Episode 64: The Impact Of COVID Debt

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This is The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Welcome to The WealthAbility® Show, where we’re always discovering how to make way more money and pay way less taxes. Hi, this is your host, Tom Wheelwright, founder and CEO of WealthAbility.

So, COVID has battered the economy. We all know that. That’s pretty obvious. The economy is in dire straights as a result of what’s gone on with the crisis. And the government has responded by first shutting down, then opening, then putting a lot of money in the economy. And so today, we’re going to really discover what happens next.

So, what’s the result of all of this government spending? How do we get through not just the crisis? It’s one thing when your house is burning down, you do certain things, but once your house has burned down, what do you do? And then, what happens for the next many years?

And we have somebody I have been wanting to have on this show for a very long time now, somebody that I’ve admired for many, many years. The former budget director for Ronald Reagan. We were actually talking, we were in Washington at the same time. I was in a little lower position than Mr. Stockman was. But David, welcome to the show.

 

David Stockman:

Happy to be with you. And good to talk about those times. We are in a totally different world today, I’ll tell you that.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Don’t we? So if you would, for those who don’t know you, David, would you give us just 30 seconds of your background?

 

David Stockman:

Well, yeah. After I got out of graduate school, I went to Washington in 1970, worked as a staff assistant on Capitol Hill, looked around and said, “How did some of these bozos get elected? It can’t be that hard.” Some of them didn’t seem all that smart.

So as a young man, I was 30 years old, I announced I was running for Congress in my home district in Michigan. I happened to win. And I was elected to the House in 1976. I spent four years there. I was part of the Young Turks group, at the time Jack Kemp, and we were called Supply Siders, and we really wanted to change…

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I remember that.

 

David Stockman:

Yeah, we would change the direction of policy, cut taxes dramatically, shrink government, let free enterprise thrive and all those good things. And we got connected to the Reagan campaign in the fall of 1980. I don’t know how it exactly happened. I got drafted to be his stand in debate rehearsal opponent for his debate first with John Anderson, the independent, who I’d worked for as a staff assistant, and then against Jimmy Carter. So I was Jimmy Carter for a whole week, getting Ronald Reagan prepared.

In any event, he won the debate. I think that’s why he won the election. It was very close. And right after the election, he called me and wanted to know if I would be interested in joining his government. And I said, “Yeah, I’d like to be director of OMB.” Because I was very focused on the budget and realized because I’d been in Washington long enough, that all it means is we move the switchboard, and the whole central government.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Right.

 

David Stockman:

Because you’re in charge of the switchboard, maybe you could make some things happen. Well, he said, I’m not sure exactly what that job is, but in any event, a few days later, he called back and said, I had the job. So-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

That’s awesome.

 

David Stockman:

I became the budget granter. And then I became one of the architects, I guess, of the whole effort by the regular demonstration to change policy from the big governments great society Jimmy Carter mess that we inherited, and we made a little progress, but not a lot. Because it turned out that nobody wanted to give up all their goodies, and we couldn’t cut spending. We cut taxes a lot, a huge deficit emerged, and we’ve been fighting with that legacy ever since.

Unfortunately, what happened was Greenspan got ODN as chairman of the Fed when Volcker was forced out. I was a great supporter and admire of Volcker. I think he did the right thing, but Greenspan basically made it easy for them to keep running these large deficits. He monetized it. He put the Fed on the path after 1987 of continuously expanding his balance sheet, which then became massive in the crisis of 208. And so, we looked at these numbers, you have to just scratch your head. When Greenspan became chairman of the Fed in 1987, the balance sheet was 200 billion. Now, remember, the thing opened in 2014. Okay, so that was 75 years to taking them to get to 200 billion. Today, it’s seven trillion, okay-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So let me ask you David, so we’ve got the biggest deficit ever this year. I mean, in the first 10 months, trillions of dollars in deficit, never been this big. Do you think that the government… What was interesting to me was how fast the economy collapsed with the shutdown? I mean, how fast it collapsed, it was like, wow, you didn’t realize just how tenuous our economy was until you saw that big hit. I mean, it hit my business, right, when we dropped 80% sales in one week. So did the government have an option other than infusing that $3 trillion through the Cares Act?

 

David Stockman:

Yes. It had an option, which is, and I’m glad we’re raising this because to talk about wherever we’re going, we have to understand what has happened in the last five months, which is unprecedented, off the charts. They had the choice of not marking down the economy, of not panicking, of not going into a hysteria about the COVID, which was never justified. Now, I agree, for 5% of the population, it is a very serious illness. Mainly the elderly, the very elderly, and people that have underlying, life threatening conditions. 80% are 65 and over, and over half are 85 and over. We, like Marshall Law, effectively, we shut down the economy to fight this thing, but that’s half of the death rate from poisonings. That’s less than half of the death rate from automobile accidents in that population. Now, the reason I’m dwelling on this, that’s the workforce. That’s the economy that got shut down. Last year, 80% revenue that was lost. That’s the whole sector of what I call the hospitality and leisure-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So you would not have shut down the economy?

 

David Stockman:

Absolutely not. Trump made a horrible mistake by listening to Fauci and what I call the scarf lady, Dr. Birx. These people have been here with disease business their whole careers. Fauci runs to the NIH in ’68 when he graduated from Cornell. And he’s been there ever since. And Dr. Birx has been in there since she got out of medical school. So between them, they got about 90 years on the government payroll. And zero years out where you are in the real world trying to run a business. Now, how in the hell can you run a restaurant when they tell you only one third of capacity is going to be allowed.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Right.

 

David Stockman:

How do you even plan for the future if they say, oh, we’re having a slight increase in cases, so we’re going to shut you down again. Which is what’s happening in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. We’re in a real mess because this isn’t a business cycle, the ordinary kind of business that works its way through the economy in a year, a year and a half. This was martial law overnight. That was devastating. And now they’re trying to buy our way out of it with this massive spending, which we should go into because it’s off the charts-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So I presume you prefer Sweden’s way of dealing with the crisis.

 

David Stockman:

Sweden, and I don’t mean to interrupt you, but for a long time, you can see all the stories in the New York Times and so forth. Sweden made a huge mistake because their mortality rate was slightly higher than let’s say grow rate and there’s some reasons for that. Most of the deaths in Sweden were in care homes and long term care homes, anyway, it wasn’t because they didn’t shut down. But of course they didn’t shut down. Schools remained open. Work remained open. The social congregation activities as I call them, restaurants and so forth remained open. But the point is they have more new cases. They have maybe one or two deaths a day for the last three or four weeks. If you look at the charts, it’s over. It’s passed through the population. More or less they have herd immunity. And if you look at the European economy style coming out of the second quarter, the strongest economy in Europe is Sweden.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Wow.

 

David Stockman:

And mainly what they lost was exports, because the rest of Europe, which is their market was shut down. But-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So let’s talk about the deficits, David. Let’s talk about the huge deficit. And what I’d like to know is… So okay let’s say that heaven forbid, things get shut down again when the flu combines with COVID in September and October, and now you’ve got some pretty major… I mean, it’s an acceleration of what we’ve got now, right? So what happens then? And you keep running these deficits, I like to know what happens in the next five years?

 

David Stockman:

I think when we’re in great trouble, because the only reason we’ve gotten away with what we have so far is, the Fed is monetized over borrowing. Now, if we go to early March, the Balance sheet of that is about four trillion. By the end of June, when the everything bail out’s have passed, the 1200 for everybody and the 600 a week of unemployment benefits, and the so called PPP program and all the rest of it, the balance sheet was seven trillion. So they basically bought all the new paper-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Right.

 

David Stockman:

That they said was pushed out of the treasury was pushing into the market during that three month period. Now, how long can you keep doing that? I mean, this is really Banana Republic stuff. Both from a central banking point of view and from the Fiscal point of view. And when I say central banking, I mean when I say Banana Republic, I’m not really trying to be excessive or use an exaggerated metaphor. We’re going to end up this year, which of course the fiscal year ends in September, spending over $7 trillion federal budget and taking in revenue of less than three trillion. So when you have a government borrowing far more than it’s taking in, in revenue and to make ends meet, you got a Banana Republic. And it’s not going to be easy to dig out of this, especially if the Democrats win the election.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. So let’s go to the other side of that argument, which would be the MMT people, right? The Modern Monetary Theory. And they think that actually you can have too little of a deficit, right, and they’re saying, look, you got to keep pumping money into the economy. And deficits while you can get too big, as long as you monitor them they’re not the end of the world. The way I look at it is, if you look at… Let’s look at an invest… A bank and a bank right now, they borrow at a low rate and lend at a higher rate, that’s how they make their money. So they don’t have any assets. I mean, banks don’t really have assets. They have your assets, and then they lend you your assets, right? They lend you my assets, its basically what happens. That’s how a bank works. Why can’t the government do that?

 

David Stockman:

It’s very simple. If we take that purely, we just been talking about when they went from three trillion to seven trillion. They bought four trillion, basically, of government notes in bonds and bills and some GSE and all mortgage backed securities. All of those represented real resources, that one time they paid salaries or they bought aircraft carriers and they built houses. So on the one hand, those debt instruments represented the consumption of real resources, labor, capital technology, and so forth. On the other hand, how did the Fed pay for that four trillion it bought? It simply created digital credit-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Right.

 

David Stockman:

Equivalent with the banking accounts of the various dealers who sold them the bonds during that frenzied period of bond buying. But that’s something for nothing. That’s magic. On the one hand-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Yep.

 

David Stockman:

You have digital air. And the other hand, you have fluctuating real resources. That’s what’s wrong with Modern Monetary Theory. It’s mess. It’s free will to asses. You can’t… I mean a serious person can’t even debate it, let me tell you. So it’s how long can you… If you really look at Modern Monetary Theory, ones net assets, let’s not bother with assets. Let’s just borrow everything and have the Fed, basically, buy up all the debt with a digital credit sprayed out of thin air. And let me go further. Why work? Why do we need to work, when you just have the federal running out of the sky. You’re getting close to that, when the $1,200 cheques went out. That’s when people got their money-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Right.

 

David Stockman:

And went and recruited 60 million people. And where do the treasury get the money to send out 160 million.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I’ll get back to this in a second. Hey, if you like financial education the way I do, you’re going to love Buck Joffrey’s podcast. Buck’s a friend of mine. He’s a client of mine. He’s a former board certified surgeon and he’s turned into a real estate professional. So he has this podcast that is geared towards high paid professionals. That’s who he’s geared towards. So if you’re a high paid professional, you’re going look, I’d like to do something different with my money than what I’m doing. I’d like to get financially educated. I’d like to take control of my money and my life and my taxes. I would love to recommend Buck Joffrey’s podcast, which is called Wealth Formula Podcast with Buck Joffrey. I hope you join Buck on this adventure of a lifetime.

So let’s fast forward to January and February. Let’s say we have a Biden Harris presidency and-

 

David Stockman:

Harris presidency.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Let’s call it a Biden presidency for now, okay. Let’s stick with Biden for now. And we have this presidency. So we have these two, and they’ve already been talking about $2,000 a month for retroactive to March as kind of basic income. They’ve talked, Biden’s proposed a $3 trillion tax plan. None of which goes to pay the deficit. What happens when you have a big tax increase in an economic slump?

 

David Stockman:

I think the day of reckoning arrives, I think we have a real disaster. We’re just skating by right now because we have this massive allocation of transfer payments and enhanced unemployment insurance, half a trillion dollars in the PPP program and I could go on now. That’s the only thing that’s keeping the economy alive. It’s very fragile. And if you come in with a massive tax increase, more spending, you’ll get a tremendous panic on Wall street. They’ll start selling everything in sight, stocks, bonds and anything, really have a tremendous liquidation. And then how is the Federal Government going to finance all of that spending. I just think it would be a catastrophe. I see no way actually that it would happen. They might pose it. It’ll get up on the Capitol Hill and it’ll get in a huge fruit fight over execution, like we’ve never seen before.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So, okay.

 

David Stockman:

So unfortunately.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Let’s just wrap up with this. What would you do? Let’s say that you were in charge, you could do what you think is right for the economy. What would you do?

 

David Stockman:

Well, the first thing I do is fire Dr. Fauci and say the lockdowns are over. We’re going to let the economy reopened. The second thing, if I get voted, I would house clean at the Fed. These people at the Federal Reserve just totally distorted the financial markets. They’ve inflated asset prices beyond any reason. And I would say, we’re going to go back to some money. We’re going to go back to a real private enterprise system that’s based on real price discovery in the financial markets. Third, I would tell Congress we better start living within our means. We’re going to reform entitlements. We’re going to cut the military budget by half, but we need to be policing the world. We can’t afford to be policing the world, it doesn’t work anyway. So I would cut a trillion dollars or more out of spending from entitlements. And then I would try to get back to a path of rationality, of sound economics and sound money. It’s a huge tall order and a deep mess at the moment, but you can’t just keep digging yourself in deeper. At some point we’ve got to get back to sanity.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. So, we don’t have a whole lot of control over that because we’re not there, we don’t get to do that. So what do you suggest people do? One of the things I always ask our guests is, what practically should we be doing, given that we can’t control that and that it’s probably unlikely to change in the short run?

 

David Stockman:

Yeah, I think it’s a great question. 2020’s are going to be a very bad decade. So people need to start conserving their assets, consuming their resources, reducing their spending, and get ready for the storm because is coming. Second, get out of the Wall street, the stock market, the bond market, all of the financial markets are unstable. They’re dangerous. They’re artificial. They’re propped up by the Fed. All of these prices are too high. Who would want to own a 10 year bond that’s yielding six tenths of 1%, less than inflation? Who wants to own Apple when it’s trading at 35 times earnings or a double its historic level? So get out of the financial markets. Third, remember when the rubber meets the road here, the only real money left is going to be gold. And I think gold is going to soar as a Haven, as people flee the financial markets that have been so distorted and made so fragile and dangerous by the Fed. So those are the three things that I would recommend.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Awesome. So one of the best lessons, economic lessons I ever received, my wife and I were on an eco Safari in Zimbabwe and our guide, you know of course Zimbabwe’s been through this. So they’ve been through this rampant inflation and printing money and so forth. And we asked him, so what did you do? What have you been doing? And he says, “Well, every time I get a paycheck, I immediately bought a cow or a sheep because I wanted it in a hard producing asset.” I’m going, to me that sounds like really [crosstalk 00:20:11] good advice, right? You get producing assets.

 

David Stockman:

Yeah.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Something that’s actually tangible instead of something that… I loved your quote. I heard your quote once, that you invest in things that Bernanke can’t steal.

 

David Stockman:

Yes, yeah.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I love that. I think the whole idea of being sound and getting some financial education… I think, that’s why I love what you’re doing. I know you’re out there on the, so to speak, on the road, but you’re doing these interviews so that you can get people to understand what’s going on. I just want to really thank you. If somebody wants more information about all of your great writings, what you’re doing, where would they find you?

 

David Stockman:

Every day I address these topics, of a Biden administration, of a Trump administration, of the Fed, of the financial markets, of the fiscal situation, our foreign affairs policies, the world economy. All of these things you have to bring together in the big picture. And basically the title of my newsletter Contra Corner, I think tells you where I’m coming from contrarian. I do not believe the establishment narrative of what they’re telling you on CNBC or Fox Business, or the other cable networks, is what they want you to believe. But it’s not where we’re really heading as we go into the future.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

David, It’s been absolutely and absolute pleasure, a delight meeting you and having this conversation. I think you’ve given some great insights.

 

David Stockman:

Thank you.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

And great advice. And just remember everybody, when we get true financial education, when we’re really understanding what’s going on, we do have some control over what we do and we’re always going to make way more money and pay way less taxes. We’ll see you next time.

 

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