Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-05-26_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

03-05-26_THURSDAY_6AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klauserdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. It's great to have you here. It is Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Join the conversation at 770-KMED. My email Bill at Billmyershow.com.

Steve Bont is going to join me. He is with the new American, but he's also an economy. by trade. And we're going to be talking a bit about the Iran war, the Iran war. I was going to say like the Iran and then start like saying like Iraq or something. No, it's just Iran. And what potential financial shocks are we looking at here? The markets are still continuing to be relatively volatile, relatively sporty.

V thinks this is going to be just sort of a temporary thing or the portent of something a little more serious. Don't know. We'll talk with Steve about that. American is a interesting publication. That's a publication arm of the John Birch Society. Those old paleo conservatives, you know, the paleo conservatives, not the neo-conservatives. The neo-conservatives are the Lindsay, the Lindsay Grams of the world, you know, the ones who get sexually excited every time, you know, the bombs are flying and the planes are going and the rockets are red-glaring and all that kind of stuff. And the John Birchers are more, okay, what does the

Constitution say? And I know the Constitution. is not very popular. We always talk about it. Boy, we sure would like the Constitution. But, you know, the Constitution sort of has become an inconvenience. It just depends on if you're in power, if you are the party in charge, the Constitution is an irritant. If you're out of power, then, of course, you want to, hey, follow the Constitution. And it's kind of this way on both sides of the aisle. It really is.

It's like it just cracks me up. It just cracks me up to see, no, I don't even mean like, ha-ha, but there's just an ironic or an irony of it when you see the news reporting here, like, you know, all the gray hairs, the hippie, all the gray-haired liberals in Ashland getting out and marching the streets and protesting war. And yet, when they're guys in, they're not there. There's not there, right? Remember the women in white?

Remember, we saw all those kind of things. is the moment that their, the moment that their team is in charge, then all of a sudden anti-war conversation tends to go away, which is right now, now that you have Republicans in charge and that the unit party continues to be pushing, you know, wars of choice or various other things for whatever good. Now, you can say this is a good thing to be doing right now, and I'm happy to take your call if you think we are doing something good right now.

But I've been consistent about these things. I think that there are the dissidents are the ones that have actually been more consistent on these sort of things. And the dissidents, of course, don't get nearly the push or nearly the attention that those that are involved with the Uniparty. Because there is one thing, Washington, D.C. tends to love a good, splendid war. Both sides of the aisle usually tend to get together and do their thing. That's just my opinion. Just my observation after 45 years in broadcasting and about 26 of it in talk radio. All right.

But let's talk about that if you wish. 7705-633-770K-MED. Hey, question I would have for you this morning. Is this enough punishment? I think this may be a simple question just to pose to you. Since you're a little early, maybe just got a little coffee in you. But we had the Oakdale Middle School students in Medford. and by doing their thing

and they walked out of class to protest ice enforcement efforts and to show support for illegal aliens. That's really all this it was about. Now it doesn't get reported this way. They're out showing support for the immigrant community is how all the other stations. Well, when I do the news story, I said,

hey, they're here for the illegal immigrants, the illegal aliens. Yes, I did use in the news a little more of a softer term illegal immigrants, right? But it's illegal aliens. We know it's illegally elegance, and this is what they're doing. They're protesting ICE enforcement. And their punishment is one day of suspension from the Medford School District.

And my question is that is this too much punishment about right or too little punishment? Because once again, this is unauthorized. About 80 students ended up doing this. They just go out there and walk out. These are middle school students. These aren't even high school students. These are middle school students. and there was a parent or two kind of going along.

And I can't be helped but be a little suspicious that essentially these are more hard left-wing parents getting involved and kind of spurring things along because otherwise why would the kids be showing up or why would the parents be showing up? And apparently a student organized walkout and so they get one-day suspension. Is that enough?

just about right or too much punishment. 7705-633. I'm happy to take your calls on that. I just want to kind of gauge your temperature on these things because in my day, we never would have even considered walking out of school. And heck, we were going to school during the Vietnam War. It would have been Principal Mitchell coming out there with the Board of Education. Get your asses back in, kid.

I don't know if he would have said that. I should have. But that's kind of the way that would have been. I don't know. It's, you know, this idea that we train our kids to be a little throat-punching Antifa leftist activists, I think should be a cause for concern. I know they're talking about supporting the immigrant community. But essentially, what we have school kids being encouraged probably by the left-wingers to go out there and do their thing, they're going out there to protest and say that the federal government essentially has no authority to enforce federal law. At the same time, the state of Oregon says you can't enforce the law either.

So anyway, it's a couple of things on my mind this morning. Happy to take your call. 770KMED. And hi, it is Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Good morning. Who's this? Good morning, Bill. It's Francine.

Francine. Welcome. How are you, my dear, from talent? I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, you know, I'm doing okay. I just had to take. My cat just jumped up. I opened a drawer to get something.

My cat jumped up. in it and was messing, tossing everything around, and I got them out just in time before you put me on. Listen, I have those kind of situations. Cats could just go kind of nutty and everything flies. You know, in fact, by the way, I had to tell you this, this is my cat story for this morning. Okay. I had this, I bought this really super expensive birthday card for Linda. It was a handmade card.

It was just beautiful, but I got her from a local store here the other day, right? And so she loved it, and she hadn't. She's saving it. has this handmade stuff put all over. Just a beautiful card, right? And of course, what this is going with? Because we have cats, right? Yeah.

Where do you think, Matt, the 16-year-old Maine Coon, decided to do his latest fur ball throw-up? Oh, no. Yes, on the handmade card. The handmaid. So, now, he's an old guy. I can't kick his butt. Obviously, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But I said, honey, I'm actually going to go down to the store. I'm going to see if I can find another handmade car just like it. And then I'm going to fill it out again so you can throw the other one out. You have to like, you know, tape or nail it to the wall so that they can't actually get up, get high enough to get it. Pretty much. Pretty much. Okay. I know.

Now, what about your call? I have about a six-month-old male kitten who's just absolutely crazy. But he's starting to learn to obey like a dog. It's kind of interesting. That's good. Now then, what did you actually call for? I didn't mean to interrupt you. That's okay, Bill. Okay, so this whole thing with the war, you know, Trump's war, blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't listen. I don't pay much attention to people talking about it because everybody has an opinion and none of what they're claiming to know is necessarily even close to the truth. So I just kind of, I'm just sitting back and watching. But a couple of things I've heard was like, oh, he, he had to go to Congress and then someone mentioned this.

And I thought it was kind of interesting that if he had gone to Congress, it would be a big deal. Everybody would know about it. There would have been no surprise, you know. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I'm all for this. I'm just saying. Yeah, well, of course, and then I would counter that with, okay, how much of a surprise is it when you have, you know, tens of thousands of people and tons of ships kind of moving to you, you know? I know, but that's all been going on for a while. Yeah.

The actual attack, you know, I don't know, just strategically that could have been an issue. Not that I'm saying, yeah, gung-ho, go for it, you know, but the other, and I'm not saying not to either. I just don't know what to think at this point. So you're still kind of holding your fire, so to speak, you don't quite know. Yeah, well, first of all, I have no control over anything. So why get my panties in a nod, as they say, you know what I mean? There's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is watch, and I'm trying not to listen to all the opinions,

Because most of them, that's all they are, is opinions, people trying to make themselves sound smarter than they probably really are. Yeah, always the latest hot take from the bubblehead on front of the camera. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I get you. I appreciate your call. Thank you for that, Francine. So we have, Francine's kind of like, I don't know what to think about it yet. Hi, good morning. KMED. Who's this? Welcome. This is Minor Dave. Dave, you're one of the members of the early morning risers club. What's up? Well, I wanted to say with King Charles in the Lodge of London trying to collapse the economy

with pulling the insurance on oil tankers or maritime, and Donald Trump ordering some agency to sell them insurance at a reasonable rate. Yeah, this was essentially bypassing. What President Trump is essentially doing is bypassing Lloyd's of London's monopoly, isn't it? That's right. And you've got to remember what? We're at a war between, what is it, Hamilton's American industry and King Charles' imperial economy, where they wanted on money, not on the wealth to be, and what you can produce.

Yeah, I just don't know if I can really count the conspiracy or count on the conspiracy that this is, you know, part of King Charles and the Royal Family. I just don't see them as that kind of a power broker these days, Dave. Well, they are because they control 50% of the landmass on the United States and their trust. Okay. I'm not familiar with that one, but all right, I'll scratch my head on it. Thank you. I guess this is the one conspiracy I haven't read up on.

I'm going to have to. Hi, good morning, KMED. Who's this? And welcome to Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Good morning, Bill. This is Wayne. Wayne, what's on your mind, huh? Well, I'm a little concerned.

I'm not sure it's a conspiracy, but on Wednesday morning, you were having a conversation with your favorite automobile guy, what's his name? Yeah, Eric Peters. Very, Eric Peters. And he made a statement that really upset me, but if it was true, I probably wouldn't have been so upset. Yeah, I think I know which one. I think he actually made a mistake on one of the things he said was actually happening

what he said was an American ship was actually an Iranian ship going down. Is that the one you were thinking of? Well, he said one of our destroyers was shot down. Yeah, no, it was actually Iranian. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a big mistake. Yeah, well, sometimes that's what happens. You know, you're sitting there and you're talking, and then you realize I said,

I don't think that happened. And I looked it up and, yeah. And it ends up being it was the submarine attack on the ship, right? That was the same event. But anyway, when he says, you know, you probably haven't got the news feed, Bill, but I just heard that the Iranians sank one of our destroyers. You know, that's... Sometimes in live talk radio, one can make a mistake. I've made him too.

Okay? So I think... Yeah, but then he went on to be very negative. I think he's got to stay out of politics by the... Oh, no. Now, he can't stay out of politics anymore than I can stay out of politics any more than I would tell you to stay out of politics. And politics is people's opinions. And I have to tell you, a lot of that website is a libertarian car guy.

And so libertarian politics tends to be the rule there. I am not a libertarian as much. I used to be more of a libertarian, but I found it kind of being a non-governable system. in my opinion, but that's just me. Okay? Where would you rate yourself on a 10-point scale being 10, 100% mega, and zero being negative? Well, I am for Make America Great Again, 100%, but I don't see a lot of what is being done right now is being necessarily making America great again.

That's where I tend to draw. You know, and so I've asked a few questions about President Trump's actions, but I also don't claim to know everything. All right. Sounds good. Thank you, sir. All right. I appreciate it.

I mean, how could you not want to make America great again? Of course, to say that we want to make America great again is also to acknowledge that, yeah, we're not so great again. We were becoming not so great again. The decline was real. Good morning, KMED. Hi. Who's this? Hey, good morning, Bill.

Terry. Terry, what's on your mind? Hey, I got a question for you. And the other day at the end of your show, you had a guy on from the show. you had a guy on from the church that they have a project they're trying to get rolling for building homes for older homeless people. I don't know if remember that. And he says it costs like $50,000 annually for these guys.

And in the bigger city, it's like $100,000. Do you recall that? Yeah, I recall that. 90,000 is what they were spending up in Portland right now, a lot of money. Well, my question is, I mean, sort of made it sound like, you know, we get these guys in the housing and that all goes away, that money. but doesn't it, to me, it seems like it would even cost more annually. So are they saying that that money just goes away if they put somebody in housing?

Well, let me put it to say. I don't think he's necessarily saying that. What he's doing, though, is that when they build a tiny house for 50 grand, that is just a, that is just one cost. And then there is a modest expense with having that senior citizen in there. And then there's a real asset, and the home can be reused for other people over time, too, if a senior citizen ends up passing away at least. At least it's a permanent asset rather than just money being flushed down continually on hotel rooms or other temporary shelter types of systems.

I think that's kind of where they're coming from. That was Brian Boutel you were talking about, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, over it. It almost made it sound like, you know, well, all that money just, and don't get me wrong. I think it's a good thing what they're doing, but it almost made it sound like, oh, well, this money goes away. But really, I think it's kitten on, you know, what it's going to do to, you know, take out that 50 grand. I mean, shoot.

Yeah, well, if you have a senior citizen who is probably part of the shelter network and maybe they are, you know, more expensive than otherwise, the whole idea was to have shelters available for someone that has a very modest social security income and wouldn't be able to fit in a regular rental to still have credible housing and off the streets. And I think that's a societal good, don't you think? Oh, yeah, absolutely. But I was just curious, you know, if they said, well, it cuts it by $5,000 or $10,000. They made it just seem like it cut it by a lot. Yeah.

I don't think it cuts it by that much. Yeah, I'll have, you know what I'll do? And by the way, Chad McComis is doing a similar plan with the Joy community over on Biddle Road. in Medford. So we have both communities doing this. And I think it would be a good idea. I'll talk with both of them and get a little more of the details on that. I think they're both doing great work.

Appreciate the call, Todd. 770, KMED. Hello. Hi, KMEDE. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. Bill. This is Vicki from the Applegate. Hi, Vicki. What's on your mind? Well, I want to comment on the kids protesting. Yeah, the kids that walked out of Oakdale and they get one day suspension. What do you think?

Well, I don't think that's enough, actually. But on the other hand, I would love somebody to sit these kids down with no parents, no teachers, no other influences, and ask them exactly, what are you protesting? And see how many of them sound like an adult repeating what they've heard. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't think – first they started with college kids protesting, then it was high schoolers. that we're protesting. Now we're down to middle school. Now we're going to have kindergartners and people that are in, what is that daycare, that

federal daycare program, they call it. Yeah, you're going to have the head start kids out there being little robots protesting, right? Right. And I can almost guarantee these kids in middle school would not have any better answers than the preschoolers. They're only, I think it's, parent, motivated, or possibly things they might have heard at school. I think that they're being led to think that they're, you know, making a huge difference in this. And they have no idea. They can't even figure out what they want to put on to where, to school. So how are they even going to know about politics?

It's an interesting question. I think it's a good one to ask. Thanks for the call. Let me go to next line here on conspiracy theory Thursday. Hi, good morning. Who's his? Hey, Brother Louis. Brother Louis. What's on your mind, sir? Oh, my God. Lots of stuff. I don't want to forget to do this, but I've been telling you about this guy Marandi, who is in Tehran, who is a professor. He speaks perfect English. And he's been giving the other propaganda, you know, the propaganda that we don't hear over here so much, you know. Anyway, he calls the Trump regime the Epstein regime.

I think that is absolutely brilliant sight. Oh, boy, Trump, he wouldn't like to hear that. That's for, the president wouldn't like that at all. Of course not. But he, Trump's in trouble with the Epstein thing. And he's trying to, he's trying to. Now, you honestly think that President Trump is in trouble with the Epstein thing? How?

Well, he's had to redact the hell out of it. You know, there's no question that he was involved in this stuff that he doesn't really want to come to light. And they had Clinton on the other day, you know, last weekend they had him and Hillary both, you know, debriefed or whatever deposed or whatever they call it. And I watched bits of that, and you can just watch Clinton and you can remember back to the Monica Lewinsky thing. Which, you know, anyway, I guess I don't want to go too far. Try to go too far and get too many things going up. Well, well, all I was going to get at, though, with President Trump, is it President Trump was involved in stuff, or is it business associates, world leaders,

everybody that he has deals with that are involved, you know, in this? Because Don doesn't strike me as the pervert type, but I could be absolutely wrong on that. Oh, yeah, he strikes me as one of those, yeah. Oh, so we disagree on that? Okay, all right. Yeah, I probably disagree on that one. All right. I think Trump is really being blackmail. I think that that's why Netanyahu has so much power over Trump is because, I mean, that's why it makes sense, because Trump was actually not really wanting to do this war.

And he was, I think he was forced into it just the way, you know, almost like Putin was, which brings me to another point I wanted to make is Quagmire's. We're in for another quagmire. I can see it coming. They're trying to get going before the election, so we can't get out of it by electing different people. But maybe this sounds pretty crazy, but nothing else makes any sense to me, except that why is Putin in a quagmire right now?

He wanted to do a special military operation to respond to the attacks on ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and all that kind of thing. But, you know, and they just would stop bugging him about getting Ukraine into NATO, which would mean that they could put missile bases on, you know, 80 miles from Moscow. Yeah, and Russia was not going to tolerate that, made that clear. That made sense.

Okay, and Norman we tolerate something like that too. All right. Hey, but Quagmire, the word quagmire. You know, forget the word quagmire. It's too early to say that we have quagmire, but, you know, if we have to pull that term out, we will but we'll probably i think we'll have to get and revisit this in 60 days and then find out if we're in a quagmire okay yeah you watch but by the election i think we'll be in the quagmire so that we'll have to rally behind the flag and we won't really be able to throw the bums out well yeah

because if you throw the bombs out then uh you're for the terrorist instead of for america right that kind of yeah yeah it's the same playbook that is the way that is the way the system tends to manipulate it whether it's a democrat president or a Republican president. Absolutely. Okay. So on that, I will agree with you, in which patriotism is the coping mechanism, I guess, all right?

Hey, I'll tell you what, we'll take some more calls on this. Give me about 20 minutes or so. We'll do some more open phone calls. We're going to get into the financial issues involving this situation in Iran right now and what that might be looking like. Steve Bontah will join me. It's not all about you when it comes to your well-water quality. There's a lot going on below the Sunday morning on.

at 9 on KMED. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Dr. Steve Banta is publisher of the New American. It's a magazine from the John Birch Society. It's also a longtime contributor to the magazine. Extensive experience living abroad, Argentina, Spain, India, Sri Lanka, China. Oh, so you are CIA.

Is that right, Steve? No, I actually never even contemplated. I did look into the NSA when I was still undergraduate in college, but quickly decided that that lifestyle wasn't for me. So, no, I've never done anything with the kind. Okay. Well, you know, I had to have fun with you, right? Because that sounds like an agent, right, going from place to place to place. And, you know... Well, I can speak Chinese, and I have actually been... I've actually seen some of the Chinese missile sites in the South China Sea as a tourist. Oh, as a tourist. Okay.

And speaking of... Speaking of China, I have to, you know, get your... opinion here because I was telling you off here that I have great affection for the John Birchers and I know that John Birchers were really attacked hard by what I now would consider conservatism Inc which is the neo-conservatives, the National Reviews of the world, the William F. Buckleys of the day back in the 1960s of course they went after and they went to war with the Borchers back in the day essentially saying that you know the modern day liberal conservative was the way to be. Would that be a fair assessment of the war between, you know, the paleo conservatives or the old line conservatives and the newer ones? What do you think

about that? Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, the fact that we now have a term for the Buckleyites, the neocons, I think speaks for itself, you know, argues in favor of that. And, you know, the neocons probably, you know, won the cultural battle back in the 60s and 70s, But we're winning the war, the long-term war, because now, you know, the neocon arguments have lost all credibility in the eyes of most people on the right. And you see neocons being hustled out of Congress, left, right, and center and being replaced by people who are much more in alignment with what used, I guess, used to be called paleo-conservatism. And we like to call it Americanism, but, you know. Yeah, yeah, but Americanism, but yeah, it's been labeled paleo-conservatism. In other words, the old style conservatism, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that embraces kind of a strict adherence to the Constitution and coupled with concern for preserving American and Western values, all that kind of thing. What are you thinking about as far as the health of the Constitution right now, Steve? Because it's quite interesting. And, you know, when it comes to war, war, of course, is one of the biggest drivers of constitutional, well, we tend to look at it as a bother, right? You know, it's an irritant. If you're a Democrat and you want to go to war,

the Constitution is an irritant, and you just ignore it. If you're a Republican, same sort of thing, really. And when the Democrats go to war, the Republicans protest. When the Republicans go to war, the Democrats protest. I mean, wash, rinse and repeat. It does really feel like it's like two sides of the same bird of prey. What say you? Well, first of all, I mean, you know, partisan tribalism is nothing new.

in American history, but it seems to become a lot more acute in the recent decades and years. And as far as the Constitution, as a whole is concerned, I would say it's on life support at best. De facto, well, de jure, and de facto, really. I mean, most of what the government does this nowadays is unconstitutional if one regards the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as part of the Constitution. And, you know, they make explicit what the founding fathers understood implicitly, although, you know, Madison in the federal's papers did also, you know, did reiterate the doctrine of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, if it isn't something explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, then it is understood by default to a given power to remain with the states or with the people. But the states essentially have been bought off, uh, or made poorer, I think, in many cases. cases because of grant stream funding, right? And so the states end up pretty much dancing to the tune of the

federal government rather than, in other words, it's no longer these United States, right? It is the United States of America is essentially what we've morphed into over the years. Yeah, sure. It hasn't happened overnight. It's been a process of many generations. But I mean, you know, nowadays, good rule of thumb is if it's called a government program, it's probably unconstitutional. I mean, And there really is about the only government program that's explicitly licensed by the Constitution is the Postal Service and the military. You know, but again, even those operate the military. I don't have any beef of the Postal Service, by the way. That's like the one – I'm a very strange guy.

I'm one of the few people that enjoys visiting the post office because when I go, I think, you know, you people are legit. You know, you're taking a paycheck. Even though we make fun of the Postal Service and the inefficiencies, right? at the same time, it's the one agency that's actually in the Constitution. Isn't that something? That's right. That's right. And so I would counsel your listeners, never ever give the post office a hard time because at least they're legit, you know. But the vast majority of the rest of what the federal government does program-wise is all illegitimate.

It's not mentioned explicitly or even implicitly except by an incredible stretch of the imagination in Article 1 section. which is the article that spells out most of the powers of Congress. And, you know, much of what the president does, the executive branch, most of it is not licensed by Article 2. And, you know, so this is, so, you know, de facto at least, I mean, we live in a kind of a post-constitutional twilight and have been for some generations. And, you know, the jury is still out on whether we'll be able to, you know, restore the constitutional limited government in full vigor. But, you know, but there's so many things working together because the government we have now is designed to be imperial, is designed to be a socialist welfare state in every respect, you know, the financial system, the system of taxation,

the regulatory agencies, everything, they all kind of work together and draw sustenance one from another. And I would also say that our economy, and I know that we are always told, and I was trained in government schools that we are a free market economy, right? And I'm thinking to myself, you know, when I look at the money system and the regulatory state, I don't think any of us have ever lived under a truly open free market economy in our lifetime. But we're used to this being the definition of a free market, freedom-oriented economy. Is that fair or unfair to bring that judgment? Well, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, you know, Aristotle long ago defined this notion of revolution within the forms, whereby you keep the forms and the terminology. Yeah.

But the actual meaning, you know, is changed radically. And this happened to the ancients as well as today. So, I mean, broadly speaking, what I would say is this. A little over 100 years ago, we converted the financial system and the fiscal system into Marxist systems. Okay, because, you know, the communist manifesto, two of its ten planks are the establishment of a central bank with a monopoly on currency. Well, we got that with the Federal Reserve. Yep. And then a heavy graduated income tax. We got that. So that means, in effect, that those two parts of our economy, the financial part, and, you know, the tax gathering part, the fiscal part, are both basically communist, are Marxist anyway.

And, of course, the education system, which is also part of that communist manifesto. And here it is we did this Cold War. We did this Cold War, spending trillions of dollars, all sorts of wars. We're going to stop those evil Russians. And the system still apparently was taken over by that ideology one way or the other. Kind of a softer version with more of a smile on it. Would that be fair? Kind of what we're looking at right now, what we battle in our system?

Yeah, I mean, and the reason that was gradually, you know, the rest of the market, for example, is becoming less and less free. The rest of the economy is getting more is because of the pressure from those portions. that are already socialized, are socialist, right? Right. And there's another aspect to that. I mean, we were talking before we went on the air about the possibly impact of this war. Yes. And, you know, I would say that it's not a coincidence that the 20th and now the 21st century

has become the great era of large-scale modern warfare because of this new system we have, this wonder system that allows you to print money and borrow pretty much at will and not have to depend on the tax-paying base to finance. war, you know, these two things work in tandem. And this war with Iran, regardless of, you know, whether or not it's politically well-advised and all that. I'm not going to argue one way or the other. I certainly know about Iran's history and with the United States. Yeah, and there's still a lot we really don't know. I mean, it's still very new in this. This is all. One thing we can say for certain bill, and that is that it's going to cost a lot of money,

a lot of money, okay? It's probably going to run up a couple trillion dollars more in debt. I mean, I don't know, I'm sure you've seen the video of that torpedo, you know, blowing up that Iranian ship. These aren't your grandfather's torpedoes. I mean, they blew the ship literally right out of the water. So I imagine it's a very costly munition. And the same goes with all these, you know, satellite guided bombs and the guided missiles and everything else. I mean, the war is going to be enormously costly. And once the g-wiz factor of the, you know, the display of the latest high-tech wears off, as it inevitably will, as it did after the, you know, the shock and

all the first Persian Gulf War and all this sort of thing, then it will come time to settle accounts and to pay the bills, and it will probably be manifest in yet another major uptick in the debt. And that will be deliative. I mean, wars are always harmful to the economy. It's one of the great fallacies of modern economics, and not even modern economics forever, is this bizarre belief that war is the health of the economy. It may be the health of the state, but it's not the health of the economy. Well, I think it's the health of the businesses which are all attached to the state.

And there are many of them right now, military industrial complex, the congressional lobbyists. There are people whose rice bowls depend on, well, continuing to put the nation in debt and continuing to keep us in conflict. And that is just a fact. And that is a bipartisan thing, right? It doesn't matter which president is in office right now. Yeah, absolutely. And this is the reason. And again, I'm not arguing for against the merits of this particular war.

I mean, I've been watching Iran for a long time. And what they did to their own people a month and a half ago was absolutely appalling and all of that. So leaving that aside, you know, the fact is that one of the reasons that the Constitution requires Congress to give authorization for wars is that wars are very, very costly transformative events. And they require a certain amount of deliberation. They should not be embarked upon for light and transient causes, as the founders might have said. And so, you know, this is something. And this feels a little bit. I mean, I know people are arguing online that this is part of a grand design, you know,

to kick the legs out from underneath the Chinese table and all the rest of this. And there's a good case to make that. In fact, I don't think this had anything to do with nuclear weapons. I think that was just a false pretense, or pretext rather, given to the people, because we buy that one every time. I think it's really about squeezing China hard on oil and energy. I think that's what that's all about. But they can't talk about it that way.

You know what I'm saying? You know, they can't say, well, we're going to go and kill and just kill everybody in the Iranian government because of China. Right? That wouldn't fly, I don't think, in public opinion. No, that's true. And, I mean, you know, I mean, time will tell if they're able to execute this with more competence than previous administrations have. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the old movie The Princess Bride where the character Vitsini warns about the classic blunder of the great classic blunderer, which is never go to get involved in the land war in Asia. Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, history would suggest that this is probably going to go in the same direction. I mean, the last I heard the Kurds in Iraq were planning to launch a ground invasion of Iran. So it's going to be interesting and messy. But, you know, even if against all odds, you know, this ends up, you know, finishing with, you know, They remove the regime with surgical precision and, you know, the crown prince, Pahlavi returns triumphantly and establishes a free Western state or something like that, even if it has a happy ending, which I doubt because, you know, fairy tale endings are in short supply in the Middle East. But even supposing it does, we're still going to be left with an enormous bill to pay.

And that is, and, you know, and other consequences, you know, it's going to end up, you know, triggering realignments internationally. we're going to, we're inevitably drawing down our own supply of weaponry, which could have an effect if a country like China or Russia made an aggressive move against us that would warrant some kind of defense. I don't know. But for these and many other reasons, you know, the kind of deliberation that can only occur in the legislative branch of government is warranted. I mean, the Venezuela thing was a little different. I think there were honest arguments on both sides as to whether that constituted, you know, an act of war, whether or whether. It was just a, you know, this kind of thing.

It was fast. It was over with very quickly and cost us practically nothing. But this is a very different matter. And it's already being, we're already being told it's going to last four or five weeks. Well, you know, I mean the price tag for a high-tech war four or five weeks at this level of intensity is. You're talking in the trillions. It's the trillions at that point when you, well, at least the multiple hundreds of billions. We know it's going to be at least that and probably more.

My concern at this is that the people end up paying for this ultimately within more currency destruction. Isn't that the truth of it when it comes right down to it? Yeah, we always end up paying for it. And the reason the government gets away with this generation after generation is that inflation is a somewhat subtle process. And so people don't understand why it is that prices go out. They don't understand why prices went up so much in the last few years. years, you know, consumer pride, and they're not going down either. And gold and silver continue to soar. Well, you know, the underlying cause for that is, you know, government is the reason.

You know, it's not something that's happening because of, you know, abstract, airy-fairy things happening in the other side of the world. They may palliate or exacerbate the effects of inflation, but they're not the root cause. The root cause is government working in concert with the banking system to increase the money supply. That's it. And then that's, that drives up prices. I mean, they do it because basically they borrow lots of money, and then they monetize the debt rather than pay it off up front because it costs less in the short run. But in the long run, of course, it's manifest in, you know, soaring housing prices and soaring education costs and soaring prices at the grocery store and the devaluation,

the systematic devaluation of your savings account and your retirement and mine. Steve, I wanted to bring up a lot of people can't understand that. Yeah. Steve, Steve, St. Bonto, once again, is the publisher of the New American, a magazine from the John Birch's citing, the newamerican.com, by the way, is the website. Great site. And I wanted to touch on, I heard a caller on the Chris de Gaulle show, who was the national host on earlier, you know, before I am,

before 5 o'clock, and it struck me. And he was talking about how he had lost $50,000 in the stock market this week because of all of the volatility and the big major sell-offs. And then he said, you know, I could lose it all. I'm just paraphrasing him. He said, I could lose it all if it meant that I could save this country. And he was conflating, you know, the Iraq or the Iran War, rather, with getting rid of Iran, with saving the United States.

And is, do you think it's heartfelt these days with a lot of Americans, or is that kind of a patriotic coping method or maybe some kind of a technique that we sort of, comfort ourselves through patriotism. Well, if our government's doing it, it must be right, the right thing to do. Any thoughts on that? Well, I would say probably the latter, but I would also say this. Most Americans have no idea how bad it can get. Just that, well, unfortunately, there's no one left alive in Germany who remembers the hyperinflation of the 1920s, although there are other countries that have experienced hyperinflation. Argentina, for example, many Argentines in middle age can tell you how ruinous hyperinflation is, how it can, I mean,

inflation is bad enough, and it has lots of, you know, social effects that go undiagnosed, you know, but hyperinflation is something that humbled emperors. It brings down empires. It destroys societies. It leads to dissolution, civil war and collapse, and obviously systematic impoverishment. Is it different for the United States, though, because of the liquidity of our bond market, as an example, and there's no real alternative for it. No one's going to go out and buy Chinese bonds. The United States market is liquid, in spite of the fact that, yeah, the currency still can continue to look a little shaky, and we're still the reserve currency for right now. How would you evaluate it all right now? I know it sounds a little weedy, but I'll ask.

No, no, it gives us, no, it's a valid question. And I mean, it's the reason that Argentina, for example, can't get away with inflating the way we can. We can export a lot of our inflation, as you say, because people buy our debt more readily. But that is still ultimately dependent on world confidence that the government will, you know, the U.S. government will be good on its, on its pledges and won't, you know, inflate its way out of debt. And if, if world global sentiment ever turns, then we're in big trouble. because even the U.S., the mighty U.S. government, if it can't find buyers willing to purchase debt, you know, the whole, the system falls apart. I mean, let's not forget, you know, the pound sterling was once upon a time the world's reserve currency.

That's right. You know, and there have been others before that. So, you know, nothing is, nothing is a given. And this, you know, at the height of Britannia, it was unimaginable that any other state of affairs could obtain. And yet today, you know, the people of, obviously Great Britain is long past your prime. And in a similar matter, most people can't imagine a world other than the world we have now in which, you know, the United States calls the shots. In other words, that's our normalcy bias, right? It is.

And that could change very quickly thanks to the pitiless laws of economics. You know, what the English poet of the late empire called, yeah, Roger Kipling called the gods of the copy book headings. You know, he used that as an example. He said, you know, the gods of the copy book headings come calling, you know, all of your sophistries, all of your, all of your conceits vanish away. And you're reminded anew of the true nature of things. I want to run a scenario by you. I forget which financial analyst that I was reading that was predicting that President Trump will have no choice but to take the new Federal Reserve. And that this whole thing about, you know, beating up on Powell and getting the new guy, even though the new guy is supposed.

an interest rate hawk, right? But that he's going to have no choice but to drive interest rates down and down hard, especially given what's happening in Iran right now, which means that we're just getting ready to unleash a new torrent of inflation, but he can't, he has no choice but to do this because of the percentage of the budget right now that goes just to servicing the existing $38 or a $39 trillion dollar debt. does that sound like a reasonable thing? Because it almost sounds nutty that you would have, you know, an interest rate hawk coming in, and yet we're going to drive it down. We're going to

drive it down as low as we can. And then, you know, inflation be damned eventually. What do you think about that? Well, that sounds very plausible to me. And I mean, in the final analysis, on the final analysis, you know, the elite class, what's come to be called the Epstein class is, you know, looks after its own and the devil take behind most. And if that requires There's an inflationary or hyperinflationary episodes so that they have, you know, can protect their own assets, then so be it. But that's, you know, people don't understand. Well, they talk about it. What he talked about, though, is that it would lead to what he was saying was be a terrifying bull market, was the term that he used in which it would be a terrifying bull market in which we regular schmose, of course, are host.

But if you have assets, it's a great time. You know, it's a great time to be in the market, you know, that kind of thing. Yes, well, these irrationally exuberant markets are actually inflationary. People don't recognize. People think that inflation is when the price of your eggs doubles. Okay, and that's the last effect of inflation. Most inflation is manifest in asset markets via something called the Cantillon effect, which was discovered a long time ago by Richard Cantillon,

an economist who, by the way, understood inflation well enough that he was one of the few who was able to profit from the infamous South Sea bubble and get out, and I think the Mississippi bubble as well, which ran at the same time in France and Britain, the first modern inflationary episodes and got out before he lost his fortune. And then he pointed out, he said, you know, the thing about inflation is that it doesn't affect everybody the same way because there has to be a place, you know, there have to be spigots where the money enters the economy and people who are drinking at those spigots will benefit. So, you know, the money, you know, when the Fed, you know, buys government debt, it buys them from somebody.

It buys them from preferred dealers, large banks and money center banks, and mostly in New York City, but also in other cities. And those banks get first dibs on all the new money, and so do all the people that have their accounts there. And they get to buy stuff cheap before the price goes up, right? Right, and it gets plowed right into the stock market and into real estate. And that's why you have this unbelievable boom and bust cycle. It drives up to people to understand it, like, for example, the dot-com bubble, all these stock bubbles, all financial bubbles, in fact, are inflationary. They're created by inflation in the first place.

This stuff didn't exist prior to the 17th century because banking systems, such as they exist at the time, didn't have the ability to generate inflation on the epic scale that they have been able to sense, you know, the Bank of Amsterdam and so forth, going back to the early history, you know, in the 1600s, is when people first discovered, you know, what has been called the Mandrake mechanism,

this marvelous way of converting debt into money, we call inflation. But it's a relatively new thing. And so that's the people don't realize that. And so they look at the stock market and they go, this is a miracle of free enterprise. And the stock market is soaring or, you know, real estate is going up. And I'm flipping my house and, you know, made out like a band. Well, no, that's because all this new money is pouring into the economy at the asset level. And then eventually it starts percolating down to the level of the consumer.

And of course, it destroys savings bill. It destroys the saving ethos. It transforms popular morality such that people don't, you know, consider it quaint and outmoded to even think of saving money. Everything should be leveraged. Everything should be because leveraging is the way to go. In other words, savings is replaced by debt as the primary means of attaining prosperity. And this is a figmentary, you know, illusion created by inflation. You know, people like Peter Schiff, they're one of the rare economists, investors who actually understand this,

will tell you this. And, of course, every time that the, you know, that the economy fails to come to Armageddon and say, well, you see, they were wrong. No, no, you know, eventually, in the long run, we'll be right. You know, and when the crash comes, it's going to be devastating to make the 2007 collapse look like nothing by comparison. So what I'm alluding to, you know, predicting where the markets go based on the war activity, now and all the other unseen influences that will be coming to bear over the coming weeks and months then.

It sounds to me like you're still predicting that one way or the other, it's going to be two trillion dollars on the debt, and that's the part that's not being talked about enough. Is that the bottom line? Yeah, when we fight wars, which everyone expects that we win them, it tends to favor the stock market, you know, very different if we were fighting a war, let's say, against Russia, and people were expecting nukes to start raining down on American cities any moment. That would have a very different effect on the market. Because a lot of this, you know, in an inflationary market, perception is everything.

You know, I mean, confidence is absolutely everything. And so right now people are confident that one way or another, you know, obviously we're going to win this war. Obviously, we're going to get our way. And this has been the case for a long time. So there's not going to be that blow to public confidence. So the economy is kind of suffering this long-term death by 1,000 cuts. But sooner or later, something will happen. You know, there might be a nuclear attack on America or some other, you know, black swan event that severely shakes our confidence.

Remember what the stock market did it with the 9-11 attacks? Yeah. Well, I've often wondered if all it would take is one U.S. aircraft carrier to go to the bottom. Wouldn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's a fair point. Something unexampled that we haven't seen since, you know, World War II or something like that. you know, and who knows, we could go another 20 or 30 years and enjoy this type of, but sooner or later, something's going to happen that is going to absolutely shake this country

to its foundation and cause people to question if whether or not, after all, you know, America will be able to endure forever. And when that moment arrives, you know, the economic chickens will come home. I mean, if you look at the history of hyperinflation, most, although not all, the major hyperinflationary episodes of the last hundreds of years, have occurred in countries that are experiencing civil war or have experienced defeat in a major war, as Germany did in World War I and World War II. So usually, you know, there's some sort of major, other major crisis that comes about,

and if the conditions are already in place for hyperinflation, in this case, you know, massive amount of dollars around there, you know, all over the world that are not backed by any, any reserves, any concrete, you know, the conditions are already there. you know, the only concern is, you know, whether, whether politics will continue to be compliant, whether the rest of the world, as you say, will continue to buy America debt, American debt, and continue to, you know, to prostrate themselves before the American military might and all the rest of it. So, I mean, those are the questions. In other words, interesting times is what you're predicting here.

Okay, all right. We'll call it that. Absolutely. Steve, I know you're right on these issues. I appreciate your work at the news. American, John Burr's Society, the new American.com, the new American.com. Please sign up, subscribe, get involved with it. I think it's a great site. Great news and analysis there. Anything else I should mention before we take off? No, Bill, but thanks so much for the plug. And as always, it's been great

talking with you. All right. Steve Bonta, once again, Dr. Steve Bonta, economic expert publisher of the New American on KMED and KMED HD-1 Eagle Point Medford. KBXG grants pass.