Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the economic crash, noting Bitcoin's failure as an inflation hedge and criticizing the corporate press for prioritizing January 6th hearings over market collapses. They analyze White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's incompetent response to stock declines and argue the Federal Reserve is trapped: raising rates risks a severe recession while lowering them validates permanent inflation. Ultimately, Smith predicts an inevitable "inflationary recession," suggesting the debt-based economy cannot survive the Fed's impossible choice between crushing inflation or destroying markets. [Automatically generated summary]
I should also mention that I, so I got my website redone.
So comicdave Smith.com finally updated my website.
I know it was long overdue.
But yeah, so there's a new site up there.
Go check it out, Comic Dave Smith.
Let me.
You got good clips on there?
I'm sorry.
You got good clips on there?
I don't know exactly what's up on there, but it looks real nice.
You got to put on the homepage the first time you're on Rogan and you explain the ANAP, which is the best single pitch for libertarianism.
What was that?
First appearance on Rogam, you explain the non-aggression principle, and that's a wonderful 10-minute clip.
Okay.
Yeah.
Send me that clip.
I don't even remember these things sometimes.
Oh, yeah, where I was kind of talking about who you should throw in a cage.
Was that, is that the one you're talking about?
Maybe.
I just remember you kind of got into the nap and why you're a libertarian.
And it was like a pretty, I thought it was the best explanation of the concept I've heard.
I love that.
This is really a not so great comment on me that you're literally talking about the defining moment of my career.
And I'm like, did I live?
I do kind of vaguely remember I did some shit like that, right?
Yeah, that was huge.
That's right.
That was what changed everything.
You're like, hey, you remember that one moment where you went from failure to success?
And I'm like, that does sound somewhat familiar.
Yes.
Okay.
So anyway, the Beardo, they were the guys who did who did the website.
They'll take whatever shitty old website you have, custom design it with a great message and everything.
They did a really good job on mine.
If you go to beardo.co, is it b-e-a-r-d-o dot C-O?
And they're fans of ours.
They're really cool people.
So they, they took care of the website for me.
So I just wanted to give them a plug because they fucking did a great job.
So Josh, I believe, is the guy.
As long as we're tangenting, I got a question for you.
Did you win over Mark?
How'd that go?
No, I don't think I won over Mark.
Okay.
I don't know.
There's, you know, there's some people who are like, you're not going to win over everybody.
And people who are like, I just don't want to get involved with politics.
You're not always going to win them over.
But I think I at least like took on some of the critiques and showed that there's, you know, they're not as sound as might be seen.
Holding Bitcoin Through The Crash00:02:16
But I don't know.
I'd have to see what the response is to the episode.
You know, is what it is.
I'm more of a Brian guy now, anyways.
Yeah.
Screw Mark.
We're team Brian.
Brian and John.
Those are our fucking lines of liberty guys.
I'm just kidding.
I love Mark very much.
Okay.
So a lot going on right now.
The markets are doing, how you say, Rob, not well.
I have to work again.
You know what happened to my Bitcoin?
Well, Bitcoin's definitely not doing good.
What's the price of Bitcoin at right now?
21.
And we just hit and we just hit that Michael Saz, whatever short.
Who the hell knows where it's going to blow up to?
So you think it's going down further?
It doesn't look good.
I'll say ideally, you would have hoped that Bitcoin was a hedge against the system and a hedge against inflation, but it looks like it was over collateralized and a risk asset, same as everything else.
So as to what the real poison, like I believe in Bitcoin, I'm not selling my Bitcoin.
I hope it goes to whatever.
But at the moment, it's coming down, same as everything else.
Well, it's interesting because there's such a split in Bitcoin, like in the Bitcoin community.
Like there's a whole bunch of people who are very pro Bitcoin who are like, no, We never told you it was a hedge against inflation.
That was never our thing.
We were telling you it's a currency.
You know what I mean?
And it's a way of doing that.
That's kind of the same claim.
Well, to some degree, it's different.
They're like, no, you got to hold your Bitcoin because you'll be able to like, this is like something that you'll be able to use as currency in the future and after like the crash and stuff like that.
But there were definitely other people who were like, no, no, no, this is a hedge against the system, a hedge against inflation.
And those people are taking a bit of a beating right now.
So we'll see.
Anyway, we'll see.
We'll see what ends up happening.
So the markets, forget outside of the crypto world, the markets in general, the NASDAQ and the SMP and like the Dow Jones have been having rough days, rough days for a few days now.
Markets Hit Rough Days00:03:15
And there's a lot there that I want to get to.
So we'll talk about like what's actually going on with the markets.
But if you're concerned about like whether this is the big crash and whether something really bad is going to happen in the economy here and whether this is going to affect your life and your family's life, what this is going to do to your town, to your community, don't freak out because Congress is going to get to the bottom of January 6th.
So just so you know, the people who are in charge are, they're getting down to the bottom of what really matters.
Yes, your life might be ruined.
Your family's life might be ruined.
Sure, I understand where that's a bitter pill to swallow, but just know that we're going to see every angle of some fucking weird guy in a bull hat damaging government property because that's what is really important.
I know that's tough to accept, but that's what really matters, not your silly little situation.
So whenever I like talk about these things, when we talk about something like January, the January 6th hearings, which are going on, we'll get back to what matters in the economy and all that stuff.
But when you talk about like these things, I always try to, and you know this, if people listen to the show, this is the style that I have.
Like I preface whatever the topic is with this, like what I think is the overview.
You know what I mean, Rob?
You've seen me do this a million times.
I try to set up like, okay, let me give you a few minutes of setup of the bigger picture of what's really going on here.
And then we'll get down to how this little event plays into everything bigger.
I just, I always try to do that because I guess number one, I think that's what really matters, like what, what's really going on here, you know, not just this little sliver.
And then number two, because it's so, it's so easy today to get lost in the day-to-day, you know, in the like, whatever they used to call the 24-hour news cycle, which is now like the, I don't know, it's, it's like the every second news cycle with social media and all this shit.
And, and I try to say, so the last time, a couple episodes ago, we talked about January 6th.
And, you know, I started by talking about how, you know, like there's all these crimes that the government commits against its people, but what they care about is when the people commit crimes against the government and all that.
And I had a little rant on that, which I think I, you know, that's how I feel about it.
But I was thinking about it today as I was watching some of the coverage and watching stuff from yesterday and, you know, and like listening to some of the talking heads talk about it.
And I was reminded of something I was talking about on Rogan's podcast, not the first time you're talking about when I went on, but I guess might have been three times ago I was on.
I think it was either in must have been in late 2020 when I was on.
Calling Out Political Hypocrisy00:15:14
I think it was the one in the Red Studio in those days.
And I was talking about this moment which really stood out to me.
And it was when Donald Trump was campaigning.
It was right down the stretch of the election and he went to rural Pennsylvania.
And I think 40,000 people came out to listen to his speech, something like that.
And he got up on stage and there was like maybe like a six minute long chant of we love you.
We love you before he ever sang.
Was it like Barney style?
No, It was more like an aggressive Republican, you know, we love you.
We love you.
That's so weird.
Yeah, it was like, it wasn't necessarily a healthy type of love.
It was like a prison rape, you know, love, but it was, but they meant it.
That's the way I yelled at my mom and girlfriend.
So I understand where they're coming from.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
Just like you, just your style of love.
No, but it was really like an incredible moment, you know, watching it.
And I remember really looking at it and being like, this is really, this is something.
And whether Donald Trump wins or loses the election, you know, at the time, you're like, geez, man, like, this is really, this is incredible that he can go to this rural like part of the country, get these people who adore him.
This was always something about the Donald Trump phenomenon, you know, the Donald Trump moment, the campaign, the presidency, the campaign, the post-presidency, all of it.
It was just so incredible.
You know, you had this guy, this like, I don't know, this New York billionaire kind of celebrity huckster type guy who connected with like working class America in such a powerful way.
And don't get me wrong, I know there's, there was just as strong a passionate, we hate you in other corners of the country.
I'm just, but just the fact that he connected with that crowd was so bizarre.
And there's this guy who was like, I don't know, just the most insane and fascinating and monumental political moment in all of our lifetimes was this guy.
This, this was, you know, it's like if you lined up everything that happened politically through me and your entire lives, there's one thing that stands out as the craziest thing.
And it's Donald Trump.
Like, whoa, what?
And you watch, and they like loved him.
And you would think that anyone who was met the basic criteria of being an adult and not retarded would look at that and go, what's going on here?
Like, let's think about this.
Let's like try to be somewhat thoughtful and understand what's happening here.
And of course, the entire response from the establishment was like, you know, he's racist or whatever.
I'm not even arguing whether or not you think he's racist.
Like, I don't even care.
But it's just like, that would be like the, it's like Russia or racism or whatever.
There's just no, no, even like attempt to be like, what is this?
What's happening here?
And, you know, like as if, I don't know, are you, would you sum that up with like, well, what, the 40,000 of them just came there because they were like, man, we're all fucking so racist.
And we won't admit it publicly.
We won't admit it, but we really are so racist that this guy who's also, and he won't admit it either.
He won't admit it, but, you know, he's also secretly racist.
And that's just why we love him so much.
Or what, you know, like, it's like, something else is going on here.
And so much of it was that all it took was finally one guy looking at those people and going, hey, I care about you.
I'm just throwing a little bit of really, though.
It's like, I don't hate you.
I don't despise you and everything about your way of life.
In fact, I really like you.
I think you're who we should focus on.
And we're going to bring your jobs back and we're going to make America great again.
We're going to make you win.
You know, it's about you.
It's not about everyone else except you.
I'm here for you.
And them feeling like his enemies were their enemies too, and that he was fighting those enemies.
He was fighting those people who really hated him.
And say whatever you will about Donald Trump.
There's a lot to say.
I've said plenty of it.
You know, I'm the guy who goes on Fox News and says Donald Trump should be tried for war crimes.
You know, like I'm not a Trump supporter, but I can still look at that and think, wow, like there's something profound going on here.
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And Donald Trump, what he did was he talked about things that those people cared about that really affected their lives.
You know, he talked about how their towns had been decimated.
And I'm not saying he was right about all the reasons for it.
You know, he probably blamed it all on stupid trade deals or something like that.
I think there's, I don't really think that's the explanation.
But from their perspective, at least he was talking about it.
And he said he was going to bring their jobs back.
He was going to make them more money.
And then just on some like level, he was like, look, I care about what's really going on here.
I care about how your life is being hurt.
And I think about that, how he made this connection with those people.
And then how much the corporate press are despised by those people.
And I'm looking at the January 6th hearings.
And it's just like, could you think of a better example of why someone in some town that's been completely decimated, who's really struggling, would hate CNN?
Could you think of a better example than their coverage of January 6th?
I mean, say, let's say in the worst case scenario, let's even say January 6th is everything they say it was.
Still, It's like, dude, there were 100,000 overdose deaths in the last year in America.
Doesn't get near, it doesn't get a fraction of the cover.
It barely gets mentioned, you know?
You see, like even the way they talk about like something like just the markets over the last few days.
They, I mean, there's these are people's retirement accounts.
You know what I mean?
Like there's real people's like fucking whole life just got fucked up in the last few days.
This doesn't get the wall-to-wall coverage.
You know, so many of these like issues that really affect people's lives.
And they don't even pretend to care about that nearly as much as they do about this thing, which is so transparently just a show trial for political purposes.
And I'm not even saying they won't get anything.
There were a couple things that came out of the January 6th hearing so far that I thought like, ah, maybe there is, you know, something there.
There was some corruption.
But it's just the point that it's like, that's what you care about.
And it's so obvious why you care about that.
You care about that because you want to damage Donald Trump, because you want to damage Donald Trump's base, because you want to try.
It's like there's not even a pretense that what we really care about is the American people.
What we really care about is what's going on in your life.
We really want to report to you the news that matters to you.
You know, like there's not, there's not even a pretense of that.
It's just like you need to forget about all of those problems in your life and you need to focus on the news that matters to us.
And also, by the way, a pretty clear undertone that we despise you.
Like it's a pretty clear undertone that like, and by the way, this is because the Trump supporters are so, they're such disgusting people.
It's a condemnation on all of you that a couple hundred of you went into the White House, you know?
Now, if a whole bunch of Biden supporters were to say, you know, destroy fucking a bunch of property or whatever, that in no way, you know, those people were just protesting.
It's the, you know, it's the way that the unheard speak or something.
But you, Trump supporter, you, you are the scum of the earth for what happened here, which wasn't nearly as bad.
You know, like, it's just, so anyway, that's just kind of like the bigger thing that I was thinking about.
It's like, why there is such hatred for the corporate press, why Donald Trump was so beloved by these people, and how derelict in their duty the corporate press is.
Like it's, it's not even like they, they, they're wrong on these important issues.
It's like they don't even care about the important issues.
They care about their show trial.
Anyway, I don't know.
Any other, any thoughts you have?
No, I, uh, I gotta say, I hadn't really, I hadn't really thought about it in those terms at all.
Uh, but I think you're right that it does showcase the elitism that like if you're if you're currently hungry and they're talking about a procedural issue, it's just it's literally just offensive to you.
So I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right.
It is, it is distasteful amidst everything that's happening to see these people not addressing what's actually important to your life and instead playing political games.
It just seems like an inappropriate time for it.
And even for the Democrats themselves who were talking about, hey, we need like quit messing around.
We got to take care of gun control.
And then they turn around and change the focus to January 6th.
I'm saying even within their own storylines, there's something offensive about not addressing the immediate concerns and clearly playing what's a political game.
And like you said, even if there are some things that came to light that should be addressed, it does seem like the timing to average people would be distasteful.
I hadn't really thought about that, but I think that's fair.
Yeah.
And, you know, I mean, on top of that.
And I don't know if, you know, it's like, look, there's so many things about this that are ridiculous because they'll claim that it's like, well, this was an attack on democracy.
And that's why it's so crazy.
And that's why we have to spend so much time talking about it.
But also, if you were to go, well, why don't you take a vote about what the people think is the most important thing for you to cover right now?
Do you think January 6th would be number one?
Does anybody think that?
Does anyone think it'd be top five, even 10?
I mean, does anyone think that inflation and the economy would not beat January 6th if there was a vote over what's the most important thing to cover right now?
You know, like, I really don't think anyone believes that.
And so, you know, it's like, oh, we got to like democracy, but in this vague sense of democracy.
And then, of course, you know, if you take it one level further, you could go, well, obviously they don't even really, I don't know, they don't really mean democracy.
Democracy is such a weird fucking concept in the minds of all of these people because it's not like, you know, if they were like, you know, let's say in Pride Month, you know, you went, well, we just found out that 51% of Americans don't support the transgender agenda.
It's not like they'd be like, oh, yes.
Well, then in that case, we're completely against it.
It's not like if they were like 51% of people don't support gay marriage.
In fact, you know, even though I think the majority of people do support gay marriage, I think a pretty strong majority, that wasn't achieved through democratic process, a democratic process.
That was achieved through the Supreme Court, making it the law of the land in all 50 states.
And so you could argue that, you know, like if 60% of people supported slavery tomorrow, I don't think people would want that.
They'd be like, no, well, we believe we have a system here.
We mean that many people that cool process.
Yeah.
But, you know, but so, you know, like, so something like the Supreme Court, that's, you know, they, they would all, even if they talk about packing the Supreme Court, right?
They would say that having a Supreme Court, these people who praise democracy is important, even though they're not exactly democratically elected.
They're appointed by the people who are democratically elected, right?
And then confirmed by the people who are democratically elected.
And they're supposed to be like an independent branch of the federal government.
There was a guy who just tried to fucking kill one of them.
But that's not a, you know, like that just doesn't, that doesn't like meet this level of, oh my God, we have to take this so seriously.
And what does this say about all the other, you know, like Democrats or whatever who oppose that, you know, the Republican appointed justices?
I mean, that's dangerous, right?
Trump Loyalist Assassination Attempt00:12:00
Like there's none of that.
There's none of, in fact, where his address was leaked from.
Like there's, but it's like, this is just such, it's such bullshit.
And it's so clear what it's really all about.
And so that it's just interesting to see that.
And I'm not saying like, like the points that I just made, the points I made at first about like the people and why they connected with Trump and the issues that matter to them and all of that, people are very aware of that.
People may not be as aware of that latter point, like they haven't thought through democracy and the branches of government and the Supreme Court thing, but people do on a gut level just smell this shit.
You know what I mean?
People really do just kind of they can sniff out what is really going on here.
And so that's, I think that's always, you know, an undertone of all of this.
I don't know.
And anything else?
Was there anything else about the January 6th hearings that stood out to you?
Is there anything you thought was particularly interesting?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I watched quite a bit of part two, no longer in prime time.
And now they've canceled the third one or indefinitely postponed it.
The first one being there was something a little bit shady about, well, what they're trying to do is to say that they want to create criminal activity by Trump, that he wasn't just misinformed by lawyers, but that he actually picked lawyers with the intended purpose that they were going to support his claim that he knew was not true.
And so even Barr looked at it and said, hey, you're outside of reality if you think this to be true.
That's the case that they're trying to present.
There were two things that they did that didn't completely add up to me.
And by the way, I'm very much like kind of okay with the fact that maybe Trump totally did make this up and maybe shouldn't be allowed to run again.
I am okay with that.
The two things that happened, though, that seemed a little bit screwy to me was firstly, Barr made the statement of, we knew going into this that there was going to be dumps because Republicans vote in person and that Democrats are voting by mail, but he didn't say why.
Like, because Donald Trump also said that before the election of going, hey, this is going to be fraudulent because, and that's why they're trying to boost the mail and voting.
So that was a little bit screwy.
Like now, you might tell me that Republicans weren't as concerned, but like they're also lazy.
So I don't know why Republicans wouldn't prefer to stay home and send in their ballots.
So like that was a little bit that he just skirted and said, we knew going into the election that there was going to be a vote, a dumping of Democratic votes because they do it by mail.
So without saying why that should be true, because Donald Trump said that before the election also, that is a shady, like a shady thing that happened.
So just to dismiss it and go, well, we explained to him beforehand that that was going to happen.
Well, that's not enough.
You know what I mean?
Like if he's saying, hey, this seems screwy, you need a very good reason for why that is not screwy.
You see what I'm saying?
So that was the first thing that I kind of caught that was a little weird.
The other thing was that California lady who was running actually seemed to be sharp and like a good lawyer and prosecutor.
But the person that they were, and I could just have this wrong, the person that they were showcasing, I guess, as being the alternative legal counsel that Trump dismissed, I don't actually know what that guy's role was.
Like they're suggesting like that was Trump's, like they're painting it as if that was Trump's lawyer and that he decided instead of listening to him, he was going to listen to Rudy Giuliani.
But I don't actually know that what that guy's role was because they just said he had like a longstanding and I don't know if you watched any of that where basically they even showed when the prosecutors or whatever were asking him and he goes, yeah, I had no problem being known as like the normal, the normal legal team and that they were the obscure legal team.
And just the last point on this, the other thing that they don't quite confirm is that when they were telling Donald Trump, hey, you're crazy, were they telling him he was crazy on the basis that they would never be able to provide enough evidence to overturn the election?
And so therefore it wasn't worth pursuing because just the looking into it would undermine the democracy.
Because there's a distinction between that and there's zero evidence and these claims are just totally ludicrous.
You see what I'm saying?
It could be that there's some validity to the claims, but they understood there was no reason to look into the claims because they knew that they could never come up with enough evidence.
But that's not enough to not at least look at it and possibly address whether or not he's being crazy.
And so, to me, they didn't totally confirm that distinction of, did they actually think that all the claims were 100% crazy or just that there was no way that they could possibly validate it so it wasn't worth pursuing?
Barr certainly would fall into the, hey, this is bad shit crazy.
That other guy, based on what I saw, I'm not, I'm not 100% convinced.
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Isn't it interesting in a way?
And I got to say, I mean, I find it to be, I mean, maybe this is my own confirmation bias in a way, but I remember saying all along to you, and because me and you back when this was going on, we talked about this so much.
This was in the pre-COVID days.
The thing that we hammered on about for people listening to the show, you remember this well, that what we talked about so much was the Trump Mueller investigation and everything that was going on with Donald Trump being framed for being a fucking Russian spy or whatever.
So stupid when you talk about it in hindsight.
And again, just to be clear, I hate disclaiming this stuff, but I just want to make it clear.
We were also the people who were talking about how much Donald Trump is fucking up as president and how awful like his policies were.
But the sitting president of the United States was being framed for treason.
So it was like a fucking big story.
We talked about this so much.
And I remember always talking about how Barr was controlled opposition.
And it was so obvious to me the entire time.
And the entire corporate press narrative at the time was that Barr, what was it?
Do you remember?
That he was a complete Trump loyalist.
Yeah.
That he was, he was just there because he was Trump's yes man, who would say anything that Trump wanted and was just so loyal to Trump that, remember like this was the entire like talking point, and it's just so obvious that we were right about that, because he's so quick to throw him under the bus right away.
Look, Barr was uh, I should have thought of this to pull this video up, but Barr Was out on the fucking Sunday shows talking about how the mail-in ballots were guaranteed to lead to fraud and that this election would not be legitimate before the election.
He was making this claim.
And now, during the hearings, you see him come out there and throw Trump under the bus.
Oh, this guy's crazy for thinking this was fraudulent.
You know, now, okay, I'm not even a guy who's saying I think the election was fraudulent.
You know, that's not a clean read.
It's a weird one.
I don't know, you know, but that's how I maintain it.
Like, I don't know.
I'm not putting this past anybody, but I just don't know.
I haven't been convinced.
I haven't seen sufficient evidence to convince me of it.
But Barr, I just remember it.
I remember, oh, and people fell for it so bad.
And the people on the Trump side, the right-wingers got so duped by this.
Like, you know, I remember people being, you know, because it's like, this is the game they play where it's like the progressives, they're all like, Barr is a complete Trump loyalist.
And the scandal of scandals is that the Justice Department is run by Trump now.
This is no longer an independent branch.
It's completely politicized and it's blah, blah, blah.
You know, he's just going to do whatever Trump wants.
And then they go, now that Trump's been cleared on the fucking Russia, you know, the charges of being in some conspiracy with Russia, Barr is going to investigate and bring down this whole thing.
And then all the right-wingers are like, yeah, we got our Trump loyalist in there who's going to investigate.
And what were we saying on this show at the time?
We go, nothing's going to come of this.
Nothing.
This is not a Trump loyalist.
This is a Bush guy who's in there to now pretend to be the guy who's going to be looking into all of this shit, but he's not going to expose any of it.
And all of the shit that has been exposed, none of it was exposed by him.
That's just not at all where it came from.
It all came from different avenues, but it wasn't from him.
It wasn't from, and this investigation was supposed to, I mean, so many crimes were committed.
Like none of it, one lawyer got charged with the crime.
The one lawyer who like fucking blatantly, you know, fucking lied on the FISA application.
One FBI lawyer, he got in trouble because it was so blatant.
And I don't even think he like, I don't remember exactly what he got fucking sentenced to, but it wasn't even that fucking bad.
It was like, you know, but that's it.
And so it's just, anyway, that's, that's one of the things that I think about during this part of the hearing.
This thing is mostly a charade because you're never going to be able to prove that Donald Trump didn't believe, at least believe in his own head that there was fraud enough that he needed to put up this stink.
You'd have to prove that he actually sat down, concocted this, and like have some evidence of that.
What they did at the end of the hearing, though, which was very interesting, was they brought up the amount of money that was raised and how some of it was then basically paid off to Trump's staff in like funding their organizations.
Now, the more interesting conversation to be had would be, are we going to review campaign finance laws?
Because like Hillary Clinton, when she was in the State Department, Saudi Arabia is giving her a whole lot of money and people that are working in her campaigns to the foundation, but the people in her inner circle making a lot of money at that foundation.
So you remember how like the thing, like once she lost the election in 2016?
The foundation.
Yeah, the foundation just completely dried up.
Like it was so obvious.
It's like, oh, like in hindsight, you go like, this was so clearly to bipolitical influence.
Like all of a sudden, when you weren't going to be president, when everyone thought you were going to be president, you're raising like hundreds of millions of dollars into this foundation.
And then as soon as you're not going to be president, all of a sudden the Saudis are like, we're not that charitable, actually.
Turns out we do like women.
Women are popping their hands off.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
We're not humanitarians, we're genocidal dictators.
That's right.
I forgot.
Like, it's just, you know, all this shit.
It's just so goddamn funny.
The other thing that I think I would just say the other thing about January 6th, I'm sure I've made this point before, but it's worth repeating.
Anatomy Of The Big Lie00:06:57
But there's something what comes up over and over again, which I find really interesting, is what they call the big lie.
This is the term that all of the Democrats and all of the corporations.
I would think you reserved it for that.
No, That's not the big lie.
That was, it's not even misinformation, Rob.
It's that was an unfortunate error.
You know, but you know, a million people died.
That was officially a whoopsie.
But the big lie is Donald Trump claiming that the election was stolen and Donald Trump repeating this lie over and over again and all of this stuff.
That was, you know, this was, you know, the worst thing ever.
And you see it's interesting to me to see the reaction of the establishment to the idea of how horrible this is to question the legitimacy of an election.
And it, you know, I see sometimes libertarians who will even go like, and look, I'm one of them.
I'm one of the libertarians who goes, because I don't really play like, and maybe this is like to my uh, maybe this is a flaw of mine, but I'm not really Machiavellian.
Like I tell the truth as I see it.
You know, I'm not like sitting here thinking, what's the best thing for me to tell to lead, say, to lead to the outcome that I want to have?
I'm not thinking like that.
I'm just, I just, my, my thing is, I like to just tell the truth as I see it.
You know, I'm not saying I'm right about everything.
I'm only right about 99% of things, but I just tell you what I think.
That's my bond with the audience.
But I see these like some regime libertarians, you know, the Beltway fucking types and fucking some of the like, you know, the people who we just overthrew in the Libertarian Party, those types who are like, you know, going right along with this.
You know, he says, Trump tried to, they tried to overthrow democracy and install a dictator and all of this, and Donald Trump, the big lie and all this stuff.
And it's like, I go, I zoom out a little bit and I go, if you think about anatomy of the state, right?
And this is a pretty fundamental libertarian insight, right?
And you've read Anatomy of the State, Rob, I assume, right?
And one of the things that Rothbard really breaks down in that like brilliant pamphlet is that, you know, okay, so it's, it's like that, first off, like there's a pretty like irrefutable argument that the state is essentially a criminal organization.
They have all the characteristics of a criminal organization, whether, you know, and that the state does these things that if anyone else did them, we would consider to be, you know, it'd be very easy to tell you what that is.
It's, oh, this is the mafia.
This is a gang.
This is, you know, you like they may call it taxation, but they're just robbing people.
And they may call it war, but they're just killing people.
And they may call it, you know, imprisonment, but they're just enslaving people.
Like it's these things, they just come up with a euphemism for the thing, but it's this, it's the same exact act.
But as Rothbard breaks down, what's the fundamental difference between a government and a criminal organization?
The difference is the perception of legitimacy.
The difference is that people don't think of it as them just being robbed.
They think of it as taxation, the price you pay to live in a society, and they don't think of it as mass murder.
They think of it as a military conflict.
And they don't like they perceive this to be legitimate.
And under our modern government, the justification for that, it's not like it used to be, like where the justification would be like, well, the king was chosen by God or whatever to be, you know, to rule over you.
The justification for it now is democracy.
The justification for it is like, look, we all agreed that we're going to have a vote and majority rules, you know?
And you see the way they react to someone challenging that legitimacy.
And it's like they freak the fuck out at the idea that someone would start chipping away at that.
Because, you know, if you really think about it, you're like, you understand why they freak out about that.
And they have to call it the big lie because they're like, holy shit, if people don't perceive us as legitimate, then they'll just see us as the fucking criminal gang that we are.
And in that situation, is it really so clear that the libertarian position should be to come in and be like, no, guys, I don't, I need to see more evidence that this wasn't legitimate.
You know, like maybe our response to that should be like, yeah, well, listen, even if he did get 51%, it's not legitimate.
Like, that's, that's kind of the point.
It's still not legitimate to fucking rule over this whole other group of people.
And so it's just, I don't know, the fact from the libertarian perspective, if you understand that, if you've really like, you know, taken in the lesson of anatomy of the state, then you go, wow, so we're now in a situation where some huge portion of the voting population doesn't believe the last election was legitimate.
And therefore, basically the entire government, if you're a Trump supporter, a Trump supporter who believes in the big lie, then all of the sudden, you're a lot closer to where we are.
You're like, all of a sudden, a lot closer to realizing that this whole thing is fucking criminal.
This whole thing is illegitimate.
And I don't hate that.
Why am I supposed to hate that?
Like, even if it's not true and this election was not fraudulent, the whole thing is still illegitimate and criminal.
And so I kind of like the idea of more people feeling that way.
So, and it's also, it's just revealing how much they freak out about that, you know, like how much they freak out about the perception being out there.
So, anyway, I find all of that interesting.
That's why there's another way, which is that the federal government doesn't have to be that big and powerful, that, you know, you get to impose this much authority on the other side that doesn't want that government there.
Yeah, that's right.
Quit Smoking With Fume00:02:44
Like, if just, you know, theoretically, like, if you're like, okay, well, Alabama really wants to live one way and California really wants to live another way.
Is it so obvious that if California has a bigger population that they should enforce their will on Alabama?
Like, if anything, the law should be that those who vote for those policies in California have to remain in California or for at least a period of like 20 years.
There shouldn't be a bailout.
You know, there's people who want to vote for this shit.
You got to stay in California.
You got to, you got to live by what you vote for.
And let's see if you really like those policies.
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Fed Response To Inflation00:15:55
All right, listen, let's uh let's let's keep going for a little bit on a different topic because I didn't want to spend, we ended up talking about this for longer than I thought, but I want to talk a bit about the markets and what's going on here.
So, let's play a video that uh our lovely producer Brian uh sent over to us uh earlier, which is uh Peter Ducey confronting what's her name?
I can't even remember her name, it's too annoying.
Uh, the new press secretary, uh, Jean-Pierre, Corrine Jean-Pierre, um, the first ever uh black lesbian immigrant, yeah, whatever.
Just there's there's supposed to be like I think like 17 uh descriptors in front of it, but the first ever uh lesbian, black press secretary with shoulder pads in a yes, in a wheelchair, something else.
Okay, let's see uh what she had to say.
Thanks, Corrine.
President Biden once bragged about the stock market hitting record after record after record on my watch.
How about now?
Meeting the stock market.
All the gains from President Biden's time in office have been wiped out.
So, as you know, we're watching, we're watching closely.
Uh, we know families are concerned about inflation in the stock market.
Uh, that is something that the president is really aware of.
And so, look, we face global challenges.
We've talked about this.
Uh, this is we're not the only country dealing with what we're seeing at the moment as it relates to inflation.
You know, Putin, Putin's price hike, inflation coming out of a one-third of the global pandemic, all of those man.
This is just words.
Like these are just words unrelated to the previous word, unrelated to anything that he just asked about.
It's really unbelievable how bad she is at this.
Like, I don't even know.
Like, wait, what?
First off, he goes, so Biden brags about the record.
First off, it's so stupid when people are suffering through inflation to brag about how there's records in the stock market.
Like, I don't know.
It's just so ridiculous.
Like, isn't it so great that all these prices are so up?
Isn't that wonderful?
But then he goes, well, you're bragging about how there's all these records, you know, in the stock market, but all of it's been wiped away.
Just like in a few days, all of it's been wiped away.
And she goes, no, I know a lot of people are concerned about inflation in the stock market.
And you're like, no, We're not talking about inflation in the stock market.
We're actually right now talking about a dive in the stock market.
Not that it's inflated.
You were bragging about it being inflated.
Now it's taking a dive.
That's the question here.
And she goes, well, there's global challenges and Putin's price hike and everyone in the world is like, wait, what?
The hell does this have to do with anything?
It's unbelievable.
And this is again why, you know, why just government and democracy is also fucking stupid is that you just have to say things like you're just, she knows.
Well, maybe she doesn't know, but other people know before they put people like this in there that they go, look, the vast majority of people you're talking to have no idea about any of this shit.
So just say something that fucking sounds like it could be nice.
I don't know.
But it is funny to watch her squirm.
She is really not good at this.
I mean, I think we already made this joke by that binder.
It's really just the usual suspects.
They got random talking points and she just flips through and she's like, yeah, price hikes and president's aware of it.
It's like, you might as well just not even have someone there and just have an eight ball with like the 12 responses.
You know what I mean?
She's just like, yeah.
She's like, coffee mug and picture frame and tissue box.
Like, wait, what?
Does that have anything to do with anything?
She goes, I just have household items listed in my binder here.
All right, let's play a little bit more.
No, Putin, Putin's price hike, inflation coming out of a once-in-a-generation global pandemic, all of those things play a factor.
But the thing, the way that we see this is that the American people are well positioned to face these challenges because of the economic historic gains that we have made under this president, under this president in the last 16 months.
Okay, so as you say that Americans are well positioned to weather this stock market decline, what is the president's message to somebody who might want to retire, but their 401k is getting wiped out?
So we know that higher prices are having a real effect on people's lives.
We get that.
And we are incredibly focused on that.
Can you just pause it one more time?
It's like she doesn't know the difference between higher prices and the stock market tanking.
Like she's responding as if he's asking her about inflation.
Isn't this so bizarre, Rob?
Yeah.
Like there's literally no, he goes, well, what about people who's like 401ks?
We're actually talking about the deflation, price deflation within the market.
No, he's not talking about price inflation.
Like he's, he's not like, like, again, and then first, to hear her bragging about the economy and how good it is is like really incredible.
It's just like, listen, the emperor's clothes are beautiful.
So I don't, there's nothing like, okay, if you think you can convince people we're in a great economy, fine.
But he's going, yeah, but what about someone who is going to retire tomorrow?
You know, in their 401k, all of a sudden just dipped by 10%.
You know, what about that person?
And she's like, look, we know inflation is having a real, like, I don't think this chick even knows the difference.
I don't even think she has any idea the difference between that and what he was said.
She was almost like she went out there just prepared to say inflation is hurting people.
So that's like what I guess I have to respond to.
I don't know.
Isn't that insane?
Biden got caught in a lie the other week where he was trying to pretend that savings, Americans had more savings than they did and that they're not as indebted as they are.
And so what he's trying to do is to pretend that we've experienced such economic growth that for the Fed to finally step in and cool inflation, we can afford it because we've had real economic growth over the last couple of years.
And it's like, this is the natural cycle and we can step in.
The stupidity of this mostly, because this is not the first time she said it, is that we're now at a great moment in our economy.
So we can handle this.
Isn't the moment before a bubble explodes always a great moment?
Like if you're describing the best moment, well, that's always like that's kind of the way it works before an economic collapse is you're at your strongest and greatest moment.
Like that's the way bubbles work.
Right, right.
It's like if you were like shot out of a cannon with no safety net and right at the absolute pinnacle, you'd be like, the highest we've ever been.
So I don't know what you're looking at, but I think this is like a really great situation we're in because clearly we're only going higher and higher.
And you're like, you're about to die.
You're really like clear.
This is not so stable.
All right, let's play the end of this real quick because there was a little bit more that was pretty funny and interesting.
We can to make sure that the economy is working for every American people.
But we are coming out of the strongest job market in American history and that matters.
And that a lot of that is thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which only Democrats voted for that.
Republicans did not.
And it led to this economic boom, this historic economic boom that we're seeing with jobs.
Historic inflation?
No, that is not.
That is, that is, that is not how we're seeing the American Rescue Plan.
Look, the president came in.
We have to remember what the president walked into.
When he walked into this administration, the economy was at a standstill.
Schools were closed.
Businesses were shutting down.
20 million people were on unemployment insurance benefits.
That is what he walked into.
And he took action.
He got the American Rescue Plan done.
Democrats, only Democrats voted for it.
And it helped turn the economy around, including getting more than 200 million people vaccinated, having a comprehensive vaccination plan that was not in place when he walked into the administration.
And then quickly, is the president running for re-election?
He has answered.
First of all, let's reset for a second.
I cannot talk about elections.
I cannot be a political analyst from here or the midterms or anything like that, or including 2024.
The president, as you know, has been asked that question many times and he has answered it.
His answer has been pretty simple, which is yes, he's running for re-election.
I can't say more than that.
There's the video there.
All right.
So can we comment on the political analyst part?
Because she's like, yeah, obviously not, but I'm not allowed to give you my opinion.
So why are you asking me this?
He said yes.
Well, I don't know if it's so obvious.
I mean, Joe Biden wants to run for re-election.
That's pretty clear.
It seems also clear that the established...
Like every old guy that still wants to drive his car and you got to take the keys away.
Yes, that's a great example.
That's literally what is happening with Joe Biden right now.
He's like, what do you mean?
Oh, I had a couple crashes.
I can drive just fine.
And at a certain point, they're like, Grandpa, you can't drive and you also can't be president again.
So, but it is pretty funny to see.
I imagine if you were a Republican, you are quite happy with her insisting that everyone remember that only Democrats voted for the Build Back Better plan.
All right, Rob cut out there.
So we are getting close to wrapping up the end of this anyway.
But I was just going to say that I think that Republicans would be pretty happy to hear the press secretary for the president making sure to remind everybody that it was only Democrats who supported the Build Back Better plan.
It was only Democrats.
Republicans weren't involved in this.
And it's quite something also to see a Democrat brag about how only Democrats supported the Build Back Better program.
And, you know, Joe Biden came into an environment where schools were closed and the economy was, you know, in this, everyone, people were, no one was like, you know, having a normal economic experience.
It's like, wow, yeah, but who was like championing all of that?
And in fact, who was criticizing the Republicans for not being more aggressive on, you know, all of this stuff.
So that's all of that was pretty bizarre.
But let's just, let me try to just quickly before we wrap here, give you my thoughts on what's really going on with the economy right now.
The reason why the markets have been tanking lately, and this is very clear.
I don't think this is a controversial thing to say at all.
It's because the Federal Reserve is meeting right now.
And they're meeting and their meeting concludes tomorrow.
And they've talked about the, or at least not just talked about, but what everyone's predicting is that by the end of this, they are going to raise the Fed fund rate by 75, you know, 0.75 basis points.
So instead of half a point, they're going to raise it by three quarters of a point, which is more than they claimed they were going to raise it by.
And they're doing this to give the appearance that they're reigning in inflation.
Again, as I've mentioned before on the show, to rein in the, you know, they say this is the worst inflation since the 70s.
It's actually, that's just by the government CPI, and they've changed the way they measure the CPI.
If you measure the CPI the way they measured it in the 70s, it's actually worse than the 70s.
If you recognize that the CPI is not a measure of inflation and that actually the creation of new money is new money and credit, that is the measure of inflation.
It's the worst.
It's far worse than it.
It's worse inflation than anything we've had in American history.
To rein in the inflation of the 70s, it took a Fed fund rate of 20%.
Whether we raise the inflation or whether we raise the Fed fund rate by half a percentage of a point or three quarters of a point is going to do nothing to rein in inflation.
That's just not going to happen.
This is all just theater.
However, the Fed has painted themselves into a corner.
And this is something that everybody should recognize.
And it's not, they've been doing this for a while, but it's like, if you imagine painting yourself into a corner, the corner they've painted themselves into is really tight now, really tight.
There is not a lot of room.
So, in other words, traditionally speaking, if the Fed were raising rates and understand, as I've described before in the podcast, raising rates, this is what bursts the bubble, whether it's the Fed doing it or the market doing it.
Raising rates when you've had artificially low interest rates and you have a ton of malinvestment when you raise the rates is when the correction comes.
That's when the recession comes.
That's when you go from this boom to a bust, an artificial boom to a very real bust.
And what the Fed has been able to do in the past, and particularly in the last, you know, 13, 15 years, is if they were ever getting to that point and the markets are tanking, they lower rates again and they lower rates.
And then that kind of calms the market.
Everyone goes, oh, okay, there's going to be very cheap credit and easy money flowing.
So we'll be okay.
The problem is that now, as inflation is really hitting, they're in a different spot.
So this, I think, is almost undeniable.
I think almost nobody from any, you don't have to be an Austro-libertarian to agree with this.
Like, I think almost anyone would acknowledge that if the Fed said tomorrow, instead of raising the interest rates by three quarters of a point, we're going to raise the interest rate by two points.
This is not a lot, historically speaking.
But if they said they were going to raise the interest rate by two points tomorrow, that would tank the economy.
Tank the economy.
Like, whoa, this is way too crazy of a rate hike.
And in the same sense, if the Fed said that we are going to, we're going to back off, we're going to bring them back down to zero, that would also tank the economy because people would freak out about the fact that this was a clear sign that inflation was here to stay and they weren't even pretending to rein it in.
So they're in this incredibly tight corner where they have to pretend to be attempting to rein in inflation, but also not scare all of the, you know, not freak the economy out, not spook everyone with rates being too high.
Inflationary Recession Reality00:02:14
Because obviously this economy can't stand a raise in interest rates.
This is what happens when you have a debt-based economy.
You can't handle higher interest.
You know, again, this is, it's not that complicated.
It's like if your whole life is living off of credit card debt and they're raising the interest, like, holy shit, this is going to tank you.
So that's the spot that we're in now where they can't like they can't back off, but they can't go forward.
They're completely painted into a corner.
This is, look, I know I've predicted before that there's a big economic crash coming, but I'm telling you, what we're going to end up with after this, here's the prediction.
And you've got it, you know, and judge me by this.
We're going to be looking at an inflationary recession, a steep recession with high inflation, which unfortunately is really the worst of all worlds.
They can't raise rates high enough to rein in inflation.
And if they did, I mean, the recession would be so steep.
It would probably be a depression.
You know, I mean, if they were just tomorrow to raise rates to 20% or something like that, it would be insane.
You know, it would just absolutely be the destruction of the economy.
And there's no one, there's no political will to do that.
So they're not going to do that.
But they probably will raise it by three quarters of a point.
That in itself may not bring it on, but the next rate raise probably will.
So it's going to be the basically the rate raise is going to be enough to crash the economy, but not nearly enough to rein in inflation.
And now we're looking at an inflationary recession.
Man, I wish everybody the best of luck through this time.
And I hope everyone can try to put themselves in the best situation they can because this economy ain't good.