Glenn Beck: Time to Reboot the System

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," February 10, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: People are — I know people watch this program and they disagree with me and that's fine. We should have disagreements in America.

They'll tell you that what I've said in the last couple of years, which is: Stop spending, cut taxes, get out of debt — I was saying it during the Bush administration — they'll tell you, in this situation, it's a recipe for disaster.

I have to tell you, in all honesty, they're partially right. Why I stick to this is because their solution is much, much worse.

We're not looking at any good scenarios anymore and the longer we wait, the worse it's going to be.

The solution they're giving you right now is putting you in fantasy land. And when you wake up from the fairytale, the bottom falls out. Now, if they were doing this and saying prepare, prepare, prepare, then it would be OK — maybe.

Let me explain.

When we go into a recession, you always hear what we're hearing now: You've got to spend your way out.

OK. Well, if spending dips, government pumps more money into the system to keep the economy going. OK? It's reasonable. If this were a normal time, a stimulus package, may have worked great. I still wouldn't agree with it, but it may have worked.

In this case, two-thirds of the money committed hasn't even been spent yet — two thirds. Why is that?

In normal times, our debt may not be a huge problem, but we're not in normal times anymore with our debt. Our debt is huge. It's a gigantic problem, because the debt is so massive.

I read a story today: We may not mathematically be ever able to pay this debt off. What are we doing to our children? And the debt is getting worse.

We know that the deficit from this year is $1.35 trillion, right?
Our debt ceiling was just raised — this will cover us for the year they say, if nothing happens — to $14.3 trillion.

Now, you add in our unfunded liabilities, which are $107 trillion.
It's even worse. Put those two together: $121 trillion.

But it's worse than that. It's worse than that because we have more — other things that aren't on the books. Fannie and Freddie Mae, not included in this numbers. Federal budget — no, no. That's another six-point — what is it, $6.3 trillion?

OK — got it?

This isn't accounted for in Obama's blueprint.

Now let me show you exactly how our economy works. We're 70 percent spending. We don't build anything anymore. We're just consumers.

So 70 percent — so, let's say this is our normal economy here. When we go into a recession, you stop spending. When you stop spending, the economy goes down like that. OK?

Well, if we don't fill this hole with money and bring the spending up to here, people lose their jobs, businesses close. As this falls, and then it becomes a cycle. That's the theory. The theory is you fill a hole. If you don't, you spiral out of control and you may be in a Great Depression.

Well, let me tell you this story — nobody has ever taught you this story because we came out of it without the spending, without the government intervention. It was the depression of 1920.

No one teaches you about 1920 because we pulled out of it using free- market principles. The government didn't fix it. Who did? The people.
I'll tell you about in a second.

But let me go back. Seventy percent of our economy is spending — you going out to the mall. The government fills the hole with this spending. This is why George Bush said after September 11th, go out to the mall, spend, live your lives, go on vacation. It keeps everybody employed if you spend. OK?

But it's like — the theory is, it's like you're pushing a car down the hill. Have you ever — have you ever been — I had crappy cars when I was growing up and I'm like 20 years old and I'm — I got a car that's got a clutch, it's got to go down the hill and I'd be pushing it with my foot as it goes down the hill and you pop the clutch and the engine starts. That's normal. That's normal.

Their hope is that this money will pop the clutch, you'll invent something, you'll do something and the economy will come right back up.

Now, this is dangerous in this situation because of all of the debt.
We haven't done this. We've done this. It's a much deeper hole. It's much deeper.

Remember, this was global catastrophe. You just heard the president say it. We almost had a full global collapse. We were going to have a greater Great Depression.

We have a deeper hole to fill this time. That's a problem because we have all of this. How are we going to pay for it?

The unfunded promises — we have grandpa's Viagra and grandma's hip replacement to pay for. We just raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion — new debt. Plus, off the books, $6.3 trillion, for everybody's house.

Filling in the hole, adding to these numbers makes our bankers, the people who are loaning us all this money freak out. They're like, "OK, guys, are you going to invent something here? You got anything on the horizon?"

America, ask yourself: what do we have on the horizon? Oh, yes, that's right — solar panels. Yes.

If this doesn't turn around as projected — and let me ask you: when is the last time you ever heard anybody in Washington predict anything with the economy accurately? If it doesn't turn around, we're left with the banana republic. And I'm not talking about the one with $175 jeans, a third world nation. We're talking about Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic.

In this scenario, it leaves us with un-payable debt. You can't pay any of this. Plus, we destroyed our credibility throughout the world. Our monetary system is over as we know it. No one trusts us anymore.

We don't trust our politicians anymore — because if this happens, we figured out that they lied to us the whole time. They destroyed and took away our children's future and our Constitution. It doesn't sound like a happy place. In fact, it sounds like this: time bomb number 20, the coming populist revolution bomb.

Hello? Look what's happening in Greece.

So, now, here's what I've been recommending. And I know this is extremely ugly and look, I'm a guy on TV. You got to make the decision.
But it's based on a theory that failure is important.

My chart goes like this: You don't fill the hole. The economy drives off a cliff. Lots of jobs are lost. I may lose my job, you might lose your job, but it allows the economy to reset.

We learn from our mistakes. We purge the system. We do it all the time with our computers.

How is this not common sense?

OK. You're on your computer and you figure stuff out and you start to see, the computer is starting to run slowly or that it freezes up, what do you do? You reboot the system. If you don't, it crashes. Then you might lose everything.

What I'm saying is: Save the data. Save your money, save your family. Prepare yourself. Turn it off. Let it crash and we'll reboot.

I believe in the American system. I believe in the entrepreneur.
Things are going to get ugly for a while but we'll help each other. Not because the government tells us to, but because we're neighbors. We'll save our future in the end.

Let me go back to the story of 1920 because you say, oh, that's crazy. Oh, they're going to print it. That's crazy. It will never work.
Glenn Beck is mad!

1920, the unknown depression. Remember I told you about the "Roaring '20s" yesterday or the day before? This one wasn't a Great Depression, but it was just as bad as 1930. You don't know about it because we pulled out of it quickly.

In 1921, our goods and services lost half of their value. By comparison, the loss of our housing value in the past year has been 18 percent.

1920 — hello. Our GNP fell 24 percent between — in one year, 1920 to 1921. Our unemployment rate back then was 11.9, higher than it is now, far worse than today. And in 2009, real GDP only decreased 2.4. Got it?
Two-point-four.

Hello? In some cases, 1920 was worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s. But what happened? Harding, because they learned — America learned its lesson, progressive, that was a nightmare, they cut spending in half — spending in half.

By 1923, they cut taxes. Remember I told you yesterday, top rate was, what, 73 percent? Cut it to 20 percent. The result? Stock market tripled, real wages increased 20 percent. Got it?

Your, everybody's wages, your wage increase was 20 percent. A dramatic expansion of the middle class. By 1926 — and this is my favorite stat because I've never seen it before. Only time has ever happened in peacetime. Our unemployment rate went from here — you're ready? — to 1.8 percent. Never happened in the history of America outside of war.

My point is, reboot the system. Trust the American people. Trust freedom. Trust what we've been.

We changed the world. We invented almost every damn thing in the world. It works. Trust yourself. Trust the divinely inspired system that was given to us by our Founders and then destroyed piece by piece by piece, by the lies of the progressive movement. It works!

Check it out, 1920. The depression you never heard of.

By the way, I saw a picture on the cover of "Wall Street Journal" this morning and I think that says it all. It's a photo of a cleaned out supermarket in Northern Virginia. Look at that. I saw that and I thought it was Russia. People freaking out about the snow in wintertime. If that is what happens when if it snows in America, what happens if any of these things happen in America?

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