The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Savanah Hernandez & Jeff Brown | 5/11/22

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Despite rising inflation, the New York Times argues that times haven't been this good since man landed on the moon. Host of "Rapid Fire" Savanah Hernandez joins to share the horrors she saw firsthand while visiting the border. Founder and chief investment analyst for Brownstone Research Jeff Brown joins to discuss President Biden's latest actions regarding quantum computing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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enlarge our clientele to the world entire. Trouve of little enterprises like on our own.com. Holy cow, as we get ready for Stu's 500th episode, 500th episode, we get you ready for

the Glenbeck Radio Program episode 14,500 in 82. Right. I'm just saying. But tonight we have a little, or today we have a little bit of everything. We have a fascinating look at the border, somebody who just got back from the border and told us some of the things they saw. And also were informed on with the border patrol.

It is much worse than anybody really, really thinks. And we spent an hour with Jeff Brown, who is a futurist, who is absolutely fantastic. guy who really knows high tech, we begin the conversation about quantum computing. It is closer than anyone thinks, and it is going to change everything, all the way from Bitcoin to military to batteries. We talked to him about all of those things, and banana milk. Just saying, banana milk, all on today's program. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

tens of millions of Americans, the good times are right now. Are you ready, Stu? This is good news. I'm excited. This is the era of great political division and dramatic cultural upheaval. But much more quietly, it has been a time of great financial reward for a large number of Americans. Now, I want you to remember the class warfare that has been going on. I want you to remember also that the true.

Truth is, wealthy Americans are getting wealthier. Everybody else is not. But we're not going to learn that in this. We're going to be corrected. For the 158 million people who are employed, prospects haven't been this bright since men landed on the moon. And as many as half of those workers have retirement accounts that were fattened by a prolonged bull market in stocks. There were 83 million owner-occupied homes now in the United States.

and at the rate they've been increasing in value, a lot of them are in fact giant piggy banks that families live inside. This boom does not get celebrated much, no, no, because it was a slow-build phenomena in a country where news is stale within hours. It's happened during a time of fascination with the schemes of the truly wealthy, see Elon Musk, and against the backdrop of increased inequality. If you were unable to buy a house because of spiraling prices, the storing amount of homeowners' equity is not really a comfort.

The queasy stock market might be signaling the boom is ending. A slowing economy, renewed inflation, high gas prices, rising interest rates could all undermine the gains achieved over the last few years. But for the moment, this flood of wealth is quietly redefining retirement, helping fuel Silicon Valley and stoking a boom in leisure and entertainment. It's boosting corporate profits by unprecedented amounts, while also giving just about everyone the notion that a better job is just within reach. More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily quit in March.

That's the highest number since the government started keeping statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week a few years ago, the monthly total was between 3 million and 3.5 million. It's now 4.5. Wow. Maybe it's easier to focus on the negative, but a huge number of people, maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well, says Dean Baker,

an economist, and co-founder of the liberal, of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. You'd have to go back to the late 1990s to find anything like this. Before that, the 1960s, this widespread wealth, this widespread wealth, according to the New York Times, throws light on why the number of workers who say they expect to be working past their early 60s has fallen below 50% for the first time. It accounts for the abundance of $1 billion startups known as unicorns.

Wow, that's the little guy went in there, isn't it? The $1 billion startups? Just the average Joe taking his lunchbox and his blue shirt to his tech startup. That's right. More than a thousand now, up from 200 in 2015. It offers a reason for the rise in interest in unionizing companies from Amazon to Apple to Starbucks as hourly workers seek to claim their share. And it helps explain why Dwight and Denise make a wait. The sign of prosperity is that workers have tried to seek their share.

Doesn't that mean they don't have their share? No, they're living in a giant piggy bank right now. So they can't get out. But they can't find money. They're seeking it. No, they got it all in their house in the piggy bank. They live in a giant piggy bank. Are you listening?

Well, you said 40 million households are doing well, but there's a hundred and twenty four million households in the United States. What about the other 84 million house? And it helps explain why Dwight and Denise Macchison just returned from a 12-day cruise through Germany. You know, I had not considered the... Dwight and Denise Mackleson part of the economy. Well, listen, our net worth has reached the millionaire level due to our investments.

Congratulations. Which was unfathomable when we were married 40 years ago, said Mr. McKinson, 76, who's retired from the U.S. Forest Service. The couple who live near Cordillane, Idaho, have a company. There are 22 million U.S. millionaires. Credit Suisse estimates, estimates, up from a fewer than 15 million. in 2014. Isn't that great? Well, that is great.

I know. That part is great. I know. That does not necessarily mean the economy is currently healthy. Right. When you're talking about investments, how you're getting the Mackleson family onto this wonderful 12-day cruise, it doesn't seem like when the markets are tumbling is the time to brag about that. No. Oh, my gosh.

Stu. What am I missing? You're missing the enlightenment that is coming from the New York Times. Yes. That I would agree I am. Some would have concentrated on, wait a minute, 22 million U.S. millionaires up from 15 million in 2014. Some might point out that the New York Times has always hated stats like that.

But I'm not going to do that. The Mrs. Mackleson, I'm sorry, Ms. MacKasson says, I use coupons to buy things. One of my daughters would say, mom, that's so embarrassing. But we believed in saving. how she uses coupons too. Every economic transaction has several sides. No one thought home prices in 2000 were particularly cheap,

but in the last six years, prices have risen by the total value of all housing in 2000. In many areas in the country, it has been practically impossible for renters to buy a house. This fracturing society, even as the overall home ownership rate in 2020, rose to 65.5%. The rate for black Americans have severely lacked at 43.4%. It's even lower, 44.2% in 2010. The rate for Hispanics was only marginally better. This disparity might account

for a muted sense of achievement. It's a time of prosperity, a time of abundance, and yet it doesn't seem that way, says the vice president of enterprise research at Black Knight. Sean and Stephanie McCauley said the value of their house, just 20 miles north of Seattle, has shot up 50% since they bought it just a couple of years ago. We're very fortunate now given the situation for many others during the pandemic. He works for a data orchestration company. Somehow we're doing even better financially, and it feels a bit awkward. Even for those doing well, the economy feels precarious, however.

The University of Michigan's veneral index of consumer sentiment fell in March the same levels as 1979. And politicians have been mostly quiet about the boom. Now, listen to this. Why? Because Republicans aren't anxious to give President Biden the credit for anything, said Mr. Baker, the economist. the Democrats could boast about how many people have gotten jobs and the strong wage growth at the bottom, but they really seem reluctant to do this, knowing that so many people are being hit by inflation. Oh, so they're out of compassion.

They don't want to rub people's noses in it. That's the only reason why he's not taking a victory lap is because he knows that people are suffering. He wants to connect with them. The initial coronavirus outbreak ended the longest U.S. expansion in modern history after 128 months. A dramatic downturn began. The federal government stepped in generously spreading cash around. Spending habits shifted as people stayed home.

The recession ended after two months and the boom resumed. Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chair, recently warned that there were too many employers chasing too few workers, saying the labor market was tight to an unhealthy level. Well, that's probably because everybody is so rich now. You know, right. We learned that, you know, what was it, uh, 40, 4 million? 40 million households are doing well. Then just there's just the other 84 million households.

So a decade ago, the housing market was in chaos between 2007 and 2015. More than 7 million homes were lost to foreclosure. But that was because they were egged on by lenders and people lived in houses they couldn't afford. But now the reverse is true. People own much more of their homes than they used to, while the banks own less. And that acts as a shield against foreclosures, which in 2019 were only 144,000 during the pandemic. Foreclosure mostly ceased due to moratoriums. That's parenthetically speaking, of course. The equity available to homeowners reached nearly $10 trillion at the end of 2021. That's double what it was at the height of the 2006 bubble. Oh, that makes me feel better because we know

2006, I mean, that's double. Of course, we're double of the value of all of the homes. Just the increase is double than the value of all of the homes in America at full price in 2000. So I don't know exactly what that means, especially since 2006, we were double that. And then we had a huge bubble that broke. Anyway, for the average American mortgage holder, that amounts to $185,000 before hitting loan-to-value tripwires. That figure is up $48,000 in a year. That's what the American family earns annually.

Wow. Even new homeowners feel an economic boost. We've never had enough for a down payment. But then, Stu, the summer of 2020, we got a good tax return. We got a stimulus check And we had a little money in the bank So this is according to Magalai Pena 41

An architect for the federal government She and her husband bought a townhouse In the Miami suburb of Homestead She's a first generation immigrant from Nicaragua She likes to check out the estimated value Of her home and her neighbors in the real estate website Redfin Sometimes I check it every day or every three days It's been crazy.

Everything skyrocketed. In 2006, homeowners cashed in their equity. Sometimes they used the money to double down on another house or two. In 2022, there is little sense of excess. Brian Carter, an epidemiologist in Atlanta, said he and his wife, Desiree, had about $250,000 in equity in their home, but they didn't plan to draw on it. I was 27 in 2007. I watched a lot of people lose their houses because they couldn't leave. their equity alone.

That included my next door neighbor and family across the street. I don't want to worry like that. In May 2000, the entrepreneur Kurt Anderson said raising money for a media startup called Inside was as easy, excuse the expression as getting sex in 1969. That was just a few weeks after the Stark market peaked. 17 months and one merger later inside shut down. Wow. In 2000, the startup downturn was the first sign of a wider economic trouble. This time, it may simply be that people are doing too well.

U.S. households are in the best shape in 30 years. But does it matter? Oh, my gosh. It's such great news. I came in here today a little down. You did. Yeah, I did. I just saw that the inflation numbers were worse than expected.

Oh, no, it was only going to go up 0.4. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So like to 8.1, I think, is what they were expecting. Yeah, I know one of the numbers I saw was it was up, just a little higher. I think they expected 6% and they got 6.2, which is, of course, doing wonders for the markets. Once again, this Joe Biden economy is so vibrant. Sometimes, and this is something people don't consider, sometimes the vibrancy of this economy blinds people and they click the sell button instead of the buy.

Yes. That's what's going on. Yes. People have so much money. They want to buy more. And because of this vibrancy, they're clicking the sell button. That is going to clear itself up soon. This is just a transitory issue that will be over in moments.

It's probably over already. I mean, it's not quite reflected yet, but soon it will be. Well, I just want you to know anybody who says, who talks down this economy really ought to be censored. I mean, for disinformation, probably even malinformation. You know, they know exactly what they're doing. They just don't want to give Joe Biden credit. Now, I'm different. Believe me, I'm going to give Joe Biden all the credit he deserves.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. It is great to have Savannah Hernandez back in the building. She was a producer here at The Blaze for, a while and really top-notch producer and now she's her own host rapid fire and she's just gotten back from the border with some stunning footage tonight at 9 p.m. We're going to tell you about the bloodbath, the death that is involved at our border and it's happening in your own communities. This part of the story is only part of the special tonight at 9 p.m. only on Blaze TV. Welcome, Savannah. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. Glad you know, typically I was behind the desk.

Now I'm here at the desk with you. Very exciting to be here. I'm excited for you. Thank you. Take us through what has happened with you. You went down to Eagle Pass and Brownsville and you saw some amazing things, but also you saw some amazing things on the phones of the border guards. So tell me what you saw. So when I went down to Eagle Pass and Brownsville, it was a It was pretty crazy because I got to watch the entire process of how illegal immigrants cross over into our country and then how they are bused throughout our country. So in Eagle Pass, you have the Rio Grande River, which is where a lot of the illegal immigrants are drowned trying to make this journey across. And so that in itself was very terrifying to watch because you are essentially watching people on the Mexican side of the border, just jump into the river and hope that they make it across. Sometimes there are children in tow.

You never know what's going to happen. Eagle Pass is not, I've not been there, but it's not necessarily an easy place to cross. I mean, aren't there cliffs on the American side of parts of Eagle Pass? There are parts that are like that, but the primary part where they do cross, you know, it's pretty easy to get in and out of the river. However, at that section, there are currents that typically drag people under the bridge, and that's why we had, for example, National Guard Bishop Evans, you know, he drowned trying to save the illegal.

immigrants making that cross over. So it was very shocking to see, and I asked National Guard, I asked Border Patrol, I asked, you know, so these people are allowed to get into this river, cross into our country, and Border Patrol is just supposed to come pick them up and process them. And they were saying, yes, our job is to observe and report at this point. National Guard was telling me that, you know, they had a lot of empathy for these immigrants coming through. Sure. But then they expected Border Patrol to come pick them up in the vehicles, go take them to the processing centers, the National Guardsmen would give them water bottles. One of the National Guard telling me that one of the illegals just opened the bottle of water, poured it down at his

feet, and threw the trash down. If you go to where these illegal crossings are happening, there's clothes littering the border. Let me show some of those pictures if you happen to be watching on the blaze. This is shocking what our border looks like. Keep going through, skull through. I mean, look at that. It's just clothes and garbage as far as the eye can see. It was very shocking. And Glenn, one of the worst parts of being down there was seeing condoms and boxes of birth control at the border because we know what is happening there. We know what these women and children are going through, making this journey across. We know what the cartel members and also even members of the Mexican Police Department are putting these people through.

They are taking advantage of these migrants trying to make this journey. I was talking to now. National Guard who is telling me that the cartel oftentimes kidnaps families, will rob them of their money, will basically hold them hostage and torture them. This is just a tactic of the cartel to keep people subservient to them, to keep the migrants scared, let them know that they're in control. A National Guard also telling me that the cartel members own cell phone towers on the Mexican side of the border. They're tracking the National Guard's cell phones, sending them pictures of dead bodies and death threats saying that you are next. So that's what the Biden administration is allowing to prosper. That is what the Biden administration is putting our Border Patrol members and National Guard members through. Did you see any of those cell phone texts and pictures or did they just tell you about them? They told us about them. Oftentimes, the Border Patrol National Guard don't even want to speak to reporters. And the reason is, is because they do fear for their jobs. They fear, you know, dealing with a pushback of coming out and talking to a reporter and telling the truth about what's going on.

So oftentimes they'll come and speak to us off the record about these things and say, hey, you know what? You didn't hear this from me, but this is what we're really going through and this is what's going on. This is, I mean, this is so easy to see what the right thing to do is. And yet no one will, no one will even address it. No one in mainstream media is talking about this. The human trafficking that is happening at our border is obscene. beyond that, the fentanyl problem, the drugs that are, we are empowering these cartels,

and they are taking fentanyl and just pouring it into our cities. It's absolutely horrifying to see. And going back to the human trafficking quickly, one of my friends who reports extensively on the border, Eagle Pass, Brownsville, all of these areas, he actually got footage of small children who had been drugged by the cartels. The reason the cartels do this is so that way they can keep the children quiet as their trafficking them at night. One of the most horrifying parts of this story is that border patrol is saying that they oftentimes see these children multiple times because the cartel will use these kids as a way

to get grown men into our country as a family unit. That's how they get these people into our country. That's how they help disguise them. So horrifying what we're seeing and then going back to the fentanyl crisis, I was in the tenderloin district in San Francisco and I was absolutely shocked watching people use meth, fentanyl, they had crack pipes out in the middle of the middle of the middle of the the day at 2 p.m. Glenn, I have been to BLM riots. I covered them for the entirety of 2020. I felt more unsafe on the streets of San Francisco at 2 p.m. with the police right next to me than I did at a BLM riot. That is how terrifying San Francisco is. So what is the fentanyl is being made in Mexico and in China? Right? Yes. Biden is saying all this fentanyl problem is coming from through our ports.

but how come that's the only supply chain that is working now? Those are the only ships that are coming in from China that doesn't seem to make an awful lot of sense. And Glenn, too, the art of journalism is so great because anybody can do it, right? Anybody can go down to the border right now and see with their own two eyes, how open this is. Anybody can go.

And if they stick there long enough, talk to Border Patrol or National Guards members or even locals of these border cities and ask them what they're going through. Many of them talking about the immense drug trafficking that is happening in their cities, the crime rates going up, cartel members walking through their neighborhoods with machetes, terrorizing them at night. That's what these people are going through.

And that's why in border cities specifically, we are seeing a big uptick and people voting Republican in more red because they are terrified at what is happening every day. And they are these cities on the border. They are now many of them under control of the cartel or lo, living in fear of the cartel? I would say living in fear. I've just started my investigative reporting into this. So as of now, it's been very surface level, me just going and kind of speaking to locals. I haven't, you know, the next step is dig deeper and ask these family members, what have you really been experiencing? But just on the surface level of talking to locals, they do fear the cartels in these cities. In California, in Texas, we know that the

cartel has made their way all the way up to Dallas. So this isn't even an issue that just affects border towns, unfortunately. Thank you so much. We'd love to have you back when you continue your investigation and get the facts from you on what you're doing. I'm so happy for your success. Thank you so much, Glenn. And I really appreciate you highlighting this issue. I really do.

Yeah, not a problem. Savannah Hernandez, a host of Rapid Fire. You can find Rapid Fire where? Anywhere podcasts are streamed and follow me on true social at Saff says. I'm banned on Twitter. Great. Thank you. Your band on Twitter?

Twice banned. Yeah. Well, probably not for long. Probably not. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Thank you so much.

God bless. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Jeff Brown. Welcome to the program, sir. Good morning. It's great to be back. It's great to have you on. You are the founder and chief investment analyst at Brownstone Research,

editor of the Bleeding Edge. I mean, I'm not saying this to you. I'm saying this to everybody who is. listening, you know who you are, and a favorite on this program. He is the, would you call yourself kind of a futurist? I would definitely say I'm a technologist and a futurist. Okay.

So let's start with what happened last week. The Biden administration signed an executive order that said, we got to get serious about quantum computing. And because I don't trust anything in an executive order, I wondered what it was. And why the sudden haste on quantum computing? And I knew you'd be the guy to answer those questions. Yes. Well, you know, in terms of this particular administration, this particular announcement is largely driven by really what's happening in China.

You know, we've seen at a state level in China billions of dollars invested over the last decade to develop quantum computing technology in China. And there is a very growing concern that these machines, these quantum computers, will quickly become powerful enough to decrypt existing data. information, particularly that of which, which has been collected and stolen and hacked over the years, quantum computing basically allows these repositories of state secrets and technology to basically become visible, readable, usable. And obviously, if China has the ability to have this level of computational power, the U.S. really needs to do something in terms of being able to find new ways to encrypt and protect existing and new information from these types of potential hacks. Okay, can you, first of all, explain what quantum computing even is?

You know, probably the easiest way to think of this is that it is really the next generation of computing systems. It is, but it's a lot. It's, I mean, if the abacus to the, to the modern day supercomputer, is it as, is it as much of a change as saying that today's supercomputer

compared to a full blown, quantum computer is the abacus? It's even more, it's even more dramatic than that. It's more significant than that. Holy cow. You know, quantum competing has the ability to basically manipulate particles in a way that has doubly or triply exponentially more computing power compared to a supercomputer, not just the computers that we use every day, a laptop, or a desktop, but to the world's most powerful supercomputer,

computer. It's doubly or triply exponential in terms of computing computational power than a classical computing architecture. That's how dramatic this shift is. Can you explain, I'm sorry to get into all this tech stuff, but to be able to understand the rest of the stories and the questions that I have, can you explain what a qubit is? Yeah, so a qubit is, we think about kind of a particle But what makes Q-bits very unique is that a normal computer bit is like a transistor. It's a zero or a one. And we calculate things with zeros or ones. It's obviously very efficient and effective.

It's what all of our computing systems are built on. But in comparison, they're relatively slow. When we're manipulating a quantum bit, a particle, it is able to have something called a superposition, which means it can almost have an infinite number. of positions. So rather than a zero or a one, you know, it can have almost an infinite number of positions that can be used to calculate or solve complex problems. And so what happens is with every qubit that we add to a quantum computer, it has this doubly exponential effect on the power of the computing system. And that's what makes it such a radical breakthrough.

It doesn't just, when you add one qubit, it doesn't just double the power. When you add that four, it doesn't quadruple the power, it just multiplies. And that's why you can have a single quantum computer that's more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. So a qubit is kind of like, excuse me for, you know, I'm a poor man's futurist here. A cubit is kind of like we would compare like the Commodore 64 was what, 60. at the very beginning of computing. So we're looking at qubits, which are far more powerful,

but we're still at the beginning. What are we at 120 qubits? Where are we? There's some nuance there. So back in 2019, we reached a point, or I should say Google, reached a point of demonstration. something called quantum supremacy that was accomplished with a 53 quantum bit, quantum computer. And that quantum supremacy was the moment that a single quantum computer, and just to put things

in perspective, this is something that basically is about the size of a refrigerator physically. A single quantum computer was able to outperform the world's most powerful supercomputer, computer, which is something that physically is the size of football fields. Holy cow. For perspective. And 53 cubits is, that was our first, you know, we're just just brand new getting into it. 53 is kind of like 24, 24 bod, or 2400 bod when we were like, oh, look how fast it is. And it took, you know, a day to print a picture.

You know, we're just stepping into the water, and we've already seen that power. And by the way, Van, that that was three years ago. And what's very interesting about what Google has been doing is that they really, they've been keeping their cards close to their chest. They haven't really revealed how much progress that they've made since that September 2019 quantum supremacy date. We know they've made radically large progress. We just don't know exactly how much.

And they recently spun out their quantum computing division into a newly formed company called Sandbox AQ. The A stands for artificial intelligence. The Q stands for quantum computing. And they've taken in some large nine-figure amount of investments. And guess who's there as well in QTEL, which is the venture cap alarm of the CIA. Holy cow. So, all right. So we, IBM is saying that we could be at 4,000 qubits, which again, the supercomputer is beaten by 53 cubits.

At what point can we break all encryption? So, again, there's a little bit of nuance here. One of the predictions that I've made is that in 2022, we will see a 256 quantum bit. computer that's announced. And obviously that will be massively more powerful than what Google demonstrated back in 2019. Within this year, theoretically, a computing system like that could crack all existing kind of standard encryption that's been used over the last two decades.

And it's not something that would have to run for months or years or, or weeks, it would literally, you could crack a file in seconds, really. Now, the nuance here is that these computing systems, quantum computing systems, have one major problem that the industry is working hard to solve, which is noise. They tend to be very noisy, and because of the noise, they're error-prone. And so the big focus of the quantum competing industry this year is really around kind of error correction and reducing the noise in these. systems so that they can be used for their desired purposes.

And when you're talking noise, you're not talking about noise that we hear with our ears, right? You're talking about... That's right. I mean, the only thing I can... Go ahead. We think about these quantum bits. You know, they're obviously very sensitive.

Anything from vibration to heat, the quantum computers tend to run in basically large refrigerators to operate. It's not really, I mean, isn't it 80 below zero and aren't most of them underground? Well, it's, they just do that to help with the stability of the environment. But they run, basically, at the temperature of deep space. Okay. So now, let's talk about some practical things here.

How long are we before China or what do you have to get to before a country or company could actually hack into our banks into the Pentagon or into cryptocurrency? Blockchain. Well, hacking into a network is something that happens now every year. But I mean enough to be able to break the codes. and I mean, they're always attempting, especially with the military, but we've blocked them so far. Will quantum computing help get control of our banking or military? The bad actors, at least my prediction, my forecast, is that within the next 18 months,

therefore before the end of 2023, that the quantum computers will be powerful enough to basically break any file, encrypted file that has been stolen. This could be from the private sector, could be from the public sector, will be able to

break the encryption of that file. And so anything that's been stolen to date and has been held will soon be visible, I think, by the end of next year because of how quickly I'm seeing quantum computing technology. you develop. Okay, so I'm going to take a one minute break. We can come back. Explain what do you

mean by file that had been, can you give us some examples of what you think that might mean might be coming our way? In 60 seconds as we continue with Jeff Brown.