Speaker 1: If he wins, in effect, he's going to be a
lame duck. He doesn't have to run for reelection and
so he can do a lot of things. You'll have
a freer hand, in fact, than he would otherwise. It'll
leave jd Vance with a with a harder job. That
there's a big opportunity to fix a lot of these things,
maybe once in a lifetime. If we don't fix some,
that hold this whole debt debt monster is going to
suck us down.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network where you
get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to
thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival
Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot
com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival
Network now more than.
Speaker 3: Ever, and welcome. You are listening to and watching the
Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie lets They've got
a really interesting guest. His name is Bill Walton. Bill,
you have a podcast, but you've done so much more.
You find him at the Bill Waltonshow dot com and
it's season entrepreneur. Bill the CEO of Allied Capital corporation
for many years and basically part of the Trump transition team.
You've done a lot and really great to have you
on here because it looks like there's an inevitability about
to take place in the election. Although elections are like
horse races, you never know when one of those horses
is going to get drugged or taken out before it
crosses the finish line, as they've already tried to do here.
But we got to talk about what you foresee happening
and is the economy hopeless at this point? Is the
country hopeless? Is there anything that can be done to
turn to write this sinking ship? Well?
Speaker 1: I think there is, and I'm quite hopeful about Trump's
prospects next week. You know, lots of people who are
close to it. I'm based here in the DC area,
and you know, the feeling is he's going to win.
But I have insider information. I have a dentist who
is dentist to all the Democrat operatives who work for
Obama and then Biden, and they're you know, in Northwest,
and they are terrified. They're quite concerned that this thing
is going south on them. And you know they've been
they've they've been living in a honeypot now for you know,
fifteen years, twenty years figure, and they're worried about the game,
the game over scenario. And the other thing it makes
me optimistic is if Trump wins. When he wins, there
are a lot of people that he has.
Speaker 3: You know, he made a lot of.
Speaker 1: People mistakes in twenty sixteen. It took a long time
to get over it and get started, and then of
course they attacked him with the Rush Russia Russia thing.
I think he's all ready for that now, and he's
got I can think of fifteen twenty people who probably
come into the administration who get what needs.
Speaker 3: To be done. They've been there.
Speaker 1: I think the odds of making some changes are good.
Speaker 3: All right, well, we certainly need it, you know. I
don't want to talk about personalities and cults of personality
all that, but it's good to hear that your dentist
is getting us some golden inside information. He takes the
gold out of their pockets. And they should be scared
because what's happened in this country is you know, the
policies that have been pursued have got us at the
brink of bankruptcy. But I mean, like Trump has said
he didn't need to do this, and I'm sure he's
doubted himself for doing it many many times since, but
he's kind of it's a calling for him, kind of
a mission, and you know, it's it's going to be interesting.
But like I said, we're not into like election politics
and all that. We're into policy. That's something that you
have first hand information insight into. You know. One of
the things people complain about Bill it's so hard to
get the government to do anything to change the government.
One policy that Trump is promoting now is elimination of
the income tax. Are you and I ever going to
live to see that? Oh my gosh, I hope so. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, the night when we put the income tax
in place. There's obviously the money part of it, but
the income tax is just an unbelievable intrusion into our
personal privacy. All of a sudden, the federal government has
the right to take apart your your sources of income,
and they know everything about you. And there are lots
of other things afoot if Kamala in up winning where
they you know, the Treasury's got something called the Corporate
Transparency Act, which they I know Biden signed into law.
And you know that that would require most of the
small businesses in America some thirty forty million, to disclose
the beneficial ownership of them, and a lot of other
things that would be intrusive. And so yeah, I do
know that's the kind of thing that when Trump wins,
you know they're going to they're going to make a
target now getting rid of the I R S for
the income tax. I don't think we get enough revenue
if we go to tariffs to substitute for the income tax,
given the unbelievably big, you know, the size of the government.
But I like the way they're thinking about it.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, but the but.
Speaker 1: The terrify idea is really it's about revenue. But I
think it's mainly about making sure that we rehabilitate, rehabilitate
American business here.
Speaker 3: And you know, we've we've.
Speaker 1: Transported most of the business, a lot of the businesses
in the jobs offshore, and we've got to we've got
to bring that back. And I think I think that'll
be a big step in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Certainly, so probably a combination of tariffs and a that
national sales tax, if you will, Probably what it's going
to have to be, but we get Elon Musk in
charge of efficiency. I mean, look, the most productive auto
manufacturing plants in the world. The most productive one happens
to be the Tesla plant in Shanghai. But it's not
that far ahead of Austin, and it's not that far
ahead of Fremont, California. Quality is a little higher there
because it was built later than Fremont, but the Austin
quality just as good. So can you can you imagine
Elon Mutska well being in charge of cutting government programs?
Go ahead? Yeah, there's one other thing. There was a
case that took place during Nixon's tenure, and I know
that President Trump is aware of it. That's the Impoundment Authority. Yeah. Case.
I don't remember the name of it, so forgive me
for that. But basically said, if Congress authorizes the spending,
you got to spend it. And the case was never
properly tested. And look to just say, all right, Congress,
you allocated six billion dollars, but we're only going to
spend four of it. Sue me. Can we look forward
to that? You think in a second Trump administration.
Speaker 1: I think it's on the radar screen definitely that you've
got a little elon musk answer. They say, well, how
much money can you cut out of a seven trillion
dollar budget? I think that's the number that could be
could be twenty million, twenty t he said, two trillion dollars,
which is a big number, but it's not you know, waste,
fraud and abuse. He also in another conversation throughout the
notion that there's some two hundred and seventy five or
three hundred federal agencies and if you want to look
at a definition of immortality, it's a federal agency. You know,
once these things get created, they never go away. And
I would bet they're probably seventy five to one hundred
agencies which may have had a good reason to come
into existence, but they don't have any reason to be
right now. And there's a big opportunity to not only
cut employment, but also restructure you know, the regulatory framework
to make it, you know, more compatible for growing a business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did. I put this question to chat GPT.
I said, listen, one hundred federal agencies, agencies that are
useless and could easily be cut. And I'm going to
give you, like just a few of these agencies. You're
going to get a real kick out of it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Do you think we could live without the Appalachian Regional Commission,
the Denali Commission, xmbank, You know, the Xmbank's just corporate welfare.
How about the postal Service? Well, we need somebody to
deliver the mail. But I think Jeff Bezos could do
it better than the government. Right. It still already is
opic US Institute for Peace. It's not doing a real
good job now. Office of Navajo and Hoppy Hope Indian Relocation.
That seems like an urgent national concern, doesn't it. I
mean it's just because on and on and on and
on and on here like one hundred of them. The
they're talking like things like the fah FA because it's
duplicated by other things in private. Could do it? Office
of Fossil Energy, I mean, let's be banned by fossils, right.
Or how about the Office of Legacy Management. What the
heck do you even know what that does? Bill?
Speaker 1: It's managing somebody's legacy and government.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's managing oversea protecting all the obsolete agencies. Yeah,
but the job is to stand guard to make sure
nobody shuts them down.
Speaker 3: I don't know. We'll have to get rid of that one.
First one. The one I want to get rid of
is the Department of Redundancy Department because it's definitely this
is chat GPT. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think of that as not really I realized it
was a libertarian this is this is good stuff, all.
Speaker 3: Right, So we could further refine this and say, pretend
you are Rand Paul or uh, you know, just pretend
you Rand Paul. What's the way to go? Yeah? Or
if I were Ludwig vad misis what would I what
would be left of the federal government? You know, you
could do that because then it has to put on
its other hat and get away from it's a leftist
to programming. But how about the Export Control and Related
Border Security Assistance program. You know, it's a list, it's
it would be comical, Bill if it wasn't a true.
Speaker 1: Well it wasn't it wasn't obscene. I mean that's the issue.
I mean, that's you know, it's comical if you're sort
of doing what we're doing. But if you run a
business and a small business, medium sized business, and you
fall under the predations of.
Speaker 3: One of those agencies.
Speaker 1: Uh, you got a problem because they can tell you
to do all sorts of things that don't make any sense.
And you know, and that's the that's the hidden tax
in America. Now, as all these agencies put out, you know,
one of them puts out a bad rule or a
rule that may be even you know, with a good intent,
but then all of a sudden you're supposed to comply with.
Speaker 3: If you get one hundred agencies.
Speaker 1: Doing that, all of a sudden, all you're doing is
filling out paperwork.
Speaker 3: How about how about like one of Trump's most successful
policies last administration was putting in the Executive Order that
for every new rule you want to impose or implement,
you got to get rid of two And it actually
was so effective that most agencies were getting rid of
twenty new rules every rule they implemented. How about every
new rule you implement, you got to get rid of
one hundred employees and one hundred existing regulations.
Speaker 1: Well, think of it, what Elon must out at Twitter?
What do you do reduce the headcount by eighty percent
ninety percent? And nobody knows that eight thousand employees and
it's taken it down to about one thousand, and it's
doing just fine with that streamline structure. I I know
Leyland wouldn't talk about this, and we weren't serious. And
if you get him thinking this way about these agencies,
I think, you know, this could be a you know,
think about our budget deficit, think about all the bad
things that people think you can't fix. Well, if you
do all this, you could.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's managed. If you saw the last Tesla
earnings call, and I've caught it, the average price of
a Tesla to produce is thirty five thousand dollars. No
grant that they don't have unions, they don't have legacy
costs like medical and pensions and all that good stuff,
but nonetheless the price has come down. Well. Inflation has
been going up. Bill two things, deficit inflation, all right,
Like I know Trump saying let's just drill, and we can,
you know, bring down inflation because energy costs and all that.
But you and I both know it's got to take
a massive cut in government expenditures. Unnecessary, wasteful, and some
that even maybe aren't wasteful but just aren't useful. And
that's where the blowback is going to come. From because,
like you said, you know, your dentist is worried because
all of his well most of his patients are probably
going to be out of a job here if Trump
was elected.
Speaker 1: Well, and they should be out of a job because well,
I came to Washington, I guess in nineteen ninety six.
I've been here several times. But Potomac, Maryland, which is
this big, big, expensive suburb north of the city, had
these huge Mac mansions and I was just really stunning,
and I asked, you know, I was new to the
PC area, and I said, what's paying for all that?
And they said, well, that's case treat money. And what
we've seen now in the last three or four years
is those big mansions have been considered teardowns, and they're
they're putting up even bigger ones up in Potomac. And
a lot of that's coming from things like the totally
misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which is basically the Green New
Deal on steroids, which is antedet trillions of dollars. And
you know, John Podesta's got a four hundred billion dollar
fund to for the for the projects for the Democrat.
Democrat donors have that they're purportedly you know, green energy,
so all that sort of stuff could go away. I mean,
the whole, the whole green energy piece is a massive
reallocation of capital, private capital and government capital. And if
we just shutting that down, would I think, do a
lot to the budget deficit.
Speaker 3: We got like hundreds of billions in corporate welfare every
year taking place right these companies. It's one thing you
give to the least needed. You could at least justify that,
But how do you justify these massive subsidies and everything else.
Speaker 1: Because they can forth, they can afford the lobbying firms
and afford the contribution to the to the senators and
the congressman, and they're the only ones talking to them,
and so they end up getting getting these handouts, and
the rest of the country can't afford to be here
and do that, and so they they've been the losers.
Speaker 3: And we you know, let's turn that around. Yeah. So yeah,
like like the Boeings of the world, and you see
what our subsidies have done. They and the banking industry, everybody,
they get these subsidies and then they up their executive
compensation and their stock options everything else. I mean, I
do believe that you run a successful company, you deserve
to be extremely well rewarded because it's very difficult, especially
in these times. But you know the taxpayer shouldn't be
paying for it.
Speaker 1: Well, that'll be a new paradigm. Now the thing we do.
You know, Donald Trump was not exactly a cost cutter
last time. It was on know and one of the
and I don't want to cost him any votes because
we have to win. But he's not talking about entitlement reform.
He's not talking about any any budget gouts.
Speaker 3: He can't.
Speaker 1: I mean that that that's gonna that's political suicide. But
on the other hand, if he if he wins an effect,
he's going to be a lame duck. He doesn't have
to run for reelection and so he can do a
lot of things. He'll have a freer hand, in fact,
than he would otherwise. It'll leave jd. Vance with a
with a harder job. But there's a big opportunity to
fix a lot of these things, maybe once in a lifetime.
If we don't fix them, that hold, this whole debt
and debt monster is going to suck us down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So you know, the federal government will still
owns forty five percent of the state of California, most
of Nevada, all these states that it wasn't supposed to
wind up owning it owns. So why don't we just
sell off ten percent of California? Would that be such
a bad thing? Well, and gild be a great thing.
Speaker 1: And there's this totally mistaken notion that if you put
land in federal hands, it's preserving it and they're going
to nurture the environment with this federal ownership. It's just
the opposite. If you put land in private hands, private
owners do an awful lot to make it more productive
and make it more environmentally.
Speaker 3: Whatever the word is, a.
Speaker 1: Better greener And so you know, yeah, I mean it
would be a win win, you get. You know, I
was back and I used to be in the merger
acquisition business, and you know, it wasn't the question of
just buying and selling companies. The way you think about
it really is you're trying to take one business that
may be struggling or something like that, and you try
to put that business into stronger hands people know what
to do with it, and hopefully they'll take that and
build it up into something better, more profit better, for
shareholders and so on and so forth. And I think
the same thing. I think it's a great idea of
the federal lands. Let's let's raise some capital and put
it in hands of people who could do something good
with it.
Speaker 3: And it's all the Western states, Yeah, Idaho, the Dakota's.
Maybe people don't want to live in those places necessarily,
but increasing the supply of land, which eventually would increase
the supply of housing. All these things, and you know that,
to me, the biggest issues campaign or you know, immigration, obviously,
the economy inflation. Inflation's a cycle. I don't know that
the government really can bring it down. It just kind
of lasts for twenty or thirty years as in the past.
But the crime, all these things we've just seen, like
deviant behavior, like Daniel Patrick moynihan used to say, we're
defining devancy down. And shoplifting is decriminalized in a lot
of states. And you got these das who don't believe
it's their job.
Speaker 1: Only if you steal more than a thought, only if
you steal more than one thousand dollars with us stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a point if you keep it under
a thousand.
Speaker 1: I guess it's decriminalized, but let me come on, this
is this is insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can see.
Speaker 1: People in the stores with their with their iPhone calculator working. Okay,
I'm getting up to nine to ninety five and better. Okay,
we've stolen enough time to get out of here to.
Speaker 3: Knock the charges down anyway, thanks to the sorosdas. But
I was in a CVS in Woodland Hills, California, and
I tell you, everything in that store was locked up,
and was there a little later at night. I had
to wait fifteen minutes for a guy to unlock the
case to get some eye drops that were twenty bucks.
In Florida. Here there are some things that are locked
up like that are high shoplift items like razor blades,
all right, and like certain eye drop eye care products.
But it's a small section of the store. Everything else
it's like open, and you know, the self checkout to cashiers.
You can have them here in Florida, but in California
or New York you can't risk them because they increase
shoplifting by fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and there's stores, you know here in the
DC area they're just showed they're just shutting the stores down.
They can't they can't afford to keep them open. So
all these things they're supposed to protect criminals or whatever
have ended up really hurting most of the inner city
communities here and here in DC.
Speaker 3: And everyone the waste of time of having to wait
for them to open something up and get it and
you just say, the heck with it, I'll buy it
on Amazon. You know.
Speaker 1: But but you think about the trouble with countries in
what we're describing. It's their target rich opportunities to make
it better. I mean, it doesn't take a lot to
sort of say, well, let's change the let's change some
of the rules about crime. And you know, we did it.
They did it a couple of times. And in New York,
I mean, Giuliani turned it around and Bloomberg did a
pretty good job with it. You can fix the city
if you get the right people in charge.
Speaker 3: So true what you're saying, Like, I remember the city
before Julianni, I remember after and the left to vilifies
him and gives him no credit for saving their haven.
And after a couple of terms of comrade Bill the
Blasio and now this new guy, the place is completely
unlivable becoming more unlivable by the day.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and you know there are a lot of
yes it is, And I don't mean the problem is
that we talk about governance, were talking about Trump, and
you know what the FETs can do, and I think
the state legislatures and some of the some of the
larger some of the smaller cities can make these changes.
I don't see changing big city government much. I mean
Democrats have got got a lockhand on it, then they don't.
They're not showing any signs of paying a price for
all the damage they've done.
Speaker 3: Well, the price is a migration from these blue states
to the red states, and of course here in Florida, Texas,
various other states, Tennessee. You see mass migration where people
are just throwing up their hands. And I know a
number of people left California and that's it. Well, Bill,
it's really been a pleasure having you on the show,
and we will definitely have you on again. We definitely
got some interesting times ahead. You find Bill at the
Bill waltonshow dot com. The link is in the show
notes This interview on Financial Survival Network dot com. Please
sign up for free newsletter and if you've got any
questions for Bill myself. The email address is kl at
Kerrie LUTs dot com. Bill, we'll talk to you soon.
Thanks so much for coming on, Gray love to be here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,