. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| And then on Wall Street, should there be a peace deal, they're going to use that as an excuse to get their touts on CNBC, on Fox Business, on Bloomberg, to say now's the time to buy back into this market because the market's going to take off and every Things fine. | ||
| So we're going to test that hypothesis with Steve Cortez. | ||
| Steve, you've got some breaking economic news. | ||
| Tell us a little bit about retail sales, consumer confidence, and let's get your take on where we stand and what this Ukrainian peace deal might mean for the stagflation woes facing us. | ||
| Yes, Dr. Peter. | ||
| So this news just hit the wires. | ||
| This is new economic data. | ||
| And by the way, a lot of data rolling in and all of it, frankly, terrible. | ||
| And the latest terrible news is retail sales. | ||
| Very disappointing for the month of February. | ||
| And by the way, I'll get more to this point of this not being about Putin. | ||
| In February, things were heating up, but no real action there until the very, very end of the month. | ||
| Retail sales only up 0.3% for the month. | ||
| What we saw within this report, not too surprising if you dig into the details. | ||
| Sales of gasoline absolutely soared because the price soared so much. | ||
| Online sales, which tend to be far more discretionary. | ||
| Online sales plunged, resulting in a barely positive read. | ||
| And when you factor in the overall rise in prices, Peter, it's actually a negative read, meaning real retail sales, adjusted for inflation, actually fell. | ||
| What I mean by that is the nominal number, the headline number, is up 0.3%. | ||
| But consumer prices, according to the CPI Consumer Price Index, consumer prices for the month up 0.8%. | ||
| So you would expect, Peter, at least an increase of 0.8%. | ||
| That would just be a natural rate of increases with prices. | ||
| In other words, you had a 0.5% net decrease for the month in retail sales. | ||
| This is very, very disappointing in real terms. | ||
| Yeah, quick question. | ||
| Did it miss expectations? | ||
| I mean, what was the expectations coming into that? | ||
| Yeah, it did miss expectations versus .4 expected. | ||
| And look, here's the thing. | ||
| I think when we look at the economy right now, it's very clear what the Democrats, what Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and all of their acolytes in the complicit and biased corporate media, what they're trying to do. | ||
| They think that in Putin, They have found a patsy for these economic woes, for this absolute economic crisis, which America was already mired in well before things got hot over in the Black Sea. | ||
| They believe that they've found a beard to cover for their economic sins, for their complete failures. | ||
| And by the way, let's show a chart here. | ||
| This is from Paul Krugman. | ||
| This is chart two, folks, in the control room. | ||
| Paul Krugman of the New York Times certainly got this memo, and he can be depended on to always promote and unfortunately propagandize on behalf of the Democrats. | ||
| Yeah, how to avoid a Putin recession. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, this is, look, you're chuckling, it is laughable, it's laughable for anybody who operates in financial markets, for anyone who has no- Fake news. | |
| Right, for everybody who has an understanding of economics, anyone who understands financial markets, I think it's laughable for anybody in small business. | ||
| By the way, by the way, Steve, when Donald Trump got elected in 2016, Krugman had this big column out about the Trump depression, right? | ||
| How'd that work out? | ||
| Anyway, go ahead. | ||
| That's just wrong. | ||
| Trump Depression, and he also said, sell all your stocks. | ||
| And of course, the economy and the stock market both did nothing but soar for the following years. | ||
| So yeah, he couldn't be more wrong. | ||
| Contrarian indicator here. | ||
| Apparently they give out Nobel Prizes very easily these days. | ||
| But the point is, he got the memo. | ||
| We're not going to be fooled. | ||
| The audience out there needs to be educated. | ||
| I think they already know it from their own experience. | ||
| What you have already experienced in terms of the costs in your life soaring and your income not keeping pace. | ||
| That means that's the definition of real wages. | ||
| Wages, incomes adjusted for the prices you have to pay for the items you want to need. | ||
| Real wages have now been falling for 12 straight months. | ||
| And this brand new retail sales data Only confirms what's going on with real wages. | ||
| When your real wages are falling, it's hard to spend aggressively, and it also saps confidence. | ||
| And I want to show that chart now, please, too. | ||
| So this is chart number one. | ||
| And this is on consumer confidence from Morning Consult. | ||
| Morning Consult actually does this on a daily basis. | ||
| So this is one of the indicators I like to go to. | ||
| They survey 6,000 consumers. | ||
| It's broad-based. | ||
| And it's extensive. | ||
| Right now, unfortunately, for those who are watching, if you look at the very right side of that chart, you will see that we have broken to a new low for the trend. | ||
| And most importantly, this is yesterday, for the first time as of yesterday, on the Ides of March, The Consumer Confidence Survey of Morning Consult broke the spring of 2020 lockdown low. | ||
| So think about that, Peter. | ||
| Think about all the progress that we have made as a society in terms of dealing with COVID, in terms of being sensible, at least in most parts of the country now, being sensible about risk mitigation, about getting back to work, reopening. | ||
| And yet Consumer Confidence breaks those lows because of Joe Biden's inflation. | ||
| Just a quick question here. | ||
| So this is not the Conference Board Consumer Confidence of those days. | ||
| This is kind of a real-time, day-to-day kind of thing. | ||
| It's more real-time, exactly. | ||
| This incorporates the Ukraine and Russia issue. | ||
| This is very real-time, yes. | ||
| That chart I'm showing you was added up yesterday. | ||
| Let's think about this now, because I'm going to hit you with a question. | ||
| Put your cap on here on this one. | ||
| So we got retail sales missing expectations to the low side. | ||
| We got consumer confidence at below pandemic lows. | ||
| What's your forecast for a recession in the U.S. | ||
| and will it be a consumer led recession or an investment led recession? | ||
| Well, look, it looks like both right now, unfortunately. | ||
| But really, the consumer, I would say, is unfortunately bearing the brunt of this because of inflation, right? | ||
| And look, my prediction, if I can hearken to the Rocky movies, unfortunately, Clubber Lang, my prediction, pain. | ||
| More pain, unfortunately. | ||
| And I know there's nothing funny about what people are suffering out there, but sometimes if we couldn't laugh, we'd cry. | ||
| Right now, Americans, particularly middle and lower income Americans, are absolutely struggling. | ||
| And the only way, Peter, that they have so far dealt with this surge in prices, let's face it, is through increased credit card borrowing and credit card issuance, something that I've talked about a lot on this show, that I've shown in my Chalk Talks. | ||
| Credit card origination from subprime borrowers has absolutely soared. | ||
| So, in other words, so far, the only way middle and lower income folks have been able to deal with the Biden inflation surge is through borrowing, but borrowing at extremely high interest rates. | ||
| And we know that that game only lasts so long. | ||
| As inflation continues to accelerate, here's what's so dangerous to me, Peter. | ||
| You know this better than anybody as an economist. | ||
| It's not just the rate of change, it's the rate of change of the rate of change. | ||
| Meaning, in other words, we're going downhill, economically speaking, and we're putting the gas on. | ||
| Things are bad and things are getting worse. | ||
| The acceleration of the acceleration to the downside, that is what is so troubling right now, is that all the trends, all the metrics, all the economic data, tell us that things are bad and that they're going to get demonstrably worse, and that is irrespective of Ukraine. | ||
| Now listen, I am Totally a proponent of an America First foreign policy of realism and restraint. | ||
| I do not believe there is any vital national interest at all for the United States to insert itself into this very regional struggle in the Black Sea. | ||
| But that is only worsening an existing crisis. | ||
| If we take that off the table, which looks possible, let's be honest right now, as you reported properly in the opening, we're getting good signs from both parties, from Ukraine as well as from Russia, that they're making a lot of progress there. | ||
| That would be wonderful, wonderful to achieve peace. | ||
| It'd be great for the world, but that really would not remotely get the United States out of the economic quagmire that we are in, irrespective of what's going on in Ukraine. | ||
| And an economic crisis, a Biden inflation explosion that totally predated the very recent troubles in Ukraine. | ||
| We're not going to allow the Krugmans of the world, we're not going to allow Biden to use Putin as a patsy for an economic disaster, which has been caused. | ||
| It is a created crisis by the policies of Joe Biden. | ||
| If we get peace in Ukraine, do you think we go back to the status quo, Annie, Steve, of relying on Russian oil and gas, both here in the U.S. | ||
| and in Europe? | ||
| Or is this a wake-up call where we retool, reboot the Trump oil and gas dominance, energy dominance, and shed that? | ||
| Well, it sure better be for the United States, right? | ||
| And I think it needs to become a foundational part of any candidate who is running in 2022 for election on the GOP side, is that we're going to return to Donald Trump's full-spectrum energy dominance. | ||
| Not even just independence, but energy dominance. | ||
| This land is blessed With resources by the good Lord, and we need to fully utilize them again. | ||
| We did for years. | ||
| We know how to do it. | ||
| We can get back to it relatively quickly. | ||
| Free up federal lands for drilling, enable pipelines, and allow fracking to again flourish in this country. | ||
| The Europeans, though, different story there, I'm afraid. | ||
| No, I think they're going to remain totally dependent upon Russian energy. | ||
| But listen, that's not our choice to make, that's theirs. | ||
| And it's one of the reasons why, by the way, if Ukraine is the problem that the left in America and a lot of establishment Republicans, if it's the problem that they want us to believe it is, I don't buy that, but let's just say for a second it's that problematic. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| It's not our problem primarily. | ||
| That is the problem of wealthy, advanced nations in Western Europe, like France and Germany and Italy, which are entirely dependent on Russian energy. | ||
| That is their problem to figure out. | ||
| Unfortunately for them, what they have allowed in recent years is a bratty Swedish teenager to dictate their energy policies and their national security policies. | ||
| We've allowed it a little bit in the United States, but not to the degree that the Europeans have. | ||
| When we come back with Steve Cortez, Steve's going to give us a preview of an important Federal Reserve meeting. | ||
| The issue is going to be how quickly, not if, but how quickly the Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates. | ||
| Navarro in for Bannon. | ||
| We'll be right back with Cortez and Russ Vogt will be joining us at the bottom of the hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
War Room Pandemic with Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| The epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide. | ||
| War Room Pandemic. Here's your host Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| The borrow in for Bannon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Before we go to the Federal Reserve, let's go to my pillow. | |
| Mike Lindell, the heat-seeking missile. | ||
| You've heard me talk about this before. | ||
| I never endorse any products that I don't actually use, and I did a towel test on Mike's towels. | ||
| Months and months ago. | ||
| Did it twice. | ||
| Picked him right out as the best. | ||
| He has his special on $39.99 for a six-piece towel set. | ||
| Use the promo code WAROOM. | ||
| So that's the towel set $39.99. | ||
| I use it myself. | ||
| Support Mike Lindell. | ||
| He is just under attack right now. | ||
| From all sorts of things. | ||
| Let's get back to the economy now. | ||
| I got Cortez in the on-deck circle. | ||
| I want to try to set the stage just a little bit for what's going on with the Federal Reserve. | ||
| When I was in the White House, there was a decision about whether to reappoint Janet Yellen, who was the Federal Reserve Chairman when we took over. | ||
| She's now the Treasury Secretary. | ||
| Or appoint somebody else. | ||
| And regrettably, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin lobbied Donald Trump, the President, to appoint Jay Powell. | ||
| And that was an unmitigated disaster for a couple of reasons. | ||
| One is that What Powell didn't understand with the Trump economy is that the kinds of structural adjustments that Donald Trump made, energy dominance, tax cuts, deregulation, most of all fair trade rather than free trade, which is never free, these kinds of changes allow | ||
| The Trump economy to consistently overperform, beat forecasts, and Powell was constantly shaking his head thinking somehow that that was going to create inflation. | ||
| Powell did not understand that the Trump economy made the appropriate structural adjustments to increase productivity, grow without provoking inflation. | ||
| And in 2019, he just killed us. | ||
| He took a full point of growth off the GDP by being overly restrictive when he did not have to be. | ||
| And that's like a million jobs. | ||
| That's like a ton of money we could have used to pay off Our budget deficit. | ||
| And the funny thing, and Powell's going to do this today, he'll get on camera, every time, even if he made a decent decision at the Fed, whenever he went out and held a press conference, the markets would crash because the guy had absolutely no bedside manner. | ||
| My theory, based on history now, is that Powell was trying to screw Donald Trump, right? | ||
| Because Powell Just wasn't on the Trump train. | ||
| He's like the rhino Republican free trader. | ||
| And the funny part, Mnuchin thought he could control that guy, and Powell wind up telling Mnuchin, you know, go take a hike. | ||
| Screwed the Trump administration, working class folk. | ||
| Fast forward now to audition for his reappointment. | ||
| What Powell's been doing In the face of evidence to the contrary is pursuing an ultra easy money policy in effect accommodating the gross overspending of the US Congress and set us up for the stagflationary cycle which is now in full bloom gripping the US economy. | ||
| So under Trump overly restrictive, under Biden Ultra easy printing money printing the printing press and now I think the concern is that even though that stagflation is coming and if you don't nip it in the bud it can last a decade like it did in the 1970s. | ||
| Powell may use the situation in Ukraine to justify slowing down a tightening Federal Reserve policy. | ||
| So that's kind of the big picture. | ||
| I'm going to go to Cortez now, Steve. | ||
| We're in the second day of the Fed meeting. | ||
| Bring us up to date. | ||
| First of all, give us a market update where stocks were in response to the various news things. | ||
| I guess they'd be up on the Ukraine peace possibility. | ||
| But down on the economic news and where bond yields are at. | ||
| And then give us your read on where Jay Powell is likely to lead us at 2 p.m. | ||
| today. | ||
| Sure, you bet. | ||
| So, for a check on markets, and markets, of course, have been incredibly volatile and mostly to the downside for risk assets, of course, in recent weeks. | ||
| Having a good day today, the Dow is up 400 points right now. | ||
| The headline from CNBC, Dow rallies 400 points on hopes for Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. | ||
| It's fascinating, by the way, this also points to this contrast Peter, you see right now among the political class in Washington, D.C., and certainly their allies in the media, just a clamoring for war, a constant call for escalation. | ||
| But we see the actual belligerence in that war. | ||
| Ukraine and Russia trying desperately to de-escalate, and it seems making progress toward de-escalation. | ||
| While the markets, at least financial markets, are cheering on the prospect of de-escalation for the near term. | ||
| And that would certainly obviously be good news for the world, as well as good news for capital markets. | ||
| It would by no means give capital markets the all-clear, nor would it give Main Street, even more importantly, the Main Street economy, the all-clear. | ||
| And one of the reasons, Peter, is rising interest rates. | ||
| Right now, as we speak, 10-year yield is at a new high for the move. | ||
| Interest rates on the 10-year Treasury bond, which is the benchmark for the entire world. | ||
| All interest rates globally, whether it's foreign government debt or your credit card tab, all interest rates are predicated upon or are gauged on 10-year Treasury yield. | ||
| It is right now at 2.17%. | ||
| To put that in perspective, on election day, November 3rd of 2020, when Joe Biden illegitimately prevailed, tenure yield was 0.8%. | ||
| So we had below 1% tenure yield with an economy at that point in fall of 2020, which was aggressively reopening. | ||
| So we had fast, fast growth. | ||
| Fast rebound in the economy with extremely low interest rates, extremely low inflation. | ||
| Now we have the exact inverse. | ||
| We have an economy that is decelerating. | ||
| We have consumer confidence that is crashing and interest rates that are rising because of the Biden profligacy, the Biden and Chuck and Nancy borrowing and spending spree. | ||
| Listen, I'll shed no tears for the Fed. | ||
| I'm as cynical as you are about the Fed. | ||
| I think as an institution, it's incredibly partisan, incredibly political, and I think Jay Powell's first prerogative, first and foremost, is always to protect the institutional power of the Fed rather than the prosperity of the American people. | ||
| And the Fed put itself in this quandary by not normalizing policy a very long time ago. | ||
| But it does now face, I will say, they are in quite a bind right now. | ||
| They have quite a predicament because you're not supposed to be raising rates, normalizing policy, Pete, while consumer confidence is plunging, right? | ||
| It's supposed to be the opposite, the metaphorical punch ball. | ||
| You're supposed to be pulling the punch ball away when the party's really getting going, when you're afraid it's going to be too wild. | ||
| Well, right now the punch ball is empty, okay, and the Fed has to take corrective action. | ||
| Again, They made their bed, and they have to lie in it now, so I don't feel sorry for them, but there are no good options, I guess is my point, because of what J-PAL, because of what the Fed has done over the course of years, because of what Joe Biden has done in just a year. | ||
| It's fascinating how fast Biden put us in this predicament. | ||
| The United States right now faces no good options. | ||
| What I mean by that is raising interest rates, normalizing policy is necessary to fight this inflation. | ||
| There's just no other way out of it. | ||
| This inflation is crushing middle and lower income Americans. | ||
| But at the same time, we have an economy that is already problematic, challenged, and decelerating. | ||
| And raising interest rates is only going to make that worse. | ||
| So either way, it's heads or tails we lose right now economically because of the policy choices Let me ask you, let me get your specific forecast though on, so we talked off air, you said it was just obligatory that it's going to be at least 25 basis points hike today announcement, a quarter of a point. | ||
| But the real issue is going to be how many hikes they're going to lay out over the next 6 or 12 or 18 months. | ||
| What's your read on that? | ||
| And also, are they going to talk about shrinking the balance sheet of the Fed, which is the other way that they tighten money? | ||
| Tell me what you think is going to happen here. | ||
| Put your Chairman Cortez hat on here. | ||
| Well, we'll see. | ||
| Tell me what you think they're going to do and what they should do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The announcement will be at 2 p.m. | ||
| Eastern Time and the press conference after that. | ||
| And the press conference is likely to be far more interesting and telling for the country and certainly for financial markets because there's really a lot of argument over what Powell will say and what he will forecast. | ||
| And is he going to try to use this situation in Ukraine as an excuse to not normalize policy. | ||
| So my prognosis is, yes, he is going to use it as an excuse. | ||
| He's going to take this opportunity because he is hyper-partisan, because he is deeply political, and because he wants to protect Biden every bit as much as he wanted to harm Donald Trump. | ||
| So I think he's going to use Ukraine as an excuse to slow roll the normalization of policy on the right side. | ||
| Four heights before the end of the year? | ||
| Four heights before the end of the year? | ||
| Perhaps. | ||
| And by the way, if it were four hikes... I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road, Steve. | ||
| And if he doesn't say that, what does that say? | ||
| I mean, don't you think he's got to, like, lay out how... Look, they do four hikes before the end of the year. | ||
| That's only 100 basis points. | ||
| I mean, in the old days, you know, usually started with 50 and then worked your way. | ||
| What's your read? | ||
| By the way, in terms of what he should be doing, he should be doing a 50 basis point hike, half a percentage point hike today, because we absolutely need it. | ||
| Look, we just got producer prices out yesterday. | ||
| 10% double-digit producer prices. | ||
| Producer prices, the wholesale level, soon become consumer prices. | ||
| That matched the all-time high since those records have been kept. | ||
| Okay, so we have an inflation explosion, an inflation Crisis in this country. | ||
| What he should be doing is raising 50 basis points today and telegraphing that he's willing to do it again and to do it soon. | ||
| And to put that in perspective in terms of, you know, forward-looking indicators, Goldman Sachs, premier among the Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs originally projected that there would be seven quarter point hikes for the year. | ||
| So 1.5% overall for the year. | ||
| That has been ratcheted back significantly since then. | ||
| And, you know, look, I'll have to tell you, the honest truth here, it's so hard to know because he's such a political beast, Powell, what he will do. | ||
| I know what he should do, which is get aggressive. | ||
| Because again, this inflation, this is so real world. | ||
| It's so tangible. | ||
| It's so crushing. | ||
| And you don't have to take my word for it. | ||
| Look at those consumer confidence numbers. | ||
| I mean, the consumer right now is so anxious, understandably so. | ||
| And it's not just food and energy. | ||
| Those are really important. | ||
| It's also rents, rental prices for apartments and homes. | ||
| are absolutely soaring in the high teens as a percentage. | ||
| That is crushing to Americans' prosperity. | ||
| It has nothing to do with Putin. | ||
| He can't be the Patsy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the onus is on the Fed here to get aggressive. | |
| Just sit right there. | ||
| We're going to bring on Russ Vogt, talk a little bit about what the Mischief of Congress do. | ||
| On our way out here, I just want to give you the broad perspective on the problem we have. | ||
| Stagflation. | ||
| Simultaneous inflation and recession. | ||
| Don't usually have that. | ||
| The problem for the Federal Reserve is that if you try to solve inflation by reducing, by raising interest rates, slowing the economy down, you induce more recession. | ||
| And by the same token, if you're more concerned with recession, as we will be shortly, if you try to cut interest rates, that ignites the inflation. | ||
| So that's the dilemma. | ||
| I want to really emphasize here, we don't usually have to deal with this, okay? | ||
| Of a widespread chain of events that go right back to the Biden White House. | ||
| We have the stagflationary beast and Paul Krugman, Jay Powell, Joe Biden. | ||
| None of these people understand the mess that they're digging us deeper and deeper. | ||
| Navarro in for Bannon. | ||
| We'll be right back with more Steve Cortez and Russ Vogt, my former colleague in the White House at the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Beck monitors us. | |
| Censors us. | ||
| Deplatforms us. | ||
| Conservatives have been helpless to do anything about it. | ||
| Until now. | ||
| Join Getter, the social media platform that supports free speech and opposes cancel culture. | ||
| On Getter, you can express your political beliefs without fear of Silicon Valley liberals coming after you. | ||
| Getter is led by former Trump advisor and War Room co-host Jason Miller, who saw what Big Tech did to President Trump and decided to fight back. | ||
| Getter is the fastest growing social media platform in history, with millions of users, including prominent conservatives like Mike Pompeo, Steve Cortez, and Steve Bannon. | ||
| Join Getter. | ||
| It's in the App Store, the Google Play Store, and at getter.com. | ||
| Longer posts, longer videos, sharper and clearer pictures. | ||
| And unlike the Silicon Valley oligarchs, Getter will never sell your data. | ||
| Send a message today. | ||
| Join Getter. | ||
| It's time to cancel, cancel culture. | ||
| Navarro for Bannon in the war room. | ||
| Getter? | ||
| Yes, the Twitter killer. | ||
| Let's get moving on that. | ||
| Sign up, get involved. | ||
| My pleasure now to bring in a former colleague of mine in the White House. | ||
| He started out as a deputy in the Office of Management and Budget to Mulvaney and then He took the top position at one point. | ||
| He's doing great work on the outside monitoring the mischief of Congress. | ||
| And so what Russ is going to do is to bring us up to date now of the latest way Congress is trying to make us destitute. | ||
| So Russ, talk to me. | ||
| Hey Peter, thanks for having me back on. | ||
| It's good to see you. | ||
| Last week, Congress passed a $1.5 trillion finalization of the spending bill, the omnibus bill. | ||
| They did it in the dark of night. | ||
| They did it in a way that even they didn't think they would be able to do it as quickly as they possibly can. | ||
| They brought back earmarks, over 4,000 earmarks. | ||
| Upwards of about $8 billion. | ||
| We haven't had earmarks in 11 years. | ||
| This is one of the only fiscal wins we've had in some time. | ||
| And all of this is being done while the country is focused on Ukraine. | ||
| Russ, just for the viewers, an earmark is what? | ||
| Pure pork, usually? | ||
| Pure, pure, congressionally directed spending. | ||
| So we're talking about a $600,000 for a greenhouse in New York City. | ||
| We're talking about $2.5 million for bike paths in Vermont. | ||
| We're talking about diversity and inclusion centers. | ||
| And we're really getting into the woke aspect of this with these diversity and inclusion centers at universities like Ohio State and on and on and on. | ||
| Why do the Republicans go along with this? | ||
| This is part of the cartel, Peter, and this is, you know, they're looking for a distraction to be able to allow themselves to get back in the business of pork barrel spending while the country is focused on Ukraine, and unfortunately there was only a very small group of people that were fighting this. | ||
| You only had about 20 people opposing in the Senate, but it's even beyond just those who voted against it. | ||
| Any of those senators could have stood up and objected and made this something that had an opportunity to have a national debate on it and they chose not to do it. | ||
| And so we're going to have to do a lot of work over the next year to break the cartel's grip on spending because, and you will get this more than anybody, The appropriations process is how we rein in the administrative state. | ||
| It is how we put parameters for what they can and can't do. | ||
| So anything that you've got an issue with regard to President Biden and his administration, the appropriations process is your only way to rein them in. | ||
| We have now lost that for another year. | ||
| So, we all know McConnell, the ultimate rhino, the corporate tool. | ||
| Why wasn't McCarthy over in the House more vocal on this? | ||
| Is he just as compromised as McConnell? | ||
| There is no good reason for why this should not have been a red team, blue team exercise. | ||
| But the problem is that the appropriations process dispenses all of these types of earmarks to a broad range of people. | ||
| And Kevin McCarthy has not led on this in any way, and we've got to get to the point where if Republicans are going to be put back in office, that the Speaker of the House takes a leadership responsibility to break up and reform the Appropriations Committee in a way that this can't ever happen again. | ||
| I put this as part of the things like we've got to get a handle on the deep state, we've got to get a handle on the security agencies, we also have to get a handle on the extent to which Congress It's part and parcel of the administrative deep state, and that comes from the appropriations process, and if you don't get at both of those, you're never going to get at fixing the problem. | ||
| Steve, you got a quick one for Russ, if you're there? | ||
| Cortez? | ||
| Russ, I just wanted to ask you, so listen, you know, I understand the mess we're in, and I understand I like that you use the word cartel to describe a lot of these establishment Republicans, not just Democrats, who insist on going along with this exorbitant spending. | ||
| Are there candidates out there, and are you involved either personally or your organization, are there Republican candidates out there who are credible threats to break that cartel? | ||
| In other words, is there hope for November of 2022 that there can be a solution to this current mess on Capitol Hill? | ||
| We don't do elections, but we are very, you know, cognizant and observant that anytime you have a freshman class that comes in, they are often people that we, at this point in time, don't even know who they are. | ||
| They will bring new energy. | ||
| Your Lauren Boebert, your Marjorie Taylor Greene, those are the people that I think will have a shot in the arm. | ||
| There are some good governor's candidates out there who are really, I think, understand what time it is. | ||
| You know, someone like Carrie Lake is in Arizona. | ||
| She is pushing our plan. | ||
| to secure the border in a fundamental way. | ||
| And we have, unfortunately, too many Republicans who think that they're living in the year 2000s, that they think they're living in the years of the 1990s. | ||
| We have a totally different problem set than we've ever had before. And it's going to be, right now we're in that time in the campaign season where we're trying to see are these people separating. | ||
| Do they understand? | ||
| What are the issues that they're running on? | ||
| To be honest with you, Steve, I don't think that has fully been fleshed out yet, but it's something we're going to be watching very closely to see who we can work with when they get here, even though we don't do elections in our organization. | ||
| Russ, quickly, who's your top champions on the Hill? | ||
| Yeah, right now the House Freedom Caucus guys are awesome. | ||
| They're the ones that are looking to run to the sound of gun on an ongoing basis. | ||
| Folks like Scott Perry, folks like Dan Bishop, Bob Good, Chip Roy. | ||
| These are guys that are going immediately to pick as many fights as they possibly can. | ||
| Jim Jordan, of course. | ||
| The folks that have filled the shoes of some of the great champions that the House Freedom Caucus was founded upon. | ||
| Those are the guys that we start with and they're the ones that put pressure on the Senate. | ||
| All right, brother. | ||
| Give us your coordinates so the War Room can find you real quick. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| At RussVote on both Getter and Twitter and AmericaRenewing.com. | ||
| We're going to put up continuing information to update you all. | ||
| All right, brother. | ||
| Fight the good fight. | ||
| Steve, stick around just for a few minutes if you can. | ||
| Navarro, for Bannon, in the war room. |
Export Selection