Episode 8. Welcome to the Second Great Depression

MIKE DONOVAN: The America that we are living in right now is not a free America.

The single greatest threat to the United States of America is no virus -- is no virus. It's the way we respond to the crisis.

Hello again everyone. Welcome to another episode of Not Free America radio. And here we are in the midst of the current economic crisis. We're going to talk economics today. Don't get too excited. It's only a 10-minute show, but seriously, I won't bore you. We need to talk straight. We need to get some things out there so that we as the American people can figure out what we're going to do about them.

Welcome to episode eight of Not Free America radio, and as I said, we're going to talk economics tonight. And specifically the economics of America's war on CV-19 and it isn't just America's war, it is a war across the world. But folks, one of the things that we have to stop and think about is what our action and reaction does. Not just what the virus, where the pandemic or any type of crisis might do. We have to think about our reaction and our response and the long-term implications of those responses. I do not believe we have properly considered the long-term implications of the economic shutdown that we have engaged upon.

And based on looking at the numbers and looking at where we are medically… I don't know that we needed to do a full economic shutdown. Maybe it could have been done in waves in cities and States where there were break outbreaks. I don't know that we're ever going to know that. What I do know is that we have tanked the American economy where you have created millions of new unemployed persons and the unemployment rate in this country is going to skyrocket to 25 or 30% in a couple of months. Those, by the way, are the same levels that we had during the Great Depression. Okay? Now people say it's temporary. Jerome Powell, who by the way, as the chair of the Federal Reserve has not been -- I wouldn't say he's been bright in his forecast, but he did say that while this is a dramatic suffering that the economy is going through, it is only temporary. But is it? When things deal with money, especially your money, or people who have, who want to protect their money? I'm not so sure.

Our economic system is based obviously on money. And there are an awful lot of people who, at the end of the day, are going to make decisions that will make or break economic systems based on money and whether they have it and whether they keep it. And these are people who are not accustomed to losing. So in a simple basic way, think about what you do every day.

I'm not asking you to consider complex economic theory and in complex sort of models of what might happen because who cares? None of that matters. But to you and me, when we go out to the store, when we get groceries, when we go to the mall, we get our kids shoes… We are engaging in an economic activity, but what does it mean? There's a complex system that you are taking your dollars to that shopping mall and putting that money down at Payless Shoe stores or Giant food store, whatever it is.

You're engaging in economic activity and you are through that process spurring growth in the economy. A little bit of money that you spend a couple with a little bit of money that every other couple of million people spend enables us to employ an engine, a human capital engine that then allows more people to have money and then more people to spend that money around more places that then builds more economic engines. And so I've always been an open border person.

I don't understand why we try to keep people out. The single most important thing that an economy needs is consumers. We should be fortunate and happy and feel great about the fact that people want to spend money in the United States of America. Something tells me we're going to miss those days when people don't have money to spend in the United States of America and that's where we are, folks.

Do you think the jobs are going to come back? Hey, do you think the malls are going to come back? Do you realize that 78% of Americans work in the service industry? They're all shut down. What's going to happen to those jobs? Do you honestly think that those retailers are going to be able to survive this? Do you think that those retailers aren't suffering from many, many companies that expect them to pay their leases?

They're going to expect those companies to pay for those leases. You know, car notes, mortgages. They don't just stop. And, oh, by the way, if they are stopping for you and me because we're individual consumers, don't you think that those banks are going to be looking toward their corporate clients with a heavier expectation?

Now more than ever… we've pinched small business in this country and our response to the economic crisis was to give businesses an unfunded mandate related to leave. We are doing so many of the right things, but in so many of the wrong ways, and it matters, it matters whether you convince people to go along with something, it matters whether you have buy-in. Now, I want you to think about something. I want you to think about a fear, something that you're really, really afraid of. Something that keeps you up at night. Maybe it's a death in the family. Maybe it's a loss of a job, a loss of a family member, something important, something close.

I want you to think about that and why don't you to think about those feelings or those dreams of those nightmares when you realize that you've lost something… that you've lost something… that you're afraid and you don't know what you're going to do. Because what I'm describing to you is where we as a country are.

And a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, this country decided to stop, dig in our heels, be drug forward… not from the perspective of everybody gathering together and understanding that it was in everybody's best interest to curb the spread of the disease… not by coming together and figuring out what the best ways to do that would be… Providing resources so that people could be better at that.

No, we instead passed laws. We instead threatened jail. We instead of getting buy in, decided that we were going to threaten people and in so doing the United States of America has dug its heels in. We are heading up the proverbial rollercoaster hill and we're trying to get out and climb back down the tracks. I got news for you.

We're going over the hill. Think about anything that you've ever -- in that pit of your stomach when you were a kid, you didn't want to do something. You knew it was going to be uncomfortable and eventually you realized that you had to do it. You had to face it, you had to get it done, you had to move forward. Life is a collection of really, really wonderful things and really, really horrible things and the really, really horrible things give us color and context to the really, really great things.

And in some ways some of the really, really horrible things or things that we needed most in order to be able to appreciate the great things. And let there be a revival in this country of the things that we appreciate on the other side of this tragedy. But let us understand something -- I said on episode one of this podcast, which is this: the single greatest threat to the United States of America is no virus… is no virus. It's the way we respond to the crisis.

Our government is out of control and it is creating hysteria. Yesterday, 799 people died in New York city, which is a record, but we're starting to see society break at the seams. An 86-year-old woman in a hospital in New York city was murdered by another patient because she got too close and accidentally grabbed her IV pole to balance her. This woman who was 86 years old in the ER stumbles, grabs an IV pole and the person who was connected to that pole pushed her and killed her.

Welcome to America, where if you violate social distancing, you deserve to die. Well, how about a Kentucky doctor who was arrested for attacking a group of teenage girls because he didn't think that they were properly practicing social distancing rules? Is this the United States? Is this what we've become? What will happen? How are we going to turn the economy back on folks? How are we going to get people to stop acting crazy?

People are going insane. It is time. It is time for us to develop a plan to get through this, not prolong it… and it is time for us to stop fearmongering and start speaking straight to people. The truth lies between any number of perspectives. That's always true. I'm no conspiracy theorist here, but I do not believe the government is being forthcoming. I believe the government is creating panic and crew. I believe that the government -- the state governments -- are creating unconstitutional rule constructs that they can't possibly manage. The disease is real, but the threat of tyranny… well, that's upon us.

Thank you for joining us. Look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow. Take care. Stay safe. Stay healthy, Not Free America radio.