Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/30/22 Jeff Deist on the State of the Economy

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, is back to talk about the strange economic situation we find ourselves in. Deist observes that the issue with today’s economic discourse is the focus on GDP and employment. What really matters, he says, is productivity. Through that lens, Deist helps us interpret the warped economy that the government brought about through its historic levels of intervention during the pandemic. Deist and Scott also talk about the importance of opposing war, the most destructive government policy of all.  Discussed on the show: Mises.org “In Latest Recession Signal, Money-Supply Growth Plummeted to a Three-Year Low in August” (Mises Wire) Dave Smith Breaks Down the Reasons Russia Invaded Ukraine on Joe Rogan 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; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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

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 scott horton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube dot com slash scott horton's show all right you guys i got a pretty great institute the libertarian institute but i admit that this guy's got the best institute in the libertary movement it's jeff diced

from maces welcome back how you doing man hi scott i'm doing good how are you I'm doing great. Listen, on behalf of everyone in my audience, because none of them own banks, we are all very worried about what's going on with the economy. Is it booming? Is it busting? Is it both? And what in the world are we supposed to do? Yeah, I would say it's busting, but it's not so easy to see because we measure these things in GDP.

And GDP can be juiced. GDP is just a number. And so if government creates a lot of spending through stimulus, fiscal, or monetary, then GDP number go up. And that gives the impression that the economy is growing. Also, we're in this very, very strange time, Scott, where there's a huge disconnect, a labor disconnect. There's lots and lots and lots of jobs going begging. but there's also increasing poverty, reduced savings rates, and more people concerned about

keeping their job. So I think what happened is that COVID convinced a lot of people, the COVID shutdowns and lockdowns, convinced a lot of people to just sort of stop trying. Maybe they were a little older in life and they said, you know what? I'm just going to limp along till I'm 62 and a half or wherever I can begin to collect Social Security. I hadn't planned to collect it until 65 or 67, but But, you know, I'm just a little too far outside of the envelope now for working. There's probably a lot of young people who got a little bit lost during COVID, and maybe now they're just spitting their wheels, going to perpetual college throughout their 20s, collecting degrees, for example, living with a bunch of roommates and traveling more, doing things other than just, you know, going straight into the job force. There's probably a lot of people who are maybe disabled but still able to work who gave up on working. There's probably a lot of state-at-home spouses who gave up on working.

So I think we're still in this weird time where the economy's not great, but at the same time employers desperately need people. It's very unusual in that sense. But the idea that it's a booming economy, I think is completely false. It's like saying that you are a great athlete because, you know, you stayed up all night and went running in the morning thanks to your meth habit, right? I mean, that's that's what we're living on. It feels very much to me like we are living on the fumes of a juiced up economy. So, yeah, this really seems to be a thing, right? So we have the typical boom bus cycle that we always go through with the inflationary money.

system. But because the lockdown's for so many people out of work, that's led to what you're describing here as this extra upward pressure on wages, right? Right as the rest of the economy is collapsing. And yet, like from the Fed's point of view and your college professor's point of view, it's upward pressure on wages that's causing the inflation that is the target of their clampdown. It's amazing to read the business press. where, you know, there was a piece in Bloomberg News that Kennedy's producers had sent me before I went on there. And you get deep enough in the article, and they say,

we're trying to force 1.3 million people out of work. And we think that if we can raise interest rates enough to ruin the economy bad enough, that 1.4 million people at the bottom of the wage scale, presumably, get forced out, then there will, won't be, then inflation will be licked. That's when the upward pressure on wages will have been defeated and then we can start getting back to work again. And I know that the Austrian

takes a bit different than that. Well, that's one way to curb inflation is have everybody really poor and unable to buy anything. Right. No one can take out a loan because there's nothing to invest in because everything is busted, right? I mean, that's perverse. And there's, look, it's not true that unemployment needs to rise to quell inflation. This is a misapprehension. These are two very different things. What matters in the economy is not employment. What matters in the economy is productivity. And productivity means that some businesses are successful and they earn a profit. They make more than they spend. That profit goes into capital accumulation in what we call CAPX and the accounting real capital expenditures. So they create more factories, more

equipment, better factories, better equipment, better processes. In other words, they invest in creating whatever good or service they create, better, faster, cheaper. And so the natural, the natural result of all that, a profit, capital accumulation, capital expenditure is actually deflationary. Absent government and monetary intervention, we should expect prices to be falling over time. We should expect things that were once luxuries like an automobile or a second automobile or airplane travel for, you know, 20th century examples of things that used to be basically for the wealthiest people in society that became standard fare for middle class folks because of the natural deflationary pressures of market competition and capital investment.

Okay, that's what we should be expecting in a healthy economy. So how many hours you work and how much you earn and whether you need one job or two jobs, jobs, you know, whatever it might be, all of that is a separate question from how productive the economy is. So they've created this idea that when the economy's booming, you know, that's inflationary, so we need for the economy to be stagnant. Whether something is booming or busting in the real sense is about profit and capital expenditures. It's not about unemployment or GDP or other numbers which can be juiced. But the irony here, is that the central bank thinks that a little bit of inflation is a good thing. As a matter of fact,

it's necessary. We need 2% inflation every year. That's our target. But boy, oh, boy, when it gets to be nine or ten, as they admit to now, I'm with Peter Schiff. I actually think it's more like 15 if you were to calculate it using the methods we used to use in the 70s and 80s. But nonetheless, let's just say it's nine or 10. Well, that's bad. So we got to quell that, but we need a little bit of it. So that seems like an odd position to take. But the idea that raising interest rates, which the central bank can't really do, they can try to do that. But they have a hard time in the market for loanable funds to actually make that happen. It takes a little while. It's not just like a switch that you flip. But as interest rates go up, that that in and of itself does

not at all mean that prices would necessarily drop. Now, for big ticket items, houses and cars, those are the main things for which at most folks borrow money or unfortunately college, but we'll touch on that maybe later. Yeah, on those big ticket items, the cost of borrowing does exert a downward pressure on prices as the interest rate goes up. But for the most part, for consumer goods, for retail goods, for groceries, for example, for all kinds of household items. When interest rates go up, all that does is, well, first of all, it knocks out or bankrupt or makes insolvent the more marginal firms in an industry because they have a lot of borrowing, a lot of debt, they can no longer service that debt. They're not as good or efficient

and making money to pay their debt. So generally speaking, as interest rates rise, the worse, the less capable companies in an industry go under. So that actually reduces supply and tends to increase prices. It also means that for companies to borrow, they have to pay more. They have to put more money into interest payments and less money into, expenditures, capital expenditures, hopefully, that increase the productivity with which they produce whatever good or service. So, you know, it seems like it's this article of faith. Well,

you know, to quell inflation, we need to raise interest rates. And I don't think that's actually true. I think that is two things which often happen in tandem, but correlation is not necessarily causation. So if we just sort of try to separate these things and tease them out a little bit and look at them, uh, individually, discreetly, we can see that there's no real reason why having interest rates go up should make, you know, the toothbrush we buy at target costs less. If anything, it should make it cost more. Hmm. Well, okay, so I guess that makes sense to me in the sense that the boom bus cycle, what it really does is it affects the higher or was it the lower, yeah, the higher, uh, stuff.

the longer-term investments, the mining and the factories and all of that, because those are the guys who are taking out the longer-term loans who are then getting surprised when the rates are going up. But I've always been curious about this because you talk about how when they're jacking up the rate, I mean, that means the federal funds rate, the overnight banks loaning each other rate. But why would they really need to force the interest rate up, especially when inflation is so high that it seems like it would make sense only for creditors to raise their interest rates to account for how much money they're losing to inflation now. So it seems like the actual capitalist, you know, creditors out there would be ahead of the central bank in raising interest rates rather than behind it.

Well, I think they would be. But some of them, the primary dealers, for example, are basically wedded to the Federal Reserve system. And so they, in a perverse sense, benefit from these lower rates because they're getting, they're parking money at the central bank if they need to borrow from each other, which they don't much have to do since 2008. You mentioned the federal funds rate, the overnight bank borrowing rate. They're also flushed with reserves that to meet their capital or reserve requirements, most of them don't really have to borrow from each other.

And so, yeah, all things said, you know, the interest rate that they have with the central bank is not that important to them. What's important to them is the spread between that interest rate and what they can actually charge their customers. Right. So the thing is, is you can try to nudge the economy. quite a bit using monetary policy at the Fed, but you can't make banks loan money. What really matters to banks loaning money is the creditworthiness of potential borrowers, which, you know, goes to the strength of the economy and credit scores and savings rates, whether they have enough collateral, all kinds of things. It's not really the interest rate that determines it, because high

interest rates or low interest rates, the spread on what banks get money, banks that deal with the Fed, the spread between what they get money from with the Fed and what they charge their, you know, either prime or subprime customers is really what matters, not the, not the underlying bank rate. Well, except if I guess we kind of conflate these things together then like the reserve ratio and the interest rate because it sounds like the easier it is for banks to print money, the more people they're going to find are credit worthy to take that money because that's their job. And in that what happened last time? They're like, man, we have all this, you know, virtual paper sitting here. Let's give it to people who will, you know, go bankrupt when the crippling balloon payment comes in a few years. But for right now, it can pay us. Well, that's great if the lender,

the bank in this scenario sells that commercial paper to somebody else before the borrower goes belly up. And there were lots of people who did great, lots of banks, lots of mortgage companies, lots of mortgage lenders, lots of mortgage lending agents who did fantastic in the 2000s before the crash because they were just basically selling loans hand over foot. And if you got out of that before the crash and never had to mark to market all the loans that you might have held, I mean, you were in great shape. It worked out just fine if you knew how to time it. But We shouldn't have these booms and bust if the Fed can really do what it claims it can do, which is smooth out all of these cyclical business problems.

And, of course, we've seen that the Fed can't do that. As a matter of fact, we're only, you know, about 15 years since the last serious crash. So if you had gone back to the 1910s when the Federal Reserve Act was being, sold to Congress and said, look, look, everybody, yeah, let's create this new system and they'll only be a big crisis every 15 years or so. I'm not so sure that would have sounded real good at the time. So if that's one of the main reasons to have a central bank is to smooth out these huge economic dislocations, well, then I have to give them a failing grade on that. Well, look, and that's the same thing for everyone listening to this or everyone who ever will

listen to this 500 years in the future or what? It's the story of all of our lifetimes. Boom bust. And that's what's so special about the Austrian school is you guys are the only ones who actually understand what the hell causes it and that it's the solution that causes it. What you just said.

The story that I learned in junior high well look, FDR created the Fed to smooth out these booms and busts that's what people believe. Apparently that's what people in charge believe. That that's what they're doing is smooth. smoothing them out. But if this is what they call smoothing them out, gee, I hate to see what the wilds of laissez-faire free market capitalism would look like. But it seems like probably

it wouldn't be as bad as this as my guess. Well, it's very difficult as a political program for libertarians or anybody else to sell austerity. It's very, very difficult because the recession is the cure. The pain is the cure. That's the thing. If you say, look, Go back to 2007, 2008. Look, folks, we've created this huge bubble. Interest rates have been way too low, and as a result, people have wildly over-borrowed. We've lent money to all these people who really weren't credit-worthy, who were maybe lying about their collateral or their income. And so, as a result, we have all these people who are over-leveraged, and the housing market needs to just collapse.

We need a bunch of banks and mortgage lenders and individual homeowners to go bankrupt. we need to clear all the bad debt off the books. We need to mark to market the real value of all those homes. You know, it wasn't 700 grand for some, you know, little small ranch house out on the outskirts of Vegas. It wasn't worth 700 grand. It was worth 400. You know, we have to write down all, you know, to have a huge loss across the economy. The stock market would, of course, respond to this probably very badly.

A bunch of people would have their immediate personal lives and, credit ruined. A bunch of banks would go under and a bunch of investment banks who owned a lot of commercial mortgage paper and packages would also go under, you know, this is all going to be very, very painful. But if we just allow these bankruptcies and insolvencies to happen, all these banks can reassemble under new ownership, new management, new boards. All these homeowners can go rent for a while, rebuild their credit and get back on the saddle, you know, this and this and that. And so we'll have a very painful correction for, let's say, 18 months or 24 months. But after that, the whole economy will be on much firmer footing to go forward.

Well, okay, yeah, you know, go run for office on that one and see how far as it gets you. So democracy encourages the political class and the banking class to continually kick the can down the road to solve every crisis with more money, more debt, more credit. It's very, very scary. You know, I mean, now we're in a situation where nobody knows where it all ends. Right. You know, this is, again, this is how I learned about the business cycle in the first place and about the central bank in the first place is, well, if it was up to Congress, they would just inflate and inflate and inflate all the time, which is really, really bad.

And so, thank goodness, we have this independent, apolitical Federal Reserve that can take the alcohol out of the punch bowl or whatever at the right time when political. the pressure would be to inflate, the Fed can do the right thing and make everybody take their medicine, Jeff Tice, they told me. Well, look, there are plenty of folks who think that all this should just be done on the fiscal side. M.MTers believe that the people we used to call greenbackers, I believe former representative Dennis Kucinich was one.

And the great financial writer, the great chronicler of Fed malfeasance, know me, prints is one. People who just say, look, it would be far more transparent. If we simply had Congress direct the Treasury to print and create dollars as needed to respond to crises, expand it, or, you know, make it smaller depending on the conditions and the financial state of the nation, and we don't need a central bank at all, and that this is this roundabout process of issuing treasury debt and then selling it around the world and having the Fed buy it back oftentimes from commercial banks or other investors, you know, that's all just obscures what's really going on. And even from a more libertarian perspective, if Congress were charged with this, I mean,

you know, whom you elect to Congress every two years is a lot more visible to most people than what the Fed's doing. So if all of a sudden prices went through the roof, you could blame your Congress critter. So there's an argument that all this would actually be more transparent and and more understandable to average people if we simply did this using fiscal policy alone and there wasn't any monetary policy. Hey, man, you guys should all sign up for the Libertarian Institute's email list.

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That's libretasbela.com. you guys check it out this is so cool the great mike swanson's new book is finally out he's been working on this thing for years and i admit i haven't read it yet i'm going to get to it as soon as i can but i know you guys are going to want to beat me to it it's called why the vietnam war nuclear bombs and nation building in southeast asia 1945 through 61 and as he explains on the back here all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974. But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War

by the great Mike Swanson available now. All right. So boom and bust ever since the Fed before and but especially ever since. But now, isn't it right that the crash of 2020 is kind of this whole weird other animal because the recession, which I believe we were overdue for a recession and a pop into the bubble anyway. And Trump was obviously desperately afraid it was going to come before re-election day. And then it did come, but it came in the form of the governors locking the whole country down. Talk about deflationary. Locked everybody in their house. You can't take out alone that way. And so I'm looking at this Ryan McMacken piece, Ryan McMakin piece at mesas.org where he has the chart of the M2 money supply

and just the insane and you can see how this is what's causing it not what's the result of the boom and bust in the economy or at least it plays a great part in it but you can see where he has labeled

2020 recession is this massive crash but then it's followed by this massive and much narrower spike on the chart compared to the previous bubbles because that was all that stimulus money that they created and pushed into the economy. And then as we started out with you explaining there about how the unemployment situation is so much different in this boom-bust cycle

because so many people being literally forced out of work had decided to stay there. And so that kind of, in other words, it's always this government intervention. trying to tinker around with the pricing structure and whatever that leads to these problems. But this, you just have such ham-handed intervention in the economy by the government here. It seems like it's making it very difficult for the thing to shake out. So they're raising interest rates way up beyond what they would want to see. And it is causing major crashes. I mean, in Ryan's piece, he shows what sure looks like the beginning of a major depression there

with the on that line graph of that M2 money supply now you know going down down down but then the question is how high do they have to raise interest rates above the current rate of inflation above the real rate of inflation or the one that they say in order to really stop the inflation so that then they'll stop cranking the interest rates up and making things more difficult for people that way so I mean can you compare it like that is you know my on something are missing more things about the differences and sames in this cycle versus the last one? Well, if you go back to the late 70s and early 80s, yes, people were literally paying 15% or more on mortgages. But at the same time, they were also getting 15% or more on simple savings

vehicles, like a six-month CD or a savings account at the bank. Okay. And both of those numbers, the Fed funds rate and the, you know, roughly the average interest rate that you could, that a typical consumer could go earn on a safe type, simple, short-term investment. Both those numbers were at least five points north of CPI. So there was a positive return on savings relative to CPI of maybe five points. the early 80s when Volcker was at his at his peak okay so fast forward to today 40 years later and you'll find the opposite you'll find if you're lucky you can go get nah maybe in the in the mid two percents on a six month CD you can now get over three on a 10 year treasury but on something short term it's still below 3 percent but real inflation real CPI is at least 10 so you're so you're losing 7% just trying to tread water. So that's a big difference between now and then. I don't know

how to explain that other than just pure manipulation. I don't think that this represents just supply and demand for loanable funds or anything like that. So I don't know how people are supposed to make it unless they're getting raises at work or increasing their business income or whatever it might be more than nine, ten percent a year. And that's not too many people I know. So I've seen some attempts at figuring out how much more average families are paying now versus two years ago for just their basic household budgets, gas, groceries, et cetera, out of a year. And I've seen estimates of like $6,000 to $7,000. Man, oh man, that's, that is a lot of money. when you look at it that way.

Yeah. Well, and I sure wonder, I can't help but wonder, not to take this whole conversation in this direction, but there's an election season coming up here, these midterms, and I wonder how strong the reaction is going to be against the current regime. Not that the Republicans are any different, but that's how it usually plays out,

is people really react to this kind of economic pressure, right? Well, sure. I mean, presidents usually do poorly in their, terms of their first four-year term. I mean, that sort of standard issue. And plus Biden is a severely wounded figure, I think. So look, if this election is about the economy, then the incumbent party should take a bloodbath. The Republicans have zero answers to this, by the way. I mean, it's absolutely uncanny how useless Republicans are at explaining or advocating any measure of market. or ownership or opportunity as opposed to central planning, dependency, despondency of socialism.

But that's what Republicans do is they blow winnable elections. But if this, you would think that the Biden administration would probably suffer politically as a result of this. But, you know, we've got a lot of things to divert us. We've got issues like trans, abortion is a very hot issue right now, these terrible school shootings, gun control is a big issue right now. So, you know, we'll see. I really don't know the answer to that. And that's why I so desperately wish, and you're going to be mad at me, Scott. I so desperately wish we had sort of a capitalism property rights party in this country.

And I know, look, I know all about the LP. That does sound like a good idea. I know all about the LP. Let's not bring up the LP. But I mean, the truth of the matter is is that we don't have a great system. for parliamentary type coalitions in the U.S., and I know you and I are maybe not necessarily in agreement on that, but we've got these stupid rules that say these, well, basically what the Constitution says is the House and Senate shall operate by the rules they choose. That's about all it says. And so as a result, we've got this stupid two-party thing where the winner takes all in terms of running the entire show in the House and Senate, which means certain legislation can

never see the light of day, which means certain committee hearings can never be held. And so it's, it's really unfortunate. And I mean, I don't know if you've read Hazlid on this, but I would prefer, I have big detractors on this one, but I'd much prefer a British or Canadian-style parliamentary system where we could have a bunch of parties and have, you know, single-issue coalitions come together to elect a prime minister or something. And then they sort of fall apart after that. I would love to see a little bit more rough and tumble. But, man, the Republicans and Democrats will absolutely drive this. this country into an abyss before they will yield a scintilla of political power. And all the incentives are there to make them do that.

That's what's so disheartening and sickening about our political system. So in my view, all the good and happy and true and beautiful things that are happening in this country are happening way far away from any of this. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not opposed to having a parliament. elementary type system and principle, I would worry that you get, you know, kind of the sort of factionalism that we don't want to see around racial and religious lines and this kind of thing in the ways that it's one benefit of the parties is it does make people form these coalitions.

It's just unfortunate that, of course, it's the Bushes and the Clintons and the McCain's and the Bidens become the ones who rule the consensus up there. That's what, you know, their corporate masters demand that you know this is what we get this kind of neoliberalism this like horror movie version of libertarianism right where it's not really socialism it's not really fascism it's it's sort of like capitalism in russia it's a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and the state that they own and bend to their will against us you know so um that definitely ain't the way it's supposed to be and i'm willing to fight about it and as far as having a free market and property rights party, look, I mean, geez, we only took over the LP a few months ago,

give us a chance. But I think that, look, the LP all along was full of people who believed in freedom and property rights and things. But I think you've got people now who really want to fight about it in a way, well, in my kind of a way. This is what I love about David Stockman so much, right? David Stockman has my same, you know, let's burn the place down kind of attitude. only he understands all this stuff about money and things that I don't.

But that whole, the spirit of, like, let's go get them, I think is something that has been lacking, but that I think is no longer. And I think we got a lot of great potential built up in the LP right now, ready to be unleashed. So we'll see how it goes in the next little while. Okay. Yeah.

Fair enough. Absolutely. We got, we got, we got something in mind. Jeff Dice, stay tuned, man. It's going to be great. And listen, you know what? We're the best on the most important things. So it's not like we're going to get our guide past the electoral college, probably.

But are we going to be able to make some headway with the American people and explaining the true nature of what's really wrong with what's going on around here? Yeah, I think it'll be second only to the Ron Paul Revolution. And there's a potential to surpass it. if we play it right. So let's see. Okay. I can hear the skepticism here. So what's your idea? You want a new party to try to do what they haven't done yet? Well, I think there is a huge anti-war, an untapped anti-war constituency in America. And it doesn't have to be ideological as much as it is just about war fatigue. I mean, you even notice with this Ukraine thing, there's fatigue because it isn't easy.

This, you know, Putin might grind for years. And now we've got a potential escalation with this pipeline. You've got Putin's speech today. You've got increased talk about nuclear powers and nuclear weapons. So, I mean, there's, there are a lot of people out there who are really war-weary after Iraq and Afghanistan in this country. And so I think that's a, that's something where there's no natural constituency for these endless wars. It's a very made-up political constituency in and around the Beltway. So, you know, whoever can tap into that, I think Tulsi tried to a little bit. She had a little bit of her finger on that pulse, you know, call it populist non-interventionism or populist real politic.

So I think I certainly hope that whoever, rents for president in two years on for whatever party is out there saying look right now number one we got to stop having these wars we we you know we we have to not have a war with Putin and Russia we need to not have a war with China we did not have a war with Iran I mean that's first and foremost you know everything else is secondary to that yeah well you're singing my tune speaking of which gave Smith's appearance on Joe Rogan the other day. I don't know if you saw the whole thing, but the clip that they used to promote it on YouTube is Dave breaking down the history behind the Russia-Ukraine War, and it's got 2 million

views so far. So, in other words, he's catching up with John Meersheimer's speech on YouTube already for being the person who explained this to the most people. So, and we're just getting gone, so. Well, God forbid we let comedians run countries. You know what? I mean, that's the thing. People, some guy was attacking Dave on Twitter and going, how come he's interviewing a comedian about this? And Dave says, yeah, well, comedians are definitely not qualified to comment on Ukraine, just to run it.

Everybody knows that. Fair enough, Dave. So, yeah, and he killed it, too. He absolutely nailed it. If you check out that one clip, if you check out, if that's the only thing you watch of that, check out that clip on YouTube. It's really great. And so anyway.

That's one thing for me to be optimistic about is the future of getting the libertarian message out in the libertarian politics. And frankly, you know, I usually don't say this publicly, but what the hell? It is kind of the reality of the situation, right? Is that Rand Paul refused to carry the torch. And he was the one that everybody was counting on. Hey, young Ron in the Senate. And everybody, all of Ron Paul supporters all gave him their money and said, great. now, you know, Ron's going to retire, but we got his son up there.

And his son is, of course, voted right on a few things and done some great, you know, arguments with Fauci and stuff like this. But from 2011 on, when he took office, he did not want to be the national leader of our movement. And so we didn't have one. We went from Ron Paul to nothing. And so we had, you know, the Mises Institute, thank God. but we didn't have anything on that level to draw that attention.

And I think that's what we're working on building back up right now with the LP in our next presidential candidacy here. So I think there's a need in the marketplace for it, Jeff, as you just said. So let's do our best to fulfill that, like good capitalist libertarian businessmen. Well, if we think, about if markets are just another word for social cooperation what human beings do if you leave them alone then war is is just another word for the negation of markets so you can have war or you can have market economy you can't have both yep absolutely right about that and that is the

message you know at the top of the priorities for our movement and for the party now and from now on we're against central banking and war. That's the bottom line of all of this stuff. And that's how you know whether you belong with us or not, too. Those are our priorities. So, hell yeah. All right, you guys, that's Jeff Dice at the Mises Institute. Jeff, thank you for your time on the show.

Hey, anytime. I love being on the show. Appreciate you, man. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com. anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.