Fed Fights Out of Control Inflation: Will it Work?

Today on Sekulow, the Fed fights out of control inflation, but will it work? Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments, or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. So, after we were off the broadcast yesterday, the Fed made that interest rate hike, the three-quarters of a percent, which is a major increase, the biggest increase by the Fed since 1994. Stock market starts falling again. It's dipped below 30,000. It's hit that 30,000 number, went well above it, but now it has dipped below. It's kind of hanging around there. It's gone up, depending on when you're listening to us today on the broadcast.

But if you're live with me right now, it's right around there. And the question is, of course, how this all affects you short-term, long-term. Why the Fed does this, which, remember, is somewhat of an independent entity, though the President selects the Fed chair and members of the Fed. They are not, in a sense, they serve longer terms usually than the President.

And you see a lot more consistency there, not so much partisanship. And it's whether or not they acted too late, whether this will, again, impact inflation. Now, that was the point there, is that this is supposed to impact and help inflation strengthen the dollar. So we don't go into a recession. So we don't go into the R word, which is recession. Now, people hear recession and they think everybody losing their house in the mortgage crisis, in the mortgage bubble of the final year of the Bush administration. And that was a great recession is what they called it, almost a depression. I mean, it was right on that line because of the amount of people losing their homes. And there was also a situation where you didn't have the government, including the Bush administration, got caught totally off guard. And they were on their way out.

And they were on their way out, but they were totally off guard. So we're not talking about that kind of situation. Recessions happen, Harry, periodically within economies. I mean, let's define what a recession is so people don't panic over this. So put simply, Jay, a recession is simply two consecutive declines in economic growth, measured by the gross domestic product figure. What comprises the gross domestic product? The production of goods and services, essentially as measured by the United States Labor Department. So it's two in a row.

Two in a row. That could mean that there has been an increase, for instance, in unemployment. Or there has been a reduction in labor force participation rates. But essentially it means that economic activity has declined. And recession is an ever-present possibility.

It's not necessarily a likelihood. But there is an increasing likelihood of a recession if we continue to follow bad policies. And I think that essentially is what the American people should be concerned about.

And they should be prepared to work really hard with respect to the November election, because that might put a break on the bad policies coming from the Biden administration. My question for everybody out there, we want you to take part in the show today and be interactive in the show today, is are you making different decisions about your 401K, your portfolio, retirement? If you were getting your tax return, would you have usually put that back into the market with someone who handles your investments?

Or maybe you handle it and you're deciding not to. So kind of what you're doing with the money that you do have, how is it impacting your life? But also talking to those out there who might be at those kind of key moments in life. I want to hear from you as well at 1-800-684-3110. Because thinking about retirement, have you put it off years because of this situation?

Are you coming out of retirement because you need more resources available to you that you just didn't plan this way? How is it impacting you? Do you feel the recession nature, not just at the gas pump, not just at the grocery store, but the longer-term feel? How do you feel? Because a lot of this is about how you feel. How Americans feel impacts us as well about this a year from now.

Do you think we'll be in a better place? 1-800-684-3110 is the number to call. There's no wrong answers.

We really want to get a sense from you. 1-800-684-3110. We have that petition up to stop the Biden administration's war on the American people, war on the American economy.

That's up at ACLJ.org. Definitely a good time to sign. Welcome back to Cenk. We do want to take your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110 because I want to understand how you see it. So when you get the news, because the news will make huge deals about this. I'm not trying to downplay the news.

We're talking about it. So it obviously has an impact when it's the largest rate increase by the Fed since the early 1990s. So when you see moves like that, how does it impact you is what I want to hear from 1-800-684-3110.

Do you have questions? Does it change more about, if you've got a 401k, more about how you're planning for the future? If you're thinking about retiring or you are retired and thinking about maybe having to come out of retirement.

If you've got young kids and that kind of situation as well. We just want to hear from folks because one very important part about economics and economic recovery is that the feel in the country. So if we all feel like this Biden administration is horrible, they don't know what they're doing. And listen, I believe that the Fed is somewhat independent of the Biden administration. But if you do feel that way and you continue to feel that way, guess what, that has an impact.

So it's kind of like when people start pulling back spending, pulling back decision making, stop hiring or come out of retirement, take jobs that they're qualified for but didn't think they were going to keep working. All those things have an impact on all of us at every level. And I think it's just important to hear from people at 1-800-684-3110 about interest rates and items like that. So let's start with Tim in California online too. Hey, Tim.

Thank you for taking my call. First place, I think it's a crazy idea to raise the interest rates. What's going to happen is people would have credit cards, interest rates are going to go up, it's going to cut down on spending, it's going to have a negative effect on the housing, it's going to make the situation much worse and then we're going to be in a depression. Well, let me go to our law and economics professor on that because there is a sense that by raising the interest rates, you actually will cool things down a little bit, letting everything settle in. Tim, by the way, totally understand your concern on the actual cost of doing this to the American people.

I filled up my gas tank yesterday, it got to $100 and it just stopped and I was not empty. Harry, but Tim raises a concern, is this interest rate increase going to just make it worse? Well, I think it will make it worse for many individuals, particularly for home buyers. So it's important to keep in mind that the CPI, which is currently at 8.6% What is that? Consumer Price Index? The Consumer Price Index measures food, clothing, gasoline and a raft of other things, but it's important to keep in mind that that index has changed substantially in terms of what it measures since 1983. And essentially it's taken out mortgage rates, they are no longer...

So for Tim's point, if you focus on Tim's point, he raises a very, very good point. And so since we are already underestimating the Consumer Price Index, consumer prices in real terms are probably higher for individuals that share, for instance, Tim's concern. On the other hand, the Fed got us in this mess to some extent because they essentially expanded the money supply by three or four fold over the last five or six years. Now, some of this was driven by the pandemic. And then you also have a large portion of government spending that was driven by the pandemic.

So I think what the Fed is now saying is we are beginning to go into a hole, so we need to stop digging. If you were running the Fed, would have you increased the interest rate? Yes, I would have increased the interest rates. I probably would have gone up 50 basis points as opposed to three quarters. And when would you have done it? I would have also done it much sooner.

I think that's the key. And I think if you had done it sooner, then you could have moderated the inflation rate. And so part of the issue that Tim is dealing with is bad policy that is multiplied by steroids. Yeah, you talk about the credit card rates that go up, so it costs a lot more to carry a balance than the credit cards. Your interest rate, if you've got an adjustable interest rate in your home, that changes too. It impacts every part of your life. I mean, your daily spending, your bigger spending, the mortgage spending, it impacts.

And we already have had the impacts of gas prices and items like that. I want to go back to the phones. A lot of great calls, different angles, exactly what we said, because we've got listeners in very different economic situations and in different points of their life also. So let me go back to the phones and go to Jerry in Texas, because Jerry is uttering something I think a lot of us feel right now. Hey, Jerry.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. Great.

Go ahead. Very difficult circumstances for me. I've had to stop funding my 401K just to be able to survive and do our daily living now. And so between the gas prices and energy prices, not everything can be blamed on Putin. I also agree with the discussion about, hey, we should have seen this and you started pumping the brakes many, many, many months ago when the data came out.

Yeah. And by the way, I'm an equal opportunity critic on this in that sense. I think the fact that the Bush administration was caught so off guard at the end of their term, and I know it was the end of the term, Jordan, but so off guard that we had an unbelievable economic collapse, almost ended up in depression, was frankly inexcusable. The Biden administration was too slow to the gate.

I agree with Harry. If you would have increased a moderate increase in the interest rates of 50, basically half a percent increase six months ago would have lessened the blow on this and maybe tempered some of this down. What makes me nervous when all of this happens and you've got an administration like this in place is that they will come up with a solution. And the solution will be massive amount of government spending influx of cash for you, influx of cash for you, and you will get more dependent on another government program.

And so they'll, they'll see this. They've got to get through this politically, it doesn't like this going to help in the midterms short term they can't. But long term, the reelection strategy for Biden or whoever the Democrat nominee is could be, okay, these Republican tax cutters know that's what we need you need more money to you and I think they always try to seize on these opportunities. They don't have the votes in the Senate right now to pass that kind of legislation if they did I think that's what that is what they would be doing.

They'd be creating another major government program but I think when you hear people say like, I'm stop. I'm not putting money in my 401k. That's also going to lead to later retirement, it's going to be a different decisions down the road so it's not just the short term impact of them having to spend a little extra my bill so I'm not funding my 401k. That's a big decision because it does impact. When you, when you exit the workforce, it does. And if you look at so there's the short term, the near term impact and then Harry the long term impact that what you want to do is get out if we get, and we're not in a recession yet. Technically, if we were into high inflation.

If you get into recession, the goal is to get out of it quickly. I think that is correct and I think the frustration of many of the callers many of our listeners, is that we have an administration that is willfully blind to the evidence which is right in front of their face. And so many people in the Biden administration will claim they do not believe in an intelligent design, but apparently they believe in intelligent bumbling with respect to the United States economy. So the Biden administration made its initial mistake on January the 20th when he was inaugurated.

And essentially what did he do? He doubled down on his opposition to fossil fuels. And so if you look at inflation rates in the United States, one of the major drivers is the rise in fossil fuel prices. So what is the solution according to the Biden administration? Their solution is to focus on wind and solar, which makes no sense. So we should unleash energy independence.

We should consider strategic nuclear power plant production. And we should also consider, and this may be somewhat more controversial, is helping the Russians and the Ukrainians find a way out of their conflict. I'm not going to take a particular side on all of that, but if you think about food, a large portion of grain comes from where? Ukraine. It comes from Russia.

Fertilizer comes from Ukraine and Russia. All of these things are combining to drive up inflation. And so the Biden administration's approach is our policies aren't working. So why don't we double down on failing policies? All right, folks, we'll continue to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from people at different points of life, whether you're an employer or an employee, whether you are about to retire or you already have retired. How is this changing your outlook? Are you starting to plan more in a long-term sense for this? Listen, some folks don't have the luxury to do because they're trying to get by week to week right now.

But how has that changed too? Because I know who I'm talking to is folks who are folks who have work, they have good jobs, they're informed folks, listen to this broadcast, either still working, a lot of small business owners, and a lot of people who are right around that retirement age who may be thinking twice about it. So again, we want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. The moms and dads out there as well, how it's affecting your family and your kids.

That's 1-800-684-3110. You can do something about this at ACLJ.org. We have that petition to stop the Biden administration's war on the American economy.

It's literally what it is. At ACLJ.org, sign up today. I want to say something. We've got a petition up at ACLJ.org. We had Senator Blackburn on just a couple of days ago. We laid out a plan on energy and things that can be done immediately to alleviate burdens on the American families. And we're working very closely with our office, our office in government affairs in Washington. There's a petition up at ACLJ.org that says stop President Biden's economic war on American families. And I'm going to encourage, we just launched it today. I want to encourage you to sign it. We want to get to 50,000 signatures. We're going to deliver it then to the United States Senate.

So it's at ACLJ.org. Stop President Biden's economic war on American families. Because, Harry, that's what this is right now. Whether we're talking about a stock market that's down as we're on live 700 or something points or interest rates ticking up, it's a war on the American family. Because, again, if they would have done things preemptively, we wouldn't be in this situation. I think that is precisely correct.

And I think that's a brilliant title for a petition. In essence, it cuts to the chase. Because at issue here, fundamentally, is the Biden administration's declaration on the inauguration day, a war on American middle class families. And it started with energy.

It's progressed to food. And the American families are paying an increasing price with respect to home mortgages. But the Biden administration is simply tone deaf. They refuse to really hear from the American people. And I think the American people are increasingly frustrated with this. And so the Biden administration is telling gas and oil companies to be patriotic. Meanwhile, the Biden administration wants to shut down oil and gas in the United States.

It makes no sense. But we are going to make sense. And we've got a concrete plan of action that we've laid out to address this, to get the oil prices down, open up our reserves. Don't rely on Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Maybe they'll help. Maybe they won't. But there needs to be an immediate fix.

And no panic. And then you've got an election coming up, Jordan, in November that could blunt the rest of their policies. You're not going to be able to get things through his desk, the President, but you are going to be able to blunt policies.

That's right. I'm going to take this call because we had this exact conversation in our meeting today, this scenario that came up. Greg in Michigan on Line 6. Hey, Greg. Hey, how you doing? Thank you for taking my call.

It's Greg from Westland, Michigan. Two-fold issue on the economy. First of all, I retired about four years ago. Not much by choice, but I had to. But what I'm doing with any spare money I do have right now, I am filling out a couple of deposit slips. As they say, pay yourself first and buy shares when you can. Whoa.

So that's no big deal. But the secondary issue is I have my mother's estate still being closed out. My nightmare now is when that trust account gets closed out, I'm going to have to change what I'm going to do with it. Yeah, so listen, we're not in a position to give you financial advice.

That is not what we do on the broadcast. We're giving you overall where we see things economically and policies that could impact that. You need to talk to an investment advisor about whether you sit on the sidelines. The trend right now is people that have cashed out are sitting on the sidelines, market's going down.

They're going to go back in when they think the bottom or near the bottom. Some people think we're not near that yet, but we don't want to be giving that advice. But those are real decisions, Greg, I know. And where Greg is in a situation where he's got cash resources, he's got decisions to make that everybody's not just living week-to-week, that there are also the longer-term decisions at play here. And I think that's why it's important that we keep hearing from all these different perspectives to listeners to our broadcasts who are in vastly different situations in their life, where they are age-wise, if their parents left money to them and this estate closed out.

And you see that he's getting his estate closed out, and what he probably usually would have done in a decent economy is gone out the window. Right. That's the big news is that people are kind of starting from scratch on their planning.

Well, now I think that's the unfortunate part of this. Let's take another phone call. Yeah, back to the phones we go. It's 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Edward in Ohio on Line 1. Hey, Edward. Yes, sir.

Thanks for taking my call. My question is, I'm on disability, and I only get so much a month, and then on top of that, I can't have a savings over $2,000, which is very crippling for me, and what in the world can we do about this? That's because, yeah, that puts you outside of the—this is the difficulty with the Social Security disability areas. A little difference like that, and it puts you outside obtaining your benefit, which, by the way, you paid for when you were working.

That is a system that needs total redo. I think that is correct, but rather than focusing on bread and butter issues, the real frustration is the Biden administration is focused on climate change. That's much more important to them than the bread and butter issues that affect the American people. How do they pay for gasoline? How do they pay for food?

And essentially, the Biden administration has issued its own plan to deal with all these problems. It's called disdain. They disdain the middle class. They disdain the working class.

They disdain the things that occupy the emotions of people who are really caught in the middle, perhaps because of no choice of their own. I want to go to Ann in California on Line 3. I've asked for people, what different situations and different choices they're making at different points of life, because I think it's important for everyone to hear, because we've got people in all these different points of life listening. Ann, welcome to Secular.

You're on the air. Thank you so much for taking my call. Yes, my husband and I are moving from Southern California to Tennessee simply because of this inflation and how difficult it is here. About four years ago, we remodeled our home. And now with the extra on our mortgage, we're faced with our retirement isn't going to look like what we had planned.

Let me tell you this. I cannot count the amount of people that are saying they're moving from California to Tennessee or California to Texas or California to Florida. It's breathtaking, which has kept the real estate market up in these areas very significantly. These are very important stories for us to hear, because we can then translate these into the United States Senate. For instance, you're not on Tennessee. Your senator would be Marsha Blackburn. She is on top of this. We're working with her.

She's being aggressive about this. We are on top of this to get relief to the American people. But you're probably making a very wise getting out of a high-tax state to a no-state income tax state makes a lot of sense. Yeah. People are making moves in retirement.

They're already in retirement and decided to go through that process, sell the house, move cross-country to a state with a better tax system or a different economy where they can get more for what they're able to sell their house for. So we'll continue to take your phone calls this second half hour is coming up. Rick Rinnell is going to be joining us. We're talking politics as well, because obviously this all plays into that. We've got elections coming up in November. So with the economy, with the elections, we saw that wild surprise Republican win out of Texas in a 13-point favorite Democrat district. A Republican wins a special election. I mean, that can be a sign of things to come. And also the nastiness that's being leveled at some Republicans, I think you can see again, a sign of things to come when you can't run on policy issues.

You start running on personal attacks. But again, 1-800-684-3110. We got one line open.

Who's going to grab it? 1-800-684-3110. Sign our petition at ACLJ.org.

Stop the Biden administration's war on the American family, the American economy. That's at ACLJ.org. Doesn't cost a thing to sign that petition today. That's the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Keepin' you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. We're going to get back to these issues. Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast. But as you know with Rick, we'll continue to take your phone calls too. Phone lines are coming in right now. I know we've got a couple people who've been holding. So Sandy, we'll get to you first when we get back to the phone.

So just hold on. Because there is some ACLJ issues we want to let you know about that are specific to our work, legal work that we do at the ACLJ, and religious liberty work that we do. And we're going to cover the economy, cover politics as well. But there's a case that we talked about back in Easter. Of course it was attacked by an anti-Christian group on a VA hospital store during Easter. Because they were selling too many religious Christian books.

Inspiration books. Initially it was the Easter display. Let's be clear because Mikey Weinstein likes you to be clear. And that's fine.

But he of course loves attacking these things. So he went after an Easter display. And then because of that, people that were hostile to religious messages then said, oh, but in the bookstore they're also selling a spindle of books. And you've seen this in every hospital. The VA doesn't pick the book titles out.

These are inspirational books. And a physician at the hospital demanded them to come down. And we had sent a letter. And in our letter that we sent to the VA, we specifically said that the VA, and this was in Albuquerque, had requested the removal of Christian religious literature from the Patriot store based on a faulty understanding of the establishment clause. First of all, Wes, the VA hospitals, and you're a veteran of course, play a very important role for a veteran.

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I have a service-connected disability and received part of my care at a veteran's hospital. Easter of course is a religious holiday.

It is a Christian holiday. But in that hospital, you have wounded and ill veterans, veterans having surgery, and their families. They look often for comfort and hope in their religious beliefs. That's why these books were in the bookstore. It's the same reason that the VA medical centers have chaplains, because people in crisis need to lean on their faith. And the VA is trying to facilitate and meet the needs of veterans, and they're being attacked for it.

Yeah, so that's important for people to understand. Then also, what we did was we sent a letter to the VA when all this started breaking. And we also sent a Freedom of Information Act request, and we got a series of emails, Andy, where it went from the Easter display to an attempt to remove all Christian material from the bookstore. And by the way, you're not compelled to buy it, but to remove it from the bookstore.

That's right, Jay. One of the emails in that chain of emails particularly appalled me. It was from the primary care physician, and she assigned herself as the mindfulness instructor. And she said she went into the VA Patriot store at the VA center and says, today I was in the Patriot store again, and I went to the book rack to check it out, and I'm sorry to say I counted 32 clearly Christian books on the rack, exclamation point, 32 exclamation point.

The few others there are secular. This is not prohibited by the Constitution or the laws of the United States. And here's the good thing.

Now there's 15 emails we haven't seen, so we may have to go to court on those. But the VA administrator got our letter also, and he said very clearly, to be clear, you are not to pull Bibles. Choice books should merchandise books on the spindle as they always have. Then he said the Easter plate they removed because it promoted one religion. That was their view of the establishment clause.

It was very clear, you are not to pull Bibles. Choice books should continue to put up inspirational books if that's what they choose. They're the vendor. If that's what they're selling. They're making business decisions here. Obviously the reason why they had mostly inspirational Christian books is because that's what was selling at that particular VA bookstore. So they should be able to make that decision about what books they want to sell based off their choice about hindrance from these nuts in Mikey Weinstein's world. That's what he is. He's insane. And he's going after VA bookstores. And I think that when you act that way, you think about the position these people are in.

The hospital. Again, we have to fight back. We don't let them. We don't stop the fight. So it's well past Easter and we're still fighting back at ACLJ.

That's the difference. ACLJ.org to support our work. We're going to take your phone calls as well at 1-800-684-312.

That's 1-800-684-3110. But I think it's a good reminder, these angry groups, they're still out there. They don't spend as much time on them lately because they haven't made as much news recently because they don't win in court. So occasionally they can get a VA hospital to do what they want.

Because if you had the court, there would be not even a debate on who wins. Alright, we're going to continue to take your phone calls too. There is another line open. So someone grab that.

1-800-684-3110. We are talking of course about the economic situation. We're talking about the Fed increase. But also the politics of all this too. Because again, we're getting towards primary season. We've got special elections. Amazing special election in Texas in a Democrat plus 13 district that was not on a lot of radars where the Republican ends up winning by 7 points.

And again, I think she shows. And Rand is a very conservative Republican. 84% Hispanic district in Texas. So we're seeing these moves. And I think as we start seeing primaries wrapping up towards the end of the summer, we have to see the unifying movement of the conservatives and also just getting behind people in November. Because this is how you blunt a lot of these bad policies.

So I want to go to Rick right off the top. We're starting to get a good sense of primaries across the country. Some people are getting candidates they want to win.

Others sometimes not your preferred candidate. And I think it's also we're not at the healing phase yet in some states. But in other places they are where they have to come back together and say we've got this bigger battle that we are fighting. And I think it's one way that people can blunt some of this economic bad news is to get more Republicans into Congress. Yeah, I actually think that the gas prices are probably the number one issue in most campaigns. And it's probably an issue where you could just win on just talking about gas prices alone.

We've seen them triple and people don't understand. And I think that's why so many Republicans that are running who haven't been on the radar suddenly are winning. And I also think it's got a little bit to do with the phenomenon that's happening in the Republican Party where first and second generation Americans have decided that the conservative side is their side. They're seeing wokeism, fascism, a march towards totalitarianism, and many of the first and second generation Americans left countries where fascism was on the rise.

They see a media that keeps trumpeting the ruling party's messages and that's filled with unbiased advocacy. And so they're rejecting that. We'll see what happens. We've got Missouri and Arizona coming up to big states August 2nd.

That seems to be the next big focus. And we'll see what happens in those races. But clearly there is a there's a huge shift in the electorate. Well, I think the fact that you had a district in Texas that Republicans haven't had in over 100 years and it was a plus 13 Democratic district and the candidate, the Republican, wins by plus seven, which is a 20 point swing. I think, Rick, what you're saying there is new generations of leaders are emerging, second generation from immigrant families like I am, a second generation from an immigrant family. And all of a sudden, the conservative view tends to be the better one politically for the American people.

Yeah. And I also think that that this woman who just won in Texas, who was not expected to win, when you look at a commercial, here is a Mexican born American. And she's talking about the border. She's talking about having a strong border and a secure border.

And her husband is a border agent. Now, that's not the left narrative. The left wants you to think that if you're for the border being secure, that somehow you're anti-immigrant. And I think it's just completely the opposite.

If you've waited in a long line, you don't want anyone cutting the line. Yeah. You're 100% right. Yeah. I mean, you talk about Maya Flores.

We were talking about first and second generation. She was born in Mexico. And I saw one of her ads and she's pro-life. She's not running away from core conservative issues either or trying to play out like there's somebody they're not. I mean, she ran as Rick said, a very conservative Republican as well. But when I saw her, I said, this is someone who's going to be able to talk to the district. It's 84% Hispanic.

She's speaking the language. She also is understanding the culture, understanding the concerns and the issues and can speak to it in a way different than any of us can. And so I think, too, that's why you invest as a party and as a movement into even longer term. And this was on the radar of the NRCC.

I think they probably played it down because, again, it's a plus 13 so you don't overplay. But it was interesting because it's one of those we donate money to a lot of these candidates and usually in races that means you would get an influx of those. This was not one that I was getting an influx of requests for. Let's go to the phone. So we told people to take some calls while Rick is on about the economy. I wanted to get Sean's call out of California on line three because younger person in a different situation than a lot of our other callers have been. Hey, Sean. Hey, guys. How are you doing today? Good. I'm calling in this evening. The reason is I'm in here, California.

I should be calling to say, hey, I disagree with everything you're saying and you're wrong. The opposite here. 35 years old, not a super high earner, but beginning of this administration turnover, I had about $50,000 in savings. $550,000 just short of $60,000. Now, a lot of guys that were smarter than me still are smarter than me said, hey, you should really consider selling anything, security-wise stocks, that electronic currency. If you made a big profit on it, sell it. So, look, I took their advice a little bit. I've taken an approach on this to try and get out of this bad situation and sell off some things.

And this is way before this even hit. My net worth has dropped from almost $60,000 to the low teens in this administration. Yeah, this is the problem. And, Rick, this is the problem. There's a young man working, had a $60,000, $50,000 nest egg. He's investing.

Was he investing like Americans do? And, Rick, now his investments are down to $15,000 because the market has crashed about 6,000 points. I mean, this is a real problem. I keep saying to people, Rick, elections have consequences. Those consequences are policies. Bad policies also equal bad consequences.

Yeah, there's no question. And I have to say that, you know, the Democrats for most of my life have tried to and maybe could argue successfully owned the middle class and young people where they were able to say we're for the working class. I think the whole thing has slipped. I think Donald Trump brought in an emphasis on the working class, on middle America, people who are union members who are struggling paycheck to paycheck, and they saw their lives be so much better under Donald Trump. Taxes were cut, gas was low, their 401k was just exploding, and they looked at the world and they heard Donald Trump say other people around the world, allies need to start paying their fair share, don't rely on American taxpayers to pay everything. That really allowed the stock market to say, okay, maybe we're going to start spending on our own infrastructure, we're going to start spending on our own situation, our own people, and that in turn bred a huge stock market increase faced in the American system. That has all imploded under Joe Biden and now what we see is on a daily basis, people filling up their cars.

It's way too expensive their 401ks imploding. And the biggest thing is fear about the future. That's what the Democrats have given us.

That's what the Democrats have given us. Hi, how you doing? Thank you for your hard work regarding my particular situation and my family. Within four months, I was sitting and realizing that my paycheck versus my spending went up for average about $800 a month, eight to $1,000 you know my wife's not working she's a homeschool mom. I am a medium to low earner.

A good thing is that I have any car payments or anything except mortgage and I bought mortgage, a long time ago, which makes it affordable, but honestly I'm looking at the line of where I'm struggling. And we have right now a lot of families, refugees families where we helping them from Ukraine, in our church and different other churches around us as well and it's, it's pretty hard and it's hard for them to find out how much it costs to live in this area and this is like California or New York. Yeah, so Dimitri, I wanted to ask you this you said so my understanding is you immigrated from Ukraine, correct.

A long time ago about 15 years ago. And, and you help a lot of folks that have immigrated from Ukraine. And one of the things you told our call screener was that the all this blaming Putin talk is you got your concern and I'm going to go to Rick on that, because Rick that is the message that the White House is tripling down on blame Putin for everything. The Putin price like it's actually laughable, because I'd like to meet somebody who actually believes that the the fact is, is that the Biden policies of taking away energy production, the Biden policies of taking away the Trump sanctions on the Russian pipeline have contributed more to the war in Ukraine than anything else.

Senate Democrats joined the Biden administration to do this, and they cannot complain and completely blame Putin for that. Rick as always we appreciate your insight and I think you know we're getting more and more into the politics too. It's gonna be great to have Rick, helping to analyze all of that these races all over the country and how they're impacting the bigger picture as well 1-800-684-3110 as we said we want to hear from people we're going to take your calls, as we go into the final segment of the broadcast, different situation we heard from a 35 year old investor we heard from an immigrant from 15 who immigrated from Ukraine 15 years ago we've heard from retirees. We've heard from people planning on you know what to do with their inheritance and issues like that 1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to second we're taking your phone calls 1-800-684-3110 that's 1-800-684-3110 I want to hear from different folks different economic situation we saw the red, the Fed rate hike we talked about that early in the broadcast this segment is about all of you and taking your phone call so 1-800-684-3110 I'm going to go to order where people have been holding on to Sandy first in North Carolina Sandy appreciate you holding on, you're on the air. No problem. Thank you gentlemen for taking my call.

Good afternoon. I'm calling from North Carolina. My husband and I are in our mid 50s. We've worked all of our lives worked hard and put money aside.

Major health crisis hit in 2014 for me. And as a stay at home mom, I'm not able to collect disability. And because my husband's income as well. So we are paying thanks to Obamacare. We lost my insurance. So we're paying everything for my health care out of pocket. And with the we were just making it with Trump, we were doing a little better.

We were at we had some room to breathe, which was a blessing. Now, because of the hike in gas and food, just to be able to afford food, gas and my medications out of pocket. I've actually had to take on a remote working to remote working part time jobs just to be able to help my husband cover my medical expenses and my medications, food and gas. So that is the kind of decision receives people reentering the workforce to there are jobs in the workforce. A lot of them are not necessarily job jobs that you could live off the wage. But because of the inflation, but if you need to supplement income, those jobs are available for people but it's making them make decisions against you through a tough medical situation.

So probably wouldn't have made two years ago. But here's the thing. There is a solution to the energy crisis, which is so much of this is driven by the cost of fuel and gas. We know that and food and but the energy crisis can be so if we opened up the pipelines that were almost done being built. We went from energy exporter to an energy dependent country in 20 months, 18 months, we can reverse these policies. Marsha Blackburn's working very aggressively on this we're working with her. I have to tell you that I believe that in the November election, you're going to see a big shift in the House and the Senate. And that will at least stop the crazy policies, the policies that are causing it to make it worse.

Because part of this is something you said the other day, Jordan, I think is right. I think part of this they wanted to happen, and then it got out of control. Yeah, what too far is, yes, they certainly wanted to change the makeup you know the the ideas they wanted people to think who were in that car market range they could afford electric car to think, I'm going to choose the electric car now. They weren't necessarily thinking that everybody was going to have to buy one because the gas price would be at, you know, 789 dollars, but they wanted people to start making the shift who could make the debt decision who would start saying you know what to go through that kind of the hassle even though you people like Elon Musk have admitted it's not ready for everybody yet, the grid is not ready. It's not set up for long term travel yet. So, I read this Wall Street Journal article was about how it took.

How many additional hours it took to go from you like New York to New Orleans in an electric car because you to plot out all these different places if the charger was working and what if it wasn't working and, and again, it's one thing if you're a short commute in a city that's a different Sarah. So, they got to that point. And I think people were making those decisions.

But then it got out of control. And they don't doesn't seem like there's a captain of the ship that has confidence. So Joe Biden supposedly he seems very angry. Anger doesn't get you anywhere policies do and end up blaming Vladimir Putin, even if you honestly believe that and like Rick sadly anybody does. No one does even we have Ukrainian immigrants calling say they don't believe that.

Even if you did believe that come up with a solution, right, they say it without a solution also. So back to the phones we go I want to keep going people been holding on Eva in Georgia online five hi Eva. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm, I've been retired for a while now, and we had a night, you know, a cost of living increase this past January, which I was kind of excited about it was just under 6%. But the Medicare premium that I have to pay every month went up just over 14%. So, you have to work to make ends meet.

Right. But the minute you do that, if you make too much than your social security get tax, and now with everything else going up it's like okay so what do I have to give up now. Here's what we have to do.

We've got to change the rules, because here's what's happened even your situation. You paid tax on that social security money when they took it out of your paycheck. Now you're working. It's a double tax. Now they're trying to tax it again. And these rules during the damn place we're talking about this Harry where it can penalize somebody for making just a little bit more money has to stop. Yeah, got to get those change. And that's where leadership in the House and Senate, and ultimately in the White House will make a difference.

I think that's shocking to people who are in that situation they hear that you know, you got to keep it under an amount or else you'll lose your benefit I mean it's down to like the dollar. And so, yeah, again, these are policy changes that can be made quickly. These don't take constitutional amendments doesn't take Supreme Court cases doesn't take years of litigation. It is policy and and Congress, when it comes to the economics. I think, listen, there's going to be a lot of things presented by Republican House, and maybe Republican Senate to President Biden he's going to reject most of them, but there might be a couple that actually get through.

And they're certainly not going to be thinking about raising taxes because they're not going to be able to, they don't have the votes on that now they're certainly not gonna have the votes on that after the November election. Let's try to grab another call. Darlene in North Carolina on line one Hey Darlene. Hey, how are you good. So, I just wanted to say that when Trump was in office, my 401k flu.

I mean, it did. Fantastic. And I just retired this year. And I'm on Social Security fixed income, and with everything the way the prices are, it's like everything that I had, and was secure in now is very unsecure, and it's very difficult and if it wasn't for my family, I wouldn't be able to get along. So this is where this is why we're doing this broadcast so we can communicate all this to our representatives in the House and Senate but I also want to tell you this.

I'm looking at the market right now it's down about 700 685 700 points now it's under 20 30,000. Here's the thing, but nobody should be panicking. Okay, nobody should be panicking. We're going to work on this we're getting a policy in place. There are actions we can take.

We just got to be aggressive on this. Yeah, and I think, listen, I think what's scaring people now is, was that short term years COVID there was a lot of relief from so things, your stocks were doing fine. Your foreign kids were doing fine your bills were doing fine and actually cost of things was going down because people weren't buying as much spending as much to drive you weren't traveling. I think we're people are nervous now is that they they see no end in sight yet because of Joe Biden, and it's Joe Biden's leadership that we talked about that with Harry just the feel the feel is important.

Well, there's the meal is. I don't trust these these guys trust Kareem john Pierre and the economic team he has in place of these kids to get us out of this. You know, we talked about this in our meeting, so much of the stock market for instance can be, there's the emotional factor I call it.

For instance, when you dropped under 30,000 people so 30,000 is the floor we can live with it and then build back then it drops to 29,900 now you're hoping it'll get the 30,000 at least close over 30,000. This is because it the policies is what Jordan saying is right. The policies are wrong and when the policies are wrong.

It's bad. And that's what's happened. Yep, folks, we want you to support the work of ACLJ if you're able to at ACLJ.org also sign our petition stop the Biden administration's war on the American family the American economy that's up at ACLJ.org it's a brand new petition just launched yesterday.

So once you check that out as well that doesn't cost a thing you can share with your family. I think, you know, again, we need to see these Republican victories conservative victories that are adding up in places that are even unexpected. Build on it into November. So, because we know that's the, that's the way out. ACLJ.org support our work we will talk to you tomorrow.