May 16, 2025 · 48:48

Guest Host, Alex McFarland, is joined by Todd Sheets, author of On Wealth and Progress

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Guest Host, Alex McFarland, is joined by Todd Sheets, author of On Wealth and Progress | 1-800-326-4543 ext. 345 To donate call : 877-616-2396

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0:00Darkness is not an affirmative force.
0:03It simply reoccupies the space vacated by the light.
0:06This is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio.
0:10It should be uncomfortable for a believer to live as a hypocrite.
0:15Delivery people out of the bondage of mainstream media.
0:18And the philosophies of this world.
0:20God has called you and me to be his ambassador.
0:24Even in this dark moment.
0:26Let's not miss our moment.
0:28and now the Hamilton Corner.
0:33Good evening, welcome to the Hamilton Corner,
0:35Alex McFarland here.
0:36Very honored to be sitting in for attorney,
0:39pastor, journalist, Abe Hamilton III.
0:42Abe is out today and as is frequently the case,
0:47I get to sit in in his stead
0:49and I'm very honored that you're listening folks.
0:51We have a great show because among other things,
0:54we're gonna talk about money.
0:56And that's something that impacts all of our lives.
0:59You know the Bible has a lot to say about economics and finances and stewardship.
1:06I think about Proverbs 22 verse 7 that says the rich rules over the poor.
1:12And here is a Bible verse that is just axiomatic.
1:15It's become part of our vocabulary.
1:18And the borrower is servant to the lender.
1:21Proverbs 22-7.
1:23And you know, I don't know that much about economics.
1:27I know you've got to take in more than you put out.
1:30You need to live within your means.
1:32What a novel idea.
1:34You know, my wife and I and our family,
1:36we try to live within our means.
1:40I very often, I wish that our government
1:42would know how to do that.
1:44But I will remember back in 2008,
1:50I was a president of a small college
1:53and we had a number of donors to the college.
1:56And there were people in real estate and people in banking.
2:01And I remember what a panic it was in 2008.
2:05And in fact, in my home state of North Carolina,
2:07a 100-year-old bank went out of business.
2:11I mean, it was actually the blue chip bank in North Carolina
2:17that was highly, highly respected.
2:21But for a lot of, I would say irresponsible lending,
2:26they ended up going out of business.
2:29And I'll say this and then I want you to meet our guest.
2:32I read about a $36 trillion deficit.
2:37And again, I'm not a primarily an economics guy, but listen, I know the billions of dollars
2:45of interest that's accruing on our national debt daily.
2:49I mean, that is something we should be concerned about.
2:52And I think the time to prepare and to be informed and to be ready for the rough waters that may
3:00lie ahead.
3:02The time to think about that, be wise about it, frankly pray about it, the time is now.
3:09Well, to help us weigh in and learn about these and some other issues, I'm very honored to
3:14have Todd Sheets, his website, one of several that I think will reference.
3:20Todd Sheets writer dot com W R I T E R. Todd Sheets.
3:27He's got a background in economics and accounting and is just a voice that many people trust
3:35and look to.
3:36He's a prolific author and a public figure when it comes to online information about
3:43government, current events and the economy.
3:45And he's with us now.
3:47Todd, thanks for making time to be with us
3:49on the Hamilton Corner today.
3:51Thanks so much for having me.
3:52I'm delighted to be with you and your audience today.
3:56Well, I always love to hear people's story
3:58and then there are a lot of current events
4:00that I want to get into.
4:01But give us a little bit about your background
4:04and how you came to do what you do.
4:07Yeah, I'll try and keep this short.
4:08If I ramble on for too long, please cut me off.
4:10We don't want to put anybody to sleep out there.
4:13No.
4:15Yeah, no, I grew up in Iowa, you know,
4:17what I call kind of a lower middle class family.
4:19My dad was a high school football coach,
4:22so my whole life was kind of built around athletics
4:25and that type of thing.
4:27Once I figured out that I wasn't gonna be
4:29either a pro football quarterback or an NBA player,
4:33I realized I had to go down a different path
4:35and got very focused on academics,
4:38came out with a CPA, went to work in the accounting industry
4:42for a few years and then went into investment banking,
4:45was very fortunate to end up at a firm here in Florida called Raymond James, which was a
4:52fantastic place to work run by incredibly bright, motivated and honorable people. I had
4:59a very good, you know, successful career that I was very thankful and appreciative for. Had
5:06the chance to retire fairly early. And then I thought I wanted to go out and start a business
5:11which had kind of been a lifelong dream.
5:14And I kind of went down that path for a while,
5:17but then after a year or so,
5:21I kind of realized that there were some other forces
5:24pulling on me, which I think happens to many people.
5:27And from many different perspectives,
5:28it might be spiritual, it might be career oriented
5:32or whatever.
5:33And it took a while to figure out what those were,
5:35but I really came to understand
5:38that I wanted to devote a great deal of time
5:41to researching our economic history and developing a better understanding of how we got to the point
5:48we were at and this was in the midst of the financial crisis by that point in time.
5:53And what really was the best system, what created the best ability for people to be able to work hard
6:01and lift themselves up into a better life for themselves and their families, which I think is a
6:07goal that almost everybody out there shares. And I also became very interested in, I had
6:14always had a lifelong interest in writing, and then also started to get involved with music
6:20for the first time as well. So that's kind of taken me down the path that I've been on,
6:25it led to the book that you mentioned, I appreciate you bringing that up. And then also to starting
6:30to write these pieces on sub-stack in order to try and add some current events related
6:38commentary on a much broader range of issues that are not just economic and historical,
6:44but also current events, geopolitical, geopolitical, and all of these other areas as well.
6:50Yeah, I think our upbringing is probably somewhat similar.
6:55I grew up on a farm in North Carolina.
6:58My mother was a public school teacher for all of her adult life.
7:03And my dad had been with, well, originally my dad was with
7:07Ralston Purina in St. Louis, but ultimately my grandfather, my
7:12dad, and then me up until young adulthood, we ran a family
7:17farm.
7:17But it was just drilled into me.
7:19Maybe it was my grandparents' depression, era, life, and
7:24and then my mom and dad, but don't borrow money,
7:27live within your means.
7:29If you don't have the money, don't do it.
7:33And so the idea of even like credit cords,
7:37because credit cords are like ubiquitous now.
7:40And Todd, we do a lot of summer camps,
7:43and it amazes me like 15 and 16 year olds
7:48that brandish two and three credit cords.
7:53And I don't know, it just kind of,
7:54it makes me kind of cringe because I just grew up
7:58in a culture that was so averse to borrowing money.
8:03And I'm getting towards a question here.
8:06I guess you with your background
8:09and now really being an expert voice on economics and money,
8:16how concerned are you that it's just assumed
8:21that you spend what you don't have.
8:24It's just the American culture.
8:26You live on credit and you borrow and you spend
8:31and just indebtedness is a part of life.
8:35How concerning is that to you?
8:39Well, I think it's a very big concern.
8:41I mean, I think you and I were both very lucky
8:45to grow up in that kind of environment that you mentioned.
8:49And I think your references are exactly right.
8:51I've made reference to the same thing in the book
8:56that you've mentioned, that as time has gone on
9:00and borrowing has increased so much,
9:02it's something that would have made the phrase I used
9:04was our depression era grandparents roll over
9:07in their graves.
9:08I mean, anybody who has lived through an experience
9:14of that magnitude, where the things that you take
9:18for granted every day, waking up and having a job to go to,
9:22an income that you can depend on,
9:25being able to feed your family, being able to go to a bank
9:29and withdraw the money that you have in the bank.
9:31And all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out from under you
9:35and that instills a level of discipline
9:42and concern about the future
9:45And the ability to pull you off things
9:48till you can afford them tomorrow
9:50that you don't have to buy today,
9:53that I think is very valuable.
9:54And one of the amazing things about the Depression
9:58is that was basically the mindset
10:02that not just existed throughout the country,
10:07outside of Washington DC
10:09and with the people up until the Depression,
10:12It also existed in Washington DC up until the 1930s.
10:17If you go back to the 1800s
10:21and the first 30 years before we got into the depression
10:25of the 1900s, what you find is government spending
10:30was around three to 4% of what's called gross domestic product
10:35which is basically the overall economic output
10:38of the country, today it's over 20%.
10:42And we consistently ban either balanced budgets
10:47or balanced or budget surpluses.
10:50And so we get to this point where the depression happens
10:54and all of a sudden, the people in real America
10:57learn these very vital lessons the hardest way possible,
11:02but then government starts going in the other direction
11:04where it starts to believe that actually running deficits
11:07can be a good thing and incurring debts can be a good thing.
11:11And that's let us down this very long path of decades
11:15that has brought us to the point.
11:17Now you mentioned $36 trillion of debt
11:20in one of the sub-stack pieces that I wrote recently.
11:25That is similar to.
11:26It's not quite as bad.
11:27So I don't want to try and scare people.
11:30But it's similar to having a $120,000 mortgage
11:35on $100,000 home because that $36 trillion GDP
11:41is 120% of our economic output, our GDP.
11:45And so we have very clearly over the decades here
11:49worked our way into a somewhat dangerous position.
11:53And I think the debt and the debt are two
11:56of the three big crises that we have to deal with
12:00in order to reinvigorate this economy
12:04So it can provide the kind of upward mobility, you know,
12:08that became the heart of the American dream
12:11that has driven us for generations,
12:13going all the way back to the beginning of the country.
12:15Todd, the GDP, is that, and forgive my ignorance here,
12:21is that net or gross?
12:24I mean, tell us about the GDP
12:26and what will it be calendar year 2025?
12:31Yeah, they're estimating right now.
12:33It's right in the 29 to $30 trillion range.
12:36Okay.
12:37So the good news about that is we are far and away the largest economic power in the world.
12:45China is now second to us.
12:47There's is around 19 trillion.
12:50But they've got to provide for a population that is almost four times the size of ours
12:57on a GDP that's even smaller.
12:59So.
13:00As of yesterday, it's funny.
13:02of yesterday China's population is like 1.42 billion.
13:09Yes. And we're in like 330 million range or so. So GDP is maybe two-thirds of ours,
13:19but their population base is pushing four times the size of ours. So even though on
13:25a simple basis, they are becoming more of a competitor. And unfortunately, we are seeing
13:32that in their actions around the globe. But in terms of really being able to provide for
13:38the citizenry and that type of thing, they're nowhere near where we are. They're experiencing
13:43significant problems right now. And we're still the major power. But now you drop down from
13:48China and you get down to countries like Germany, Japan and others that maybe have like $5 trillion
13:58of GDP. So we're still like six times the next tier that you get down to. So we're the
14:03dominant economic power by far. We have by far the greatest economic potential of any
14:11country in the world. It's still sitting there, but it is also being constrained by a series
14:19of misguided government policies that have been implemented over the last 30 years or
14:24so that have led to these very high levels of debt and these deficits which are critical
14:29issues for us to address.
14:31Todd, let me come in here.
14:33We've got a break.
14:34Folks, this is potentially one of the most significant shows you're going to hear in many
14:38a day.
14:39Todd Sheets is our guest.
14:40Alex McFarlane here, we're talking about the economy and the money that we all are going
14:46to need and how we can be a good steward of it.
14:48Stay tuned.
14:49A brief break in the Hamilton Corner is back after this.
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15:29Live into the darkness. This is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio.
15:41Welcome back to the program Alex McFarland with you and our very special guest Todd Sheets. I'm learning a lot
15:49from him, and I'm sure you can too. Todd Sheets.substack.com.
15:56You'll find some of the content that he's written and then also the website ToddSheetswriter.com.
16:03both of those I highly recommend. Todd, first of all, thank you for your time and
16:08welcome back to the program. Before the break, we were talking about the GDP and
16:13that the American GDP is annually 29 to 30 trillion, which is well more than China.
16:22You know, it is uncanny how this country has the earning potential it does. I mean,
16:31really and I was encouraged to hear you say that that's not gone away. That still is there.
16:40As they say, America is the land of opportunity and you would maintain that it still is the
16:45land of opportunity, right?
16:48Absolutely. I wrote in one of the pieces here recently. You think about people who are in
16:56disadvantaged circumstances, repressive regimes throughout the world, and they go to bed at night,
17:05dreaming of waking up in a better place, where they can maybe work hard to build a better life
17:12for themselves and their family. They don't dream about waking up in communist China,
17:19where there are limitations, there are social repressions, there are religious
17:26repressions, you know, there are restraints on freedom and economic upward mobility.
17:31Everybody that I know of still dreams of waking up in America and there's a good
17:40reason for that and it's the reason that you just mentioned and even though we
17:43We have significant issues that we have to resolve.
17:48In many ways, because of what's happened to many other areas around the world, we have never
17:54been better positioned than we are right now to lead the next wave of growth and upward
18:02mobility and opportunity for raising the living standards of not just ourselves, but also people
18:10around the world and that's one of the great lessons of history and capitalism that just
18:15hasn't been taught enough.
18:18For hundreds of years, thousands really, going back to the reference that you made earlier
18:23about the biblical reference of the rich suppressing the poor, that was what happened throughout
18:30history until capitalism came along and all of a sudden you had this system where the
18:37The pie itself was growing.
18:39I won't get into all the details,
18:40but this shows up in the GDP growth rates throughout history.
18:46Countries were basically stagnant until around the 1800s
18:49when this started to happen.
18:51And so you had a very small number of entrenched wealthy people
18:56and royalty and political classes who were very well off
19:00and everybody else worked for them with no upward mobility.
19:04And then all of that started to change in the 1800s.
19:07And the dynamics that existed then are with us today,
19:12and given our leadership in technology,
19:16and many other of the most important industries in the world,
19:20we are as well positioned as we have ever been
19:22to continue leading the world forward
19:24and lifting up the world around us as we do that.
19:27And you know, Todd, I've spoken and debated
19:31at quite a number of American universities.
19:34And even like at Christian colleges,
19:37students and faculty will come to the microphone
19:40and just berate capitalism,
19:43oh, evil corporations that make a profit.
19:47Alex, how could you as a Christian thinker
19:50support capitalism?
19:52And I'm thinking look,
19:54well, for one thing,
19:55this world is pregnant with life and opportunity
20:00and increased. And the anti-capitalist Todd generally have this finite pie
20:07mentality. It seems like, and I've had PhDs debate me on this, but they're like,
20:12if you had a meal tonight conversely on the other side of the world, somebody
20:18else went hungry. And that's just not how it is, is it? I mean, there's not this
20:24finite pie that if someone is fed of necessity, somebody else went hungry. That's just not
20:32reality, is it?
20:33No, it's not. And it was until roughly the 1800s, maybe starting a little bit before then, but
20:41then as capitalistic ideas were introduced, you know, first in Europe and then spread and
20:47introduced even more deeply in America, what we started to see was a vast upward mobility
20:57that raised living standards, raised quality of life. We talk about things like child labor.
21:07And you talked about coming from a farm family, like my mom did. And she had
21:13eight brothers and sisters. Part of the reason they had nine children was they
21:20wanted all those kids working out in the fields, right? Exactly. Yeah and so the
21:26ability to move away from that came as we became more of an industrial
21:32society and efficiency, the efficiencies that came with that enabled us to do more
21:40with less and so all of a sudden we could end child labor. We could get to, we could
21:48go from people working seven days a week to working six and then five. We could go from
21:5312 or 10 hour days to eight hour days and things like, you know, having weekends off,
22:00the ability to take family vacation, spend more time with each other, you know, all
22:04of these things developed out of that. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, I think
22:10many people, you know, that that, you know, probably the ones that have debated you at
22:14the microphone, they've adopted this idea that we kind of need this group of political
22:22elites to figure out how to carve up the pie in order to make a better outcome instead
22:30of letting all of this work from the ground up, which is the way that, you know, that capitalism
22:36works. And in many ways, it's very much like what happened with Christianity. So, you know,
22:41that's not my area of expertise, but I've often talked with friends. It's like, you know,
22:47in my limited understanding of this, you know, this was one of many belief systems and theologies
22:54that existed around the time that Christ started to become influential. And it didn't become
23:01this massive worldwide movement because there were some leaders that were forcing it on to people.
23:08It came because people could see how much better it was making their lives and so they adopted it
23:15for themselves. And it was like this natural organic growth. And that's very like what happened
23:21economically in the capitalist sphere here.
23:24Exactly.
23:25You know, there's a twice Pulitzer-nominated sociologist named Dr. Rodney Stark.
23:32He was a brilliant guy.
23:33He recently passed away.
23:35But he said that Christianity overtook the Roman Empire.
23:41Among other things, Christ had risen and the gospel was spreading.
23:46But Dr. Stark, he said, it's just a better way to live.
23:50And employers realize that Christians give a full day's work.
23:55Christians don't steal from their employer.
23:58Christians are generally true to their wife and family.
24:02Christians come with this moral code.
24:05And Christianity, like you say from the ground up, it took the world over for a lot of reasons,
24:12not the least of which though, was it was just a better way to live.
24:17But I want to talk about, and this is so good, because I think it's helpful for people that
24:23perhaps have not really heard about some of the economic success, and I would say economic
24:31greatness of America.
24:34Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I think it was Adam Smith that talked about this invisible
24:38hand that people come up and prosperity breeds prosperity and the economy grows and the lives
24:49of people are bettered and then there's with wealth the opportunity for benevolence and
24:57charitable giving.
24:59And this has been part of our DNA really.
25:02We have been able to feed the nations and help the downtrodden, and capitalism and economic
25:10prosperity drove that, didn't it?
25:13Absolutely.
25:14And I think there's another very important point that comes out of that is, again, kind
25:19of beginning with the depression and the mistaken impression of what caused that that came out
25:26of it.
25:27started going down this path that government had to take on a lot of these responsibilities.
25:34But if you go back to the late 1800s, the early 1900s, when industrialization was really kicking
25:42in, wealth was developing, upward mobility was occurring, we allowed more immigrants to come
25:52to this country as a percentage of the population base that has ever happened before our sense
25:59here or anywhere else in the world. You know, we went from like 5 million people in 1800 to around
26:05100 million people in the early 1900s, and there was somewhere around 30 million immigrants that
26:12came to the country in that time. So think about that, 30 percent of the population base,
26:17And the economy was growing so fast that they were absorbed in without any problems of unemployment,
26:26you know, without any resentment from the people that lived here.
26:31And so this was an amazing period.
26:34Government was not playing a big role.
26:36And as these immigrants came, they set up communities of, you know, providing support
26:44for the others that were coming.
26:46And so this was coming naturally through the churches or in the Jewish community through
26:50the synagogues.
26:53And people were, if you're not getting a lot of your income taxed away, which wasn't happening
26:57back then, there was no income tax until the early 1900s, it's very easy to go to church
27:03and say, look, I see people around me who aren't as fortunate as I am, they're not as
27:08well off.
27:09I want to help them out.
27:11And so charitable donations through the private sector typically funded through religious organizations
27:18like the churches or the synagogues became a primary way of helping new immigrants come
27:25to the country and become absorbed, learn the language, become a part of the workforce
27:32and start contributing and then they make donations.
27:35And then like you said, we have this organic growth happening where the pie is expanding
27:41And it's not just the economic pie,
27:44it's also the philanthropic pie that's growing alongside.
27:48So yeah, there's all these benefits that,
27:50as you said, unfortunately,
27:55the people in academia have turned away from.
28:00They became hammered with these ideas of communism
28:03or government interventions, things that are designed
28:06by other academics that are supposed to solve
28:08all these problems.
28:09And, you know, they just have not worked out nearly as well as what we had going before.
28:16We went down that path.
28:19This question might seem a little simplistic, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
28:24Todd, what happened in the Great Depression?
28:28Help us understand how that happened and what was the Great Depression?
28:34Yeah.
28:35So, there's a couple important points to understand.
28:38And if I talk too long on any one of these, just interrupt me and redirect.
28:42But the first thing to understand is we truly had a limited government model from the time
28:50of our foundation, you know, going back to the 1800s, really starting with Thomas Jefferson,
28:55who was a big believer in limited government.
28:57And it lasted all the way up until the Depression of the 1930s.
29:03And the depression then was the greatest economic collapse we had experienced to that
29:08point in time.
29:10The economy started to collapse, unemployment, which had never been a problem before, shot
29:17up up into the 20 to 25 percent range.
29:22Think about that.
29:23Almost a quarter of the people in the country were out of work.
29:27There were massive banking failures and panics that occurred.
29:31went to the banks and they couldn't get their money out. So the economy starts to shut down,
29:35and it lasted much longer than any other downturn. It lasted for over roughly about 10 years.
29:42So unfortunately, the message that was taken away from this was that this was a result of private
29:52market failure. And a lot of this thinking came out of the Roosevelt administration and the so-called
30:01brain trust that they brought into enact or create all these big government programs to try and
30:06turn things around, most of which failed, which is evidenced by how long it took for recovery to
30:13actually occur. Roosevelt came into office in the early 30s and we didn't come out of the depression
30:18until 1939, 1940. But because things kept cycling down, they went a different direction. And this
30:27thinking developed that you could start the depression
30:32with the great stock market crash of 1929,
30:36which was a symbol of private market failure,
30:39that evidence need for government
30:41to play a much bigger role in the economy.
30:43Forgive it, why did the stock market crash there in 29?
30:48Yeah, so you never know exactly, but what we do know,
30:52and this is from people on both the left and right,
30:54The stock market crash played almost no role in causing the Great Depression.
31:00Economic production had actually turned down in the summer before the crash.
31:06It was more of a symptom of underlying problems that were starting to emerge than it was a
31:12cause of anything.
31:14And so there were two big causes of the depression.
31:18And another thing that's not well understood is that this was not just a domestic event,
31:24which is the way most of us learn about it and study about it in school.
31:28It was also an international event.
31:31The international cause of the depression actually dates back to World War I.
31:37And what happened in World War I is all of a sudden the major economies of Europe who had
31:44been growing for the first time in history over the previous century, they make this
31:49extraordinary mistake of being pulled into what some people have called the war over nothing
31:57that costs them everything, which is a great decision of it.
32:01And they start this is going to go right back to what we were talking about earlier.
32:07They go from having balanced budgets and reasonable debts to having extreme budget deficits to
32:15to finance the war and massive borrowings.
32:18And God, forgive me, forgive me.
32:20We've got to take a break.
32:21We're talking with Todd Sheets, riveting information, folks.
32:25Stay tuned.
32:26We're going to come back more after this.
32:30Is our theology of money upside down?
32:33Our vision is that all Christians would see God
32:36as their ultimate treasure.
32:38It's a game changer of an idea.
32:41And we start with this idea that God owns everything.
32:45And we are his household managers of what he has entrusted to us.
32:49So we own nothing, but we have stewardship responsibilities,
32:53faith and finance with Rob West weekdays at 9 a.m. Central
32:57or on the AFR app.
33:05A Hamilton Quarter Podcast and One-Bitted Common Terrets
33:08are available at aFR.net.
33:10Back to the Hamilton Quarter on American Family Radio.
33:22Welcome back to the program.
33:23Alex McFarland here.
33:24We're going to resume our conversation with Todd Sheets, but I want to make you aware of
33:29our Summer Speaker Series and our summer camps.
33:33Just humor me for a moment, a little bit of shameless self-promotion, but my website is
33:38AlexMcFarlane.com.
33:41Let me refer you to AlexMcFarlane.com slash conversations.
33:46We've got a Summer Speaker Series.
33:47We just had Dinesh D'Souza in great voice of political science and Trump's first few
33:55months in office.
33:57But we've got another session coming up.
33:59Dr. Gary Chapman famously wrote a book called The Five Love Languages, sold 20 million copies,
34:06and he is America's relationship doctor.
34:10And he's going to be with us in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on June 15.
34:15And I would invite you to come to that.
34:16Then we've got Charlie Kirk later on this summer,
34:20Lauren Green of Fox News.
34:22If you would check out alexmichfarlane.com slash conversations.
34:27One other thing I would ask you to pray about is our summer youth camps.
34:32We've done these for 25 years and we've got camps in seven states,
34:36beautiful places like Montana, upstate New Jersey and the Hudson River Valley.
34:42And so tell your friends about the summer camps that we're doing.
34:47And we're teaching kids not only about the gospel and about Christianity, but we teach
34:51about America.
34:53We teach kids about American exceptionalism, why this country is great.
34:58And we try our best to inspire young people, to love God and country and to be patriotic
35:05and to get a vision for what their future can be.
35:10I don't have a lot of patience for pessimism and doom and gloom and so many young people.
35:16I wish you could see their faces as we tell them that look you were born for a purpose and
35:23life is worth being excited about and you've got skills and gifts that you can develop and
35:29not only be a blessing but be blessed.
35:33So keep us in prayer.
35:34My speaking tour, I'm always on the road somewhere every weekend.
35:39It's all at AlexMcFarlane.com.
35:40Well, our guest in this hour is Todd Sheets.
35:45First of all, Mr. Sheets, I want to thank you.
35:47I'm learning a lot.
35:48I'm taking notes.
35:49You were before the break, talking about the causes of the Great Depression.
35:55I welcome you to resume that.
35:58But for a moment, let's talk about the gold standard.
36:03I've heard it said that like, for example, somebody might say, well, in the last 12 years,
36:11our house doubled in value because we paid $250 and if I sold it today, it would be $500,000.
36:19I've heard somebody say that, no, your house didn't really double in value.
36:23The dollar's ability diminished by 50%.
36:28The buying power of the dollar went down.
36:32So let's talk about if you don't mind the gold standard, was that a good thing and why
36:41when the government just prints money, just puts ink on paper, that doesn't really increase
36:48the strength of the US dollar, does it?
36:51No, again, this is another great question.
36:54I mean, that period that we were talking about, the 1800s, early 1900s, we were on a gold standard
36:59throughout that. And if I can introduce just a little bit of additional history, which comes
37:04back to the importance of these deficits and debts that we started the program talking about.
37:11If we go back, Europe throughout the Middle Ages and up into, you know, towards this 1800s,
37:181900s period went through these recurring cycles of wars. And as countries would go to war,
37:25they would run up big deficits, which would cause them to print too much money and borrow too much
37:31money, and it caused people to lose confidence in their currencies, which is exactly kind of the
37:36issue that you're addressing here. And so, Great Britain, realizing that this can't keep going on,
37:42or if it does, they're going to lose the ability to borrow. They actually started to create a gold
37:48standard back in the late 1700s. And actually, a little one more little tidbit here, Sir Isaac Newton
37:56played a role in this. He became the master of the mint and basically implemented policies that made
38:03gold the hard standard of the British pound at that point in time. So the gold standard, it was
38:12incredibly effective throughout this hundred plus year period of time in limiting government
38:19spending and limiting government indebtedness until we get to World War I when spending
38:27breaks out again deficits go crazy, they borrow too much money and that's one of the big factors
38:32that let us end the depression. So post-depression, we come out, we go on kind of a modified gold
38:40standard and then in the 1970s what happens is and it's the same old story again and again,
38:47the same risks. There's a phrase out there, history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes.
38:53We keep seeing these same kind of things happening again. In the 70s what was happening was when
39:00Lyndon Johnson became president in the early 1960s after JFK died or was assassinated,
39:07And he embarked on two major spending programs.
39:11One was the escalation of the Vietnam War, and one was what he called the Great Society
39:16Programs, which were supposed to end poverty.
39:20Those programs started creating big budget deficits.
39:24The Federal Reserve, as it always does, started printing money to fund those deficits.
39:31And as they started printing more and more money, it basically was getting to the point
39:36where people around the world were realizing,
39:39we weren't gonna be able to honor our obligation
39:42to exchange dollar bills for gold,
39:45because we were printing too many dollars
39:48relative to our gold holdings.
39:50And so that's when Nixon took us off the gold standard
39:54at that point in time.
39:55And since then, we've basically been on a currency
40:02that is only supported by trust and faith
40:05in the fact that the government won't abuse its ability to print unlimited number of dollars.
40:12Isn't it true that like a piece of money, it's in and of itself is not really valuable,
40:21but it represents something that guarantees the value.
40:28Like the gold is the actual tangible asset and the dollar in circulation represents that
40:38tangible asset.
40:39Is that a fair way to say it?
40:41Yeah, very much so.
40:42And I would expand on it just a teeny bit.
40:46The most critical factor is the confidence in the dollar or the currency.
40:51So if you and I both have confidence in it, even if it's not backed up by gold, it can
40:57be a worthwhile medium of exchange. I can get dollars for doing something that I do for writing a book
41:04and I can turn around and donate to a ministry that then uses those dollars to go out and do good
41:10within the church and that type of thing. So as long as that confidence is there, the dollar or any
41:17currency can serve its purpose as a common medium of exchange. The critical element of the gold
41:24standard was in helping to maintain that confidence and ensure that government couldn't do the
41:31kinds of things that it has repeatedly done throughout history, which is to print too many dollars
41:38and to destroy the value of the dollar to the point where it destroys that confidence that makes the
41:44currency an effective medium of exchange, which makes everything much easier to do. If you don't
41:51have that. You think about how awkward things are. Then you now we're talking about going back in
41:57time to where I'm a shirt maker and I have to give you a shirt and you put hooves on horses
42:06and I have to hope that you want my shirts so that you'll re-shod my horse and that kind of thing.
42:11That's an incredibly inefficient system. The barter and currency-based thing. Everything becomes much
42:17more efficient because I can give you something that's a value to you even though you may not
42:23care at all about what I did to earn that dollar in the first place as long as it was
42:28leaked legitimate.
42:30Yeah.
42:31So, I got to ask you this because I'm glad Trump won.
42:36I voted for Trump.
42:39I'm a big Trump supporter, but the midterms are coming.
42:44And I know there are some in this country that have a vested interest in the economy
42:49doing poorly because they don't want Trump to succeed or conservatives to win in the
42:56midterms.
42:58Based on where we are, can you prognosticate Todd Sheets?
43:03What will the economy look like by the midterm elections and by the end of Trump's term?
43:09Yeah, so I would say that, you know, I think, I don't agree with everything that we're doing,
43:17but by and large, I agree with you.
43:19I think the Trump administration has taken on a broad range of critical issues that need
43:25to be addressed, many or most of which fall into the economics sphere.
43:30And I think we are headed in a much better direction than we were headed in before.
43:36And my expectation is that these initiatives will pay off and that in four years we will
43:46be in a substantially better place than we would have been before.
43:50Predicting what happens in the midterm elections, not that far out, that's a much tougher call
43:56because it often takes time before these things start to kick in.
44:00But I would be reasonably optimistic about things here.
44:03I think overall they're headed in the right direction, most on most of these items.
44:12They've got a good plan and we've got a really talented and brilliant group of people who
44:18are working with him to lead these initiatives.
44:23Are the tariffs going to bring substantial revenue to the U.S. government?
44:28And if so, what do you speculate will be done with those revenues?
44:34Yes.
44:35So, I think they will bring some revenue.
44:38I mean, our deficit is in the neighborhood of $2 trillion.
44:42So, the first big thing is to cut that in half, which should be an achievable objective.
44:49Get it down to about a trillion.
44:51Hopefully, doge can contribute something at least in the $3 to $500 million range to that
44:57remaining trillion and then potentially tariffs can contribute another chunk that may be as
45:03similar to what Doge is doing to help deal with those issues.
45:07So yeah, I think there's a possibility that they'll make or a likelihood that they'll
45:12make a meaningful contribution on the deficit side of the equation.
45:17Why do you think we don't have a balanced budget amendment?
45:24Well, there's not many people in Washington who like the idea of operating with a balanced
45:28budget, but again, I would go back to look, the mentality about all of this changed in the
45:34Depression, you know, from 1800 until 1930, except in times of war, like the Civil War or World War
45:44I, we ran either balanced budgets or a surplus. And that was Republican and Democratic administrations
45:53because there was a deep belief in that model.
45:56But then this failure to understand the real causes of the Great Depression led the FDR administration
46:03and all of their supporters, many of whom came from academia.
46:07They were part of the brain trust that was designing these programs to believe that government
46:14spending and government direction was needed to offset the likelihood that the private
46:22economy would push us into these disastrous circumstances.
46:26So John Maynard Keynes became an advocate of the idea that government deficit spending
46:33could actually be a good thing.
46:36That borrowing by the government to help pull out of an economic downturn could actually
46:43help with things. And you know, unfortunately, that totally changed the mentality on these
46:49issues. And once you do that, the nature of politicians, they love spending somebody else's
46:55money on their constituents, right? And Republican or Democrat. And so, you know, since that time,
47:03we've had this, you know, building dynamic where we've gone off in, you know, this unfortunate
47:08direction and it's gotten dramatically worse over the last 15, 20 years.
47:13Todd, I think a lot of people, earlier you mentioned the Federal Reserve and for a lot
47:20of us and folks, here's a name that you haven't heard in a while, but I think it's an important
47:25name, Alan Greenspan.
47:27I remember, you know, people in, I don't know if it was maybe the late 80s, early 90s,
47:34I used to say, forget who's president,
47:36Alan Greenspan really runs the country.
47:39But, and feel free to comment on his legacy if you want to,
47:43but oh man, we're out of time.
47:47Oh my goodness.
47:48Cause I was gonna ask you to explain
47:50what the Federal Reserve does.
47:52So Todd, listen, I hear the music.
47:55We've got to have you back.
47:56This is so helpful, so instructive.
47:58Before we go, give us your website again.
48:00You're writing how people can find what you do.
48:03Yeah, yeah, the website is Todd Sheets Writer, W-R-I-T-E-R,
48:07and Todd is with 2D's and Sheets is just like Sheets of Paper.com.
48:12If you go there, you can find my book,
48:14and you can also find a link to the substac pieces
48:16that I'm putting out, which, as we talked about,
48:19are free of charge.
48:20Well, thank you so much, Todd Sheets.
48:22And folks, thank you for listening.
48:24I want to thank Marty Sparks and Jeff McIntosh
48:27for helping engineer the show.
48:28Alex Meforran here.
48:29Thank you for listening.
48:30You can listen again at AFR.net.
48:33shows archived. May God bless you and may God bless America.
48:40The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American
48:44Family Association or American Family Radio.

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