All I saw were whales. We got plenty of whales. Don't worry about
the whales. Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what
you can do for your country. Mister Garbatscheff, tear down this wall.
Read my lips. It's the Ricoche Podcast. Peter Robinson and Rob Long.
I'm James Lennox and today our guest is the one, the only, Larry
Cutlow. So let's Abrazel was a podcast. They spied up my campaign.
They did all sorts of things. I was under investigation and under season.
So are my people. And if I wasn't tough, I wouldn't be here
right now. I guarantee you that. So if I didn't fight back,
I didn't do here. America's a nation that can be defined in a single
word. I was a foot excuse Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast,
number nine hundred and seventy two. I'm just kidding. I thought maybe you
would, you know, wake up and say, wait a minute, I
missed three hundred of them. Now we'll get there eventually, and we'll get
there through the grace and wit and wisdom and intelligence of the founders who founded
Ricochet in the first place, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilax
in sun splashed Minnesota. Rob Long is on his deck up in Gotham,
where it looks to be beautiful, and Peter is in California, where of
course it's green and lush and wonderful June, the first week of is there
anything so rare? It's a beautiful time. But of course what we're all
paying attention to is the blood on the floor and the political matters where DeSantis
and Trump seemed to have finally decided that it's on. So welcome, gentlemen,
And how have you viewed the last week where the slumbering descantist campaign seems
to have woken up and started to address particular things that are being aimed at
them politics at last high time. That's my view of it. High time.
And it ain't bean ball, and it ain't bean ball, No,
it ain't ball. Um, I guess what my Rick de Santis unchained?
Rob is rob Meatball, Rob Meatball geese ron excuse me, I'm so I
was about to do some little riff on the way he seems to be pronouncing
his name, and then I screwed up. Anyway, Okay, so Rond
Santis or de santiss or, who knows. Anyway, the guy is tough
and smart. I still stand by their comment that I think Rob and I
agreed on this. In some way, he's not quite himself in front of
a camera. There's some kind of stiffness there. But when you see him
making eye contact as he did in IYO with actual human beings in the crowd,
he's pretty good. He's pretty good. Also, I have to say
I'm torn about this because I don't want a field of thirty five candidates vying
for the Republican nomination. Some of them, it seems to me, are
vying for the vice presidency, and some of them are simply vying for book
contracts and they're own talk shows or their own radio shows. On the other
hand, I'm very happy to see Chris christ To get into the race.
Chris Christie has his drawbacks, for sure, but again, he's tough,
and he's smart, and he's willing to go right at Donald Trump. Um.
All this strikes me as good news. I have enjoyed the last week
of politics and Pence's entry. He might get the impression of is he informally
yet it's happening. It's happening. I want to know what sort of Spengali
can work his mesmerism to convince some of these guys that this is their time.
Um, you know, and I mean Pence is going to be like
respected the man in the past, but in this point, at this point,
he's like the court gesture who finds himself on the throne addressing the formerly
you know, the posed king who beat him. I mean, I know,
I mean, I mean he can say things from the inside that the
rest of them can't. Now whether or not he will another question, But
don't you think so? I mean, he was privy to all sorts of
inside things that coming from him. One would have a tendency to believe he's
in an obvious bind. He was much too loyal to Donald Trump, much
too loyal to Donald Trump for three years and eleven months of that administration for
the Trump haters ever to forgive him. And then he was too disloyal to
Donald Trump for the Trump supporters ever to forgive him. That strikes me as
a pretty serious bind. On the other hand, again, this is this
man is intelligent, articulate, he's deeply experienced, He's been a congressman,
a governor, vice president. Let's see what he has to say. Sorry,
Rob, Rob, you're on the rooftop there in I'm on the roof
in the village. Let's hear what the view from the rooftop. Well,
you know, I've always thought Pants, I mean Pants is a lot more
conservative than I am, certainly, and that he's more conservative than I that
you've never been comfortable with, right. But he's a very good politician.
I mean, as you say, though, you don't get to win all
those statewides without being good, especially in um in the kind of the good
the good government with Midwest. So I actually feel like he's a pretty decent
candidate so far. I mean, he hasn't done anything yet, but you
know the outlines. I like Christie because Christie's a bomb thrower and he can
think on a speech. And I've always enjoyed Christie. I mean, I
remember this is how old I am. I remember friends of mine in show
business when Christy was like the big star in Republican politics in two thousand and
eight, the first Obama term, And when they were before they would start
work, they would they would watch what they called Christie plorn. They would
go on YouTube and they would find the Chris Christie video clips where he was
just eviscerating the press and eviscerating the teachers unions, and it was all off
the cuff, and he was articulate, and it was like this. All
we could think of was my God, Chris Christie. I cannot wait for
him to be president United States. Of course, that was as I said
many many, many years ago. But I'm he still seems to have that
fire. So I'm excited about the fight, right like you are. I'm
a little concerned lately, though, that the two front riders of who I'm
calling the two front runers, they may not be the runners a Trump and
De santists seem to be having like a who's stupider contest. For Trump to
say, as he did earlier this week, that actually, Chris that um
Cuomo Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, was a better COVID governor than
Ron De Santis is just stupid. It's almost indefensibly stupid. It shows a
guy who just simply can't doesn't recognize the problems with COVID, the problems that
he caused, the problems that he inherited, and doesn't understand what happened and
will say anything, however idiotic to sort of score points. It's just dumb.
And then I expected Ron de Santis to be sort of smart, and
now run to Santis is saying things like, well, you know, Operation
Warp Speed and the vaccination was a mistake and a disaster, and that's just
stupid. And I was actually impressed by Donald Trump's response to that to a
voter who said, hey, what about this vaccine? And he really I
mean Operation Warp Speed was one of these like stellar accomplishments of the Trump administration,
and it was a blueprint for government sponsoring technological emergency innovation that will be
studied and emulated, I think, I hope for decades. So, you
know, for Ron de Santis to sort of take issue with it, it's
just so stupid, Like why can't these two guys attack each other like,
you know, like they're supposed to. They don't have to be dumb about
it. One of the things that Trump's team has done is put out a
series of tweets accusing Ron de Santis and wanting a twenty three percent sales tax
on the nation, which looks bad. Gosh, gee, that's that's horrible.
But of course the beauty of it now is that in the Twitter world
there's something called commune enter team notes. Yes, and this has really changed
the way these things work. It used to be that you could come out
and say something like that, you'd have to go to the comments and scroll
through a bunch of garbage to get people saying, actually, know what he's
talking about is the you know, the fair tax that would be in place
after we'd abolished the IRS and personal income tax. It's right there under the
tweet. It's right there. Community not its people have noted, so that
instantaneous you can have the most the most formidable, capable communications team you want,
with great graphics and splaining and know how is to when to time it
and how to phrase it, which they don't, and instantaneously it's undercut by
one guy who's making a note that everybody else sees. And I think that's
going to be cool, and I think it's going to be a welcome addition
to the political discs. It's I mean, Matt Walsh said, not Matt
Walsh, um oh Man, I forget his name. Back during the the
early days of blogging, said, you know, this is the Internet and
we can fact check your your but and that was true then, but you
had to go to a blog and you had to read a point. Now
it's real time fact checking, which I don't think we've seen like that before.
I agree, so far, I've liked it. I liked that this
is the back to them on the candidates. I have to agree that so
far, so far, I have the feeling I'm just being well. Of
course, politics is a subjective business, but I have the feeling that Donald
Trump is not bringing out the best in Ronda Santis, that de Sandis feels
somehow he's got to get down load. It'll be interesting to see the way
Chris Christie handles this problem. Chris Christie knows Trump has watched him work for
him. Of course, Christie's problem is that he was against Trump, then
he was for Trump, and then he was against him again, and then
he helped him the transition, and then he helped Who knows right where it
all ends up, but is Chris Christie. Chris Christie will be forceful,
He'll throw a punch after punch after punch. Something tells me he won't.
There won't be the feeling that he's been that he's stooping, that he's climbing
down into the governor. Well, because he's a fighter. I mean,
that's because that's what he is. I mean, I actually was impressed.
I kind of liked it. I mean, I mean, you know,
not I thought it was destially accurate, but I kind of liked it.
When Trump is attacking Desantist for being a tax racer, that is what Republican
candidates do. That is that whenever Trump behaves like a buyer brand Republican using
his opponents of trying to raise taxes, I'm like, that's my sweet spot,
stay there right. Whether it's true or not. I mean, it's
actually rarely true the way they talk about it, but um, I mean
certainly within Republican party. But I think the big difference here is going to
be that in twenty sixteen, every single candidate on the day is there was
trying to avoid going after Trump. They all thought, we'll leave this guy
alone, let him play his little game. I'll be here to pick up
the pieces. This time, it's the opposite. Every single one of those
guys in the Daists has got to be the one that holds Trump's head aloft
and say I killed otherwise it's over. So if your pants, there's no
middle ground. If you're Christie, there's no middle ground. If you're de
Santists, you have a little bit because you're kind of like the superstar of
the public party now which probably fade over time, but that's it. I
mean, if I'm Trump, I'm not going to those debates because every single
person on that day is still be going after me because it's really the Kamakaze
mission and those are sort of dangerous opponents to have. So they might all
get they might all go down low. What's gonna What's Trump gonna say?
Like? Why is everybody being so mean? What happened to stability? You
can't say that. Well, they're gonna hang Fauchi around his neck and Burkes
and the rest of it as they should, as they should. I mean,
I'm with you about the vaccine deal. I think that's a bad move
for to Santist, But they can use Fauch and they can use the rest
of it. And I mean the Desantist campaign came out with a like a
ninety second two minute clip of trumping about shutting it down. We did the
right thing. We shut it down. We did the right thing. We
did the right thing. All kinds of context and variouspeeches and the rest of
it. Now, some of that may be cherry picked. Some of us
may be saying, oh yes in March, in April we wanted to show
etc. But it's effective and it portrayed, and it's it says, are
you can you can you guarantee you We're not going to get another lockdown from
this guy. Um No, as people are pointing out drug, Trump is
spending his time defending the last four he hit, the four years that he
had it, and that's a long time ago. It's forever ago. Nobody
wants to talk about that anymore. We want to look forward. And when
he talks about I'm going to drain the swamp, I think who was it
today? Was it DeSantis or somebody the others who said, well, look
you had four years, he had four years and you didn't do any of
this stuff. What makes us think that you, now older and more damaged,
UH is going to be able to do it again? So yeah,
it's it's it's an absolutely fascinating time. And I don't think anybody is going
I don't think Christy or Pence will pull more than half of one percent.
That is probably. I want to circle back to something. Rob just made
a point I had. I hadn't thought of it this way, but the
way he just framed it is not only true, but I think the main
dynamic we're going to see at least in the first three primaries, and that
I'm thinking now in particular of Chris Christie. If you're Chris Christie, what
are the incentives you face? Do you think you can actually get to be
president? Probably? Not? Well, then why do you want to go
in? You want to go in for the fun of it, because you
want to be back in the action. Well, how do you enjoy yourself?
If you're Chris Christie, you go after Donald Trump? Suppose you know,
suppose you already know, there's the chances are more than nine out of
ten that you're not going to make it. So if you go into this,
how do you avoid embarrassed? Ah? Here's what you do. You
will have the gratitude of all your friends in Manhattan and New Jersey for the
rest of your life if you're the guy who took him down, and the
way right, whoever the president is exactly and cleared the way. For So
I hadn't thought that. This is exactly the point that the incentives now for
everybody in the race, but in particular for Chris Christie, for for de
Santis too. But DeSantis at the same time he has to be worrying about
looking president, not Chris Christie. His whole aim here is to go torpedo
like for that great orange presence. M hadn't thought of it. But you're
exactly right. I also remember there's a there's bitterness there right, Oh,
this revenge too, like Christie was supposed to be the Attorney general and Jared
Kushner because Chris Christie put Jared Kushner's father in jail legitimately by the way,
um, he richly deserved to be in jail. Um. But Christier said,
no, we can't have Christie in the administration Trump. Of course,
you know, he rolled a lot to Jared Jared, which has been another
series of problems. Um. And so Christie wants he wants revenge. There's
nothing I think that drives somebody more than just that moral lago meets the Red
wedding with Chris Christie and his medieval outfits with a sword dripping with the grew
and gore of the man he slaying exactly speaking of Grew and Gore, No,
it's actually not speaking of civility and fascination and intellectual perspicacity in the like
Larry Cudlow column is for The New York Sun, host of the Fox Business
news shows Cutlow, which airs at four pm Eastern Time weekdays. We welcome
him back with gratitude and warmth. Larry, Hello, my favorite never trumpers.
Is the pleasure? All right? We got a deal? Should we
be pleased about this? Dancing about this? I mean, gosh, the
deficit is going to go down by one point five trillion over the course of
a decade, even though those numbers kind of magical and suspect. Is this
the best we could get? Is this just politics as usual? What's your
take? No, it's a good deal. Bye. I mean Kevin McCarthy
ran circles around Joe Biden got him to completely change his entire point of view
from a clean debt bill to a debt bill that has significant spending cuts and
significant policy changes, very good policy changes, things like workfare and permitting and
regular budget on appropriations and pago on regulations. Everything Biden did not want.
And McCarthy did a heck of a job not only doing that stuff, but
as I say, the way McCarthy handled himself, insistent but always open to
compromise or talking the language of compromise, and so many press conferences, so
off the cuff meetings, you know, with reporters in the hallways of Congress.
I mean, he really did a masterful job. And he got two
fairs of the Republican Conference with him. So I thought it was very good.
And I think what you've got here, you know, this is something
new Gingrich and I have talked a lot about on the air, and except
that Kevin and I have talked a lot about during this whole process, you've
got a large first step towards restoring conservative economic principles and pro growth principles and
anti inflation principles. So I think it's actually a very very important win politically,
and it's a very important win fiscally, and it will help the economy
a bit. And it's the first step. There'll be much more coming,
Learry can I So you said that Kevin took Biden to the cleaners, and
the Senates just has approved this now one by about a margin of three to
one in the House, he got most Republicans, overwhelming number of Democrats.
All right, So there are a couple of explanations here, and I have
before getting to the question, I have to just Kevin McCarthy's reputation right up
until the becoming speaker was very nice guy. But the idea that he understood
he himself never claimed to be a policy guy. The idea that he understood
policy, that he understood strategy. He was a wonderful chief whip. He's
the guy you want to count noses. But Kevin as a negotiator. So
then we get this dead ceiling. Seems to be their two explanations. One
explanation is that Democrats suddenly realized how out of step they are with the great
boy of the American people. Or Kevin McCarthy is one shrewd figure. He
has been underestimated throughout his career, and now we see him in action and
it's an impressive show. What do you think? Well, what about both,
Peter? I mean, I'm leaving the great synthesis to you, Larry,
go ahead. Now, I think I think he's a very underrated guy,
and I think the public is sick and tired of Biden's frenzied spending and
government's central planning and regulatory overreach, and inflation is still the number one problem,
and real wages are still falling. Look, I you know, Kevin
McCarthy is a longtime friend of mine. When I was working in the White
House, I used to bring him into a lot of meetings with the President
in the you know, the dining room behind the Oval office late in the
afternoon, early in the evening. One of the receptionists would say that,
you know, Kevin McCarthy's here, and I'd go out and instead of making
wait, I'd go out and bring him in. And you know, he's
learned a lot. He's working hard. He's a very affable guy. As
you suggested, He's climbed the ranks. You know, he's he's been around,
he's seen the mistakes and he's learned from them. And I think also
as hard as it was for him to win on fifteen ballots for a speaker,
I think that was a very positive experience. And the Freedom Caucus people.
You've got some very very smart Freedom Caucus people, and I think that
helped him and proved him, made him a better speaker. And you know,
the turning point for this stuff was not so much the debt deal.
It was the Republican debt ceiling legislation that they said, that was the shot
across the bow that changed the entire political calculus in Washington. The White House
did not take him or the Republican House seriously when they put that resolution together
that actually wasn't a resolution, it was a bill. And the bill was
well received. That's the thing. You have these middle of the road think
tanks in Washington, like the Peterson Institute or the Committee for whatever it's called
Responsible Federal Budget, Maam McGinnis. They came out and said this is a
good common sense bill. Well, that put tremendous pressure, and you got
guys like Jeff Stein, who's a pretty good economics reporter for the Washington Post,
writing about that and put tremendous pressure on Biden in the White House and
made them realize between that and the polls that they were making a gigantic mistake.
So Larry, go ahead, No, no, no, no,
go ahead. Well, I was just where did that legislation come from.
You've got between the Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his chief whip Steve Scalise. You've
got two guys who whose reputations are as nose counters, very good politicians,
but who put together this bill, who thought through the economic strategy you get
if you want to say, well, actually I wrote it for them,
and they just called if you want to insert yourself, Larry, go ahead,
But where did it come from? Seriously? Well, look, um
couple look at him. There are some former Trump office holders who have helped
myself included, Kevin Hassett included. But you also have a lot of smart
people in the Republican Conference. Uh. You know, Graves is a very
smart guy. The guy running the Banking Committee's a smart guy who you know,
was one of the two negotiators. Mckenry, Pat mcannon. He's a
very smart guy. Um Byron Donalds is a very smart guy. French Hill
is a very smart guy. I mean, I'm not gonna go down the
whole of it, but there's a lot of talent, a lot of talent
you're you're gonna see. You know, these these House members who were junior
members now becoming more your members. Many of them will go on to serve
in the Senate or governorships. The GOP has a very deep base, and
they're all contributing these policy things. You see, the mistake the Republicans made
in the mid term elections was not specifying policy. It was general. You
know, we hate inflation, all right, well we all hate inflation,
but they never spelled it out. We were begging them too. I don't
know how many of them I used to have on the show, especially the
Senate candidates. But anyway, inside the House, they're doing a heck of
a good job. It's a very interesting policy laboratory. And I might also
add McCarthy and Scalice and others have a number of former Trump staff serving on
their staffs right now, so there's a lot of depth in policy development.
Hey, Larry, I think thinking back to January, if those you know,
sixteen thousand ballots that Speaker McCarthy had to go through, and at the
end of the day, I think a lot of people are thinking, well,
I don't think we've ever had a weaker Speaker of the House, right,
I mean, you know what happened in all those ballots, And yet
the guy somehow turns it around and he does a really great job, and
he sort of knows what he's doing, and he manages to keep a pretty
powerful coalition together. He manages to make policy arguments that I mean, you
know, work requirements and things like that that I think people really do feel
strongly about all of that stipulated. And yet I can't help think that,
you know, we're here again, like we're having these debt ceilings, debates
and crises all the time. What are we not fixing that needs to be
fixed? You know, Rob One of the great House speakers was Nicholas Longworth.
I think he was the turn of the last century. I knew him.
I knew him. He was married to Kenny Roosevelt's daughter. They thought
he they thought he was a fop, but he turned out to be a
hell of a good speaker. Just just saying, you never know what these
things you never know, right. So the look, the problem in the
last couple of years and is the Democratic Party has moved pard to the left.
During the campaign of twenty twenty, Joe Biden made a deal with Bernie
Sanders. I mean it literally made a deal on paper, and Joe Biden
said people didn't pay enough attention to this that I'm going to follow your lade,
your guidance. So the party turn socialist. So they come into power.
They have all three houses, and they go and spend six trillion dollars,
and they put on the board two trillion dollars worth of higher regulatory costs,
and they wage war against the fossil fuel business. And some people call
it modern monetary theory. Well, modern monetary theory has utterly failed. All
right. Inflation is still high, growth is low. We're on the cusp
of a recession. The country is in revolved. Middle income blue collar working
folks, lower middle income working folks are losing money. Their take on pay
is fawling. You can't have that. It's not sustainable. So the left
had their way. The pendulum swung way way too far, and now the
panagulum is beginning to swing back. But do you think we're ever going to
get out of this? I guess I have two questions. One is it
seems my premise is that we have an enormous federal entitlement problem. We don't
seem to want to get our hands around that. There are two solutions to
this. One is to raise taxes and the other is to grow. And
I guess, my guess my concern is, And I just I'm asking for
your prognostications because you are a you are a pro growth economist. You've been
arguing for growth for as long as I've known you, and you do and
you do it. I mean I I basically steal your ideas and say they're
my own. That's that's how smart I think you are. Brought you forget
the third option, returning to the gold standard. Now, okay, right,
right, right, um, assuming for a minute that we're not really
we're not ready as a country to have a conversation about entitlement reform, because
like you know, that seems like a like we're not what are the what
are the things we can do? But what are the things that we as
citizens of voters can agitate for and demand that are with big parts of a
pro growth agenda? That but growth agenda that Reagan sort of um, who
was the greatest economics professor in American history, taught us to focus on,
which I feel like we're in trouble now because we're not growing. Alvin Coolidge
wasn't bad either, yet, that man, um, Look, growth is
everything. Growth is everything. You know, there's six seven eight million people
according to Nick everstat of AI who are able bodied people who should be working,
and they're not, largely because they're being subsidized not to work by the
federal government. Right if you've got and and the McCarthy. The deal made
some modest but probably significant adjustments, So workfare will gradually be restored in the
next few years. You know, you put those people to work, you're
going to generate higher incomes for them, but also at existing tax rates,
you're going to generate more revenues, particularly payroll tax revenues. That's one solution.
Now, the first thing you have to do is elect a Republican president
and a Republican Senate to go along with the Republican House. Okay, that
is very important. I mean that. I know politically that's obvious, but
I'm saying to you it's very very important. And so far as entitlements are
considered, there are some structural issues that need fixing. And the way to
do that is to appoint a commission. And it's probably going to be a
bipartisan commission, just like Reagan did when I was a young pup working for
him, and he had the Greenspan Commission, and he put Pat moynihan on
that, and he put Lane Kirkland on that and the rest of us were
staff members to help them, and they worked out a very good deal,
a very good deal, and it lasted for about, I don't know,
forty years, fifty years, So you'll probably have to do something like that.
McCarthy, by the way, announced that he would go for some kind
of budget commission. Whether that will include the big entitlements, I don't know.
I haven't. I talked to him last on Sunday. I haven't talked
to him this week. But you know, that's what you'll have to do.
But rob growth is essential. I mean looking, I've been carrying around
in my briefcase the following from the end of World War Two, when the
government statistics were made uniform and more reliable. Between nineteen forty seven and two
thousand, a year two thousand, the American economy grew at three and a
half percent per year after inflation over fifty years. Unfortunately, since two thousand,
the economy averaging now about one point eight percent. It had a little
blip in George W. Bush's presidency, a little blip, and it had
a similarly temporary blip under Trump, but it's now lapsed back. You know,
in fact, the last fifteen months, the economy has grown by less
than one What are we doing wrong? So well, there's too much government,
that's what we're doing. Boat anchors around the neck of the beast.
That's right, that's exactly right. There's too much sand in the gears.
There's too much regulation. Trump did a good job rolling back regulations. Biden
comes in and reverses the whole bloody thing. Okay, they're starting to raise
taxes again. Very bad. The whole tax system still could be lowered and
simplified. We also have flirted with inflation again. I mean, look,
we didn't have any inflation for about forty years. Boarded reading about six weeks
into a Roman orgy with it. I mean, look, you know,
you laugh about the gold standard, but people should use as a reference point
for the value of the dollar. They should use gold and a broad commodity
index, so COVID, COVID with the emergency spending. See here here's the
problem, the fiscal problem. We passed a two trillion dollars some odd bill.
Actually it is probably close to three trillion, the so called Cares Act
in twenty twenty. Okay, I was very much a part of that negotiating.
Steve Manusian was our lead. I was a deputy. It was a
bipartisan bill. It's something we had to do. And the fellow reserved bought
the bonds we sold and pumped up the money supply, and commodity prices started
soaring. And so for now, that by itself was not inflationary. The
inflation didn't start till later. Why because when those programs started expiring in twenty
twenty one, okay, the bidens went in and what did they do.
They put out a two trillion dollars so called whatever it's called, the American
Relief Act, which even good Keynesians like Larry Summer Summers, yes, Sathan
Furman. Furman's a terrific economist. By the way, he's a good friend
of mine. Austin Gouldsby said a little bit, although he was bucking for
a job. But the point is, you know what I will call adults,
responsible economic people on both sides of the aisle said don't do this right,
and they went and did it, and they kept on doing it,
and rob they would have kept on doing it right through this debt ceiling,
except they ran into Kevin McCarthy in a Republican House, Larry, I want
to return to this insight of yours, because I take it well, let's
put it this way. Reagan gets elected and says, an effect, the
best we can do with social securities put together a commission, patch it up.
They did patch it up pretty well. See it for some period of
a couple decades, and take it okay, and take it off the table,
so we can get to what we can do, which is promote growth.
George W. Bush gets reelected and says I'm going to devote my second
term to entitlement reform, and he wastes an entire year taking on social security
head on and getting exactly nowhere. The central insight here is you do what
you can with entitlement programs, but you don't go down rabbit holes. Republicans
need to save their principal energy, their principal fight for tax cuts and rolling
back regulations and promoting growth. You can contain the welfare state, but the
name of the game is permitting the private economy to grow faster than the welfare
state. Correct, Correct, All right, that you're allowed to say more,
Larry, Just we see so rarely says correct to you that the first
time I've known Larry for forty years, and that's the first time he's ever
thought I got anything right. I say, this group on the whole has
been definitely picked its game up. Inflation and a recession will do that tens
to focus the mind. Listen, Biden, socialistsm has united all of us
exactly. Really, I'm Minneapolis right now. I'm in a fifty two story
skyscraper that's probably got about twelve people in it. Don't tell Minneapolis is coming
back slowly. New York is in bad shape. As we're learning, all
of the real estate values of some of the Class A stuff is just is
cratering. There's excess capacity. They're starting to refinance everything. And though so
commercial property in New York is finding its floor and that may be good and
burn out some of the excess and the rest of it. People are talking
about, we've got to convert these empty office buildings as Class B stuff from
sixties into housing. But there's all these green regulations that say they have to
do this and that and this and that, which makes it incredibly expensive to
do so. Commercial real estate in downtowns in general, if you're on Florida
is in trouble, and this affects the finances of cities a lot. So
we're going to see a shakeout of this, aren't we? What is the
ripple effect through the economy nationwide, in particular of what's happened to commercial real
estate because everybody went home and nobody wanted to come back. Yeah, well,
I agree with you, by the way, I think your analysis is
about on and commercial real estate is going to go through its first correction in
about twenty years. Now. Is it going to decimate the economy? I
don't know. I think some of these some of these regional banks are going
to get it hurt. We haven't heard, we haven't heard the last of
that problem. The people that run these reats and you know, commercial building
funds and so forth, are going to get hurt. Investors are going to
get hurt. But don't forget that. You know, land has value and
the buildings have value. So you're going to get a shakeout. Managements will
be thrown out, new managements will come in. Rents and prices will be
adjusted. You know, it will be a classic form of a capitalist kind
of correction. And will it hurt the economy? Yeah, it will in
the short run. Is it going to be catastrophic, No, I think
that will lead however, in the next year or two to a you know,
the government, the lefties are going to try to have a big bailout
for this type stuff, and the Conservatives will oppose it, and the public
I think will also oppose it. The public sick of bailouts. But yeah,
I agree, there's a commercial real estate coming shakeout coming, not residential
so much. Residential has heard badly by high mortgage rates, but it'll be
more commercial mortgage rates. Jack and I took a little steam out of the
out of the bubble. But before when we had real estate corrections, I
mean, I remember the time when oh my gosh, the Japanese are buying
everything, like they were going to buy the Empire State Building and disassemble it
and move it to Tokyo. No, they bought a bunch of stuff here.
Prices went up, and then eventually things happened and the market went down,
but there still was a demand for office space. It seems like a
fundamental shift that has happened where the existence of an office building is no longer
the guarantee that it used to be It used to be, Yeah, we're
gonna put up a big seventy story skyscraper on Park Avenue for JP Morgan,
whoever, and people will come to work there in their suits, in their
ties, and they will be productive. But you don't have that paradigm anymore,
and that has to have a make this a different correction than it was
before, or are all corrections basically the same? Actions are basically the same.
I would say, you know, inside your view and I agree with
your view, there are cultural issues that are troublesome to me. I mean,
look, a lot of these kids don't want to work. They don't
want to go to work, and they don't want to work, and that's
not good. Now. I think that will change as they mature, and
there's now a counter revolution about you know people. I mean, I'm non
stop. I wanted work requirements in this house. Bill I started talking about
it right after the election. I've never stopped. Guys like Bill Bennett have
them on the show all the time. You know, we talk about the
dignity of work, the scientific work, work is because godly. But the
trouble is the left taste for religion. They don't even think in those terms.
So that is a cultural issue that is a very important sidebar to your
economic point. Rob I just want to tell you Larry said that my analysis
on growth was correct, and then James Lilacs gave a real estate analysis and
Larry Cudlow said correct, Robinson correct, Lilacs correct, long just by definition
correct. But I have a cultural question, right because I feel like sometimes
a lifetime you've spent in finance and economics and business, there's something you know
that maybe we need to hear. And I know you're an optimist, so
I I hope I know what your answer is going to be. But I
let me tell you what a friend of mine told me. Grew up in
Detroit in the fifties and sixties, and when you're growing up in the Detroit
area fifties and sixties, there were not that many toy stores because everybody had
tools in their basement, and when your kid wanted a train set, it
was considered kind of uncool to go and buy a train set. You could
make a train set. You have a better train set. So you go
to even now you go to garage sales in Detroit area and they are these
train sets that are very specific gauges you could never buy trains for because they
were made in someone's basement. And his point is, he said, America
is never really gonna come back roaring until we have a bunch of dads and
a bunch of moms too, a bunch of Americans who just want to go
down to the basement and they know they can make their own trainset. Do
you know what I'm saying, I guess what I'm I guess. This is
a long winded way of saying are we going to be okay? It's funny.
So I'm seventy five years old and very grateful to be kicking look pretty
good by the way. Seventy five man, I'm looking forward to that.
But I remember my train set in the basement of our house in Englewood,
New Jersey, where I grew up, and I remember not only setting it
up with my dad, with my mom watching periodically, but actually working it.
And we had a beauty, we had a beauty downstairs, and I
remember that. It's a wonderful thought, a very comforting thought. So,
you know, it's a complicated subject. Are we going to be okay?
I believe we will be okay because we are a democracy, and we are
free country, and we are grounded and what I would call traditional conservative values,
and we have been assaulted by the left in recent years. It's really
not just these five years, the Obama years, un least this, but
there'll be a counter revolution. I truly believe that people are putting their put
down. Enough is enough. And you know you need families. You look,
you need traditional families. Okay, you need two parents to be with
their kids and teach them and to take them to church or temple, and
you need that. I'm sorry, I believe this in my soul. Last
fall I was honored, I mean truly honored, one of the greatest honors
of my life. They gave me National Review gave me the William F.
Buckley Prize, and there were four or five hundred people in the Reagan Aircraft
thing in the library, and I got up and I spoke about a lot
of things. Bill Buckley was a very dear Bill and Pat Buckley were very
dear friends of ours. And some of my worst days professionally occurred when I
was on the staff, and then I recovered and we were dear friends afterwards.
Actually Bill loved my wife, Judy. He liked me, but he
loved Judy. But where I'm gone with this is I spent a fair amount
of time talking about Bill's belief that you must have a religious foundation in society,
and my pal Catherine Lopez wrote a lovely piece after that event, which
was called God and Man at the Reagan Library, and she captured absolutely.
I mean, she's a brilliant woman and she captured exactly what I was aiming
at. So how long how too? I don't know, Rob, But
I know I know it works. I know it works, and I know
there are a lot of people in this country that know it works. And
I know we're in a slump right now, and I know we're in a
bit of a decline. But in my lifetime, which has banned declines and
recoveries, I've seen how we can and will recover. And that's why I'm
an optimist. And you know I do go to church on Sunday, and
that helps him. That note a tonic chord. In fact, we will
end Peter and myself are correct, Rob. We'll just believe him for the
next one, and we look forward to hearing from you and whatever position you
happened to take in the dissentis administration. Larry, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks a lot of calls, Hope. I appreciate thanks, Larry.
There's only one thing I want to know, Rob, who in Detroit was
going down in the basement and hand wiring the armatures of their electric transformers to
run the things, and hand forging the little cars and the clipping things.
And I mean, I can see people putting their own train sets together,
but making from scratch from trains. These were machinists in the great American car
industry. They were working, and you know, they were incredibly skilled workers,
and they had all the tools at home. Probably had some tools they
took home that they might not have an authorized to take home, but they
had them. You would have to have equipment that was capable of nanosurgery sometimes
to get some of these little small things. I mean, are you saying
that it was dissolute for the other kids to just get a Lionel set and
put it together? That I think that there was from what I understand that
if you were working in the car backed artifactories and for Chryso GM all over
Detroit area, that you considered a point of pride to make those toys and
you could, and you had the tools and the equipment, and you had
the skill, and you had the technology, you had the working assembly line
at Kaiser, and you're putting in this bolt or you're fastening this part and
putting into there. That is not a skill that translates to building from scratch
an electrical transform, an electrical motor, and what's more to hand to make
your own tracks with their own gauge and the rest of it. I'm not
saying this didn't happen, but the idea of homebrew electric trainsets is something that
I've never encountered before. And Ricochet podcast ladies tell them the only place you
can get a debate on train sets in Detroit in the nineteen fifties, exactly
Ricochet meet up in Detroit. Maybe somebody could get up on this one rob
and speak in a which which talk about meetups. There are a bunch of
schedule meetups. There's one in mid July and Winston Salem. There's the annual
German Fest meetup in Milwaukee, it's happening the last weekend of July. And
Labor Day weekend meetup in Cookeville, Tennessee. There's a bunch of meetups.
There are kind of tentative ones in Columbus, Ohio late June. The other
is in mid July in Portland, Oregon, which I think would be kind
of that that actually counts as an expedition. And then Mammoth Ka Nashville Park
in Kentucky in August. That's got some takers. Look, we like to
meet online, we'd like to meet at the Ricochet dot com. We'd like
to meet when we do these podcasts. You know you can if you're a
remember, you can join us while we're doing them live. But we almost
like to meet in real life. So if you want to join, please
do. Please join ricochet dot com dot com and join us in one of
the meetups. And if one of these doesn't work for you for whatever reason,
just put up a post and say how about this one here at this
time, and Ricochet members will show up, because that's what Ricochet members do.
They do. Ricoche members show up. Ricochet members go to the site
and post in the member feed, where you know, we have these little
private conversations amongst ourselves that are great. Ricoche members know that when Rob is
talking about the meetups, that that must mean that the show is coming to
a conclusion, and they also know that that means the inevitable plea for a
five star review on Apple for all the reasons that we've given in six hundred
and forty four podcasts. And if you're not a Ricoche member and you are
still hanging on every little syllable and phoneame we are uttering here, we advise
you strongly as possible to go to the site, check it out, sign
up, spend a shekel or two and see exactly why we call at the
place on the internet you've been looking for all your life. It's not Facebook,
it's not Twitter. It's a community of sayings, center right civil conversation.
And in addition to all those other sibilants, we're going to use the
S word short because Peter Robinson has to scamper rob Is to get out before
the workers start their almost over. But before I know we have to go,
Yes, before we go, I just want to I know I don't
think we fully. I mean, I am still always actually in awe of
Larry Cutler's great I could listen to him all day and I just did what
I know he'll listening. I want to thank him for joining us. But
also I hope everybody loves him as much as I do, because I think
he's a great, great, great American. It's it's fun to hear and
again he knows things, having seen things. And also and for somebody to
have known things and seeing things and remain optimistic as an American spirit that we
love and cherish and encourage at Ricochet. I mean, that's one of the
things about the political argument today. We're gone, we're dead, best days
behind his best to just give up on it all and go. You know,
we all feel that some days, as I want is the point?
What am I going to accomplish? And then you listen to Larry and you
think, no, we can accomplish a lot. We will accomplish a lot,
and we have to do it together. And by together, I mean
all of us listening to this. Members are not, but you should be
a member. Peter rob it's been fun. We'll see everybody in the comments
at Ricochet four point oh next week, boys, mhm, hey join the conversation.