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April 22, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:24
April 22, 2010, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 podcast.
So have you seen have you seen the lead paragraph in a McClatchy news story today?
Well, let me read it to you.
While while Goldman Sachs lawyers negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission over potentially explosive civil fraud charges, Goldman's chief executive visited the White House at least four times.
My friends do not doubt me.
I wonder what happened in those four visits of the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfine is his name.
I wonder what happened.
I can imagine it.
I can just imagine it.
President says, hey, don't fret, Lloyd.
We have to do this first.
They have to charge you guys, the FCC.
We have to do this first before we can partner up in private and run all your competition out of business.
But Obama says, oh, we we learned about this on CNBC.
We didn't know about this until we were watching CNBC.
Anyway, greetings, folks.
It's great to have you with us.
Here we are, three hours of broadcast excellence, straight ahead on the EIV network.
Telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
The market uh, let's see, plunging down 84 points since Obama began speaking.
Honest Alb speaking now at the Cooper Union, supposed to start at 11 30, didn't start till 10 till noon.
I wonder why.
We're not gonna jip any of it.
Uh we're rolling on it.
But it's a it the whole thing is just typical Obama, typical setup.
Uh it's a head fake.
Uh is to get everybody looking in the wrong direction while something else actually happens.
Uh this is all about pushing his financial regulatory reform bill.
And he just, I was just reading the close captioning, he just uh said it's not it's not correct to say that this is a uh uh a bailout bill.
It most certainly is.
It is indeed a bailout, but what do you call it?
It's a bailout bill or a destroy them bill.
The regulatory powers the executive branch is going to have after this bill passes is um it's just it's just another piece of the puzzle being put together to uh totally convert this from a private sector uh free market economy to a command and control economy with the command and control coming from the regime in Washington.
Nicole Jelinis has a great piece today at the Investors Business Daily on the up-end page.
She also writes for the New York Post.
And the headline of her piece, Wall Street bailouts would be invited, not prevented under Dodd's bill.
Obama castigated Senate Republicans last week for opposing Dodd's Wall Street reform bill, Democrats say Republicans' main argument that the bill will not prevent future bailouts is false.
The bill itself, though, is irrefutable evidence that the Republicans are dead on right.
Mitch McConnell started the fight earlier in the week when he said the bill not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts for Wall Street banks, it actually institutionalizes them.
The White House and Congressional Democrats have hit back pretty hard.
Obama said, I'm absolutely confident that the bill that emerges is going to be a bill that prevents bailouts.
How can this literal know nothing be so confident what he's talking about?
He told us all these wonderful things that were not and we're going to be in the health care bill.
What is in his background that makes anybody have any confidence he knows what he's talking about?
This question occurs to me more and more now.
Who is Barack Obama?
Where does is it written that Barack Obama of all people in this country is qualified to regulate the financial services industry?
Where is it written that Barack Obama is qualified to manage control design and run the health care industry of this country?
One sixth of our economy.
Where's the experience?
Where's the resume?
Where is the training?
Why do we assume that just because you've been elected president and we got a bunch of no-nothings in Congress, they happen to be the experts?
They get to cause all of these problems, then they get to act like spectators who were watching along with the rest of us, and then they spot a bunch of fraud and they say, Oh, Look at how bad the capitalist system is.
Look how rotten the free market is.
Unfettered free market was never we never intended that.
It's not a free ride.
Obama's a bashing the free market again today.
Who's he?
I know he's been elected president, but why is he reacted to this will make him mad too?
Why is he treated like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai after a conversation with the burning Bush?
And that's exactly how he's being portrayed to us.
This guy's coming down from the mountain, he's got the tablets, he's got the Ten Commandments, he's Moses.
He's talked to God or whoever, he has all the answers.
Where did this get conferred?
Who conferred all of this on Barack Obama?
Tim Geitner, by the way, was even stronger on this bailout business.
He said the bill will ensure that if a major institution manages itself to the edge of the abyss, we're able to dismember them safely without taxpayers being exposed to a penny of loss.
Now, doesn't that make you feel good?
To have the government discuss how they will deal with a business they think has crossed the line.
Dismember?
Is that kind of like how when you rip kids' tonsils out for profit?
What a you realize the power that they are granting themselves here?
And they they say without taxpayers being exposed, guess who's going to be exposed?
Taxpayers, because the taxpayers are the shareholders.
The taxpayers are the investors, and the taxpayers are the employees of these firms that are now going to come under command and control authority of the regime.
Ask the bondholders at Chrysler how how it is to do business with the regime.
They're called greedy because they want to get paid back in their investments.
When everything goes belly up, Obama said they're the problem.
Too much greed.
Chris Dodd was the bloodest.
The bill as drafted ends bailouts.
Nothing could be more clear, says the man who helped ruin our economy.
Now this bill, 1,336 pages.
In this bill, Chris Dodd left room for regulators to be generous with citizens' money.
For example, the bill would direct the FDIC, which would wind down too big to fail financial firms to operate under only a strong presumption that creditors and shareholders will bear the losses.
Ditto, uh duh, and what are they, if not taxpayers?
The bill would direct the FDIC, which would wind down too big to fail financial firms to operate under only a strong presumption that creditors and shareholders will bear the losses.
Meanwhile, uh, ladies and gentlemen, over there, over there at uh Fannie Mae, and over there, over there's Freddie Mac, and they have been bailed out and will continue to be bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars by the regime.
They are effectively now being run by the regime.
They were combination private sector government-owned operation was always a uh oxymoron to me.
But uh so we're not gonna hold them accountable because they're Uncle Sam, over there, Fannie Mae, over there, Freddie Mac.
We're not gonna hold them accountable to leave because they are the government, they are the regime.
But these private sector people, these investors, and these shareholders and these credit, they're the ones that are gonna bear the losses.
Now, you might ask, how is an investor supposed to gauge what company is going to be too big to fail?
Uh and what is it that's going to have the regime cracking down on these firms?
Is it that they make too much profit?
Uh if if uh if they make too much profit, should they not invest in a firm that makes too much profit because the firm that makes too much profit going to be targeted by the regime?
Uh do they just try to pick losers to invest in, knowing that the um the regime will be sympathetic to these people?
As for whether the bill puts taxpayers at risk, failed firms must repay any amounts owed to the United States unless the United States agrees or consents otherwise.
So he means he means that the feds and the Congress can forgive repayment.
That's what this means.
Any amounts owed to the United States, failed firms must repay them unless the United States agrees or consents otherwise.
So the command and control economy under the authority of the regime will be able to forgive loans, pick winners, pick losers.
I wonder on what basis they will do that.
Now, Nicole Jelina says, why would the financial firm owe Uncle Sam money in the first place?
Why?
Partly because of something else in the bill, an orderly liquidation fund, big or complex financial firm, would have to pay up front into a treasury-controlled $50 billion pot of money that would bear the cost of liquidating a future AIG.
In other words, Obama stash.
They have to create Obama's stat.
This is a tax.
This is an upfront tax.
They got to put the fund in there, $50 billion, that would bear the cost of liquidating the future AIG.
That's why a financial firm would owe Uncle Sam money in the first place.
The FDIC would have the authority to use this $50 billion as it sees fit, including guaranteeing bondholders, uninsured lenders, counterparties, and other creditors to a failed company, just as the government did with AIG and Citigroup in 2008.
The idea that the financial industry can pre-fund its next arbitrary bailout with $50 billion, which is the plan here, is a pleasant fiction.
How much would an orderly liquidation fund have needed to stem investor panic starting in 2008?
Are you ready for the number?
20 trillion dollars.
Investors Business Daily has the chart way beyond TARP.
Washington has committed 20 trillion dollars to support Wall Street since 2008, including TARP, but way above it.
And they've got it categorized here, line item by line item, and how much the government has spent or bestowed on Wall Street, and it comes out to about 20,000 450 billion, which is 20 trillion dollars.
So if we have if we if we have spent 20 trillion dollars in the last two years to make sure Wall Street didn't collapse, what is a $50 billion fund to do?
The true tab is not the retroactive cost, rather it's what investors demand at the time of an acute crisis so as not to flee the unknowable risks of a financial system in meltdown precipitating depression.
Think about everything Washington's done the past two years.
TARP, 700 billion.
That's easy.
Outside of TARP, the Treasury said it would guarantee $3.4 trillion worth of money market funds in the fall of 2008.
We have told you about that story, and that's the thing.
The falling money market, that is what made everybody panic.
That's what pulled the cane off the campaign trail.
That's what everybody thought was going to start a run on every bank around the world.
That's what they had to stop.
And they did it by guaranteeing $3.4 trillion worth of money market funds in the fall of 2008, right during the campaign.
The Fed has purchased $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities over the past year or so, providing a floor to avoid deeper housing price declines in bank losses.
It also offered $1.8 trillion to commercial paper markets, the FDIC, guaranteed up to $490 billion in financial firm bonds, committed another $700 billion in expanded deposit guarantees, which allowed banks to avoid selling off assets at crisis level prices, taking Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship and guaranteeing another housing agencies in their debt.
That was another $7 trillion.
Other Sunday sundry programs end up quickly, and they've got the table here, and it it it does equal $20 trillion in the last two years.
So just like we look at California's underfunded and unfunded pensions of half a trillion dollars, $500 billion, the overall indebtedness of the state, and you sit there and say nothing was real.
Nothing was real.
Has anything been real on Wall Street?
If it has taken 20 trillion dollars, which we don't have, to keep Wall Street above ground, has anything been real.
Well, if you want to know what the 20 trillion is, I'll we'll link to her piece here.
It's an investors business daily.
We'll link to it and we'll link the table at rushlimbaugh.com where you can go line by line and see what we have spent beyond TARP, which was 700 billion.
I gotta take a time out here, folks who are a little long here, but this is just a prelude to um uh what's happening with Obama at Cooper Union today, demanding financial regulatory oversight, command and control, the regime running your money back after this.
Okay, here's the close of uh Nicole Jolinas' piece at IBD Democrats can't really believe in a $50 billion fund could avert the kind of investor panic we saw in 2008.
And if they do believe that, we are in real trouble.
They don't believe that, Nicole.
They just want the money to do other things with, like fund A corn under the desk.
It's a slush fund, is all this is.
It's a way of uh of of getting Obama control of $50 billion.
The legislation.
The same thing that the uh the uh uh the porculus bill really was.
It wasn't a stimulus to the economy, it was a slush fund.
The vast majority of it yet to be spent.
So, anyway, the feds could not invest two trillion dollars in any financial markets, treasury bond markets, global stock markets, real estate, some combination, without distorting them.
And in a crisis, global investors would expect the bailout fund to dump some assets to pay for its rescues.
This expectation would exacerbate price declines.
The only regulation that would better protect the economy from future financial failures is a set of predictable rules.
How novel an idea is that.
A set of predictable rules that are in place for a while, including consistent borrowing limits and trading rules across financial firms and securities, like those we had before the 1980s.
The Dodd bill does not propose such rules, and Republicans should point out that the mere idea of those rules is what really annoys the too big to fail financial firms.
Uh we're being scammed here again, folks.
Let's go to the audio sound bites and start with audio soundbite number nine.
This is Obama yesterday afternoon on CNBC's street signs, John Harwood said, the timing of this Goldman suit, the fraud accusation by the SEC, anything political in that.
I gave a speech about financial regulatory reform in 2007, before our current crisis, in 2008, before we fully knew what this crisis was going to be.
We released financial reform as a package over a year ago.
And so we're not Johnny Cum Lately's to this thing.
The SEC is an entirely independent agency that we have no day-to-day control over.
Well, yeah, they never discussed with us anything with respect to the charge that will be brought.
So this notion that somehow there would be any attempt to interfere in an independent agency is completely false.
So you could say categorically, no winks, no heads up in advance, no signal from anyone.
Categorically.
We we we found out about it on CNBC.
Well, yeah, found out about it on CNBC.
The other guys read about it in the New York Times.
And uh while the while the Goldman Sachs lawyers were negotiating the charges with the SEC, the Goldman Sachs CEO visiting the White House four different times.
But of course, there was no collusion.
It's an independent agency.
Well, we don't control it over there.
That's all they do is control things.
They are bugs, community organizers, as we discussed yesterday.
Obama wins nothing on the basis of superiority of policy, superiority of argument, having the best ideas, Zilch Zeronada.
He doesn't even care about that.
He gets what he wants via thuggery, governing against the will of the people.
Here is uh next question from Highwood, 2008.
You got a lot of money, about a million dollars from Goldman Sachs.
Greg Craig, your former lawyer, apparently gonna represent Goldman Sachs, in light of this case, do either of those things embarrass you.
First of all, I got a lot of money from a lot of people.
And the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.
As far as my former uh White House counsel Greg Craig, he's one of the top lawyers in the country.
Uh he has a range of clients, uh, but we have the toughest ethic rules uh that any president's ever had, and the one thing that he knows is that he cannot talk to the White House, he cannot lobby the White House.
Uh once he left the White House, he cannot in any way use his former position to have any influence on us.
And so uh neither of those things I think are gonna have any bearing on how we move forward on this issue of Wall Street.
Yeah, I'm not gonna get back the money.
Why should I get back the money?
I'm not gonna get back the money.
There's a lot of people gave me money from Goldman Sachs.
I mean, and they knew what was to know what I was gonna do.
They knew I was setting out to destroy Wall Street.
They knew I was gonna go in there and ruin New York, and they still gave me the money.
Why should I give it back to them?
The New York City mayor is defending Wall Street, did so the day before Obama's visit.
And it's kind of like the pot calling McKell.
Well, can't say that in this case, uh, because that would be racist.
But here's Bloomberg.
Michael Bloomberg, all upset about what Obama's gonna do to Wall Street, yet he's using his rich man's guilt to force all kinds of taxes and regulations and laws all over New York.
Trans fat salt, you name it.
He's used his money to make himself king of New York forever.
Here comes Obama, you know, to as Michael Goodwin said yesterday, finish the job on Wall Street to really ruin it now.
And Bloomberg starts whining and moaning.
Now, I respect that he knows this business, certainly a hell of a lot better than Obama does, and but I just have a uh a big it's a problem for me, because he's done his own damage to New York as the mayor.
Uh Man Bo Diddley, uh Rush Limbaugh program.
All right.
We have we have some audio sound bites here from Obama's address at Cooper Union.
And as you listen to this, uh, we got one, two, three, four, five of them, if I use them all.
We can have five of them here.
And as you listen to this man, if you l you'll listen to Obama.
Remember, you are listening to a guy who has never ever held a real job in the productive economy.
He has never ever invested or taken a risk in a business.
He has never ever had to make a payroll.
He has not the slightest understanding for how commerce works.
He has only resentment for capitalism.
And yet this man, as I just saw aptly described, is telling people on Wall Street, who risk everything every day to make profits, that they are the danger to the prosperity of America.
A man who has no idea what he's talking about.
A man who has limited well, not limited, zilch, zero nada experience.
The only thing he's done with money is spend other people's.
He has earned it by publishing a couple of books.
He is the most unqualified person in any room he enters.
And yet, he goes to Wall Street today to tell people there that they represent, that they pose the great threat to the prosperity of America.
Unlike, of course, the federal government.
Oh, no, no, the government doesn't pose a threat to prosperity, does it?
No, no, no, no, no.
Certainly not with this regime.
So you keep that in mind as you listen to arrogance and conceit personified.
I believe in the power of the free market.
You do not.
I believe in a strong financial sector that helps people to raise capital and get loans and invest their savings.
Uh uh part of what has made America what it is.
But the free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.
Stop the tape.
That's not what it was, that's not what it is.
The free market today is the most regulated free market in the history of free markets.
A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can have.
That's not that is the dead giveaway of how this man sees this country.
You all are a bunch of thieves.
You who have anything are thieves because this country has allowed you to just take whatever you can get, however you can get it.
And that's why he's gonna cut it down to size.
That's why he's gonna reverse this.
That's why he is gonna reform this.
Remember Obama said he felt like he was behind enemy lines when he was working for a business newsletter in New York City.
Resume tape.
Too often in the years leading up to this crisis.
Some, and let me be clear, not all, but some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there's a family looking to buy a house or pay for an education.
Open a business, save for retirement.
Really?
I remember the debate between uh Dole and Clinton I six.
Dole got in a couple shots on Clinton's lack of character.
Clinton said, you know, no attack, no attack ever fed a hungry child.
Well, I guess we're back to this now.
Trades on Wall Street destroy a family's chance to buy a house.
Trades on Wall Street deny a family an opportunity to pay for an education.
Trades on Wall Street mean that it's tougher to open businesses on Main Street.
Because traders on Wall Street are trading.
It's hampering others' ability to save for retirement.
That's the message.
From a guy who has never ever held a real job in a productive economy, wouldn't know where to go to get a real job, only experience with money is spending other people's.
And here he is passing judgment on others.
Here's another soundbite.
The system as it stands is what led to a series of massive costly taxpayer bailouts.
And it's only with reform that we can avoid a similar outcome in the future.
In other words, a vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts.
That's the truth.
No, that's not true, as we have demonstrated in Nicole Jelinas'column today and any number of people.
You've got a $50 billion slush fund.
You have the regime will now be in charge of who makes it and who doesn't, who fails and who doesn't.
What he means here, what he's trying to convey is instead of bailing somebody out, we are gonna shut them down.
If we decide that they're if it would not worth it, we're gonna fire their management.
They are gonna be in control of it.
The same people that write our tax code, the same people who gave us social security, the war on poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, the same people that gave you the DMV.
These are the people gonna be running our financial system now.
Somehow they are more qualified than experts.
And the system did not lead to a series of massive, costly taxpayer bailouts.
Government action did.
So we have a classic case now.
The government instituting policies that that that uh create great harm on the people have to follow the regulations.
The great harm results in massive losses, huge problems caused by the government, and in the government who caused the problem gets to sit around as a spectator and say, look what you SOBs did to our economy.
Look what you evil capitalists did.
We've got to fix this now.
So they get to do two things.
They get to destroy it, and then rebuild it in their own image.
Here's another soundbite from our man-child regime leader.
Invisible to regulators, invisible to the public.
So reckless practices were rampant, Risks accrued until they threatened our entire financial system.
And that's why these reforms are designed to respect legitimate activities but prevent reckless risk taking.
All these straw men, all the construction of Obama's speech is a magical thing here.
These reforms are designed to respect legitimate activities, of which he doesn't see any, by the way, but prevent reckless risk taking.
Now what is reckless risk-taking?
We don't know.
He gets to decide now.
The regime gets to decide what is reckless risk taking.
And if you are judged to be engaging in reckless risk taking, the regime can shut you down.
Or fire you and your board of directors and put their own people in there.
Ignoring, of course, the role that risk plays in the establishment of greatness, the invention of products and services, and the efficiency of markets.
Now here he is.
You knew this was coming.
Time to dump on CEO pay and bonuses.
These Wall Street reforms will give shareholders new power in the financial system.
They will get what we call a say on pay, a voice with respect to the salaries and bonuses awarded to top executives.
Americans don't begrudge anybody for success when that success is earned.
You do.
When we read in the past and sometimes in the present about enormous executive bonuses at firms, even as they're relying on assistance from taxpayers, or they're taking huge risks that threaten the system as all.
Or their company is doing badly.
It offends our fundamental values.
It's also none of your damn business.
They've paid the money back.
They have paid all these people have paid back the TARP money.
It's none of your dad business what they pay people.
Don't care what your fundamental values are, you don't have the right to impose them on every entity in this country, Mr. President.
But that's what he's doing.
Folks, be back right after this.
Okay, some by 28 coming up, then we'll go to the phones.
Keep in mind, you're listening to President Obama, a guy who has never ever held a real job in a productive economy.
The only thing he knows about money is how to spend other people's.
He doesn't know how to earn it.
He doesn't know anything about capital formation.
He could not have known in 2007 what was coming.
He has no experience.
Somebody had to tell him what was coming in 2007, meaning the crash in 2008.
He didn't have the experience to know.
Somebody had to know, somebody had to tell him, and for that somebody to know, they had to have a hand in it.
Can anybody say George Soros?
Pulling the marionette strings here.
Of our leader of the regime.
This guy's such a sophist.
You know this whole business of trades.
We talk about the economy here being it's not a zero-sum game.
You know, the the liberals have always wanted you to believe if somebody gets hired, somebody got fired.
That if somebody got a raise, somebody got a pay cut.
That if somebody's taxes went up, somebody's taxes went down.
And the economy is not a zero-sum game.
The pie is always expanding.
But trades on Wall Street are a zero-sum game.
For every winner, there is a loser.
It affects only the wrong side of the trade.
Obama doesn't like that there are winners.
That's his problem.
No leftist likes winners.
It's not fair, because where there's a winner, there's a loser.
The loser feels bad.
Maybe the loser got shafted.
But what was going on here with Goldman Sachs and the hedge fund and this John Paulson guy, these were sophisticated investors that were looking at these collateralized debt obligations, these pools of mortgages that had no value to them.
And you had some sophisticated people thinking, okay, this pool's going to make money.
Investors are going to come in and buy it, I'm going to make money.
And Paul said, nope, I think I get a bomb out.
I'm going to sell short.
He won.
The other guy's law happens every day.
You take a look at the action, how many trades there are on Wall Street?
There are that many winners and there are that many losers.
You look at the volume, Dow Jones Industrial Average volume.
Whatever it is, there are that many winners and there are that many losers.
It's a zero-sum game.
He thinks it's a rigged game.
And he's going to take the rig out of it by making sure nobody wins.
Because the regime is going to run the show.
Here's the final soundbite.
We've produced a proposal that by all accounts is a common sense, reasonable, non-ideological approach.
The target the root problems that led to the turmoil in our financial sector and ultimately in our entire economy.
We've seen business as usual in Washington.
But I believe we can and must put this kind of cynical politics aside.
We've got to put an end to it.
That's why I'm here today.
That's why I'm here today.
You are the cynic.
You are Mr. Cynical Politics.
Non-ideological.
Don't make me laugh.
Cynical politics aside, business as usual in Washington, you are defining that, pal.
Reverend Wright told PBS back in 2007, it's one of Obama's mentors.
People don't realize that to be rich, you gotta keep somebody else poor.
Most of us don't understand that.
We enjoy the standard of living we have in the U.S. uh by virtue of new poor people we keep so-called dev in developing countries and third world countries.
There's no connecting of the dots at all.
And that's amazing and disturbing to me.
Jeremiah Wright, this is what Obama believes.
He spent 20 years in the guy's church.
To be rich, you gotta keep somebody else poor.
Zero sum game.
Total lack of understanding how capitalism works.
But this is what Obama believes.
And he believes that every winner is a cheater.
Every winner has screwed somebody in order to win.
The loser has been jacked with.
The loser has been defrauded.
The loser's been tricked, or what have you.
And too often he's sure he's thought of himself as one of those losers.
DNA manner of speaking.
Gary, in Ringwood, New Jersey, as we start on the phones.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
It's a pleasure to talk with you again, Ryan.
Thank you very much.
Despite what family members say that I should walk around on eggshells, I have to make this comment.
If you allow this to pass with this financial derivatives, this could set a bad present precedent throughout the whole economy.
There's a buy like you said, there's a buy and sell for everything.
If I'm in a dress business or apparel business, if I have a dress at 3999, and two weeks later I have to mark that that that dress down to 2999.
Could they now come in and say, Well, you knew it was you were going to mark it down, so what you did is fraudulent.
So they can really go with this and start to take every single buy and sell order.
Absolutely.
And if they can say the setting of every price is a fraud.
This we cannot allow this to happen.
Otherwise, our whole economy will be totally taken over.
This is scary.
Well, we mentioned that yesterday.
That's uh, and and you know, you don't have to own the banks, and you don't have to uh you don't have to literally take them over like you have the automobile business.
To control the financial industry, you just have all you have to have is full regulatory authority.
I mean, rubber stamp regulatory authority.
That's what this bill gives the regime.
Rubber stamp regulatory authority on the fly.
There aren't any rules here.
They make them up as they go.
How the hell are Obama's feeling that day about the XYZ widget company?
And did they donate to McCain?
Or Sarah Palin.
You know, I mean this is how regimes like this work.
John in Tucson, Arizona, I have about a minute, but I wanted to get to you, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, I just had a comment almost 25 years ago.
This country went through a on a smaller scale, the uh an SNL savings and loan crisis.
And what was uh a small percentage of SNLs that were underfunded, the uh Democrats came in, changed the rules, and made a whole lot more of the savings and loan banks, made them underfunded, and they all went belly up.
We don't have very many of them left anymore.
They're doing the same thing on a much bigger level.
Yeah, hello, Charles Keating.
Uh well, pardon the whole thing.
And not only that, you had tax reform in 1986, which also took away some of the deductions for real estate investments.
Uh They changed the rules in the middle of the game, and that's that that's what led to the SNL crisis having a problem because so many of the SNLs had invested in condo projects and commercial real estate uh projects, and the tax deductibility was just yanked out from under people's uh feet when this happened.
But he's got a good point.
This is just a much grander scale uh than what happened with the SNL crisis in the late 80s.
A brief time out, back with much more after this.
In that first soundbite that we played of Obama at Cooper Union, he said a free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.
A license to take what you want?
That's the definition of this regime.
This regime is in the process of taking whatever it wants, however it can get it.
Usually, my friends, this is identified as theft, which is what is occurring here at the top of our federal government.
Oh, by the way, Obama says the VAT tax he said we never have, uh, it's back on the table.
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