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March 29, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
32:29
The Coming Dollar Disaster? with E.J. Antoni and Rep. Warren Davidson
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Exporting Inflation Abroad 00:09:34
Hey, everybody.
Today in the Charlie Kirk show, E.J. Antoni from the Heritage Foundation joins us.
And also Warren Davidson, we talk inflation, we talk spending, we talk fiscal policy, and we close with, according to Wallet Hub, what is the happiest city in America?
It's a bunch of garbage.
You have to listen to this.
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Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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This hour will be dedicated to some very serious questions about our currency, about inflation, about our fiscal health, our fiscal solvency.
Joining us now is E.J. Antoni from the Heritage Foundation, the new and improved Heritage Foundation, economist and very smart man.
EJ, welcome to the program.
Charlie, thank you for having me.
Of course, what, in your opinion, is the true inflation rate?
And what does that mean for middle-class, muscular-class people in the heartland of the country that are just trying to make ends meet?
The floor is yours.
Charlie, it's a great question.
You know, inflation is, in the short run, really difficult to measure.
In the long run, it's pretty easy because everything tends to go up by about the same amount.
But in the short term, it's affected by what government is purchasing and where the money is going at first before it has a chance to filter out to the rest of the economy.
So we have a lot of different ways to measure inflation, but all of the official government metrics have a lot of flaws to them, not the least of which is the fact that they fail to account for those who are affected the most by inflation and taking a more accurate measurement of the cost increases that those people are facing.
And once you do that, in my opinion, you add at least two or three percentage points to the official inflation metric.
You can look at something like eggs, for example.
That is a very good illustration of how the poor who disproportionately use eggs as a source of protein have been just dramatically affected by the increase in food prices because eggs have gone up so much more than filet mignon, for example, on a percentage basis.
So the number is hard to pinpoint.
Let's go into the main drivers of this.
We created $6 trillion out of thin air in, I think, really fiscal mismanagement over the last couple of years.
And we're not seeing inflation slow down in any of the kind of core consumer price index metrics that I think really matter.
Are we going to see a cooling off in your estimation with inflation now that money's getting more expensive and interest rates are going up?
What do you think the next six to 12 months are going to hold?
Well, unfortunately, while we have seen some moderation in the Fed's growing of the money supply, now all of that is being reversed with all of these bailouts.
Every time the Fed creates money, it is increasing the money supply.
And so we have to realize that the Fed doesn't have a vault of cash.
Calling it the Federal Reserve is really a misnomer.
It doesn't have a reserve.
It creates money whenever it gives that money out.
So every time the Fed finances one of these bailouts, it's reversing what we call the quantitative tightening that it has been doing for months now.
Now, you have to remember that anytime the Fed acts, the effects are not immediate.
you usually see months pass by before those effects actually manifest themselves in the term of high terms of higher or lower prices.
So we probably will see a lot of those official inflation metrics continue to moderate.
We're not going to get back to 2% anytime soon.
But eight or nine months from now, what we're going to feel are the effects of all the money creation that's going on today to finance these bank bailouts.
So in addition to that, as we deteriorate our currency and we weaken the dollar, the world's reserve currency is built on the American dollar.
It seems as if the Chinese, the Russians, and the Saudis are all talking about using a petro won.
Let's play cut 44 of Fareed Zakaria, play cut 44.
The dollar is America's last surviving superpower.
It gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle.
It can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, which frees that country out of large parts of the world economy.
And Washington can spend freely, certain that its debt will be bought up by the rest of the world.
And then play cut 34.
The share of dollars in global central bank reserves has dropped from roughly 70% 20 years ago to less than 60% today and falling steadily.
The Europeans and the Chinese are trying to build international payment systems outside the dollar-dominated SWIFT.
Saudi Arabia has flirted with the idea of pricing its oil in Yuan.
India is settling most of its oil purchases from Russia in non-dollar currencies.
Digital currencies might be another alternative.
And in fact, China's central bank has created one.
So, EJ, what does that mean?
They're dumping the dollar as the world reserve currency.
And what does that mean for American strength and sovereignty?
Well, we need to realize that by having the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, one of the things that that has allowed the Federal Reserve to do is export inflation abroad.
And so it has isolated Americans from some, but certainly not all, of those cost increases.
The rest of the world is catching on to this.
And so they don't want to rely on a currency that is as volatile as the dollar has become.
But on top of that, there's a political point here that needs to be made.
Not because this is inherently a political issue, but because politics has now invaded the monetary field.
And it's this.
After the war in Ukraine commenced, we actually confiscated dollars that were owned by the Russian people and by the Russian central bank.
And this is not justifying at all what Putin has done, to be clear.
But it is the case that what we did is we broke a contract that we were going to hold those dollars available for depositors.
And as soon as that happened, we effectively weaponized the dollar.
And as a consequence of that, a lot of countries around the world are now wondering, are we, for example, woke enough for the Biden administration?
What if we disagree with the Biden administration on climate change, on gender-related issues, on abortion?
You pick, whatever the case may be.
Countries are now Wondering, are my dollars safe if this administration disagrees with me politically?
And the answer to that right now is frankly very vague.
And with all of that doubt, the dollar is now losing its rock steady dependability, and people are losing their faith in the dollar.
The reason why this is so scary, and what the viewers and listeners really, really need to understand here is that there are right now trillions of dollars overseas that are being used to conduct international commerce.
If people no longer want to conduct commerce in those dollars, if they want to use the Chinese currency, or if they want to use the Russian ruble, or if they want to use gold, whatever the case may be, all of those dollars come back here because this is going to be the only place you can spend those dollars.
You are talking about maybe doubling the money supply here in the United States.
I mean, the inflationary effects of this would be so catastrophic, they can't be overestimated.
I know that sounds hyperbolic.
Well, it doesn't.
It sounds right on.
So, EJ, can you just elaborate on the agreement we broke and Putin and Russia?
That's interesting.
I didn't quite understand that.
Can you just elaborate on that, please?
Certainly.
There are a lot of foreign countries that own dollars because what happens when you have a trade deficit as massive as we do, we are constantly sending dollars abroad.
And so, those countries have a stockpile of dollars.
They can take those dollars and invest them back here in the United States.
They can put them on deposit perhaps to earn some interest.
And so, the Russian central bank had a massive stockpile of dollars.
We're talking billions and billions of dollars here in the United States.
Now, those did not belong to the United States.
They did not belong to the American people.
They did not belong to the United States government.
They belonged to the Russian central bank and the Russian people.
And what the United States government did was literally confiscate those dollars from the Russian central bank.
And as soon as that happened, people are now, people then began to wonder again: am I going to be next?
You know, obviously, again, what Putin did was wrong invading another country.
This is not supposed to be some kind of defense of Putin's actions.
It's merely to point out that the promise that those dollars would be kept safe and would be available whenever the creditor wanted them, that promise was broken.
Russia's Massive Dollar Stockpile 00:04:38
That is fascinating.
I haven't heard anyone else make that argument that basically we shot our own currency confidence by doing that.
And that destabilizes the dollar as the world reserve currency.
I mean, do our leaders think about this stuff?
Do they want to get rid of the dollar?
I mean, it seems as if that's if you wanted to get rid of the dollar as the world reserve currency, that's exactly what you would do.
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So, EJ, we're in a very confusing economic climate currently.
Washington, D.C. seems just determined to continue to spend more money as inflation goes and the economic indicators go under.
We have bank collapses.
Federal government is doing more than ever.
The fourth branch of government seems completely just unchecked and they are doing whatever they want.
So, EJ, We're seeing this confusing economic time, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly where we are at.
And I know this is a difficult question, but if you were to forecast the economic trends, do you think we're going to already in a deep recession?
We're going to stay in a deep recession.
What is the data showing you?
Carly, it's a really, really great question.
And when we try to determine, for example, when a recession begins or ends, we have to look at a whole host of different factors.
And right now, the majority of those are pointing down, but probably not enough to really say definitively, yes, the economy is contracting right now.
But what it looks right now, just given today's data, before year's end, we are definitely going to be into that downswing where the economy is, in fact, contracting.
And I have quite frankly given up on all of the so-called experts who are supposed to officially determine whether or not we're in a recession.
Because look at last year.
Look at the first half of the year when the economy actually shrank.
And what happened?
That came and went.
And again, the so-called experts never batted an eye.
Whether or not that was politically motivated, I'll leave that to you to determine.
But the fact remains that the economy did contract for the first half of last year, and it's very likely going to begin contracting again in the very near future.
One of the key things to look at, which a lot of people don't for some reason, is new orders for businesses.
And what we've found is that when you examine that data, there is not enough new orders coming in to sustain current levels of output.
Businesses have literally been surviving in part on old backlogs of orders.
Some of those still date from 2020.
But once those are gone, there's again not enough new orders for businesses coming in to sustain current levels of output, which means you can't sustain current employment, which means layoffs.
We've already started to see that on a small scale in select industries.
But as we go into the recession, that becomes widespread.
Yeah, and it's interesting because I was talking to some private equity guys earlier, and they say they actually have had no difficulty raising money from higher income clientele.
And I think there's a lot of dollar bills out there, which is the X factor, right?
So we're not going to have a liquidity crunch, at least in the short term that we saw in 2008, but we certainly are going to have a value implosion crisis, which is, have we allocated dollar bills to businesses and industries that have just kind of been Potempkin villages?
Therefore, the only way to let that correct is through collapses or actual economic calamity.
I mean, so EJ, I guess what I'm getting at is we're in an unprecedented economic moment, and the only way out of it would be a restoration of sane fiscal policy.
Is there a soft landing you see in the next couple of years?
No, I don't think there's any way you get out of this through a soft landing.
You know, you can't spend, borrow, and print trillions upon trillions of dollars and not expect negative consequences for it.
No Soft Landing Ahead 00:13:08
There is just no way to softly land this thing.
You can't take the plane up to 50,000 feet, burn out the engines, and then expect that you're somehow miraculously going to cruise to that soft landing.
The Fed has set this economy up for a disaster, and they have done it in large part because they needed to finance the trillions of dollars that the government spent that it simply didn't have.
It's fascinating.
EJ from the Harris Foundation, EJ Antoni.
Thank you so much.
Well, thank you for having me.
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So Matt Taibbi testifies in front of Congress, asked questions by the weaponization of government committee, and talks about how Twitter has been involved with the federal agencies.
And then he gets a knock on the door from the IRS.
And who is it?
It's the IRS asking about your tax returns.
Now, that's very unusual.
The IRS really doesn't do house visits.
And why is it that they then decide to go knock on the door of a dissident journalist?
We know the reason.
This is Stalinistic, Maoist behavior from the Biden regime to try to chill speech and intimidate journalists.
Could you imagine that if when Trump was president, this is the equivalent, that when Trump was president, Maggie Haberman got a knock on the door from the IRS and they just knock on the door to Matt Taibbi.
Well, it'll be a shame if you get audited.
I mean, we're supposed to believe this is a coincidence.
No way.
This is a massive story that we're going to unpack in greater detail tomorrow.
I want to play a piece of tape here for a couple of reasons.
Let's just play this.
It's just interesting.
Then we'll get to Warren Davidson.
Biden, Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen.
Public opinion in the IRS is extremely negative because the IRS is not large enough.
Play Cut 50.
Well, it's extremely negative because the IRS has been starved for resources.
You think it's resource-related that they have a bad reputation.
It's nothing to do with historical culture in the agency or anything like that.
I mean, they're a bunch of Stalinists.
Joining us now is Representative Warren Davidson from Ohio.
Congressman, thank you for joining the program.
You're on the Financial Services Committee.
Any initial thoughts before we dive into this on the Internal Revenue Service, the targeting of dissident journalists?
Or what's going on here?
Your thoughts, Warren Davidson?
It's an honor to join you, Charlie, and you've got it exactly right.
The Weaponization of Government Committee gets testimony from Matt Taibbi, and the next thing you know, they're weaponizing government.
And I love that you tied the clip in with Janet Yellen saying, hey, we just need more people.
The Biden administration proposes 87,000 agents in addition to the 78,000 they already have.
For reference, 87,000 agents is the equivalent of five infantry divisions.
You don't need five infantry divisions, five additional infantry divisions of IRS agents to go after millionaires and billionaires.
They're going after people like Matt Taibbi, who dares to question the regime.
They dare to question the regime.
Not even just ask questions of what they're doing, and they send these Stalinistic forces after them.
So, Congressman, there's so many things to talk about on the Financial Services Committee that you're handling.
Let's talk about one element: ESG.
What is ESG?
Where does it come from and why does this now involve Congress?
I believe it's an existential threat to the American capitalist system.
Your thoughts?
Yeah, that's a good way to summarize it.
It's a pro-China anti-American heresy code.
So what does the ESG stand for?
It sounds pretty benign.
Environmental, social governance.
We care about the environment.
We want people to care about their neighbors, social, you know, care about a just society, and we want good governance in our companies.
But the exact thing that they're putting out there that sounds so nice is really just meant to be cancel culture against disfavored, totally legal, but disfavored things.
And it's selectively applied only to American companies.
So companies like BlackRock in the private sector, ostensibly private sector, will cancel American companies, do things that hurt Exxon, where they're on the board of directors.
Meanwhile, they'll bid up contracts that go to the Chinese-backed companies that they're partnered with the Chinese government on, because they don't apply the ESG standards outside the United States.
So it is, you know, a way to deprive Americans of capital formation and selectively give it to people that are good with the cause.
Yes.
It's a Maoist social credit score system that is being implemented via economics.
So Biden vetoed the bill.
It was actually the first veto of his presidency.
So Congressman, what is your take on that?
Biden wants the Chinese-style social credit system in our economy.
Why do you think that is?
Yeah, I mean, every kind of hearing that you could think of where the Democrats have said, all but, gosh, we really envy the power the Chinese Communist Party has.
We should implement something like that here in America.
What was going on here with the bill that he vetoed, it was a bipartisan bill that passed the House and the Senate, made it to his desk.
And what it did is it said, the people that manage your retirement savings, they're supposed to manage it so that it's in your best interest, that it gets a return.
People plan and plan for, prepare for retirement by earning returns in their retirement savings account, not by pushing a woke domestic agenda favoring one party's domestic politics.
And that's basically what Joe Biden said.
We're going to keep using all of your money to work against your own interests and to advance the cause of our ideology.
And very few people understand the threat that ESG poses to the entire society.
And we do not have enough votes to overcome the veto.
And I mean, money managers across the country, if any of you out there are using Vanguard or Fidelity, I got to tell you, you are part of a very dangerous trend of a Chinese-style social credit system that is coming via through rating companies and fund managers.
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All right, I want to play a piece of tape here, Congressman.
We played this previously.
Let's go to cut 45 on how the share of dollars, people are dumping dollars as our world reserve currency.
Play cut 45.
The share of dollars in global central bank reserves has dropped from roughly 70% 20 years ago to less than 60% today and falling steadily.
The Europeans and the Chinese are trying to build international payment systems outside the dollar-dominated SWIFT.
Saudi Arabia has flirted with the idea of pricing its oil in Yuan.
India is settling most of its oil purchases from Russia in non-dollar currencies.
Digital currencies might be another alternative.
And in fact, China's central bank has created one.
We are seeing the deterioration of the American dollar.
Congressman, your thoughts.
I'm glad you're calling attention to this.
This really should be America's foremost threat to our national security is preserving the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
And you see all these actions that undermined it, and a lot of it is domestic.
How did we get here?
We destroyed the value of the dollar by spending too much money.
We spent more money, not just more money than we were collecting in taxes, not just more money than people would lend us.
We spent so much money that the Federal Reserve's balance sheet in 15 years' time has grown from less than $1 trillion before the 08-09 financial crisis to a little over $4 trillion back then by 2010, 2011, to now it's up at around $9 trillion.
And it's growing because there's no appetite in the market to keep taking up all the money that needs to be created to cover for the massive spending.
So this is how it's related to the debt ceiling fight.
We hit that limit.
And when you hit a credit limit, you're supposed to take measure.
Like, well, should I actually change course?
And it's a warning sign: change course, turn back.
Global markets are telling you the same thing.
People don't want the dollar.
And it's a combination of too much spending by the federal government, the Federal Reserve intervening and loading up their balance sheet, the Federal Reserve artificially holding rates the wrong way, too low for long, and then juicing them real fast instead of letting the market set rates.
And then lastly, we're disincentivizing the productive part of our economy.
We're paying adults not to work, not to participate in the economy.
And working-age adults need to participate in the economy.
We can't get a growth rate without it.
That's one of the biggest constraints on supply when you talk to everyone across the economy.
We could grow faster.
We could meet the demand if we had people.
And meanwhile, part of the spending is going to people that won't even go to work.
And that's a good segue to the debt ceiling fight.
Where does that stand?
By what date do we have to get that hiked?
And do you think that this new Republican Congress can get some serious spending cuts passed?
Well, we have to change course, right?
You know, one person in this negotiation is President Biden, and he said it's non-negotiable.
So he's the guy that's immovable.
He's saying we can't negotiate.
Kevin McCarthy has said we absolutely need to negotiate.
We have to talk about how did we get here and how are we going to make sure not only do we not bankrupt America now, we don't bankrupt America in the future.
So of course we're not going to default on America's debt.
The question is, are we going to come up with a plan not to default on our debt down the road?
And that's the conversation Joe Biden wants to avoid that we have to have.
We have to turn back and cut some of our spending.
We have to scale back some of the Federal Reserve's non-market interventions.
We have to let markets set rates and we have to get people back to work.
Where do you think we're most likely to actually get some spending cuts anywhere?
I mean, we're spending way too much money and our debt is $30 plus trillion dollars and we just seem comfortable with it.
Where do you think is the place that we can isolate where we can actually get some serious spending cuts?
I think the easy thing are the things that Joe Biden is doing that are already unconstitutional.
Things like student debt forgiveness that has a price tag of anywhere from $400 billion to $1 trillion, depending on who's scoring it.
And I think the other thing is there's a lot of money that was created, part of that $9 trillion that's on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet.
That cash is sitting in the U.S. Treasury unspent.
It's not obligated for anything else.
So if it stays laying there, it's going to get spent on something.
We should roll that back and that'll give us a start.
And it's not something that Congress is in the habit of doing.
I mean, since I've been here, I haven't really seen anything get cut.
We still have Obama phones, for example.
So there are a lot of low-hanging items out there that we could cut.
And then there's tougher conversations where I think, you know, like President Trump has been right to point out, we have to take some things off and make them off limits.
We should be clear to seniors.
You've already retired.
There's nothing.
Nobody's coming to change your retirement.
You can't change that right now.
And I think it would be really fraud on behalf of the United States government to somehow change the deal after people have already retired.
So you should stop letting people scare seniors about that.
It's dishonest.
Weather Matters for Happiness 00:05:07
I agree.
Congressman Davidson, thank you so much for joining us, and we'd love to have you on again soon.
Thank you for the fight on the Financial Services Committee and all that you're doing for our country.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Charlie.
God bless you and all your listeners and viewers.
Okay, the new study is out.
I always get a kick out of these.
CNBC.com as if there's some sort of subject matter expert on this.
Having traveled to all 50 states multiple times over, I have a pretty good idea of whether or not these studies are full of nonsense.
This California city is the number one happiest place to live in the United States, and it's not LA, San Diego, or San Francisco.
This is according to a recent Wallet Hub study that goes through the World Happiness Report, and it's the 2023 happiest cities in America.
And so it goes through what are the happiest cities in America.
And so it's just fascinating.
Okay, so number one, actually, let's just, we'll reveal.
We'll go through it.
Number 10, which there's no way this is true, okay?
I mean, it's interesting.
I would love to learn why, because if you were to say, Charlie, this would be one of the nastier cities in America, not one of the happier.
Burlington, Vermont is the 10th happiest city in America.
No, there's voter fraud in this survey.
There's no way this is true.
Those people are not happy.
When I go to Burlington, they are not joyful people.
Okay.
There are a lot of things they're not happy.
The number nine is South Burlington, Vermont.
More voter fraud.
No way is that true.
They manipulated it.
They're using machines or something.
So screwed up.
Number eight, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
That one I would believe.
There are some really good Midwestern folks, but I think Rapid City is actually a nicer city than Sioux Falls.
And I love Rapid City.
It's great.
It's like a time warp from 1955.
Every corner has a statue of a U.S. president.
Great memories in Rapid City.
Then Columbia, Maryland.
I don't understand how that one snuck in.
Number seven.
And again, I mean, no offense.
We're going to find out how happy you really are because we're going to get emails.
Charlie, I live in Burlington and I'm happy.
Yeah.
Okay, right, sure.
Columbia, Maryland, apparently one of the happiest cities in America.
Irvine, California.
Now, this one I believe.
Orange County, I actually think is a slice of heaven.
I really do.
I think that Irvine, California is a slice of heaven.
Number five, San Francisco, just not possible.
I'm sorry.
San Francisco is not the fifth happiest city in America.
Impossible.
We're supposed to believe that?
No way.
Number four, Overland Park, Kansas, which is a suburb of Kansas City.
I believe that.
Then Madison, Wisconsin.
Are you kidding me?
Have you ever been to Madison, Wisconsin?
And so they say, well, their emotional and physical well-being, number five.
Community and environment rank, number eight.
No way.
Number two, San Jose.
Really?
That San Jose is the second happiest city in America?
If that is the second happiest city in America, they're happy because no one can afford anything.
We all rent.
Jeez.
And then Fremont, California, number one, which might just be because there's a bunch of Asians there and they just are generally really happy people.
So it could be.
I don't know.
But then I go into the Wallet Hub survey and it goes down.
I'm actually interested at the least happy.
Detroit, Michigan.
Okay, no, I think that's probably right.
Nothing against Detroit, but I don't think that they're really known for, I don't think they're really known for their joy in Detroit.
Then Cleveland, Ohio.
You know, this will be a thought crime.
I would much rather live in Cleveland than San Jose.
I'm telling you, Cleveland, I went there for the Republican Convention in 2016.
People call it the mistake on the lake.
The problem is that it's too cloudy.
I will give you that.
Okay, then Montgomery, Alabama is the third unhappiest city.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
Knoxville, Tennessee is the third most depressed city.
Then Vancouver, Washington is the most, fourth most depressed.
And then Spokane.
That's just a cloud thing, honestly.
By the way, Knoxville, Tennessee is actually really sweet.
It's right on the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
I've been there multiple times.
I actually think it's really nice.
And then they say the lowest depression, this goes to show that weather really does matter.
I know this is crazy.
Not crazy.
It's actually interesting.
That Pearl City, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, San Jose, California, and Irvine, California have the lowest depression rates in the entire country.
And the highest depression rates are in West Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Washington, Washington.
It's fascinating.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm just not buying it.
I'm not buying the San Jose as the second happiest city in America.
Nope.
Something wrong with that.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
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Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
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