Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/22/22 Jeff Deist on Inflation, the Housing Market and the Death of Savings

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Scott is joined by Jeff Deist, the President of the Mises Institute, to discuss the bizarre economic moment we are living through. Deist puts into perspective the historic levels of economic stimulus ...that the Federal Reserve injected into the economy in 2020. The intervention was unprecedented in both scale and speed, and we’re already feeling the effects. Scott and Deist talk about the state of housing markets and where in the past we should look to better understand where the economy is headed.   Discussed on the show: Episode where Bob Murphy and Jon Schwarz Debate Whether Inflation Is a Good Thing The Human Action Podcast Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute, where he serves as a writer, public speaker, and advocate for property, markets, and civil society. He previously worked as a longtime advisor and chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, for whom he wrote hundreds of articles and speeches. Follow him on Twitter @jeffdeist. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got jeff diced now he used to be chief of staff for the greatest american hero ron paul back when he was a congressman for many years and now he is the president of the
Starting point is 00:00:59 Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, the Mises Institute, Mises.org, Mises.org, and they are the guys who understand economics as compared to everybody else. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Jeff? Hi, Scott. I'm doing good. How are you? I'm doing pretty good, but you know what? I look at these numbers going up and down and making everybody just miserable out there. And people are looking for which ways north in a storm here. what are we supposed to do? What's going to happen? And what the hell is the dang deal, man? Where do we even start? Well, it's scary because it's worldwide, too. This isn't simply something that's happening in the United States. And it is certainly no longer simply something that can be mostly or even partially ascribed to the supply shutdowns, which happen across the Western world and across the East as a result of COVID policies.
Starting point is 00:01:57 I think at this point, that argument about supply chain, which, of course, affects the supply side of supply and demand, that's getting a little long in the tooth. Now, that doesn't mean that supplies do not continue to be disrupted, and that there are not still lots of instances of cargo ships rotting, basically, at anchor just offshore U.S. ports. That is absolutely still happening. The question of why and how you might undo that from a policy perspective or otherwise is, is a different question. And I think we have to look at the economy politically, and we have to look at it in terms of economic theory, two different things. So politically, you just mentioned, yeah, it's getting weird out there. And that means people feel it. It means people are uncomfortable. It's a visceral thing. They see, obviously, when they buy gas twice a week or whenever, they see that right in their
Starting point is 00:02:53 face. But more importantly, the grocery store, those are the two biggies that I think. are going to be very hard for the Biden administration or anybody else to hide from people because it's really, really strange times if you go to your local grocery. I normally stop at a Walmart market, which happens to be, not a full on Walmart, but like a little Walmart neighborhood market that's right on the way home from my house. And just strange things as to what will sometimes be out of stock. Like lately, they never seem to have chicken breast. If you go to the chicken section, They just have a few little wings and a few little drumsticks, but they don't have much. And so you think, well, is that the result of something happening at Tyson's Chicken, or is that a problem with employment at Tyson's Chicken?
Starting point is 00:03:39 Who knows? I mean, you know, you'd have to go talk to the grocery manager and trace all this. But, I mean, people have this sense that things are unraveling, that things are out of control, and that nobody has a real plan for reining in all of this. inflation, which politically we define as price inflation. And the fact that they feel this shows that they happen to be right. I mean, that's actually correct. Nobody is in charge and nobody knows how the hell we're going to stop it. So that political calculation is right. Yeah. Well, you know, I had a debate. We need to follow up on this, but I had a debate on the show between Bob Murphy and my old friend, John Schwartz, who's a progressive, maybe even a leftist.
Starting point is 00:04:22 I think he's a progressive, but I really like him because he always was really good on George W. Bush back in those days and stuff. So we have this kind of friendship. And he had written this article about, no, inflation is good because, hey, you can buy a house and dollars, pay back in times, these kinds of cliches. And Bob was saying, well, yeah, there's some truth to that, but there's also these other things. But I hear nothing but complaints. I don't hear people saying, and maybe I'm just not listening in the right circles, or maybe the people who are the beneficiaries of this inflation don't recognize. recognize exactly, you know, that they're winning and not losing. I'm not sure how it works. But it seems to me like inflation is just making everyone absolutely miserable. They can't
Starting point is 00:05:02 afford even to get to work to make money that they can't afford to get to work with. Well, I think what your friend is alluding to is the idea that inflation benefits debtors and it hurts creditors. And the creditor class tends to be the black rocks of the world and the Goldman Sachs of the world and the one percenters and the Nancy Pelosi. So if someone's going to feel pain in this environment, it ought to be them and not the average Joe who's just trying to deal with his car loan. But here's the problem with that is that both mortgages and car loans, which are the two main things, I guess other than college education, the two main things for which people tend to borrow money, those rates of interest have doubled just since January of this year.
Starting point is 00:05:47 not that long ago, people were paying well below 3% on commercial mortgage, just people with, you know, decent credit. And now people are paying well above five and six for that. So just the interest rate part of your mortgage has doubled. And the same thing's happening, of course, in the auto loan sector, where we've now seen people go into seven-year car loans. I mean, it used to be five years, 60 months. Now you go into seven years and you know, I mean, it's just,
Starting point is 00:06:16 even if you go buy a brand new car, you're going to be underwater and upside down for a big part of that seven years, meaning you're going to owe more than the car's worth, Blue Book. So that's it, you know, the idea that we should all live on debt and that that should be the way that average people conduct their lives. They don't own their house outright. They don't own their car outright. They just make payments. And this is A-OK. and maybe someday when you're 75, you'll own it, and then you'll just give it to your kids or whatever when you die.
Starting point is 00:06:50 Yeah, I think people are starting to rethink that, and I hope that people start to think again about ownership and about property. And, you know, maybe it's better to be out in the sticks somewhere with a piece of real land that you can buy for $150,000 with, you know, an old, crappy house on it that doesn't have a fancy kitchen or whatever. then to have a McMansion in the Burbs for six or 700 grand, which is going to make you basically a surf for a long, long time in less number go up, which we assume is always going to happen. But I think we're on the cusp of a pretty nasty decline in housing. And I'll go out on a limb and say that. And I would even go so far as to say to anyone thinking about buying a house right now, maybe not late. and maybe not in all markets. But in most markets, anyone thinking about buying a house
Starting point is 00:07:43 would probably find that in 18 months they're going to do better. Well, you know, actually, that's what I'm counting on if I can ever get out from the IRS. It would have been nice if I could have bought a house back before they doubled in nominal value here in Austin, where I live. If I'm going to ever buy a house now, I'm going to have to move out to Lano or something. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:08:05 I bet I ain't the first one he thought of that either. I'll end up living out in the prairie. out east somewhere but anyways and so this goes right to the point too which like let's say some middle class people are able to you know overall they do benefit from the devaluation of the dollar in the sense of taking out a 30 year mortgage and ending up getting cost of living increases over that 30 years that make that original price and principle that they agreed to pay much less as you say interest rates go up but inflation right now is beating interest rates that's for sure so let's say there's some truth to that but then that's really the
Starting point is 00:08:46 middle class that's benefiting from that but poor people and working class people are out on their ass and that's the thing too it's like the old bill hicks joke about like hey if there's just a few of these guys i'd be like well they're bombs that's why they're bombs is because they're bombs but when there's hundreds of thousands of them everywhere they can't all just be hobos and Winoes and Krusty punks, right? These are people who, you know, even if they have jobs,
Starting point is 00:09:15 they're still living in their car because the rents have gone up just absolutely incredibly for people who are making hourly wages. I mean, what are they supposed to do? And we see what they're doing. They're living under bridges, Jeff.
Starting point is 00:09:29 And then they're under arrest for living under a bridge. Well, you're really at Ground Zero in Austin in terms of crazy growth. and there's really no political or even economic policy that can make houses magically appear under any conditions if the population's growing faster than you could reasonably build decent houses. So, I mean, there's always that.
Starting point is 00:09:52 Austin is fortunate in a sense in that you can always go out further in Austin, in a place like Tampa, Florida, which is a really hot market right now. As far as the middle class versus the poor, look, the middle class might benefit from inflation in terms of, as you mentioned, their mortgage or their car payment, assuming they've got a fixed rate of interest, which is not always correct to assume. And in most of the world, for example, the idea of a fixed rate mortgage is not a thing. Mortgage has changed as interest rates change. So that's a little scary. But more importantly, even if you do have a fixed rate, you're probably hoping to sell it someday for more and have a capital gain. And
Starting point is 00:10:36 you know, the money for which you're going to sell it, and that gain is also being sliced and diced by inflation. So, I mean, there's always a piper to pay, but... And then you've got to live somewhere. Well, you have to live somewhere. Where are you going to buy if things are still going up? But it's the poorer folks. I happen to know a lot about Tampa and the real estate market there because of some friends and because I do a radio show there. But, I mean, that's a place that has a big tourist economy, a lot of restaurants and resort-type things.
Starting point is 00:11:06 which you might expect in Florida as a result, versus, let's say, tech jobs, which are more concentrated in places like Austin and Miami. So you have all these folks who work for an hourly wage or tips or whatever it might be. And, you know, when the influx of residence is such, and when the influx of money created on both the fiscal and monetary side is such that it's rising much faster than new housings being built, well, you know, you have less affluent folks having to move further and further out or become homeless or live in their van or in their truck or live with friends or get a bunch of roommates even though they're beyond that age. I mean, this is very typical. And you can basically present someone with a rent increase.
Starting point is 00:11:51 You know, their lease is almost up or their month to month or whatever. You present them with a rent increase because that's, you know, the landlord, you can call them greedy, but the, you know, it's no different than the person trying to sell their house for as much as they can, trying to rent their house for as much as they can. And so the last, the landlord, you can, and so the landlord can present a rent increase, which really might as well be an eviction, right? I mean, like the current tenant is not going to absorb a $300 a month rent increase, let's just say. And this is very common across the Tampa Bay market. So it's a very tough time, and you go back, I mean, you can go back forever.
Starting point is 00:12:27 You can go back to the Civil War. You can go back to 1913 and the Fed. you can go back to 1971, you can go back to 99, 2000 now on Greenspan but let's just for sake of coherence just go back to 2008
Starting point is 00:12:43 which most of your listeners can remember and we're working and remember that terrible economy how scary it was during the financial crisis people were you know am I going to lose my job, am I going to lose my house and plenty of folks lost both and this is only 15 years ago you know this is this is recent
Starting point is 00:12:59 memory so we saw what the Fed and what Congress did then. They said, well, we got to do the only thing we know how to do, which is create money and credit on the monetary side and spend money on the fiscal side. We got to bail out AIG. We got to bail out B of A so they can buy countrywide. We got to bail out everybody except for laymen who took the fall at the outset. So this is what governments know how to do. They know how to produce money and credit, not goods and services. Big difference. know how to produce money and credit, and they know how to spend. And that's GDP. That juices the economy, makes things look better nominally. So 2008 looks like a children's table at Thanksgiving
Starting point is 00:13:47 compared to 2020. And let's not forget, that was still Trump. In March of 2020, when we were all sitting around looking at each other going, what the hell is COVID? And they did what they always do. The only thing they know how to do in a so-called crisis, I would argue COVID was not a crisis. That's a different debate. But they did what the only thing they know how to do. And this time around, what the Fed did was infinitely more than what it did back in 2000. Well, not infinitely, but it was degrees more. The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve Bank, which means everything they own, had gotten down below $4 trillion by 20, early late 2019. And it's now almost up at $9 trillion, almost doubled in just a couple of years.
Starting point is 00:14:39 So what is that? What's the Fed's balance sheet? Why should we care? Well, basically, it's mostly treasury debt that commercial banks held that it bought from them and recapitalized them in the process. So banks don't have to worry about solvency. They're a wash and cash. They got more money than they know what to do with in terms of reserves,
Starting point is 00:14:56 but they're still not lending to the extent you might think they would. and then it wasn't just banks. Remember all those fiscal stimulus bills? Three trillion, basically $7 trillion between Trump and Biden administrations in Congress. Well, that $7 trillion, unlike the money the Fed created, which mostly sits parked in the accounts of commercial banks. But that fiscal money, that's, whoa, that was injected straight into the veins of the U.S. economy. And there was how many trillions again? About $7 trillion all in.
Starting point is 00:15:32 And that's on the fiscal side. But now so on the Fed side? It's not the monetary side. Sorry to interrupt your narrative here, but just you're telling me, though, that they pulled the same trick that they did in 08, where the Fed created all this money to keep all their friends, the banks hole. But then they paid them an interest rate high enough to prevent them from loaning all that out, which would have multiplied a billion times to prevent price inflation there. But then Congress went ahead and did it anyway. Congress went ahead and did it anyway. But also the speed, the rapidity.
Starting point is 00:16:06 In 08, it took them almost until about 2012, 2013 to go from less than a trillion to four trillion in assets on the Fed's balance sheet. Here, it just took them 18 months to go from 3.8 to 9 trillion with a T, folks. So it was faster. So you, meaning dollar holders, the audience, you guys basically got to recapitalized commercial banks. It would be great to be in an industry where every time your ballot sheet gets a little shaky, Uncle Sam recapitalizes you.
Starting point is 00:16:39 That's, you know, but there are some other industries for which that happens, AIG, insurance, for example, that happened to them. But also, let's not forget the airlines. Our friends at the airlines have more cash than they had before COVID. They've got more cash on their balance sheets today than they had before COVID.
Starting point is 00:16:59 because that $7 trillion on the fiscal side, again, we're separating fiscal for monetary, that $7 trillion went to state and local governments. It went to PPP loans so people could pay their employees to sit at home and not actually produce goods and services. It went to airlines to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. It went to all kinds of totally unrelated pork project, totally unrelated. Every time there's a big spending bill, the lobbyists all around, around D.C. get together with the committee staffers, not the members of the House and Senate,
Starting point is 00:17:34 the committee staffers in the appropriations committees. Okay, this is all kind of below the surface. They get together and just every conceivable grab bag, you know, we get, well, let's get some money for NPR, let's get some money for the Kennedy Center, you know, whatever it might be. And so $7 trillion injected directly into bank accounts, directly into businesses, to state and local governments to families in the form of stimulus checks, well, that that got spent. That's getting spent. And that's the big difference between this time around in 08. Right. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on
Starting point is 00:18:24 Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years,
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Starting point is 00:19:13 Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen and Thurton. think libertarian audio books. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate.
Starting point is 00:19:44 And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Reese Erlich. That's listen and think.com. Okay. So I'm glad that you make it. all analogies to the previous booms and bust and this kind of thing. Because, you know, as an economist, I'm a great anti-war guy, Jeff. I look at this from a very layman kind of point of view, but a layman who read Jackal Island when I was still a kid. So I do, you know, I have it strayed, sort of,
Starting point is 00:20:16 at least I think I know how to ask the right questions. So in my experience, you have this huge boom. Let's just go back to the 90s real quick. This huge boom in the dot-coms. in housing and other things, but just the dot-com's crash, they kept the housing bubble going, and then came the Iraq War II bubble and the housing bubble of W. Bush, and then that's the crash
Starting point is 00:20:39 overweight that you're talking about. And then I kind of look at it, I prefer if you differ with me and help me understand different, but I sort of look at it, like 2020 was the crash we had coming anyway from the giant bubble of the Obama era that lasted somehow
Starting point is 00:20:55 all the way through Trump, but essentially the governors play the role of Volker, and rather than just raising interest rates, they just made commerce illegal to whatever great percentage of a degree there for a little while. And that served to essentially cause enough deflation in the system to count as, you know, essentially a crash. And then as you're saying, though, they made up for that in real time by immediately then dumping this whole new 2009-plus level of injection of liquid into the, in other words, of money in to replace the wealth they had destroyed, leading to this new bubble. But then, so the way I keep here in the analogy explained, Jeff, is that now instead of thinking of this as the 1990s or the W. Bush era or the Obama Trump era, even, those bubbles, that we should be thinking of this time more like the 1970s, where they're going to keep raising interest rates, but we're going to keep having crashes anyway.
Starting point is 00:21:56 We've got a bare market in Bitcoins. We've got a bare market in gold. We've got a bare market in stocks. You've got a bare market and everything, while price inflation is still going up, which I don't know what that means about M1, 2, and 3, and the real monetary inflation. Maybe we have real deflation there already, or definitely not yet, or what? So that's what I'm always trying to figure out, is on the timeline in my head, and the boom and the bus cycle, where are we? And then if this isn't, I guess this, if it's the 70s, that means
Starting point is 00:22:28 it's not the same boom bus like you're used to. It's this weird sort of stagflation where you're constantly crashing and inflating at the same time anyway. And then that lasts until nuclear war or the next Volker comes or something like that, right? So now talk to me. Well, I agree with the analogy to the 70s. I think that's correct. Here's the big difference. You may earlier, that interest is still much higher than the mortgage rate you might get on a house in the car. So in that sense, it's rational to borrow. But here's what's different from, let's say, the peak of inflation, 40 year ago peak of inflation 42 years ago in 1980. When things that, that's when we, that was the high watermark for CPI up until recently for the last several
Starting point is 00:23:17 decades. So if you go back to 1980, and let's say CPI was running, that depends, 7, 8, 9 percent annually, but calculated month to month. Well, here's the difference. Back in 1980, you could go and get a perfectly safe savings account at a bank or a short-term certificate of deposit at the bank, you know, basically as safe of a savings investment as you could have. And you could get 14% on it. So you could actually still make money above inflation by saving. Today, inflation's, well, ostensibly 9.1%. I mean, Joe Salerno just wrote an article that says it's probably more like 17%. And I, you know, there's a whole story behind that. It was on mises.org a couple days ago. But nonetheless, so let's just accept that it's 9%. Well, that's fine.
Starting point is 00:24:14 but if you go get a simple CD for six months, or if you could go get a simple savings account of your bank, it's going to be in the twos and that something 2%. So you'll be losing six and a half, seven percent a year. So that's different. You could still save in the 70s. That doesn't mean it was easy. That doesn't mean you didn't lose your job.
Starting point is 00:24:33 That doesn't mean you weren't getting hit by inflation. It just means you could still save. You didn't have to go out and try to figure out, oh my gosh, should I buy Tesla? Should I buy Bitcoin? know, oh my gosh, I got to have a Robin Hood account and somehow try to keep up halfway with inflation. You know, that's a huge difference. And I would love to ask Jerome Powell why that is. Why is it? The last time inflation was this high, I could get 14% on a CD, and now I can get
Starting point is 00:25:01 two and a half percent. I'd love, man, I would kill to hear his answer for that. It would probably be a long one. Yeah. It would probably be a long one. But look, you're right. And I think this inflation is really going to change people's mindset and perception. I think it's going to feel more like the 70s where you're in a foot race all the time. Yeah. Well, now, so were there housing crashes through the 70s, too? Or that got prolonged until Volker came? Now, housing was a very different market in the 70s just because of mortgage interest rates. I mean, if you go back and you say back before the big short and all the, you know,
Starting point is 00:25:44 know, the crazy liar loans to strippers and cab drivers in Vegas and, you know, some people making 40 grand and having 10 houses, you know, that sort of thing. Things weren't really like that in the 70s. You had, it was basically 20% down and at least 10% interest rate towards the later 70s. And, you know, borrowing no more than, let's say, three at the outside four times your household income, which back then more frequently tended to be one income. You know, so it just wasn't the same frothy thing. And I would lay that all at the feet of Greenspan and Bernanke. They're the ones who turned the housing market into a slot machine. And now when you adjust for inflation on the price of a house from then and now, it's a constant
Starting point is 00:26:34 or it's way higher compared to the average salary then and that kind of thing? It's higher. The price of the house is higher, but the money. monthly payment adjusted for inflation and adjusted for average wages is not. I mean, this is kind of a myth that it's so much harder for young people today by a house. I mean, it is in some ways because the damn price is so high. But up until recently, until mortgages started rising again just in 2022. But let's say for the last five years, if you had decent credit and you could come up with that down payment, I mean, the down payment's the hard part, especially getting into an inflationary environment. I mean, let's say your rent's going up.
Starting point is 00:27:12 Your rent's going up, and you're trying to save a down payment. In the Tampa market, the median house, Scott, the median house is like $600-something,000. So what's 20% of that? Yeah, well, come to my world. You need $120,000 for a $20,000 down payment. You're trying to save $5,000 a year. You're not going to make it. So this is the evil part, right?
Starting point is 00:27:38 Is it what we need is a horrible great depression to solve this massive inflationary crisis that they've created, right? The recession or depression is the cure. It's horrible to think of and politically, you know, running not only on austerity, but running on like, look, we need to go through, you know, 18 months or 24 months or 36 months of really hard times in this country in order to come out on the other side with some semblance of a real economy from which we can hopefully start. to build a sane foundation. I mean, that's, you know, that's just... And austerity for the billionaires first, right? The arms dealers and the bankers and Elon Musk and all these welfare queens and Cadillacs out there? The thing about wealth today, wealthy people, is that if you're Elon Musk, if you're Bill Gates,
Starting point is 00:28:29 you could lose 90% of your net worth and you'd still be an absolute elite who never had to work again, never had to worry about his kids or grandkids working. Whereas if you're the average person, if you lost 90% of your net worth, you know, you're on the streets. So it's, there are some, there's some definitely, I think, central bank fueled inequality in wealth. And it is crazy in numerical terms, how much more wealth, let's say Bill Gates has than an average person. But that's not the whole story. Because if we just look at zeros in a bank account, The difference is that because of capitalism, even average people get up in the morning and have a life that's more like Bill Gates's life than a person's, average person's life was like John D. Rockefellers, right? We, you get, you have some kind of habitation. It's not as nice as Bill Gates. Okay. You have some kind of car. You drive it to work. You, you know, his car is nicer. Okay. You drive it to work. You stare at a computer screen in an air conditioned office somewhere. He sits and stares at a computer screen in an air condition office. So there's some way.
Starting point is 00:29:38 ways in which wealth inequality has actually been lessened by the fact that capitalism, God willing, is a deflationary force, which brings things like air conditioning and travel and cheap calories and all the other things to us that make, that in some ways shrink the distance between us and the ultra wealthy. But in other ways, it's worse than ever. And in those ways, I would say it's because of central banks. Yeah. All right. Well, one last question real quick, and then I got to go here. But I don't know if you saw Stockman today. He's got the line graph of housing prices. And back to what you were saying is, there's a crash coming soon because that line graph is just nuts. But so the question is, when is it coming? Because I knew that there was a housing bubble all through the Bush years, but it didn't come true until he only had two months left to go in August. So I know Austrians like to say, no, I plead innocent. I don't get to say. I don't have to say win ever, but I want to win here, please, sir. Well, and the difference between housing and stocks is it's hard enough to time stock market, you know, spikes or crashes or falls. And if you could, of course, you'd make money shorting or going long or whatever you would do. But, you know, housing, the difference is you've got to live your life in the meantime.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Well, all this stuff is happening. You've got to live somewhere. And the question is you're paying rent or you're paying a mortgage or unless you're wealthy enough to just buy a house, I guess, for cash. So I would say that because interest rates are going to keep going up for the foreseeable future, and because I'm not saying they're going to get to 10%, but they're going to get to 5, 6, 7. And because some of this froth caused by COVID, among other things, is going to die off. I think in the next couple of years, houses are going to go down. I think that's for sure.
Starting point is 00:31:33 And I think David Stockman, you know, David Stockman gets a lot of grief. for being a perma bear for you know being the boy he cries wolf all the time and i would say about david stockman is that you know he's like zero hedge or or black coffee david stockman should be consumed in the morning not right before bed uh because you'll have a you'll have a sleepless night but i don't think anybody understands the financialization i'll use that word of the economy the transference of wealth and money from laboring people who touch land and touch, you know, clean offices and change beds at motels and drive trucks and change tires and deliver food and work with farming and all that.
Starting point is 00:32:23 I don't think anybody has done a better job of explaining how these, so much of these people's one-time potential middle-class splendor has been sucked out by Wall Street and private equity and financial elites. And that's populist in tone. But I think it's also true. And I think he's a hero, absolutely. Awesome. Great place to leave it. And I'm sorry, I forgot to mention this at the beginning, but it's one of my favorites. I listen to it every time I'm on my way to the airport. It's the Human Action podcast hosted by Jeff Dice and most often co-hosted with Bob Murphy there at the Mises Institute. That's M-I-S-E-S-M-E-S-M-S dot org and the great Jeff Dice. Appreciate it, Jeff.
Starting point is 00:33:08 Thanks, Scott. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on K-P-F-K, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and liberal. Libertarian Institute.org.

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