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RUSH: Ed in Palm Beach, Florida. Thank you very much for waiting, and welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s really an honor to talk to you today. I’ve never called a radio show before. I’ve listened to you since you’ve been on the air, but I just got so aggravated listening to the administration’s arguments that they’re doing everything to help commercial lending when I know it’s not true, and I just thought — I’m a little nervous but I thought I would call you today and let you know what’s really going on out here.

RUSH: Well, please do. You don’t sound nervous at all. By the way, you live in Palm Beach, do you live on a beach?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: I’m actually about 15 minutes west of you.

RUSH: Oh. Well, that means you have to be south ’cause 15 minutes away from me is in the inland.

CALLER: (laughing) I’m not on the water, I’m west.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: (laughing) But I can say we bought our car at the same place, we both have the same car. Like I say, it’s an honor. I did want you to know I’ve been in commercial lending for about 40 years, and I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve lived through all the recessions of the seventies, the eighties, that terrible time in the nineties, nothing has compared to this. I mean I think we have a situation now that most people aren’t even aware what’s going on. I’m a commercial lender, for example, I have a client in Maryland that has about $12 million worth of equities being held by the bank. He owes them $2 million. His credit is in the high 800s, he’s a perfect credit risk, he never missed a payment, and he called me a couple months ago in a panic that the bank had called his loan. So I know the people at the bank, I call them, and said, ‘Why would you do this to this guy? He owes $2 million, you’re holding $12 million worth of real estate collateral,’ and they’re telling me that a 27-year-old from this administration had come into the bank substituting his judgment with the bank manager’s judgment, who’s been there 35 years, and saying, ‘You have to get these loans off the books.’ Now he is in a panic because he doesn’t have $2 million.

RUSH: Now, wait, wait just a second here, Ed. What agency is the 27-year-old punk from?

CALLER: Well, these people that audit the banks. I guess Resolution Trust or (unintelligible) they go in, they audit these banks. And they don’t let them capitalize loans. They have all kind of new regulations. First of all, what aggravates me about the Republicans is the Democrats keep talking about, ‘Do you want to go back to the Bush times?’ Well, the truth is what was so wrong about the Bush times? I know what caused this problem. Between 2000 and 2006 we had the strongest economy that the United States ever had. We had 4% unemployment, and I don’t know why the Republicans aren’t saying this. People that wanted to sell their house got the highest prices for their house, things were great. What turned the economy, there are two basic things that turned the economy. And I saw it coming. One was when Barney Frank and Senator Dodd changed the rules that FHA and Fannie Mae, and I heard about it in 2006 with this SASI loans, which were where people could buy houses with stated income and stated assets.

RUSH: It was part of the subprime problem.

CALLER: It was the subprime. But I know President Bush and his administration fought that but they didn’t get anywhere. I think Senator McCain proposed legislation to stop it. But you had Raines and Johnson who had taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who were now getting a percentage of every loan, so anybody who could make an X would get a loan and I think you’re aware that one of them left with $90 million and one left with $10 million while they destroyed the country. When I heard about that problem we started liquidating our own loans because I saw this coming and I’m just a very small guy and I saw it coming and they had to know it was coming. Frankly I think they’re doing it on purpose —

RUSH: I was just going to get there, I was just going to get there because the Democrat National Committee and the media, the whole Democrat Party turned the economy in order to run in 2006 and win Congress back. They have been talking up a recession for who knows how long. The subprime crisis, loaning people money that they could never pay back, they knew what the result was going to be. They’ve wanted this chaos, they wanted to be able to blame it on Bush, Bush was in power, Republicans ran the Congress up ’til this time, they wanted to blame all this, they needed a bad economy to get back in power, and they got it.

CALLER: You are absolutely correct and why the Republicans aren’t saying that, it surprises me.

RUSH: Well, people have been asking me for 20 years why don’t the Republicans say — I don’t know. I really haven’t the slightest idea.

CALLER: I mean you are right on and you’ve always been right on. You have not only the show that’s the most correct and most informative, but do I say the most entertaining (laughing) quite a challenge that you have. But I love listening to you. This economy is terrible. It’s breaking my heart. I’ve done very well. I’m almost 70 years old and I’m sure I’ll live out my life financially secure. But watching so many people, we have hundreds of clients that are just terrified. I had dinner with somebody the other night who told me that his wife goes to bed every night crying. I think this administration is the worst threat against the United States in 200 years.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question about your statement that you have enough wealth to survive this or withstand it or so forth. Do you think you really do? I’m not asking for a number, but I know a lot of people who think they’ve got a lot of wealth who, the way this administration’s going, envision the day where over half of it is just confiscated.

CALLER: Rush, I was brought up in a very poor family. I’ve done very, very well. I did not graduate college. I love this country, it’s been great country. I’ve seen people have opportunities here that they could have nowhere else in the world, and what’s happening now is truly heartbreaking. Do I think I have enough? Yes, I think I do. Do I have less wealth than I did two years ago? Far less. But I’ve talked to people in much worse shape than myself.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I talked to somebody here in Palm Beach yesterday that I ran into at Costco. We put a large addition on our home and he was the foreman, I hadn’t seen him in ’05. His wife worked for Western Mutual.

RUSH: Wait a minute. People that live in Palm Beach go to Costco?

CALLER: Yeah, they do. (laughing) Yes, it’s very popular.

RUSH: I’m just kidding, folks, I’m just kidding. I’ll bet you go to Publix yourself, too.

CALLER: Yes, I do.

RUSH: I knew it.

CALLER: We have to eat. (laughing) But, no, things are very scary right now.

RUSH: I know. I’m horrified, I am terrified for the future of the country. I really am. And not for myself. I’m not the guy who makes the country work. The people who make the country work are having opportunity just yanked out from under them. It is frustrating, it’s maddening, and it’s depressing at the same time. Ed, thanks much for the call.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, folks, we’re always told that the economy and our individual states of mind are all about confidence, right? And it’s true. And the Democrats did everything they could to undermine that confidence, starting first with the attack on the war in Iraq (imitating Harry Reid) ‘This war is lost.’ They tried to squish our confidence over victory by calling our soldiers terrorists, rapists, murderers, thugs, and all that, and when they gave up on losing the war, they did all they could to destroy our confidence in the economy. The one great thing about this country that has distinguished us from the rest of the world — and there are many — but economically the one great thing, we are the one country in the world that has never had a permanent underclass until we got LBJ’s Great Society, until the war on poverty, and the Obama regime needs a permanent underclass to get and retain power. And they are doing all they can to get a permanent underclass. All of these taxes coming in Obamacare are going to ensure that the middle class will not be able to rise up the income quintiles and better themselves. Too much of what they earn will be taken away. They will never have the disposable income to expand their style of living. This, my friends, is by design.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To further the point here, folks, about a permanent underclass, which is the objective here, the more dependence Obama creates, the less upward mobility because their work ethic will be ruined among other things, and if they can’t find a job, what can they do anyway? How do you move up if you can’t find a job? The best way to control people is to keep them unemployed and subsisting on a very small endowment. They hated Reagan. They despised Reagan because he almost destroyed LBJ’s permanent underclass, and that’s why they hate Reagan. He got in their way. They want to destroy people, folks.

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