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April 22, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:24
April 22, 2010, Thursday, Hour #2
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You know, this is Earth Day.
Ladies and gentlemen, everybody is supposed to be environmentally conscious.
And so what happens?
Obama and Biden fly separate jets to New York today, leaving at about the same time from Washington to New York.
They go to different airports.
Obama goes to Cooper Union.
Biden goes to The View, the TV show.
I have sound bites, but I'm not going to bore you with them.
Now, when the president and the vice president are flying around, all air traffic is placed on hold way, way, way out.
They're vectored way out.
No launches are allowed to occur.
I remember I went to George Bush 41's 80th birthday party in Houston, Reliance Stadium.
And I had to fly back home.
I had to fly back to Florida that night.
And then I got back to the airport.
So I'm going to get out of here in plenty of time.
I got back, and I'm like, oh, we can't leave till Bush 43 leaves.
Bush, I can't leave here till Bush 43.
Nope, nope, no launches till the president's gone.
But he's still at the party.
He's still at Reliance.
How long is this?
Could be two hours.
You mean I came back here for nothing?
Nope, nobody can leave.
And nobody can land.
So they're up there burning all this fuel while Obama and Biden take two different airplanes for the short little jaunt up there.
By the way, the first Earth Day was celebrated exactly on Lennon's 100th birthday, April 22nd, 1970.
The present VP are prohibited from flying on the same plane.
I know.
I know they are.
But Obama takes two planes with him wherever he goes.
He's really talking about three because there's always the decoy and the backup.
Anyway, greetings, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, email address, lrushball at eibnet.com.
Yesterday afternoon, CNBC street signs, the leader of the regime appeared with John Harwood, who said, if reducing consumption is a good idea, Could you see the potential for a value-added tax in this country?
Something that has worked for some countries.
It's something that would be novel for the United States.
And before I start saying this makes sense or that makes sense, I want to get a better picture of what our options are.
And my first priority is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide.
And then we decide how do we pay for that, as opposed to figuring out how much money can we raise and then not have to make some tough choices on the spending side.
Okay, so now, are we going to have a value-added tax, a VAT tax?
Well, this is something that's worked for some countries, something that would be novel for the U.S.
And before I start saying if this makes sense or that makes sense, I want a better picture of what our options are.
Sounds to me like it's on the table.
Sounds to me like a VAT tax is on the table here.
And all the rest of this is just words.
It's made to look like, well, we got to examine it.
Pretty novel for the United States.
Pretty strange thing.
I ain't got to look at this because, you know, I'm Obama.
I've got so much financial experience.
I know all about taxation and I know all about everything to do with high finance.
I just have to call George Soros to find out what he thinks about this and I'll get back to you.
So here is the Giddy Associated Press report of this.
President Obama suggested Wednesday a new value-added tax on Americans still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.
Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in the interview, I want to get a better picture of what our options are.
So we've had Volcker out there talking about it.
A number of other people have been talking about it.
White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a value-added tax.
Robert Gibbs, shortly after Obama gave this interview, said, I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn't something that the president had under consideration.
After the interview, White House Deputy Communications Director Jan Saki said nothing's changed.
The White House is not considering a VAT.
They're not?
Well, I mean, who are we to believe here?
I mean, the president just said it's, he's looking at it.
His press secretary.
No, no, no, no.
That's not on the table.
Not considering it.
So in the CNBC interview, Obama said he was waiting for recommendations from a bipartisan fiscal advisory commission on ways to tackle the deficit and other problems.
Yeah.
So he's waiting to hear what Andy Stern of the SEIU thinks we ought to do to reduce the deficit because he's on the commission along with Alan Simpson, Babe, and Irksome Bowles.
And of course, they will make their recommendations in December following the November elections.
And folks, what's going to happen here is that Obama's never ever going to say anything more than he did here.
What's going to happen is you're going to have a joint presser and you're going to have Alan Simpson Babe.
You're going to have Irksome Bowles come out.
So the only way we can, I mean, like I told you the other day, the smart people are saying, Rush, Rush.
No way we can ever pay down this debt.
The reason they ran it up so large is precisely so it gets we there's no way this cannot be paid back.
What has to happen for markets to be cool with it is for an effort to be made to pay it back.
Make it look like serious effort is undertaken to reduce the debt.
And how do you do that?
Rush, they say you do it, tax increases.
That's what leftists around the world will applaud.
That's what world bodies will applaud.
That's what Democrats will applaud.
The UN will applaud it.
The Chai Comms will applaud it.
Hugo Chavez will applaud it.
And so the world will say, you know this man, Obama, he gets very serious about reducing the debt load of the United States.
This is a very serious.
So he puts this commission together.
They come out with a VAT tax.
Whatever else they add to it, Obama never has to have his fingerprints on it, but he adopts the recommendation because these are learned people, bipartisan commission, announced in December of this year, well, long after the November elections.
And the world applauds.
All right, all right.
The U.S. is finally getting serious about managing its debt.
When, of course, we are going to keep spending and spending and spending as the tax raises continue.
The spending will continue.
And at some point, the smart money people are going to be wrong.
At some point, it is going to collapse.
It can't be sustained forever this way.
In fact, guess what they've just done in Greece?
They have just realized, get this now, they have just realized they underestimated the size of their debt by a whole whopping 2% of GDP, which is significant.
It's even worse than they originally thought.
Let me amend it.
It's even worse than they originally said.
They've known it all along.
And now there's strikes.
Everybody that's on a freeloader status over there, teachers doesn't matter, striking, promising all kinds of civil unrest.
They've had decades of a welfare state, and now all of it's going to be taken away under austerity plans.
And you look over there, and you might see a little microcosm of our future.
So, and these guys are being honest.
The White House is not considering VAT, but the deficit panel is.
Alan Babe Simpson and Paul Mocher.
Well, irksome bowls.
Sierra Morgan, 31-year-old respiratory therapist from Modesto, California, billed $12,000 on her health care credit card in November for liposuction.
Except she never requested it.
She never had it.
Brandon Sharp, 38, found more than $100,000 of unpaid medical bills on his credit card when he went to buy a house.
The charges included $19,500 for a life-flight helicopter trip and emergency room visits that he never made.
I see stories like this every week.
In fact, Snerdly, we got a whole column old stacker called Life Lock because we are stunned every time we see a story like this.
Have these people not heard of Life Lock?
Have they not heard how ridiculously inexpensive it is to protect their identity, make sure this doesn't happen?
Now, they don't guarantee to totally stop it.
Nobody can do that.
But they have a Life Lock identity alert system that is the best there is.
They stop it when they stop it while it's in the process of happening, before it happens, before you lose your identity.
And you don't want to have that happen.
Talk to any of these people and find out what it takes to rectify things when $100,000 was charged in your credit card.
So Life Lock is at 800-440-4833.
They don't sell your information.
Other companies do.
You'll get 10% off the ridiculously low annual price simply by mentioning me.
Rush.
That's the offer code, the promo code.
That's LifeLock 800-440-4833.
Every six months, the Congressional Budget Office revises our debt, claiming they underestimated it.
It happens here, happens in Greece, happens in the European Union.
And Obama, you know, Obama's doing exactly what they accused Ronald Reagan of.
They accused Reagan of purposely running up a whole bunch of spending so that government would have to be slashed.
Remember that accusation?
Reagan was spending all the money because it was the only way to get government to start cutting back.
Now Obama's actually doing it.
And Obama's doing it so that taxes would have to be raised tremendously.
That's what's going to get everybody's feet out of the fire on this in government in terms of the rest of the world looking at our debt, looking at our financial system, looking at our health.
As long as we come in with massive taxes, do you know how the Europeans are going to love a VAT?
You know how the ChiComs are going to love a VAT?
You know how all these people that are nervously holding our debt can be mollified if we just start raising taxes.
And it's coming in January with the sunset of the Bush tax cuts.
This is Warren, Calabash, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi, Rush.
Greetings.
Thank you, sir.
I want to talk about this.
I heard part of your bank regulation before.
Now, the bank regulation, they want to do a lot of high-class tuning of the banks and how to regulate them.
When you think out of the box, a simple sentence will solve the problem.
You take these big banks and you cut them down to size.
In other words, make them half of their size or a quarter, whatever it takes to get proper disbursement of the monies.
Wait a second, you know.
What does the size of a bank have to do with proper disbursement of monies?
Well, there'd be more smaller banks, and by that, they'd be more banks in the neighborhoods, large banks, not gigantic banks.
So wait, let me see if I want to cut the big banks in half, cut them down to size, make them smaller?
Yeah.
And you want the people who write the U.S. tax code, who run the health care system, who run Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all that.
You want them to be in charge of how big banks ought to be.
Well, that's up to the Congress.
That's what I'm saying.
Our esteemed people, which have an oath.
They all swear this oath.
They do protect the Constitution.
Yeah, that went out the window a long time ago.
All enemies, foreign and domestic.
They are doing that.
I mean, they're coming after the Tea Parties, the domestic enemy.
No question.
I got one.
Let me tell you something.
I'm going to be very honest here.
I do not understand accounting, the banking business.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm an expert in banking.
I'm not.
I'm not an expert in the U.S. financial system.
I have to ask economists.
I have to ask people that I trust who I think know what they're talking about in order for me to learn about it.
I think it's a closed society.
All these terms they come up with are designed to like legalese in any other kind of contract.
I don't know what that means.
But I do know this.
I do know this.
I know that we do not need to put in charge of these banks some guy who has never ever produced a dollar, who has never done anything but spend somebody else's money that doesn't have the foggiest idea how capital is created, doesn't know the first thing about capital formation, in fact resents it.
This is like putting Colonel Sanders in charge of the hen house, folks.
We've got a guy who does not like the way this country was structured and founded.
He does not like the way it operated under a capitalist free market economy, and we're putting him in charge of it.
And we're putting somebody in charge of it who has deep resentment for this country and the way it's operated.
Don't doubt me on this.
A guy runs around the world apologizing for the country.
Well, you know, whether you like it or not, we must have a superpower military.
Whether you like it or not, we are a world-class economy.
What do you mean, whether you like it or not?
Don't tell me that that's not a rhetorical device, just the way Obama speaks.
I mean, if you don't want to admit who Obama is and what he's all about, it's just because you want to keep your head in sand and you don't want to deal with the hard, cold reality of what we face.
But everybody who has the ability to keep both eyes open for 10 seconds and both ears open for 20 can see exactly what's going on here.
And the last person qualified to determine how big a bank is, the leader of the regime.
The last guy, Barack Obama, and he's working at a New York, you know, a business newsletter.
And he writes in one of his books, he feels like he's behind enemy lines.
Working in a capitalist endeavor, Chester, Pennsylvania, this is Dan.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Thank you, sir.
It's a great honor.
Yes, sir.
I just wanted to know if you could enlighten me.
I'm trying to figure out how Timothy Geithner gets off saying it's not going to cost the taxpayers a dime when he's creating a whole new government agency that's going to employ hundreds of overpaid federal employees to shred apart our Ninth Amendment rights.
Well, they're lying.
They don't have a dime without taxpayer money.
It's not going to cost a dime.
It's going to be a pretty penny.
I mean, look at the Department of Energy.
That was supposed to get us off a foreign oil.
It hasn't produced one drop of oil, one AU or anything.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
So these guys, well, what they want you to believe is, in particular, what you're talking about is this $50 billion bailout fund.
They're not calling it that.
It's a slush fund.
What they want you to believe is the banks are contributing to that.
The banks, these evil Wall Street bankers and these investment bankers, they're going to have to cough up the money, not the taxpayers.
Well, the taxpayers are at the end of the line in all this.
The taxpayers here in this case are investors, shareholders.
And if the banks have to pool resources and put whatever, a total of $50 billion in a fund, whatever bank puts $10 billion in is going to find a way to recoup it.
And what they charge people, they might raise the ATM fees.
They might raise their fees per transaction.
Oh, and speaking of that, when do you start getting a tax on every trade?
A TAX on every trade that you make.
Oh, yeah, that's that in your portfolio.
Yes, inside your portfolio.
Every trade you make, tax on it.
Not capital gains, just a transaction tax.
You don't think that's coming, Snerdley?
Huh.
We don't have any money.
They have to create the illusion that they are being responsible, managing the debt.
This is Tim in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Thank you very much, Rush, for taking my call.
You bet.
I am a CPA, been a CPA for 35 years, and the Obama administration just continues to do the same.
It's a one-trick pony.
The whole banking regulation aspect that's out there is designed to do, in my opinion, little more than create yet another layer of bureaucracy, take more jobs out of the private sector, fatten up the government even more.
We have regulation out there.
Bernie made up, the SEC, the FTC, if those clowns were doing their jobs, none of those things would have happened.
Why in the world should we possibly believe that with a new layer of regulation that the individuals that are doing the job are going to be any more competent or qualified or diligent in their tasks?
That's a great question.
Except you have to look at this in a different way.
I'm assuming you are accepting the premise that what they really want to do here is regulate for the good of the industry.
My premise is all they want to do is put more power in government.
All right.
Then you're right.
It's not about regulation.
It's about control.
It is about picking winners and losers.
It is about rewarding your friends and punishing the people you don't like.
Absolutely.
This is how regimes work like this.
And that's the command and control authority here under the guise of consumer protection.
See, that's how this is all being said.
And there are some consumer protection provisions in this bill.
But they're not bad.
And that's not at all what this is all about.
That's just to get people sucked into thinking their ATM fees aren't going to go up.
Or if the ATM fee does go up, or Obama's going to fire the CEO.
So it is about control and picking winners and losers and punishing the people you don't like.
El Rushball driving your life away.
800-282-2882.
Ed, you had a substitute broadcast engineer today.
Grab audio soundbite number 14.
This is this morning on Joe Scarborough's show on Mess NBC.
The Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was the guest.
And the co-hostette, Mika Bzezinski, asked Geithner, is too big to fail actually really being prevented here?
I mean, you've got this system set up and some of these proposals that provide this orderly wind down for firms if they do.
Why not just break them up so they're not so big, so they don't fail and collapse?
Good bill, tough bill with teeth.
It constrains risk-taking so these guys can't take on this huge risk which usually leverage imperil the system again.
But if they do, we get to put them out of their misery.
Unwind them, you know, organize the elegant funeral for them.
That is your regime speaking about the American private sector.
Well, it's a good bill.
Tough bill with teeth.
Constrains risk-taking.
These guys can't take on this huge risk with leverage, imperil the system again.
And if they do, we get to put them out of their misery.
We get to unwind them, you know, organize the elegant funeral for them.
And he sounded diabolically happy making this little egghead of a Treasury Secretary.
I got a note, Rush, would this financial regulatory reform be this harsh?
Would the regime want this much control if the Supreme Court had not ruled that corporations could, despite McCain Feingold, contribute to political campaigns?
That's an interesting question.
I don't think it would change the degree to which Obama wants to control things.
I do think it might have an impact on how fast he's trying to get it done.
I thought in the big scheme of things, they're going to cap and trade and then immigration.
And I thought they'd get to this at some point.
But all of this, all of this was proposed before the ruling.
Dodd came up with his bill.
All of this was proposed before the ruling.
Now, the intensity with which they want this done, I think is a direct result of the Supreme Court ruling.
Obama's Democrat allies, this is a somewhat confused AP.
President Obama's Democrat allies of the Senate promise to cut the deficit by almost two-thirds over the next five years, but their budget plan could threaten about 30 million people with tax increases averaging $3,700 in 2012 and after because of the alternative minimum tax.
Now, how did this get passed?
How did this end up in the AP?
This is the kind of thing that gets spiked.
Because this is the truth.
Democrats want more taxes to replace the alternative minimum tax.
The alternative is tax increases elsewhere in the revenue code, averaging up to $100 billion a year after 2011 to continue alternative minimum tax relief and also curb taxes on people inheriting large estates.
The Democrat plan released yesterday by the Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad.
North Dakota relies on such boosts in revenues to carve the deficit from $1.4 trillion last year down to $545 billion by 2015.
So in other words, in other words here, the Democrats who have railed for years against this terribly unfair, terribly regressive, socially unjust alternative minimum tax are now saying they have to raise taxes in order to do away with it.
We knew this was coming.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's right, Russia.
We are going to get rid of the AMT, but we've got to pay for it.
No, no, no, no.
The AMT is unfair already.
The AMT, it was never envisioned to capture this much income for taxation as it does.
It's unfair for a bunch of people that pride themselves on fairness.
I mean, the AMT is the most unfair.
Well, it's hard to say which is the most unfair, but it's pretty high on the top of the list.
And now they do want the credit for getting rid of it, but they have to replace the revenue.
So they're talking about tax increases here.
Conrad said lawmakers will have to find revenue elsewhere into budget to pay for AMT and estate tax relief after 2011, which could require tax increases averaging up to $100 billion a year elsewhere in the code if Congress is going to keep its promises under the tough new budget rules.
Well, they're not keeping their promises now under tough new budget rules.
Anybody ever heard of PAYGO?
That's out the window.
We're not paying for any of these unemployment compensation extensions.
So all of a sudden, the Democrats now want to abide by PAYGO legislation after having ignored it time and time again, such as when Bunning objected to one of these numerous budget-busting jobs bills.
But the Democrats will do anything, even obey their own rules, if it's a way to raise taxes.
I mean, normally they break the rules, but if they can raise taxes by obeying their own rules, they'll do that.
No problem.
They're not used to obeying the rules, but they'll do so.
Now, there's a story in the Chicago Trib.
I have seen pictures, thousands and thousands of people marching, union thugs in Illinois, demanding tax increases.
Here it is.
I've got the Chicago Tribune story right here.
Grab audio soundbite number 31.
We have a soundbite with this.
Thousands of protesters bussed down to Springfield by labor unions and social service advocates rallied at the Capitol today, yesterday, in an attempt to pressure state lawmakers into raising the income tax to avoid more budget cuts.
The unions want everybody else and their taxes to go up so that they don't lose their pensions and they don't have to get any kind of cuts whatsoever.
Spokesman for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White estimated the rally crowd at 15,000, more than 12,000 of them marching around the building.
That would make it, appear to make it, the largest capital protest since the Equal Rights Amendment crowds 25 years ago.
Bus after bus after bus pulled up on streets surrounding the Capitol, dumped sign-waving protesters clad in purple, green, red, and blue shirts.
They represented a show of strength from a variety of public employee unions and dozens of groups that formed what they named the Responsible Budget Coalition.
And here is what they were shouting.
RAISE my taxes!
Raise my taxes!
Raise my taxes!
Springfield, Illinois at the Capitol, thousands of protesters bussed down by the labor unions demanding higher taxes.
Okay?
Raise theirs.
Raise their taxes.
Cut us.
They want their taxes to go up.
Raise them.
Now, this is an interesting development here.
It's interesting because the unions now see the underfunded pension plans, the states being bankrupt, and they see what Chris Christie is doing in New Jersey.
And they see that California is paying attention to New Jersey.
And they see the teachers' unions getting socked out there.
They get all kinds of givebacks, teachers having to forego promised raises and increases in pension benefits and so forth.
So here are the freeloaders.
Rush, how can you say they're freeloaders?
They're union people.
They have jobs.
They're freeloaders.
They know.
These are public employee union people.
They know what they live off of.
They live off taxes.
These are not private sector union people.
These are not, for the most part, there's some teachers in there.
Well, even the teachers, they're not private sector.
These are people that live off of your tax payments.
And they want more.
They want you to have to pay more taxes so that they continue in their freeloader gigs.
Now, this is the kind of people.
You know, we talked about last couple of days, freeloaders.
What's the percentage of people in this country that have really just checked out?
They've just cashed it in.
They're sitting out there.
They're happy to get whatever they get from the government, 300, 500 bucks a week.
And people worry, have we reached the tipping point here?
We got to the point where 50% of the American people are freeloaders now.
And I don't believe we're anywhere near there.
Otherwise, these people wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
And Obama would be honest about what he was doing.
He has to continue to lie about what his agenda is, trying to get people to support it.
So look who it is that's now actually rallying for tax increases.
Public employee union people.
They are the freeloaders.
They are a net loss.
They don't produce anything.
They live solely off the output of the private sector, pure and simple, which they hate, by the way.
I'm talking about their leaders and some of these rent-a-mob types that show up.
Now, who is it that runs Illinois?
Who is it that runs Chicago?
I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's the Democrats.
Well, why don't the Democrats who run Illinois want to raise taxes this year?
Why?
Why do these unions have to pressure Democrats to do something that is automatic as breathing to them?
Raising taxes.
What's going on here?
Raising taxes?
Why should you have to protest for that?
With Democrats, I mean, the kind of Democrats you have in Illinois.
And yet, we've got acorn-type agitators out there demanding a tax increase from people who do that automatically.
So they do it before they brush their teeth when they get up.
I mean, it's a reflex action.
This is incredible, unheard of.
A bunch of leftist, socialist, neo-communist union people asking their brothers in government to raise taxes when they do it already anyway.
See, the heavy metal is back, and the bumper rotation means it's being brought from somebody's house.
800-282-2882 here on the EIB network.
Here's a way I want to create a visual for you.
As host, I excel at painting pictures, creating images, and creating circumstances where you create your own image.
We don't provide the pictures here.
You do, actually, via the talent of the host.
So here you have 12 to 15,000 union thugs demanding tax increases.
The state capital of Illinois, which is akin to a tick demanding that we feed the dog more.
That's how you.
That is that is the way to look.
Or a leech demanding that we feed the dog more.
Yeah, it's a leech.
You can see a leech.
A tick, sometimes a flea, but whatever.
You know, we're the dog.
Union people are the leeches, and they're demanding that we be fed more.
You know what else they were chatting out there?
What do we want?
More money.
What do we want?
We want more money.
When do we want it now?
When do we want it now?
That's what one of their charges was, or chance.
And you can't see a tick when it swells up.
And they do swell up on a well-fed dog.
I mean, it's a giant tick, bunch of them, bunch of leeches.
State capitol in Illinois yesterday.
Okay, you heard, ladies and gentlemen, you heard, because we played it for you, Obama's quote delivered in Manhattan today about the free market.
Well, a free market was never intended to be a free ride.
You just can't go out and take what you want anytime you want it, however you want to get it.
Yes, you can, sir.
You do it.
There's the leader of the regime.
But if Obama really knew about a free market economy, he would be taking a page from the Heritage Foundation's thinking on this.
He would not have interceded in the health industries, the automotive industry, and now the financial industry.
We are days away from yet another vote in Washington on a banking reform bill that will stagnate all kinds of potential economic growth by putting too many limitations on the financial industry.
It will cause a lot of fear, and it will quell risk-taking.
People will be afraid to make a move.
And it could come as soon as Monday.
Staying in touch with all these things and making sense of it is what we do here for you.
And if you want more information and if you want more smart thinking, you should also be a member of the Heritage Foundation.
They're straying, they stay up to speed on all of this stuff 24-7.
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They get the word out to as many people as possible.
Heritage Foundation is a cause worth supporting.
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Just sign up.
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AskHeritage.org.
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Odessa, Florida.
This is Tom.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks, Rush.
Busy banking executive down here in Florida and a third-time caller, and I'm going for my hat trick.
You've always agreed with me in the past.
Okay, cool.
You mentioned that you state that the government is at the cause of the banking crisis.
And as a proof of that, there's one very simple question that proves it, and that is, how could any of this banking crisis occurred if Fannie and Freddie did not exist to begin with?
Explain that.
Well, they are governmental agencies that buy mortgages from the banking system, and it's government guaranteed.
And what happened actually is that they changed the conforming rules for the purchase of mortgages over time by reducing credit quality, i.e., buying subprimes, and also by changing the information requirements, i.e., not requiring income verification.
And that's what caused all these mortgages to be sucked up by Fannie and Freddie from the banking system.
And if the banks didn't issue conforming loans, then they're held in contempt under the CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act, for not doing mortgages that are conforming.
So in other words, let me see if I understand the system.
Let me see if I've got 30 seconds.
Let me see if I understand.
If Fannie and Freddie didn't exist, these banks would not be able to hold on to these worthless mortgages.
They wouldn't be able to offload them.
So they wouldn't make them in the first place.
And they would have never issued them to begin with.
That's okay.
That's exactly okay.
Once I'm told something, it's indelled in my brain forever.
And then they were assembled, and then they went to Wall Street and did all the slicing and dicing and the CDOs and the derivatives to hedge and all that.
But none of it could have happened if those loans weren't purchased by Fannie and Freddie to begin with, which couldn't have happened if Fannie and Freddie didn't exist to begin with.
Amen.
Can't make it any simpler than that.
Boy, the news is getting rosier and rosier every day.
Existing home sales were up 6% yesterday.
Jobless claims have dropped.
Today, as the labor market is improving, they just forget to mention that people still don't have jobs and have run out of benefits and no longer counted.
And they're ignoring the price of food going up and the price of gasoline going up, but we don't.
We'll share with you all of these details.
We get back to commence the next hour of Broadcast Excellence.
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