Callers Weigh in on Unemployment

RUSH: Quickly to the phones, to Port Huron, Michigan. Mike, I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. And let me say real quick: It is an honor. I’m a trucker, and when I can’t get you, I listen to other radio stations, and they all envy you. I tell them the reason they don’t have your audience and the respect that you have is because their message is not what the majority of America wants to hear. And that quickly being said, like I said I am a trucker, and the economy, any signs of recovery, we would know it. Right now should be our busiest time of the year, with Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, school started back up. We are not getting frieght. And the truckers ain’t truckin’, there ain’t nothing moving. The only thing that doesn’t move without a truck is Wall Street and that’s a hoax by itself.

RUSH: Well, there’s a reason why Wall Street’s got some action and you just nailed it. Wall Street right now is the only place where there’s a real economy going on. That’s the wrong way to put it. The real economy is not worth investing in right now. There aren’t any. It’s 10% unemployment. The real economy… People are putting their money into municipal bonds right now and in equities — and gold, by the way; big time into gold. But people are not investing in Main Street. Remember the liberals old lament, ‘Well, what’s good for Wall Street is not good for Main Street’? That’s never been more true than it is now. I’m not berating people putting money in Wall Street, the market’s at work here, but what you’re telling us is: You ain’t trucking. You got no freight.

CALLER: I tell you, you go to any truck stop and you just see how many trucks are sitting there, and you talk to any driver. If there was anything out there — it’s like my wife says — we’re on the front line. If there was any sign of a recovery, we would know it.

RUSH: Yeah. Amen that.

CALLER: (laughing) And like I said —

RUSH: The idea, the idea that there can be a recovery with no job creation is just absurd. ‘Recovery’ is what? Commerce taking place! Seventy-five, 80% of the economy is consumerism. Consumption out there! People buying stuff. And for people to buy stuff, it has to be on the shelf in the stores. And how does it get there? Guys like Mike and his truckers over the road, trains, in some cases airplanes. Yeah, there’s a three-year lag time for jobs. Well, how in the hell…? This is just pure baloney designed to make the Obama administration look benevolent and good and successful and so forth, when it’s all senseless. It all defies logic.

Now, here is a telling story within the story. This is a Reuters story, and it was published today. ‘US Home Rescue Plan Delaying, Not Solving Crisis.’ There’s a telling story within this story. After describing the macro-failure of Obama’s bill that claimed to help people who can’t afford their home to keep their home, this Reuters story tells the story of an individual that tried to get help from our president and got slapped down. It’s a teachable moment. ‘Within weeks of taking office, US President Barack Obama rode to the rescue of homeowners resigned to financial ruin. Obama, grappling with the worst US housing crisis since the Great Depression, pledged to help as many as 9 million families keep their homes by reworking their mortgages.’

Yes, he made that pledge. He didn’t live up to it. He failed. ‘Eight months later, the plan is plagued by delays, red tape and, some critics say, a reluctance by banks to do their part. Just 17 percent of eligible borrowers have had their loans modified and monthly payments cut. Hardly any have been given a cut in the amount they owe on homes which are now worth less. That means many successful applicants are left with loans that they still will not be able to afford in the long run. So instead of resolving the housing crisis that pushed the US economy into recession, America may be prolonging it and, in the process, stunting the global recovery.’ So how is that hope and change working for you?

We’re on the verge, we got the media breathlessly watching the Senate Finance Committee vote on nationalizing health care, and we’ve got a story today on how a simple little program failed! Remember how they botched Cash for Clunkers and delayed any genuine recovery in the auto industry. Now we’ve got this little program that had all these wonderful intentions. Why, to help poor people whose houses had been destroyed, value-wise, with the plunge in the economy! ‘Wow, we don’t want to foreclose on them,’ Obama said. ‘We want to find a way to have them keep their homes.’ Just 17% have had their loans modified. Instead of resolving the housing crisis, America may be prolonging it by not just letting the market work. The market will take care of this, but if you phony…

It’s like the poor people in Michigan. Okay, give ’em whatever they’re going to get from $15 million in stimulus. But that’s eventually going to dry up. And then what do they do? They need work. They need jobs, a steady source of income that results from their work. Okay, so pass out some help for a mortgage. But it’s going to end someday. You can’t pay everybody’s mortgage forever, and then what do these people do? So we’re just delaying the inevitable — and in the process of the delay, we’re making the whole problem worse and we’re deepening it, because we are delaying the market correction which will automatically happen if you just get out of the way and let it. But these are central planners. They know better than you. They know what kind of car you ought to drive. They know what kind of health insurance you ought to have.

They know what kind of doctor you ought to see. They know what tests you ought to get and what tests you shouldn’t get! They know everything. They know which vaccine you should take. They know everything better than you do, and they get their hands on these things and they screw it up every time. They have screwed up the Great Society. They screwed up the War on Poverty. Poverty has won! It’s time to declare a winner. Poverty is winning and it’s getting worse, after how many trillions that have been spent on it?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Mary in West Palm Beach, Florida. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Just fine. Thank you.

CALLER: Okay, I talked with the screener, and what we’ve got here is a money supply, a frozen money supply. I’m an economist, and you’re absolutely right, everything you said, and you can’t have an end to this recession with an increasing unemployment or if it’s staying high with continued foreclosures, increasing bankruptcies, increasing your small business, and the other thing would be that our companies, the major companies have been working gimmicks out there using a government tax cut to show a positive flow. It’s not much but it’s enough to make everybody go, ‘Oh, fantastic.’

RUSH: Wait, wait. What company is showing positive growth?

CALLER: Oh, gosh, it was on the other day, and they were showing how it had used the government tax cut to have a positive spin on their numbers, and I can’t tell you the name of it. It was in the morning show and we just don’t have the money. You need money — the velocity of money has to keep turning over and over, and we have stagnated it and it’s frozen. Any time government is involved the multiplier effect kicks in and the government decreases the money supply. If the government is involved in handing out money you can kiss it good-bye. You need it in your small businesses, you need it in your banks loaning money, and it’s not happening.

RUSH: All of what she says is true, and the point about money being frozen, not turning over, changing hands and so forth, one of the reasons is the money supply is way up, but there’s less and less of it circulating in the private sector. It’s all in the hands of government, and it’s being spent by them. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal, I think it was in yesterday’s stack, I didn’t have a chance to get to it, but I remember enough of it. The Wall Street Journal was very happy that the Obama administration’s finally figuring out here that the job situation is serious. And the Obama administration has floated something that they were talking about during the campaign and then shortly after President Obama was inaugurated, and it’s this. A $3,000 tax credit or cut for every employee hired. Now, it’s good that the administration is starting to float around the idea of tax cuts, and, you know, I don’t want to sit here and besmirch tax cuts, but this is not why people hire people. They hire people ’cause they have work that needs to be done.

To say that somebody’s going to go out and spend whatever it’s going to cost to hire somebody, plus the benefit package, health care, and all that, for $3,000 tax break? When sales are down? It just isn’t going to happen. If you’re gonna cut taxes, cut their income tax! Don’t gove tax credit stuff. Cut their income, corporate tax, small business tax, whatever it is, reduce the cost of doing business that is slapped on them by the government. Now, the Obama administration is not going to do this because they don’t want that kind of independence and freedom and liberty. What they want, at the end of the day, is if enough businesses take this deal, to be able to say, Obama created jobs, Obama created jobs, came up with this big deal, give every business three grand essentially for every new hire.

That’s like a Band-Aid. It’s not addressing the problem. And the Wall Street Journal piece on this goes on and on and on in greater detail about what ought to be done with businesses and hiring and so forth. And clearly what needs to happen is there needs to be an atmosphere, there needs to be a climate, if you will, of growth, opportunity, in the market. People need to feel confident that they can invest in their business, hire new people or do whatever. And right now they just don’t have it. People in business are not stupid. They know what the cost of doing business is. They can see what’s coming down the pike with health care. They can see cap and trade coming at them. They can see new income taxes coming when the Bush tax cuts sunset. Folks, we’re in the crosshairs, and every gun the government has is aimed at us.