The Causey Consulting Podcast

"This isn't 2008" - Part 2

Share episode

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. And today's episode, I want to have a part two of this is not 2008. As I mentioned before, I could have sat in the chair recording all day, if I really wanted to chronicle every single similarity I saw to what we have brewing up right now. And juxtapose it with what brewed up back then it would be an all day task. And nobody wants to sit and listen to some eight or 10 hour mega episode, as my voice slowly cracks, and I have to drink hot tea and eat throat lozenges. So separating it out. So the first point that I want to cover today, the Stimmy checks. You know, over the past couple of years, we've heard old Mitch McConnell, the turtle in particular, telling us that people are flush with cash, you still have people that somehow, like Jesus's miracle of the loaves and fishes, they have taken these 2020 stimulus checks and multiplied them across all the months. They are flush with cash, they're in a basement, they're crashing on somebody's couch, and they have all of this money and that is why dammit, they don't want to go back to work. I think any of us with common sense can realize that's a load of BS I don't personally see loads and loads and loads of people saying, You know what, I don't need a job right now because I am still living off of those 2020 stimulus checks. That 600 bucks here and 1200 bucks over there. That really did me solid. I am good for a good long while is it? They just won one of those outrageous lotteries, it was like $500 million. Okay, so let's flashback in time. I want to read an article from PBS asking the question five years later, what did the stimulus bill accomplish? This was published on February 17 of 2014. And it's in reference to the stimulus package that President Obama then President Obama signed into law or signed into effect soon after he took office in the early part of 2009. The costly 708 $87 billion can even hardly said the costly$787 billion spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law soon after taking office boosted the economy and help avoid another Great Depression. The White House said in a status report on Monday's fifth anniversary of the laws enactment. Republican leaders in Congress took note of the anniversary too, but argued that the bill spent too much for too little in return. White House economic adviser Jason Furman said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made other targeted investments that will pay dividends for years to come. By itself, the stimulus bill saved or created an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years through the end of 2012 FURMAN said in a White House of blogpost. Half of the total fiscal support for the economy or about $689 billion from the Recovery Act, and subsequent measures was in the form of tax cuts directed mostly at families. The remainder was spent on such things as rebuilding roads and bridges, preventing teacher layoffs and providing temporary help for people who lost their jobs or needed other assistance because of the poor economy. The report said Recovery Act spending will have a positive effect on long run growth, boost the economy's potential output and ultimately offset much of the laws initial cost more than 40,000 miles of roads and more than 2700 bridges have been upgraded nearly 700 drinking water systems serving more than 48 million people have been bought brought into compliance with federal Clean Water standards and high speed internet was introduced to about 20,000 community institutions. While these figures are substantial, they still nevertheless understate the full magnitude of the administration's response to the crisis Furman wrote. He noted that the report focused solely on the effects of fiscal legislation and did not evaluate other administration policies that aided the recovery such as stabilizing the financial system, rescuing the auto industry and supporting the housing sector. Republicans were in less of a mood to celebrate. The stimulus has turned out to be a classic case of big promises and big spending with little results. House Speaker John Boehner, Republican from Ohio, said in a written statement, five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later millions of families are still asking where are the jobs? Here we go and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky. That shows you how long some of these people just stay and stay and stay in politics argue that Obama could put the nation's finances on a more solid footing and create jobs by taking steps to roll back regulations and finally approved the Keystone XL Pipeline project from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Five years later, the stimulus is no success to celebrate said McConnell it is a tragedy to lament. FURMAN said the economy is undoubtedly in a stronger position because it has grown for 11 straight months, although not at a pace that would be considered robust. Businesses have also added 8.5 million jobs since early 2010. Obama initially sold the stimulus as an investment that would produce a dramatic decrease in unemployment that ultimately did not materialize. And this is PBS writing this article, I would definitely not say that I am reading this from a fringe news source or some far right news outlet. Okay, PbS is telling you, we were sold this idea that the stimulus would help dramatically decrease unemployment, but that ultimately did not materialize. Looking at it five years later, unemployment remains high at 6.6% in January, though it has fallen considerably since reaching double digit highs early in Obama's administration. Some of the decline, however, is due to people dropping out of the workforce, people aren't considered unemployed, if they aren't looking for work. I'm gonna button and say, have warned you about that as well. I talked many times last year, about what I believe to be in my opinion, the shenanigans and the chicanery going on in these jolts reports and these BLS statistics. If someone just says screw it, and they give up, then they don't get counted anymore. If someone is considered to be a, quote, discouraged worker, I'll get into this more later. But if they're considered to be a discouraged worker, and they just can't find anything, so they say I'm gonna give it a break, and try to see if the market refreshes, then they aren't counted. As unemployed. These numbers can be manipulated to suggest whatever they want John and Jane to public to believe. So all of this money was spent. And even what I would consider to be probably a left of center news outlet is saying, hey, the dramatic decrease in unemployment that we were told was going to happen kinda like didn't. People who aren't considered unemployed anymore if they quit looking, they're not being counted and the numbers they're putting it out here on Front Street. While far more work remains to ensure that the economy provides opportunity for every American there can be no question that President Obama's actions to date have laid the groundwork for stronger, more sustainable economic growth in the years ahead firm and set. Obama plan to discuss the economy Tuesday at a suburban Washington distribution center for the Safeway grocery store chain. On Wednesday, VP, Joe Biden will mark the recovery X fifth anniversary during a visit to America's central port in Granite City, Illinois, and quote, some pretty obvious parallels there. Some of the same people still on the scene. Now we're on the scene and stimulus checks were involved. We were sold this bill of goods that this would really help this was going to stimulate the economy, it was going to lower unemployment, and then in the wind up, did it. We also saw the data leaving out discouraged workers. I want to dive into this just a little bit more over on the balance money.com There's a pretty good definition of what are discouraged workers. discouraged workers are those who want and are available to work but have dropped out of the labor force because they believe there aren't any jobs for them. While these people have looked for work within the past year, they are not officially classified as unemployed, because they have not looked in the past four weeks. However, discouraged workers would take a job if it were offered in quote. So if somebody simply takes a break, I mean, with everything that's gone on with the pandemic, it would be pretty easy to see how if someone had a very bad illness, influenza, RSV, the Wrona, et cetera, they might need to take a month off from job hunting to convalesce. So then that person is just simply not counted anymore. So many different ways to make it look like Oh, unemployment is like 3.5% or like 3.7% who open jobs where we want unemployed birds? And why don't the baby wanna work? Think about all of that that was just absolutely shoved down our throat last year, over and over and over again. Speaking of pandemics, do you know that we also had a pandemic back then? Oh, yes, we did. Remember h1 In one, the pandemic that went from January of 2009 until August of 2010. Mm hmm. Now, let's read a little snippet of information which you can find on Wikipedia. Of course, I'll drop the link to it. And I want you to just think about how this information sounds in relation to the information that we've had. Ever since 2020. Controversy arose early on regarding the wide assortment of terms used by journalists, academics and officials, labels like h1 in one flu, swine flu, Mexican flu, and variations thereof were typical criticisms centered on how these names may confuse or mislead the public. It was argued that the names were overly technical, for example, h1 in one incorrectly implying that the disease is caused by contact with pigs or pig products, or provoking stigmatization against certain communities. For example, Mexican, some academics of the time asserted there is nothing wrong with such names, while Research published years later in 2013, concluded that Mexican Americans and Latino Americans had indeed been stigmatized due to the frequent use of the term Mexican flu in the news media in quote. Remember all that stuff about Orange Man and the China virus? You know, he was always so adamant that it needed to be called that. Again, I say if we were sitting and writing some kind of dystopian novel, or some kind of satire, we couldn't do a better job, the way that history is repeating here, we couldn't make it up as an act of friction any better than it's bearing out in reality, we just couldn't. Another similarity we find is this idea that the Fed needs to operate without any real oversight, or control. Let us come in and clean up the mess. Let us do what we want to do. And everybody else just kind of get the hell out of our way. In fact, I'm recording this on Tuesday ahead of the Thursday broadcast. And earlier today, a headline I mean, it couldn't have been more perfectly timed, it was almost like a gift from the gods themselves. Earlier today, a headline popped up on CNBC. Powell stresses the need for Feds political independence while tackling inflation. The key points read, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell noted that stabilizing prices requires making tough decisions that can be unpopular politically. In other remarks, the central bank leader said the Fed is not and will not be a climate policy maker. In the article we find, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday emphasized the need for the central bank to be free of political influence while it tackles persistently high inflation. In a speech delivered to Sweden's Riksbank. Powell noted that stabilizing prices requires making tough decisions that can be unpopular politically. Price stability is the bedrock of a healthy economy and provides the public with immeasurable benefits over time. But restoring price stability when inflation is high can require measures that are not popular in the short term. As we raise interest rates to slow the economy. The chairman said in prepared remarks. The absence of direct political control over our decisions allows us to take these necessary measures without considering short term political factors he said and quote, This is so very much like the where your daddy, we're going to give you your medicine. We know okay, we know the medicine tastes yucky and you don't want it. But naughty, naughty, you still need to take it. We know what's better for you. We don't need any kind of restrictions. We don't need any kind of oversight. You need to just sit down and hush and let us manage all of this. So very patronizing and condescending. But twas ever thus if we go all the way back now some of you are going to be too young to remember Ralph Nader but I tried to be inclusive on this program. You have told you before I don't I avoid as much as I can getting political. I'm ready assert independent, that's how I like it, I don't really consider myself to be on the left or on the right. And I try to use resources that I believe to be speaking some amount of truth. And it doesn't matter to me where they're out on the spectrum. Going all the way back to 1975, Ralph Nader wrote an article, the Fed needs auditing. I mean, of course, that's not going to happen. But going all the way back to that point in time, somebody was out here saying, This doesn't even make any sense. And I want to read from that article for you now, since other departments of government, including the department's of defense and Treasury and other agencies that regulate banks have long been subject to the audit of the General Accounting Office or GA s, the investigative arm of Congress. Why has the Federal Reserve been excluded? The answer is found in the secret of mixture of big power and big money of the banking gulyas and their Federal Reserve servants that for decades have kept such matters away from both public and Congress in order to retain their unperturbed control. Bingo. Yeah, it can't get any plainer. And so in the same way, that the Fed was knee deep in this mess, the last time around the Oh 809 debacle. Here we go. Again. If we hop over to the Wikipedia page for Ben Bernanke, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve during the mess the last time around, here's what we find. As the great recession deepened, Bernanke oversaw some unorthodox measures. Under his guidance, the Fed lowered its funds interest rate from 5.25% to 0%. Within less than a year, when this was considered insufficient to abate the liquidity crisis, the Fed initiated quantitative easing, creating $1.3 trillion, from November 2008, to June 2010. And using the created money to buy financial assets from banks and from the government and quote, any that sound familiar, this time around, we get the inflation crisis, and the Fed trying to tell you all about quantitative tightening, hey, we're gonna have to raise these rates, you're gonna have to rein everything in some of you gonna wind up unemployed, some of you got to see your wages stagnate, but we have to do this yet again, and just sit down, shut up and take your medicine. So if we scroll down to another part on this wiki pedia we read controversies as Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has been subjected to criticism concerning the late 2000s financial crisis. According to The New York Times, Bernanke has been attacked for failing to foresee the financial crisis for bailing out Wall Street and most recently for injecting an additional $600 billion into the banking system to give the slow recovery of boost. If you care to go and read even more than you will see information about the Merrill Lynch merger with the Bank of America as well as the AIG bailout. I talked about that in this in the last episode. So again, we have this all consuming presence of the Fed, and how the Fed is promising that whatever decisions they make, they don't really need the oversight, they don't need to be transparent. We all just need to back the hell off and let them fix the mess. So I would ask you this question. How did that go? The last time around? And how do you expect that it will play out this time around? Just some food for thought. I always say that I don't give advice. I don't tell anyone what to do. And I definitely don't tell you what to think. Go and read all of this information for yourself and calculate out your own opinion. I've said many times, and we'll say it yet again, I think it is very important to have some kind of job loss survival plan. Or if you weren't freelance you own and operate your own business. Do you have a nest egg? Do you have some alternate means if the current way you have of making money is probably not going to be desirable in the event of a severe long term downturn? Do you have something else? Have you wargame this out? Have you thought about it? Really what I want to do in any of these broadcasts, or any of the little mini books that I write is trying to stimulate your own line of thought, get your creative juices going, and hopefully get you pointed in a good direction. I understand that all of this can sound gloom and doom and apocalyptic and terrible. I don't think it's apocalyptic. I don't think Armageddon is right around the corner. Who knows maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so. I think this is just yet another manufactured downturn, a manufactured crisis so that more More of the elites and their buddies can take your stuff. The rich will get richer while the poor will get poor, and more and more people will get squeezed out of the middle class. I hope I'm wrong. I just remember how the movie played out the last time that I watched it. Stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.