Glenn has been warning for some time that our current system is unsustainable and simply cannot last. Today Glenn saw a chart that should strike fear into every American citizen. It shows the latest bubble that appears to be approaching the moment where it will burst -- the money bubble.
On Sunday, USA Today published a article by John Maxfield from The Motley Fool, featuring a terrifying chart showing the internet bubble, the housing bubble, and an unnamed bubble that Maxfield said was being called a stock market bubble.
Now, Maxfield's article doesn't say there is a stock market bubble happening in the United States. He explains, "the fact that the Fed's monetary policies have caused stock prices to soar, doesn't mean there's a bubble." He does say, however, that they will most likely deflate as part of an overall correction.
Now, why does Glenn think the above chart is so important?
"I'm not sure if the stock market bubble and the money bubble will be exactly the same, but I think they are. It's being propped up by bogus money. You are borrowing money from the Fed at zero interest rates, and that money is worthless. It's not backed up by anything. And when we really do hit the money bubble, we're out. We're out."
"I wanted to show this to you, because for those of you listening to me for a long period of time, you know I'm wrong on timing. I'm always wrong on timing, but I'm not wrong usually in direction," Glenn said.
Later in the show, Glenn pulled out the transcript from March 2008 when he was on Headline News where he described how "the money bubble" would come about and collapse.
"If you see what was in USA Today, you will see that they are now talking about the money bubble. We built a bigger bubble than that housing bubble in 2008. Remember when we said if we don't fix this, this will get much, much worse? And when it gets much worse, when it finally pops, what do we do as a people?" Glenn asked.
Way back in 2008, Glenn warned that the policy of the Federal Reserve could result in a "money bubble". The transcript from that segment is below via CNN.com:
BECK: Welcome to the real story. I want you to look at your newspaper today and you will see all kinds of headlines in there trumpeting the great news that home sales were unexpectedly higher in February. Hey, that`s great, until you start looking under the hood of those headlines, you`ll find a very different story. Yes, sales were up slightly in February, but they were down nearly 24% from last year. And prices, which are now just a little more important are now down 11% from last year, biggest drop in the history of the S & P index. I know, details, details, shut up guy on TV.The Dow now was up another 180 points yesterday, nearly 8% in the last nine trading days alone. I mean, that`s great. Everybody`s happy, what recession? If I may introduce you, one more time, I`m sorry to do this to Mr. Gloomy Pants. The real story is that we are now witnessing the birth of our next bubble. Just like communists, financial bubbles don`t ever go away, they just change their look.
The internet bubble shaped, shifted into the housing bubble and then the housing bubble has now shifted into something, I`m officially declaring, the nanny state money bubble. For the last few years, America has been, if I may, on a Las Vegas binge. Wall Street would be, were like out with hookers every night, Main Street doing blow and eating caviar off of somebody`s belly and then the bill claim and we just handed over our credit card. You take American Express? Then the party ended and the bills started to come in. And you know, we didn`t go home because the bill collectors were waiting for us at the front door. We just stood there in the bar and now we`re holding our hands out.
You know, looking, hey, Paris Hilton, she by the way in this analogy is playing the federal government, Paris Hilton, you`ll cover us right? Well, for now, Paris Hilton is happy to do that. She is cutting rates. She is bailing out company. She is printing out money in the basement, anything to make us all forget that the open bar is now over. But sooner or later, we`re all going to realize, wait a minute, Paris Hilton is not only unemployed, but her credit is actually worse than ours is. She doesn`t have any cash and more importantly, she has no ability to earn any cash. She`s been paying our tab by borrowing money, in fact, Paris Hilton, I believe, is the perfect analogy for this economy, neither have any real substance and both look far better in night vision, I`m just saying.
Bruce Bartlett this is former U.S. treasury official. Bruce, you`re kind of regretting coming on this program after I just equated the economy to Paris Hilton.
BRUCE BARTLETT, FORMER U.S. TREASURY OFFICIAL: Wow.
BECK: The federal government, aren`t you? You can be honest. That`s OK.
Bruce, tell me, the Fed is printing money, dumping money, the government is. Everybody is doing this. The stimulus package. They`re now looking for more, they`re bailing out companies and now they want to bail out borrowers. How do you -- this is bogus. What`s happening here is bogus money. There`s no real creation of anything here except debt.
BARTLETT: Look, the Federal Reserve, basically, is responsible for all of these bubbles and credit cycles, whatever you want to call them because it always overdoes things. You know, when the economy is hurting, it shovels money out any way it possibly can, and then they just keep shoveling more and more because they`re never sure that they`ve done enough because there`s always enormous political pressure to do something. And then eventually, you get inflation, they start to tighten. They always tighten a little too much. And so you`ve always got this boom and bust cycle that basically, I think, comes back to the Federal Reserves` money creation policy.
BECK: Here`s the problem. It seems to me that we are always popping a bubble. And in retrospect, you always go back and go, yes, $900 a share for pets.com. That wasn`t such a smart idea. It all makes sense after you get past it. How is it that nobody is seeing that the Fed right now is dumping money or shoveling money, as you say, but they`re not paying attention to inflation at all. What they`re doing is going to cause more inflation and then they got a really Sinbad belt tight, you know, tighten the belt on us to the point to where it`s going to hurt the other direction.
BARTLETT: Well, the problem is what the Fed does to the economy always takes -- there`s always a lagged effect. What the Fed is doing today will ultimately impact on the economy two years from now. But by then, people will have forgotten that that was the root cause. By then, they`ll talk themselves into believing it`s something else all together. Remember, Alan Greenspan gave his famous irrational exuberance speech about the tech bubble in 1996, but it wasn`t until 2000 that the bubble finally burst.
And in the meantime, people talked themselves into believing it wasn`t really a bubble that it was all real.
BECK: I get it.
BARTLETT: And the same thing in the housing sector.
BECK: I have to tell you, it`s like we`re taking political rufies all the time but we just what? I don`t remember that at all. Bruce, thanks a lot.
