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June 16, 2017 - The Dan Bongino Show
41:14
Ep 483 Problems on the Horizon

In this episode I address the deteriorating political discourse in the country and a path forward for advancing a positive agenda. https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalism-believers-need-not-apply-1497570751   I also address the collapse of Obamacare and a pending economic crisis.      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Time Text
Dan Bongino.
I have an obligation to come on the air with data and material and research.
I can't just say, trade stinks.
Thanks for tuning in.
The Dan Bongino Show.
Let's jump right in because we have no time for nonsense.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
When I was a young man, I don't remember it being sexy to want to allow a nanny state to control my life.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Boy, one hell of a week, Dan.
I'm doing okay.
Doing good.
You know, I'm feeling unusually good today.
I got up yesterday early morning to do Fox and Friends and had a whole bunch of hits.
I was supposed to do Martha McCallum's show, but they canceled because they were at the baseball game, so they wanted people on set.
But it was an unusually busy day yesterday, and man, I was so wiped.
I never, ever cancel workouts.
And yesterday, I was just wiped.
Like, I did nothing.
I burned yesterday probably a grand total of .25 calories.
I don't think I moved all day.
I finished up this David McCullough, well, almost finished up this David McCullough book, The American Spirit, really good book, and I just sat there.
I'm dying.
I was like, oh man.
But there's a lot to talk about today, so I feel good because I slept probably close to 22 hours last night.
Good man.
Yeah, you needed it, dude.
I feel great.
You did.
I'm very chipper right now for a Friday show.
A couple things I want to get to today.
Folks, the congressional baseball game last night, some things happened that I thought to myself, gosh, this would be really refreshing if we proceeded forward like this.
I'm not optimistic.
I wish I was, but I want to talk about that.
The liberal scam on Obamacare starting already.
What do we always say, Joe?
The why matters?
You bet.
They're already doing it!
It's the uncertainty.
I'm going to give you the talking point that they're trying to use because Obamacare is going to collapse, and then I'm going to debunk it for you so you know how to argue with your kooky liberal friends.
But hey, one quick thing, too.
I went to a stem cell conference.
For those of you who follow the show regularly, I had stem cells injected into my own stem cells, into my shoulder.
I feel really, really great.
So they asked me to speak at a conference, which I did.
Some guy gave me a sample of this nitric oxide stuff to take it, like dilate your blood vessels.
So, you know, I've never taken this in my life.
So I go to the gym the other day.
It's like a lozenge.
I take this thing.
Dude, I'm not even kidding.
My heart rate was like 7,000 beats per minute.
And the guy in the gym, the trainer, this guy, Terry, I talked to him.
Terry's like, Dude, are you okay?
I've got like, you know, the thousand yard stare.
I'm like, dude, I'm good.
I'm good, bro.
I'm good.
I'm doing kettlebell swings.
I'm on kettlebell swing number 62,000 in 10 minutes.
And the guy's like, dude, you got to calm down.
I felt like my heart was going to explode.
So, you know, it's interesting.
We deal with brick houses, our nutrition company, and I got to talk to these guys about getting a nitric oxide thing going too.
I mean, I'm telling you, Joe, my blood vessels, the ones like in your wrist were like the size of fire hoses.
Blood pouring out of my heart.
So man, a lot.
Now I see why people love this supplement.
Sheesh.
All right.
So yesterday, I know crazy stories, right?
Stuff happens.
I've been so into getting back to the Brazilian jujitsu and everything.
I feel really good lately, but I have a little bit, a little bit beat up.
So it was good to get a, get a little spike in energy.
Uh, yesterday I'm watching the congressional baseball game after the attack.
The terrorist political assassination attempt on Steve Scalise.
And, you know, before the game, there was a really nice moment where, you know, Democrats and Republicans before the game, they play this baseball game every year.
The Democrats in Congress play the Republicans.
And they had this moment of prayer where they were all in, you know, it took a knee.
And it was really nice to see it live on television.
And I thought, you know, I said, I need to just address this quickly with the audience.
You know, I thought, well, how great would it be?
I even took a note on this to get the wording absolutely down so I didn't confuse it.
I said, how great would it be if we stuck with this level of civility and chose just to debate ideas?
You know, think about it.
I know this is Pollyanna-ish and pie in the sky, and I realize this is probably never going to happen, but for a moment, imagine that I'm not going to say both sides because I don't think the left are not the far left.
I think the far left, some of them do have genuinely bad intentions.
But I don't think Democrats are bad people at all.
I think most of them just think there's a better policy prescription forward.
But I don't think a lot of people on the far left feel the same way about us.
And how great would it be if we were, say, arguing tax policy and we were legitimately, Joe, arguing about the ideas and took out the personal stuff?
And you may say, well, oh, that happens all the time.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't.
You know, think about this debate versus- here's the debate as it's framed now.
There's one side, the Democrats, who says, oh, the rich don't pay their fair share.
In other words, imputing their character as if wealthy people who've been successful are somehow greedy and want to do what?
They want to earn money?
Like, everybody wants to earn money.
You're no different.
The fact that they've been more successful at it doesn't give them a- that doesn't mean they have a character problem.
It means the opposite.
So, Joe, what I'm getting at here is, can we both agree That whether you're poor, middle class, or rich, everybody wants to earn money and be successful.
Yeah!
Okay, alright, so let's stipulate points.
Like, this is a legal case.
Point stipulated.
So there is no difference in desire or demand for wealth and financial assets.
None.
Poor people want money and assets.
Middle class people want money and assets.
Wealthy people want money and assets.
Nothing wrong with it.
Nothing wrong with it at all.
If there was, we're all damned then, okay?
People want stuff.
Now, can we also agree that upper middle class and wealthy people have, frankly, been more successful at accumulating stuff?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, have some gotten it by ill-gotten gains?
I'm sure.
There are drug dealers out there who haven't done it legally.
Possibly, yeah.
And, you know, although they're not ill-gotten, there are some people, frankly, who inherited wealth who are probably just not good people and didn't deserve it.
But that's a very limited number.
So let's just put the character questions aside right now because they're not relevant.
Everybody wants what upper middle class and wealthy people have, success and assets.
Some have been more successful at doing it, most of the time, due to hard work.
So where's the character argument here?
There isn't one.
There is no character argument to be had.
The argument is simply about ideas and should stay about ideas.
And when I mean ideas, say we put the character stuff aside for a minute.
The question Democrats and Republicans in that moment yesterday where there was some solidarity should be asking each other while putting aside the personal vitriol is what are upper middle class and wealthy people doing?
Doing that is leading to their success.
Now, I'm going to get to in a second the reason why liberals refuse to have that argument, but Joe, isn't that a fair question?
Yeah.
Let's put together a little social science study.
Which we don't even really need, but I'm being dramatic here for a fact.
Yes, you are.
Let's put together a social science study of upper middle class, middle class, and wealthy folks and see what they did.
You're going to find a number of variables that conflict with the left's narrative, and the left's narrative is personal, not ideas-based.
Because here are the things you're going to find out.
Successful people typically work hard.
They work between 8-12 hours a day.
Successful people typically went to school for an extended period of time.
College degrees, graduate degrees, sometimes advanced degrees, MBAs, JDs, MDs, PhDs, PsyDs.
They have degrees.
They went to school.
They worked hard in school.
You're going to find many of them come from stable families.
They've chosen to stay married.
Marriage is tough.
Sometimes it's a job.
But you know what?
It's worth it.
You gotta tough it out.
It is the bedrock of modern societal stability.
A stable family home with loving parents.
You're gonna find that a lot of these kids, not all, both me and my wife both, come from divorced parents.
Both of us.
I think we've done okay.
Could always be better, but I think we've done okay.
What I'm getting at, Joe, is if you were to put together a social science study, you would see that those, what did I name, five or six things, almost guarantee you success!
Okay.
Now, why won't the liberals have that conversation in a moment of civility based on ideas?
Because, sadly, those ideas, again, conflict with what I've been discussing over the past few days.
The left has been overtaken and corrupted by critical theory teaching, which is the theory that People who are in power, the white patriarchal power structure, are bad people.
In other words, Republicans and conservatives are just bad people and there is no idea they have that doesn't reinforce their own desire for power.
Therefore, they should not be allowed to speak and their ideas are worthless regardless if they're based in facts or not.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
The objective set of facts you and I just threw out there, married, education, hard work, you know, schooling, keeping your kids engaged in a rigorous academic program, they'll say those may be objective facts and those may have led to success in the past, but what you say doesn't matter because you're a white male or you're helping white males maintain their power in society and that's the only reason you're saying that.
Okay?
This is the problem and there was an If we could argue ideas on the... It's not just the economy.
If we could argue ideas on other things, too, like Obamacare.
I got a lot to get to.
Today's show may be a little bit longer, folks, okay?
Because I really have a lot to discuss.
On Obamacare, think about it.
If we could just speak ideas on Obamacare and not make it personal.
Think of where we could be.
We could talk honestly and say, well, why have premiums gone up?
Well, premiums have gone up because Obamacare, folks, this is in the law, you can read this yourself, demanded that insurance companies supply a portfolio of services that people may not want but now have to pay for.
Hair transplants, vasectomies, stuff like, you're like, I don't want that in my insurance plan.
No, Obamacare said you have to buy some of that.
Folks, that stuff costs money.
This is not, this is just an idea.
This is not personal, ladies and gentlemen.
This is not difficult to understand.
Now, when you combine that with the fact that they said, and by the way, you have to buy this stuff, but insurance companies can't charge you for it, because they had a principle called community rating embedded in Obamacare, which told insurance companies, here's the cap on what you can charge.
And then they said, oh, and by the way, people can come and claim insurance at any time, guaranteed issue, meaning you have to give them a policy, even if they wait till the last minute.
In other words, Joe.
I'm not going to pay premiums until I go in the hospital and then I'm going to ask for insurance?
That's not insurance, that's welfare.
That's not insurance.
Folks, why would any reasonable person, if you discuss what I just discussed, those three things, those three components of Obamacare, community rating, guaranteed issue, and demanding that insurance companies provide a wide array of services people don't want, why are you surprised that prices have gone through the roof?
I really don't believe Democrats are bad people.
Again, I'm not talking about the far-left activist nutbags.
I do believe they can't stand the constitutional Republican liberty.
But I'm not saying Democrats are bad people at all.
Why can't sensible, moderate Democrats say, okay, that stuff hasn't worked?
We're talking ideas now.
Costs are up.
People are complaining.
Cancellation and plans are happening.
Insurance companies are pulling out of entire states, frankly, entire regions of the country.
Why can't we say, okay, there's got to be a different way to do this?
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a conservative guy.
I think the less government, the better at all times.
But at this point, the healthcare situation is so bad, I'm not surprised that some moderate Republicans are saying, you know what, I'm almost willing to get to a point where we're willing to give people cash to buy insurance.
Republicans are that desperate for an answer to get the government out of this.
I'm not suggesting that's a good idea, but like when we discussed the universal basic income, I feel like everything deserves a fair shake.
Even if you think it's a bad idea, you should give the pros and the cons.
You know, giving middle-income people cash to buy health insurance, you're just going to inflate the cost of health insurance because you're creating a market that didn't exist in the past.
It'd be like giving people money to buy Corvettes.
You're going to see demand for Corvettes jump and Corvettes are going to get more expensive.
But folks, I get it.
I get why some moderate Republicans out there, they're so desperate, they're like, let's just pay people to buy insurance.
I get it.
Let's just take money from Joe and give it to Peter to buy insurance.
Now, another thing, like on the school choice thing, which I brought up a lot, why aren't we just talking ideas?
This is very simple.
Oh, by the way, on the Obamacare thing, just to show you that the Democrats are not talking about ideas or making it personal.
They say, oh, Republicans want people to die.
They want to pull insurance away from people.
Folks, that's factually ridiculous.
It is totally, completely incorrect.
It's nonsense.
But they can't.
So I watched them all sitting down in prayer and I'm like, gosh, can you imagine if we put aside for a moment the rich people are evil and they're stealing money from the poor people and talked about actual economic growth ideas.
Secondly, if we put aside Republicans who want to reform the health care system want to kill people and throw Graham off the cliff.
And third, on education, how about we just for a moment put aside the idea that, you know, Republicans don't want people to get an education by school choice.
They're trying to bankrupt public schools.
That's factually not correct, folks.
Education-based spending in the United States, inflation-adjusted at the state, federal, local level, has increased 400% since I was born in 1974.
You saying that the public school system is in any way underfunded makes you simply an imbecile.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I know we're all trying to dial down the political rhetoric, but it really does.
It makes you incredibly unintelligent.
You're not doing your homework, you're not doing any research, you're talking at stupid, vapid talking points that can be debunked in less than five seconds if you have access to the interweb or a smartphone.
It's just not true.
Imagine if we said, and we started arguing the ideas, and said, well, we're spending 400% more money, taxpayer dollars, on education.
Why are our results flatlining?
Hmm.
Maybe because parents can't pick where they go to school?
I mean, why can't we just talk about the ideas?
Now, I don't want to rehash again the shows I've done over the past few days about critical theory.
And in essence, this is a one-sentence summation.
Remember, critical theory, what's imbued the far-left movement is the idea that it's not about good or bad ideas.
It is about good or bad people and the other side is the enemy.
That's what the left believes.
That's why you will always be taken out by them, no matter what.
Now, I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, and I thought, gosh, this guy really nails it, and I'll put it in the show notes.
He was talking, was it James Freeman or something?
You know what, I always read the author, and I read so many of their op-ed pieces, I confuse them.
So I'll put it in the show notes today, though, a conservative review.
They said that the left, they were talking about this guy over in the UK who was kicked out of a far-left party over there because he couldn't answer the question to their liking, is homosexuality a sin?
And apparently had condemned at one point abortion, so he was kicked out of the equivalent of the liberal movement over there in the UK.
And the article is about how believers have, I tweeted it out at my Twitter account as well, how believers have no place in the movement, in the far-left movement anymore.
Now I thought this was fascinating because at one point in the piece he says something that he and he bingo like he nails it totally.
Oh, it was Saurabha Rami.
That's right.
I'll put it again in the show notes.
He says it's not just that liberals anymore obsessed with conquering the field of policy.
They have to double down and conquer the individual too.
So he brings up the point where it's not just that You can accept and tolerate gay marriage.
You will learn to love the gayness of people.
I'm not talking about love the people.
If you are a real Christian listening to this show, you are not to condemn or to judge.
That's not our role.
You know, I love everybody, but I do acknowledge an objective path that I fall off myself sometimes.
I'm a sinner, but an objective path means we all sin, and acknowledging the sin of others doesn't mean you're judging them, but it also means you're not acknowledging their behavior is right either.
Now, The fact that you will love the transgender bathroom bill is a perfect example.
It's not just that you will learn to love this policy, and even if you speak out against it, you will be condemned.
The point the guy makes is they're not even good winners, the Democrats.
Folks, they've won legislatively on gay marriage.
They won.
Legislatively, I'm not talking about a moral or ethical argument or future arguments now, but as of now, legislatively, passed through the court, they won that issue.
And you will make a wedding cake.
Oh, you know what?
I'm glad you brought that up, because I forgot that.
I wrote it down.
I missed that.
You're right.
Good point.
Not only will you like it, they will walk into a wedding cake maker or a florist.
Meanwhile, keep in mind, there could be five or six other options, and you will deliver flowers and make a wedding cake, or they'll sue you and make sure you go out of business.
You will love them no matter what.
Not only you will love them, because you should love them no matter what, but you will love what they're doing, I guess, is a better way to say it, no matter what.
And I thought, gosh, this speaks perfectly to the critical theory argument I've been making the other day, that it's not just that liberals argue ideas, they argue that people are bad.
Forget the ideas.
They are obsessed with conquering the bad individual.
They are not... They don't care about recognition that the ideas work.
In other words, if They don't care about, say, gay marriage working for the betterment of society, or men in the women's bathroom as bettering society.
They're not doing it for that reason.
They see it as an overall...
A growth in the power of the state to advance the liberal initiative by creating victim groups on those sides.
In other words, those Republicans are bad people.
How do we prove to transgender people?
Folks, the liberals don't care about transgender people or people who are gay.
Please trust me on this.
They do not.
They absolutely do not.
Far-left activists who understand and who are read in on the program, the far-left program, need to make victims groups out of people to show you that critical theory.
In other words, the other side is evil and bad.
They need to make a victim out of you to do it.
So what they'll say is they'll say, oh, well, let's find something to do that.
Okay, I have an idea.
Let's send a few activists in there to show these people just how evil they are for not making a cake and let's put them out of business.
We're going to conquer the individual.
It's not just that they won legislative, we're going to conquer him too.
And then they'll say, let's push for a legislative push in North Carolina to allow men in the women's room and women in the men's room to show transgender people that it's the far left activists that they're right and the Republicans are bad people because they're stopping it and getting away in their rights.
Their rights?
You have rights.
Ladies and gentlemen, think about this when it comes to big R rights.
And I really say this with no air of condescension or maliciousness at all.
Take it for what it's worth.
We all have the same rights in the bathroom.
If you are a man, a biological man, who is transgender, who is gay, who is bisexual, whatever.
You are allowed to go in the men's room.
It doesn't matter if you're heterosexual or not, or transgender or not.
If you are a biological man, you're allowed to go in the men's room.
The same thing applies to women.
With gay marriage.
I've heard people... Now folks, I'm agnostic on this topic because I'm a Christian.
My church doesn't marry people who are gay.
My opinion is the government shouldn't be involved in marriage at all.
I see no good reason for that.
I've had this argument repeatedly over and over with people and I've never heard a good argument why the government should be involved in the sanctioning of what it was a pre-political institution.
But you can't say legally right now That people who are gay have different rights than people who are straight.
They do not.
Now, before gay marriage, I should correct that, before gay marriage, if you were a man, you could marry a woman if you were over the age of whatever, 18 or whatever the state.
Those were the rules.
It didn't matter if you were gay or not.
Now, you may say, well, that seems unfair.
Well, it's not.
Those are just the rules.
The rules applied to everyone.
They were not in any way weighted.
Those were the rules set up in what was a pre-political institution that government intervened in.
Again, I don't think the government shouldn't be involved in the institution of it, but the rules were not jaded either way.
There was a set of rules that conformed to people.
I know that's going to confuse a few folks, but that's just the facts of the matter.
The rules were not designed.
Society said, initially, when we decided that we were going to get involved in this argument, that government was going to sanction marriage, that they were going to do it in the interest of a male-female relationship.
It didn't matter if you were gay or not.
It had nothing to do with gayness.
It had everything to do with a male-female relationship and procreation.
Now, I don't think the government should be involved in it, but it's just in its obsession with conquering the individual because they think you're bad.
That really irks me.
Oh, I didn't get to my read yet today.
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Alright, moving on from that.
It just was an important topic because it would be nice for once to finally argue ideas, get up on the floor and say, you know what, make your case economically for higher taxes.
I'll make mine.
And do it without one time using the word the other guy, using an adjective to describe the other party that impugns their character.
I'm telling you the left would have a hard time doing it because they're obsessed with the idea that you're a bad guy.
All right, moving on.
So much to talk about today, how Illinois is going bankrupt.
Gosh.
Yeah, I feel bad for the citizens of Illinois that are fiscal conservatives.
Their debt state is falling apart right now.
So yesterday, the federal funds rate looks like it's going up again.
Where's the story?
I took some notes on it yesterday.
What were they going to raise?
Oh, a quarter percentage point, the federal funds rate.
Now, I bring this up because this is a problem I've been discussing on the show for a long time regarding Federal Reserve policy.
There's a big, big, big elephant in the room, folks, when it comes to the economy that I brought up before.
I get a lot of emails on it when I talk about it.
And in a great moment of regret here, I'm going to tell you there is no easy solution.
I don't want to scare anyone.
I don't want to be hyperbolic about the dangers of it, but it is dangerous.
And if it's not handled very delicately, The Federal Reserve could cause a massive inflation crisis or another recession.
Now, here's the problem.
During the recession, the Federal Reserve, to inject money into the economy – the Federal Reserve, by the way, prints the money, essentially.
They're the ones that print the monopoly money, okay?
What we would call a Federal Reserve note, a U.S.
dollar.
They printed money and bought United States government-denominated assets and mortgage-backed securities.
The idea would be, like, let's say the Treasury ... So the United States Treasury issues a bond, right, Joe?
All right.
And the bond is, say, whatever.
The bond costs $50.
Say it's $100 face value, redeemable in 20 years, but the bond costs $50.
You know how that works.
You buy a $100 bond, you pay $25 for it, you can redeem it in whatever, 10, 20 years, depending on the series, okay?
Okay.
Typically, those bonds are sold to private citizens and investors and people who want to invest and see the government as a safe bet.
So if the government issues a $100 bond and it costs $50, it's $100 on the face, whatever it may be, Joe can go out and buy that bond and use it as an investment instrument.
I bought bonds when I was younger.
Not the greatest investment in the world, but they're relatively safe.
The United States government hasn't technically gone bankrupt, but a lot of argument about that after we got off the gold standard.
But what happened for the first time in American history during our recession, at this degree at least, is the Federal Reserve printed its own money and bought the government's own assets.
Now think about that.
That's kind of like the batter at the plate calling the balls and strikes, isn't it?
So like the government is issuing bonds and the government is, through its de facto bank, is buying its own bonds.
Now, you may say, well, who cares?
Well, who cares?
You know how much money they bought in these bonds?
What's sitting in the Federal Reserve?
I got to go back at four because I took notes at a different page.
$4.5 trillion!
Folks, the entire United States economy is only worth about $20 trillion every year in GDP and productivity.
The Federal Reserve, the United States' central bank, has $4.5 trillion in assets sitting on the books.
Now, this is a huge elephant in a room, and you may say, well, why is that, Dan, and what's the problem?
Well, the problem right now is, what the heck are they going to do with this $4.5 trillion in bonds they have?
Now, to sum it up for you in a neat little package here, there are only two solutions and they're both bad.
Folks, I get emails on this all the time, why do you keep telling us it's bad?
Because it's bad!
There is no easy way out of this.
There are two solutions here.
They finally stopped buying these bonds now, thankfully, and they're letting them mature.
The problem with that is they were an enormous buyer of those bonds, obviously, because they bought $4.5 trillion worth of them.
So if you're an issuer of bonds, like, say it's Joe's T-shirt company, and you need money, and you don't want to sell stock, so you issue a corporate bond.
You say, hey, invest in my company.
give me a Joe, give me $50 for a $100 Joe's t-shirt company corporate bond, right?
If your biggest buyer, the Federal Reserve, stops buying Joe's t-shirt company bonds,
dude, you're in deep, you know what I'm saying?
You're in big trouble.
Because now Joe needs money to expand his factory, and his biggest buyer, the Federal Reserve, just disappeared off the face of the earth.
So now what does Joe have to do?
In order to attract more buyers, I was going to put you on the spot here, but it would be unfair.
In order to attract more buyers, Joe Armacost from Joe's T-shirt company now has to do what?
He has to pay an interest rate on the bond that's higher.
Right.
More money.
Right.
More money because his biggest buyer just dried up.
So now to attract new buyers, Joe has to say, all right, guys, I was going to give you 5% for the bond.
Now I'm going to give you 10%.
Right.
Now, which means Joe has to pay more money out, because Joe's now not paying 5% on a bond to people, he's paying 10%, which is double the interest.
Now, why do I say that?
Because the biggest buyer for the United States government, one of them, the Federal Reserve, has stopped buying these bonds now.
They were rolling it over.
In other words, as the bonds matured, they were taking the money and then buying more bonds.
They've stopped doing that.
So interest rates at some point are going to have to go up, folks.
Interest rates for you to buy your car.
Because remember, all of these interest rates are indexed to some form of government assets at some point.
So interest rates for you to get a car loan, interest rates for you to get a mortgage.
When the Federal Reserve stops buying these and starts dumping these bonds and reversing the flow, interest rates have to go up.
Folks, this is a big deal.
If you can afford a home at 4% interest for your mortgage, and the mortgage goes up to 5% in a year when you finally have the money, all of a sudden you don't have the money anymore.
Because your real estate guy's going, ah, you know what?
You should have got that house last year.
At a 4%, your mortgage payment per month was $1,500.
Now it's $2,000.
Well, I don't have $2,000.
Well, you don't have a house.
Folks, this is a BFD to steal the Joe Biden term.
It's a big freaking deal, okay?
That's option one, which is already happening, by the way.
I should have kind of said that one second.
The reason I'm bringing up this story is because the Fed now has decided to let some of those bonds mature and not reinvest it.
Now, they're doing it very slowly.
They're letting $6 billion a month in Treasury bonds and $4 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities basically mature, which compared to their $4.5 trillion portfolio, Joe, is frankly chump change.
It's pennies.
But it's not insignificant.
So the approach right now they're taking is to do this slowly, to let go of these bonds.
Now, you may say to yourself, fairly enough, Well, what if they just held the damn things?
Held onto these assets?
And, you know, don't let them roll off like they are now.
Because remember what I told you, by not buying the bonds and letting them mature, and not reinvesting it into new bonds, basically what happens is your biggest buyer's drying up.
Interest rates are going to go up.
Joe's T-shirt factory is going to have to find new buyers at a higher interest rate, which means higher interest rates for everyone.
They could hold on to the stuff and keep reinvesting it.
In other words, like, as the bonds mature, Joe, they could just keep buying an equivalent amount of bonds.
So let's say they have $4.5 trillion and $1 trillion matures next year.
You know, the bond was due to mature in a year.
They could just take that and rebuy another set of bonds that matures in another year.
What's the problem with that, folks?
Well, as the economy heats up, interest rates, the natural rates of interest, are going to rise naturally anyway.
Well, why is that?
Well, the natural interest rates in the economy are going to rise because as an economy heats up, what also heats up, folks?
Competition for money.
Because if Joe's t-shirt factory is selling 100 t-shirts a day, and the economy heats up and he's selling 200, Joe needs a new machine.
Joe needs a loan.
Right.
But what if Bobby's selling the same amount of t-shirts and Bobby needs a new machine, too?
They're both in the bank lobby at the same time.
The bank goes, hey, Joe, we'll give you a loan at 7%.
And then Bobby goes, I'll pay eight.
Bobby, it's yours.
When competition for money heats up, interest rates go up naturally, regardless of what the Federal Reserve does.
What the heck does that have to do with $4.5 trillion in assets sitting on the Federal Reserve's books?
Folks, as interest rates go up, the assets the Federal Reserve has now, these bonds that are locked in at lower interest rates, start to lose value dramatically.
What the hell are you care about a bond at 4% if you can go sell money out there for 8 and 10%?
Prices on bonds.
Prices and interest rates always move in the opposite direction.
Always.
That's the simplest way for me to say it.
For those of you regular listeners, I don't want to go into the explanation again because we're running out of time, but just trust me at this.
You can look it up online.
Bond prices and interest rates always move in the opposite direction.
So as interest rates in the economy go up, the prices, what they're worth for those bonds, go down.
So if we're holding 4.5 trillion damn dollars in assets on the Federal Reserve books and interest rates go up dramatically, what do you think happens to the value of those assets?
They tank!
The prices go down.
Now you may say, well, what's the problem with that?
Folks, what's the problem with that?
Who do you think is going to bail out the Federal Reserve when $4.5 trillion in assets go under?
Oh, you?
It's the United States Central Bank.
It's independent name only.
It's an IENO or whatever you want to call it.
You're going to bail it out.
So to sum this up, there are two options here.
Either interest rates go up and go up higher than they would ordinarily because the Federal Reserve has to dump $4.5 trillion in assets and stops buying them again.
Therefore, the government's going to have to pay higher interest rates.
Therefore, you're going to have to pay higher interest rates because their biggest buyer, the Federal Reserve, isn't buying anymore.
The economy heats up, interest rates go up, and the taxpayer takes an absolute bath on the $4.5 trillion in assets we bought from our own government.
There is no easy answer.
They're rolling it off slowly.
I think of all possible approaches, that's the best one.
But even that's not a great option either, because rolling off $10 billion a month at a $4.5 trillion is essentially just like reinvesting it.
It makes no difference at all.
Either way, you're going to take a bath.
Now, the good news is, We are still a $20 trillion economy, and if it heats up dramatically enough, we should be okay.
I mean, it's going to hurt us a little bit.
The economy could be better.
Obviously, if we didn't have this $4.5 trillion elephant in the room.
But I think economic growth, if Trump can get this tax cut pushed through, We'll help override.
Remember, none of this is absolutely zero-sum good or bad.
A lot of it are degrees of good or degrees of bad.
I think the economy could go up dramatically growth-wise and it could mute some of these effects, but that elephant in the room is still sitting there.
All right, one more quick story before I get to that.
Let's see what I got here.
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All right.
One last story on this Obamacare thing.
The liberals are already They're pushing this debunked, nonsensical, ridiculous talking point.
They're trying to blame the failure of Obamacare on Trump.
And what they're talking about now, you're going to hear it if you watch cable news or you argue with your liberal friends at all.
They're going to say, well, Obamacare, the premiums are going up because of uncertainty.
That's the quote.
Now when you hear it, we should have like a, I don't drink, but we should have a Dan Bongino drinking and maybe a lot of protein powder instead.
Every time you hear uncertainty, take a swig of your protein powder, right?
This is their new talking point.
Now, the reason is insurers, because of the way Obamacare was set up, they have to post their premium hikes.
I think it's coming up on Wednesday.
It's relatively soon.
Insurers are expecting across the country more double-digit premium hikes under Obamacare.
So now liberals are in a panic because they realize that people are going to get these bills in the mail and they have to find a way to blame Trump, even though it's called Obamacare.
Trump had nothing to do with it.
Obamacare has not been changed at all.
You all understand that, right?
Trump has passed the House.
The bill has not passed the Senate.
There have been no substantial changes to Obamacare, outside of a couple regulatory tweaks.
Obamacare is still in effect.
Same stuff, different day.
Same crap, different day.
There you go.
These premium hikes, they're terrified about these premium hikes, so they're blaming uncertainty, and the uncertainty they're attributing to Trump.
They're saying, oh gosh, Trump.
Trump, look what he did.
He doesn't want to support Obamacare.
Here's what's really going on behind the scenes.
This is total nonsense.
The uncertainty is there's an insurance company bailout, which I've discussed before, that was built into Obamacare.
They're called cost-sharing payments.
And the way Obamacare worked is they knew insurance companies were going to lose, they thought, a little bit of money over the first few years taking on all these new clients before they could adjust to the risk pool or how sick they were.
Make sense, Joe?
They said, you know, you guys may not know how sick all your new people are, so we're going to enact this thing called cost sharing where insurance companies are basically going to pay each other off for a while until they all level out.
But they figured it would be a little bit of bad money, a little bit of money, not a lot.
The mistake they made is they never appropriated the payments through Congress because Obama had to do everything, you know, do regulation because he didn't want the public to realize what was happening was an insurance company bailout.
You checking?
Yeah.
They did not want this built into the legislation because they were afraid that if the public got wind of the fact that insurance companies were getting bailed out by themselves and the taxpayer because they were expected to take a bath, it would look bad.
So they never appropriated the payments through Congress, but they paid them anyway.
So the House Republicans sued and said, you can't do that.
These payments have to be legislated.
You're not a king.
The House Republicans won that lawsuit.
But the dates matter, Joe.
The House Republicans won that lawsuit almost a year before Trump got in office.
So how is the uncertainty attributed to these payments in any way attributable to Trump?
It's not.
The regulators ignored it intentionally.
In other words, ignored the fact that the insurance companies were never gonna get these bailouts.
They ignored it as a way, in other words, in their comments, as a way to blame Trump, figuring, you know what, if a Republican gets elected, and these payments have to be made later on, we'll just blame it on them, even though the lawsuit is a year before Trump even got in office.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
Oh, yeah.
In other words, the liberal argument is this.
Donald Trump is not paying off the insurance companies.
They're not saying that.
They're saying uncertainty.
But if you read the report, you'll see they're quoting the uncertainty in these cost-sharing payments.
So their argument is, in essence, Donald Trump doesn't want to bail out insurance companies.
That's a total lie!
So your argument to your leftist friends when they say uncertainty should be what uncertainty?
You mean the cost-sharing payments?
Oh, you mean the lawsuit a year ago before Trump got in office that was the cost-sharing payments, the bailout that was unconstitutional?
Is that what you're talking about?
So if that's uncertainty, how come they didn't know about it a year ago when they lost the lawsuit about the payments?
Oh, because you just don't do your homework and you're a liberal and you're a liar.
Again, to circle back to the beginning of the show.
They don't want to talk about ideas.
They want to talk about lies and nonsense.
You want to talk about ideas?
You have to mention the lawsuit a year ago and be honest and say, okay, we screwed up.
But that's not what they want to do.
They want to blame Trump because they're liars.
All right, folks, thanks for another great week of listenership.
I really appreciate it.
I will see you all on Monday.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
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