Understanding Financial Signs of the Times

Understanding Financial Signs of the Times. That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. You know, it's all too common for Christians to hear talk of financial issues and simply just tune out.

Some would say it's too earthly minded or too complex to understand or doesn't have much relevance to the Christian life. But those who think that should think again because finance and economics and trade and business and manufacturing and consumption and debt and currency, those are geopolitical drivers that greatly impact all of us. And so as we commemorate Labor Day weekend in America, Dan Celia, president and host of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries, joins us to discuss some of the most pressing financial questions of our day. Will the Social Security system continue to pay out? Is Medicare for all the solution to health care quality and cost? What is the danger of the U.S. being $22 trillion in debt?

And what about doing business with China? So if you listen closely, you're going to be surprised how our financial trajectory may be taking us straight toward biblical end times, prophetic events. Here's the first segment of the interview with Dan Celia.

Dan, it's great to have you back on The Christian Real View. You have been coming on this program for many years, but we have, I'm sure, some new listeners since you were last on the program. And I'm just going to give a little bit of your background and let you explain more. It says that you worked for 35 years as an entrepreneur and businessman. You started eight corporations and co-founded two others. And then back in 1999, that's 20 years ago, you sold your trust company that you were managing nearly close to a billion dollars to go into ministry. And now you host the program Financial Issues, which is on hundreds of television stations across the country and can be seen around the world. But aside from that, I thought was very touching in your bio. Aside from being married to Yvonne and having two daughters, you say, my greatest blessings worth talking about have been coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as a result of Charles Stanley's ministry, your marriage, children, grandchildren, receiving your second master's degree in theology and being ordained in 2001 and your service in the military from 1971 to 1977.

You say beyond that, the rest is insignificant. And you have a foundation verse for your ministry called Financial Issues, and it's from 1 Corinthians 4 verses one and two. It says, Let a man so consider us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. And that's just a great passage of scripture. Tell us what you mean about that verse and how it relates to financial issues and tell us more about financial issues as well.

Well, David, first of all, it is such a joy to be back with you, and I appreciate the work you do for the kingdom and your program. It always has seemed to me that that verse ought to be included at the end of chapter three as opposed to the starting of chapter four, because after an incredible discourse that Paul gives, Paul is saying, OK, now that you all understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have a stewardship responsibility for the sacred mysteries of God. Now, the sacred mysteries of God is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have a stewardship responsibility for the sacred mysteries of God. It helped me realize and understand and to hopefully communicate to people that we're living in a dream world if we think that we can be a steward, a good manager, a good steward of anything, let alone our money, if we aren't first standing firmly upon the sacred mysteries of God. If we aren't first understanding that we have a responsibility as believers to be a good steward of the gospel. What is important is that we put that first before all things in our stewardship, whether it's to be a good steward of our time, our opportunities, the gifts God has given us, our talents, our finances, our money. Well, I can't be a missionary now.

I can't be a pastor now. But I can make sure that I use the finances, the resources God has given me for the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's our responsibility as instruments of God to keep the church doors open. It's our responsibility to keep the great missions, ministries, programming of the truth that is standing upon Christ to keep those going.

And we do that with our finances. Our ministry is based on trying to teach people to honor God with their money, with their investments in particular, to understand the economy and how it can impact that, to understand even some of the politics of economics and the politics as it would be to help us to honor God and to praise God and to protect the freedoms to do that. Dan Celia with us today. He's the president of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries. You can sign up for their free email.

I get it every week. Financialissues.org is the website. Dan, I want to get into a article that was written in Commentary magazine this past spring in April by a man named Noah Rothman. And I don't know him. I know he has a conservative outlook in life. But he wrote an article entitled What the Debt Crisis Will Look Like, a subtitle, Preparing for the Worst.

I want to go through and just read a couple of paragraphs during our interview today and have you comment on some of the things he brings out in his column. The first is about Social Security. He says the financial outlook for America's strained entitlement programs grew worse on Monday.

Again, back in April. For the first time since 1982, Social Security's trustees announced that the program's ballooning costs are expected to exceed the revenue it takes in by 2020. Perversely, this was welcomed as good news since that red line was supposed to be crossed two years ago in late 2018 as last year, I guess, but was delayed as more people entered the labor market.

But the good news ends there. In 2035, in the year 2035, just 16 years from now, Social Security's funds will be insufficient to meet its obligations. And we're going to talk about Social Security briefly, Medicare, and then get into the national debt. But let's start out with Social Security. Workers paid into this.

How can it be running out of money for a payout now? Well, first of all, David, it's been used as the personal piggy bank of Congress for many, many years. And what the Social Security treasure chest is filled with are things called intergovernmental notes, basically IOUs.

And none of these IOUs have ever been made good. And the Social Security trust fund has been used for numerous things in the government that have nothing to do with the health of Social Security in and of itself. Social Security is the easiest thing in the country to fix. If I were king of the world for a day, the very first thing I would do is spend 20 minutes and fix Social Security.

But Capitol Hill has it in their mind that that is such a fiery third rail of politics that it is far better for them to leave it alone. And when it goes bankrupt, then they will rush in as heroes and fix it. The fix is as simple as changing a few of the calculations. For instance, if you change by four months the amount of time that someone has to wait to start receiving Social Security, it changes the fund by billions of dollars.

Four months. That was proposed by Paul Ryan when he came in and people went nuts. They couldn't believe they were going to have to wait four more months for the future of Social Security. If you change the actuarial calculations by changing it another four months for those that are 55 and younger, it almost gets totally fixed. And none of that includes what is very necessary and should be done is handing over the Social Security trust fund to at least half of it should be, just as a responsible thing to do, to the very same people that are managing the largest retirement benefit programs in the world.

And say manage this for a return of four and a half percent as opposed to two percent. Out of all the things that need to be fixed, that's the status because it is very easy to fix. Dan Celia with us today here on the Christian Real View, the president of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries. Their website is financialissues.org. Let's move over to Medicare from this article by Noah Rothman. The prospects for America's largest entitlement program Medicare are no rosier than Social Security. That program's hospital insurance fund will run aground as early as 2026.

And unlike the situation with Social Security, Medicare's trustees found that increased tax revenue has not altered its doomed trajectory. So another piece of bad news here with Medicare that things are going to be going south with that program as well and not too many years in the future. So what is this quote Medicare for all plan that's being touted by all these Democrat candidates and how would that be paying for and change the current trajectory of Medicare? Well, it's not going to change the current trajectory and it's going to increase taxes dramatically, but here's the problem with it. You can't increase taxes enough to pay for it. It would be impossible to pay for that and continue the other programs, particularly the other programs that they are putting forth at the very same time. Medicare, I will say, is a little bit more difficult to fix, but what we have done in the government is we've made it more difficult than it already was by turning so much control to Medicare over to the government and to insurance companies, which are acting like big governments.

So if we could get rid of the fraud alone, if we could begin to get the medical system back into the hands of competitive private markets, I think Medicare can be saved fairly easy. But here's how it's being saved right now or being perceived to be in saved to add a few more years to it. President Obama said the year before he left office, you are listening to an interview with Dan Celia today here on the Christian worldview. He will explain after this first break of the day what President Obama did during his administration with regard to Medicare. So stay tuned.

Much more coming up. You are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. I'm David Wheaton. The next Christian worldview speaker series event is on Sunday, September 15th at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie. It features Darrell Harrison presenting on how social justice impacts the gospel and the church. Darrell is a former fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary and an expository Bible teacher. He has a passion for helping Christians understand what they believe and why. He'll do just that with the issue of social justice, followed by a Q&A moderated by host David Wheaton.

No cost, no registration. Just come. The event will also be live streamed on the Christian worldview Facebook page. For more information, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The Christian worldview speaker series with Darrell Harrison, Sunday, September 15th at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie.

Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The prosperity gospel is a prominent false gospel that God offers health, wealth and prosperity if you just have faith and give money. Costi Hinn grew up on the inside of the prosperity gospel movement.

His uncle is world renowned prosperity preacher Benny Hinn. Costi saw it all, the manipulation, staged healings, luxuriant lifestyles and perversion of scripture before God opened Costi's eyes to understand sound doctrine and believe in the true gospel. Now a pastor, Costi has written an important book entitled God, Greed and the Prosperity Gospel, which chronicles his own experience and gracefully points the reader to the truth of scripture. For a limited time, you can order this 224 page soft cover book for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview.

Normal retail is $17.99 without shipping. To order, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. We are two weeks away from our two events coming up in mid September, the speaker series event on social justice. Hope you're planning on coming to that and bringing some folks with you. That's no cost, no registration. Sunday, September 15th, 7 p.m. Grace Church, Eden Prairie, Daryl Harrison.

Very much looking forward to that. And the next day, September 16th is the golf and dinner event. The registration, by the way, for that is this coming Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.

So make sure you get registered if you haven't done so already. Today in the program, we're talking about understanding financial signs of the times with Dan Celia. Let's get back to the interview where he's talking about the sleight of hand that took place during the Obama administration with regards to Medicare.

But here's how it's being saved right now or being perceived to be in saved to add a few more years to it. President Obama said the year before he left office that we in America, this was in his last State of the Union speech. He said, we are paying less money in health care than we have ever paid before. And he framed it in such a way that it made it sound like the we he was talking about was the American, were the American people because of Obamacare. But the we that he was referring to was the federal government.

He was accurate. The federal government was spending less. They were spending less because they were sacrificing good practices for the people receiving Medicare.

I'll give you one example. My wife, before she had retired, she was still working. She's a nurse, and she worked in a skilled nursing facility attached to a major hospital in Philadelphia for 30 years. And at the time, she, because of all the new rule changes in the State of Pennsylvania and the federal government required that all of the submissions for care that were being submitted to Medicare and Medicaid had to be signed off by an RN. And she was the only RN on the floor. She said, I'm not signing off on that unless I'm doing the work, the paperwork, because you can put anything down and I'm not signing off on somebody else's work.

Long story short was she ended up being the administrator that was actually doing all the paperwork. They would send a person that had a stroke to physical therapy or occupational therapy. And they would send that person to therapy every morning and every evening or afternoon. And they would go to physical therapy.

They would be wheeled down. And they would go through fairly intensive, as much as they could take, for 15 minutes to a half an hour, hopefully, if they could make it a half hour, and it would grow and it would be a one-on-one very intense thing. By the time she left, they only had one physical therapist for a group sitting in a circle of about 10 or 12. And it was once a day. And they got about two minutes of physical therapy a piece.

And that's how dramatically it changed. And then they would say, these people have not improved. So on Medicare, if you don't have improvement, they stop paying. So Yvonne would argue, of course they didn't improve. They didn't get physical therapy.

How can they improve? That saved the government billions and billions of dollars. But people that were still healthy otherwise and could still be, if they were given the opportunity, productive citizens, they don't have the chance to do that anymore. Now, it's gotten worse since then. They're the kinds of things that we are now doing in a greater way to save the government costs, thereby adding so-called time on. And what we have done, I support this president, I support this administration.

But I disagree on one thing that hasn't happened yet. So President Obama started, before he left office, bribing. That's what it was. It's called a subsidy. It was a bribe. He had to bribe major insurance companies to get into the Obamacare exchanges because they didn't want to do it because they knew they couldn't make any money. So we gave them money, billions of dollars, going out to private insurance companies for them to be in the exchanges. Private insurance companies used to work, David, on a margin of about 3%. They're making 18% today and giving no care for that and are in a position to deny care and to cast judgment on whether care should be given. We live in a market system that is based on competition or was based on competition and survival of those that are efficient and effective.

And we've given that up. And the insurance companies, along with their governor counterparts, are now together in making decisions that is saving a little bit of Medicare for the government and making a lot of money for insurance companies. The system has to get fixed, and it can't get fixed until there is a group of politicians that say this is not good for America, it's not good for free market economies, it's not good for competition, and most importantly, it's not good for the health and welfare of our citizens. And that's what's got to happen.

And I don't know that that's a possibility. We're talking about various financial issues taking place in our country today, from Social Security to Medicare. And now let's get to really the one that I'm most interested in asking you about because I just don't know where all this is going. It has to do with the national debt.

I'm going to read another paragraph from Noah Rothman's column in Commentary magazine, which we have linked on our website, thechristianworldview.org. It says, according to last year's estimate from the Congressional Budget Office or CBO, the federal debt, which is currently equivalent to 78% of US gross domestic product, will reach 100% of GDP in 2028. That projection rests on several assumptions, among them that there will be no new federal spending initiatives, wars or recessions, and a projected decline in defense spending.

All of this is, to say the least, unlikely. Americans know that a debt crisis is coming, and they do not care. In 2005, George W. Bush outlined a major initiative to reform Social Security that would introduce security and individual investments into the system, stabilizing the program and rendering it financially sustainable.

The effort failed. Then he goes on to say in 2012, what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan tried to do, they were defeated. In 2016, Donald Trump explicitly ran against conservative efforts to rein in entitlement spending, promising only to save those programs by curtailing fraud, waste and abuse, and he won the presidency. So my question for you, Dan, is at what point does this growing debt that we have, $20 trillion in national debt to other countries around the world borrowing money, when does that have to be addressed, what will happen if it isn't addressed, and how can it be addressed? It has to be addressed for certain by around 2012, so we missed it.

Yeah, so it is a huge, huge problem spiraling very quickly. I can't imagine us at this point making it to 2028. I think we're going to have $22 trillion worth of debt by the end of next year. I'm not going to go into this in the article, but according to my calculations and research, we are about 101% debt to GDP ratios right now when you factor in some other factors that some would argue might not be related to GDP, but they certainly are related to government spending.

Congress has been sold this bill of goods. The lobbyists and special interest groups and others have gone to Congress over the years and said, hey, look, come on, debt is a natural part of a growing economy. Debt is something that is needed in any business or any government or any economy in order to grow.

There's always going to be debt. There's some truth to that I wouldn't deny, but they have said, look at Japan. Japan is 350 times debt to GDP ratio. They're doing just fine. China is close to 500.

It's probably more than that now. 500 debt to GDP ratios in debt. They're doing just fine.

Everybody says, yeah, you know what? We're bigger than China. We're bigger than Japan. We have a thriving economy, a strong dollar. We've got everything going for us. We've got so much more going for us than they do. Surely, if they can do just fine with all that, so can we.

Here's the problem. It is totally irrational to compare a consumer driven economy like America to an export driven economy like Japan and China. Japan and China actually benefit from trashing their currency. They benefit from that.

That's a good thing for them. They don't care if they have a strong dollar. They don't care if they're barely getting by. They don't care if they have stagnation. It actually helps them because it makes them more competitive.

If they're not competitive, they really have problems because they're dependent upon selling the goods that are being made in their country so that they can keep people employed and keep their economy going. We aren't in that situation. Understanding Financial Signs of the Times. Our guest is Dan Celia, the host of Financial Issues television program, FinancialIssues.org is the website.

Much more coming after this on The Christian Worldview. You're invited to The Christian Worldview Golf and Dinner event on Monday, September 16th at Woodhill Country Club in Wiesetta, Minnesota. Golf registration includes 18 holes with cart on one of the best courses in the state along with lunch and dinner.

Bring your own foursome or we can fit you into a group. Hole sponsorships are also available. Dinner event only registration includes a meet and greet on the lawn, a wonderful meal, a message by host David Wheaton and a live interview with special guest Darryl Harrison. The fellowship content and setting combine to make this a memorable event in support of The Christian Worldview radio program. We hope you can come. Again, The Christian Worldview Golf and Dinner event is on Monday, September 16th at Woodhill in Wiesetta.

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Some people tune in for 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there and miss one week, tune in three weeks later. So just to those people who listen like that, we want to mention that if you haven't heard about our speaker series event coming up on September 15th, we'd love you to come. No registration, no cost. The event is on social justice, 7 p.m. September 15th. It's a Sunday evening, Grace Church, Eden Prairie, Daryl Harrison's coming in town from California. Should be a very good event. The next day is our golf and dinner event, annual event September 16th at Woodhill. You have to register by September 3rd, though, for that event.

And that's always a very enjoyable event as well. OK, today in the program, understanding financial signs of the times, this Labor Day weekend. Good time to talk about these financial issues with Dan Celia, our guest.

He hosts a program and a ministry called Financial Issues. Let's get back to the interview where he's talking about our enormous national debt. They don't care if they have a strong dollar. They don't care if they're barely getting by. They don't care if they have stagnation.

It actually helps them because it makes them more competitive. And if they're not competitive, they really have problems because they're dependent upon selling the goods that are being made in their country so that they can keep people employed and keep their economy going. We aren't in that situation. 71 to 75 percent of our economy is based on you and I buying stuff. It is very different than those economies, but nobody in Congress has ever stood up and say about comparing the two.

There is no comparison just from that aspect alone. There's other aspects in the sense that, particularly in China, they have a lot more leeway to manipulate currencies and different things than we do. It is a huge problem. All this talk since 2010 and 2011 about us cutting interest rates and keeping interest rates low is for two reasons, and it still is today. It's not for any other reasons. I will tell you with a great deal of certainty that Secretary of Treasurer Steve Mnuchin is in Donald Trump's ear on a very regular basis saying, if you don't do anything else, you need to make sure that our interest rates don't go up because frankly, we can't afford it. We're never going to get ahead of the deficit if we have interest rates going up because it's costing us so much money to service our debt. Japan alone, their number one expense for the government of Japan is interest on their debt. It's their number one expense.

It's not the military. It's not any kind of entitlement programs. It's interest on their number one expense. If we see interest rates normalize, the Fed would say normalization is about three, three and a quarter.

To me, just because I'm looking from a historical standpoint, normalization is more like four and four and a quarter. At four and four and a quarter, at the rate we're going, we will spend a trillion dollars a year adding to our national debt on interest to service that national debt. Remember, we are dependent upon consumers buying stuff. If you add on the recessionary problems that that could cause, we're not going to have as many consumers as we have today that are confident about spending money into the economy.

That's going to exacerbate the problem. What is the end game then of having this much debt? Does it ever come to change the very nature of our existence here in this country? Several things could be the end game, which is not too likely under this administration. I wrote an article back in 2009 that talked about the end times.

We know how the story ends. The end times are going to be ushered in by a one-world currency, and that will usher in the one-world government because it's going to be so easy to accomplish a one-world government. I think that one of the scenarios would be, if we and you combine our currency, we have a one-world currency, we pull together our debt, and we pull together or look at it and compare our combined GDP, our debt-to-GDP ratio is going to be dramatically lower, thereby our currency will be much lower. If our currency will become stronger, we will have a stronger currency. If we can get all of Northern Europe to come along with us, and if we can get all of Eastern Europe to come in with us, if we can start talking to Brazil and other parts of the world and Indonesia and the far Pacific rim of New Zealand and Australia, we start building that coalition of currency. Then that can go a long way for our combined debt-to-GDP ratios, and we're all going to be just fine.

That's a scary thought, I know. That could be a scenario, again, not under this administration, highly unlikely. This is why the globalists hate this president so much, because they had made so much headway over the last five years before this presidency happened.

They just can't stand the thoughts of going backwards. There is some talk about going back on the gold standard. Well, yes, we should have never gone off the gold standard. To go on the gold standard now isn't a possibility, in my opinion. Now, could we go on some sort of commodity-based backing of the dollar?

I think we probably could, and that would be a wonderful thing. But that can't happen without one of two things happening first. One would have to be a major devaluation of our currency. The president of the United States goes on the air and says, when we wake up tomorrow, our dollar is going to be the equivalent of 68 cents. I'm just picking out some numbers, and have a devaluation. People say, well, that won't be so bad.

No, no, no, wait a minute. Your pay is devaluated. Everything you do is devaluated.

You don't gain anything by doing that. The other thing that you could do is we could have massive inflation. Jimmy Carter, they wanted to inflate our way out of a recession. What that means is we create inflation.

It's never worked and never will work. The notion of creating inflation, once you let that horse out of the barn, the notion that you're going to round it back up very easily and set on down is impossible. We saw that in that administration. What happens during inflation, David, is we have GDP. Say it's 15 trillion dollars, our GDP. If we have inflation, what happens to the goods and services in GDP?

They go up in price, right? That 15 trillion can turn into 18 trillion, and we haven't sold one more thing or produced one more thing. The debt ratio now to GDP is lowered. It gives the illusion, and trust me, it's the only illusion, it gives an illusion that we are coming out of this with a notion that it really will get better and take care of itself. It's going to create an enthusiasm and optimism about the American currency and the American economy that people and companies will actually begin to grow and expand. Then that illusion will become reality.

It's never worked, and it's never going to work. That is another scenario, but I'd like to believe that it's almost impossible to happen with good leadership. That is me being, I hope not overly optimistic, but believing that at some point in time, there has got to be enough that is going to wake up and say, I may not get elected next time, but we've got to fix this problem. I believe the country that holds most of our debt is China, is that correct? The country, yes, not the largest debt holder.

The largest debt holder is the Federal Reserve. They have almost 4 trillion. China has 1.1 trillion.

Okay, so my question is, in this age of social justice, where everyone decries the fact that in America, the racism, the sexism, the oppression going on and so forth, and we're looking for fair trade coffee and so forth, we're worried about some of these social issues that people, in many cases, concoct as we're some oppressive country. Why then is there no outcry against doing business in China? In other words, American companies producing their goods in China for one reason alone, because labor is cheaper there, so then the product can be brought back into America, and you can buy your iPhone for $1,000 instead of what it would be if, I guess, if we're produced here for $5,000. Correct me if I'm wrong in this reasoning, but we're injecting money into China. By extension, we're then supporting underpaid labor there, maybe even, in some cases, slave labor. The country's ruled by communists. There's very little individual liberties there, like freedom of religion and freedom of speech that we enjoy here in America, all for cheaper products that we can buy in America. You said we're a consumer society.

Why should American companies be doing business in China, and why is there so little outcry against the social huge injustices going on in China versus the relatively insignificant ones here in America? But Dan Celia will answer that question after this final break of the day here on the Christian Worldview radio program as we talk about understanding financial signs of the times. The next Christian Worldview speaker series event is on Sunday, September 15th at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie. It features Darrell Harrison presenting on how social justice impacts the Gospel and the Church. Darrell is a former fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary and an expository Bible teacher. He has a passion for helping Christians understand what they believe and why. He'll do just that with the issue of social justice, followed by a Q&A moderated by host David Wheaton.

No cost, no registration, just come. The event will also be live streamed on the Christian Worldview Facebook page. For more information, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The Christian Worldview speaker series with Darrell Harrison, Sunday, September 15th at 7 p.m. at Grace Church Eden Prairie.

Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. The Prosperity Gospel is a prominent false gospel that God offers health, wealth, and prosperity if you just have faith and give money. Costi Hinn grew up on the inside of the prosperity gospel movement. His uncle is world-renowned prosperity preacher Benny Hinn. Costi saw it all, the manipulation, staged healings, luxuriant lifestyles, and perversion of scripture before God opened Costi's eyes to understand sound doctrine and believe in the true gospel. Now a pastor, Costi has written an important book entitled God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel, which chronicles his own experience and gracefully points the reader to the truth of scripture. For a limited time, you can order this 224-page softcover book for a donation of any amount to the Christian Worldview.

Normal retail is $17.99 without shipping. To order, call 1-888-646-2233 or visit thechristianworldview.org. . Why should American companies be doing business in China and why is there so little outcry against the reason why we're there? I agree with everything you say and the premise that why are we doing this? This is an oppressive communist regime that frankly will have very little impact on our economy. They might have an impact on the economy of some manufacturing. But you know, David, in the last three years, 40% of companies have moved out of China. And that has been picking up in dramatic fashion because of this so-called trade war. Companies are panicking. My hope is that President Trump sticks to his guns on this and does not compromise.

I believe this has been long overdue. It is going to bring some manufacturing here, but it's also going to take manufacturing to other countries that we can give a leg up to by going to some of these other countries that are paying decent wages and have great environments in their workforce and bring some of it back to America. Corporate America has learned over the last 30 years because things have changed so much that America is still the most productive country in the world. Our people are the most productive people in the world. And yes, you can go to China and hire 300 people to do something that you can do with 30 people and some automation and systems here. The other thing that you have here, Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW have all learned this, that we have not only a productive workforce, we have ingenuity that is still amazing compared to other places around the world. We have something very important to corporations.

We have an uninterrupted flow of energy. That may not sound like much, but it's critically important for these businesses. And these businesses working in areas of the world where your electricity could get shut off for three hours in the middle of the night pays a huge toll. The import and export costs have gone up dramatically. So for them to send some materials to China, the furniture industry is learning this very, very quickly. To send things to China, to make it up and then send it back here is starting to outweigh any cost savings in the actual manufacturing. So I think it is beginning to change. And I think with the right leadership in Washington, it is going to change. I really do. I don't know that I'm in the camp that all these companies are going to come here to America.

I don't think that's going to happen. I do believe we don't need to be supporting this communist regime like we're doing. China wakes up every morning, David. They have one thing on their mind. We've got to put a million people to work every day. If they don't keep their population just barely fed with a job, eventually they're going to have a revolt and they know that.

And they fear that every morning. The other thing is I've been totally against this notion that we've got to regulate China to not steal and pirate our technology. First of all, we're not going to be able to do it. They don't have research development in China. They only have reverse engineering. That's all they have. That is how they survive. And if we have corporate America that is not astute enough, that is greedy enough to say, all I want to do is reach that market share of those billions of people, and I'm willing to give up all of our secrets to do that, then shame on them.

And they need to fail. It is not the government's place to try to stop that and fix it. It is corporations' place to say, you know what? I don't care about getting that market share. I care about my intellectual property and my technology.

I do believe we need to do it when it comes to national security. We can't let Lockheed Martin go over there without rules and regulations. But they're not.

They are secure as you can get. So that's not the problem. You know, 92% of all computers in China run on Microsoft Windows. And do you know that only 8% have purchased it from Microsoft? And I always want to ask Microsoft, how did that work out for you?

I mean, it's crazy. So I don't think so. I've been against that. So the point I'm trying to make is President Trump shouldn't give up anything. If you're going to give up anything, give that up and let the free market corporations police themselves or go out of business. I struggle with supporting this communist regime by giving them anything. And we have had weak president after weak president that has been afraid to confront this communist regime. And now we have a president that's not afraid after I've listened since 1997 to people calling to my radio program saying, oh, well, you know, China, all our manufacturing is gone.

And now we're trying to get it back. And I think some of those same people are calling up saying, you know, this is going to hurt our economy. Yes, it will be a little bit of pain, but it's something that we have to do. And I'm afraid China is winning this because they're dragging this out to get as close to the election as possible to where they're finally going to get what they want. And I hope that doesn't happen, but it's possible that it could. So let me just summarize what you said about American companies going into China to produce goods, sell their goods there. You're saying let them if they want to do that, that's fine. But then let them be responsible for China stealing their products and replicating them and then selling them within their own country. You're saying our government?

No, they're selling it around the world, some of these things. They sign agreements. They understand after five years, so much has to get turned over to China. They know that. They know that when they go.

But they think that the getting to the market share over there with some of these products as well, manufacturing inexpensively, they think that that outweighs the loss of their intellectual property or some of their other technologies. Okay. That's all the time we have for today with Dan Celia as we discuss understanding the financial signs of the times.

We actually had 20 more minutes of the interview with him, would have liked to have played if we had more time. There's lots of fascinating nuggets within that conversation. Maybe at the top of the list for me was hearing how the financial debt structure of America and the rest of the world, if that something changes, something cataclysmic happens, there's a cascading effect. And then there'll be this push towards a one world currency. Let's combine together. What does that sound like? Something something out of revelation?

Exactly. That's why this is so important to understand financial issues for Christians. So thank you, Dan, for coming on the program today.

Again, their website is financialissues.org. Don't forget, Tuesday, September 3rd is the deadline for our golf and dinner event, which takes place on Monday, September 16th. The speaker series event is Sunday, September 15th on social justice, Grace Church, Eden Prairie. All of this information is at our website, thechristianworldview.org.

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