Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Fox Business contributor and Wall Street expert Liz Peek on the newsmaker line to discuss the lies of President Biden, the lack of business skills in the White House, and the instability of Europe.
Leahy: And we welcome now to our newsmaker line our very good friend, Fox News contributor, financial analyst, and all-around great person, Liz Peek. Good morning, Liz.
Peek: Good morning. Happy to join you.
Leahy: 9.1 percent inflation. What’s going on Liz?
Simon: Yeah, we blame you.
Leahy: Yeah, it’s all your fault.
Peek: I know it’s me, it’s Putin, it’s mom and pop, gas station owners, it’s meat processors, anybody but the administration. Look, we spent too much money, pushed too much money into the economy at a time when we did have supply chain problems, and gave a lot of people good reason to stay on the sidelines, not come back to work.
So we had a labor shortage, all these things have piled up, and then in fairness, yeah, the Ukraine war has obviously made it worse.
But I think what is the most unforgivable thing going on is that notwithstanding the fact that Americans have now seen their real incomes go down 3.8 percent and American families are paying hundreds more per month to cope with inflation, Biden has not pivoted on his anti-oil crusade and honestly, it’s just crazy-making.
There are so many things we could be doing to really enhance domestic U.S. oil and gas production and we’re not doing it because the climate zealots have taken hold of the White House and have throttled Joe Biden, who really should know better.
Simon: I don’t think he really should know better. Unfortunately, this is the guy who cheated, who plagiarized in law school. You expect that person to do better?
Peek: Yes. Look, we have a very, very weak ‘leader’ right now. I think leader should be in air quotes, and the entire administration.
My friend Steve Moore put out a great study just recently talking about how there’s practically no business experience in this White House.
I would remind him, you guys and your listeners, there was almost no business experience in the Obama White House, and we all wrote about that and talked about it quite a bit.
For some reason this White House has gotten kind of a pass. But if you don’t know anybody or if you don’t have anybody who really knows how to make a budget work, how to make trains run on time, hello, Pete Buttigieg, et cetera, guess what?
It doesn’t happen. On every front this administration is failing. And even COVID, which I wrote about recently, I’m like the least alarmist person on COVID in the world. But the truth is they are not doing anything to confront this upsurge and new variants and I’m very worried it’s going to again.
Leahy: But Liz, they’re really great for the government of Saudi Arabia.
Peek: Yeah, I know.
Simon: These people are globalists.
Peek: I was watching some of the press conference of Joe Biden reading the teleprompter over in Israel and of course he’s being pressed on why he’s going to Saudi Arabia and of course he doesn’t want to say we’re looking for oil.
Although that’s obviously the only reason he would go to Saudi Arabia, having called it a pariah state and been so dismissive of it.
What really irritated me is that he said something to the effect of we think the last administration basically walked away from the Middle East. We think that’s a mistake, so we’re back.
Walked away from the Middle East when basically we had never made firmer ties with our allies in Israel and also the Abraham Accords, without a doubt the most consequential foreign policy breakthrough in the Middle East.
Simon: And how.
Peek: Yeah, right. Actually, this guy, I think what’s astonishing, and maybe people are on to this now, Joe Biden lies and he lies about everything.
Simon: Anybody who still supports Joe Biden is frankly simple-minded.
Leahy: Liz, here’s the thing. Inflation is 9.1 percent. We don’t have midterms for several months until November. That new Congress won’t be sworn in until January 2023. Can you give me some hope things are going to get better Liz, please?
Peek: So, in fact, the president put out a statement saying that the June report was out of date. And in a sense he’s right. There are commodities, including oil, which are off of their highs.
Wheat, copper, and a whole bunch of things have come down in price from their highs reached in the second quarter. And that is going to make the numbers look a little better, I think, for the remainder of the year.
In other words, the year-over-year change is not going to be as devastating as it has been these last few months. Doesn’t mean prices are getting better in oil.
There has been some retreat. Oil prices are now sort of mid-to-high $90 range, which is better than $110. But I say two things about oil. First of all, China is sort of in slo-mo right now.
China, because of their zero COVID policy, which is completely insane, has really crimped their own growth. And we’ve seen very weird economic numbers coming out of China. But basically oil demand in China is not what it would be if China were growing rapidly, which it is not.
Simon: Good point.
Peek: Secondly, we don’t really know what’s going to happen in Europe in terms of the Nordstream pipeline shutdown, when it might reopen. They’re closing it two weeks for repairs.
But there’s some thought the Russians really aren’t going to reopen it. Really what’s going to hurt our economy most possibly going forward is what happens in Europe.
Europe is our biggest trading partner, big export market. Not only are our companies now crimped by the fact that the Euro is at parity with the dollar, that makes a dollar exporter pretty tough to compete with European exporters, but Europe is in freefall.
I mean, today the bond spreads in Italy are widening. That’s a very bad sign. A little bit scary actually, about what could be happening in terms of the continent and credit risk and so forth. So there’s a lot of instability. And I’m sorry, this is the part where I’m giving you hope. (Laughter)
Leahy: Yeah, you’re just being honest. (Laughter) Hey, Liz, speaking of that, the resignation of Boris Johnson as prime minister in the United Kingdom, is this going to help, hurt, or be indifferent?
Peek: I don’t think it makes much difference. I think that you’ll still have a conservative government. Whether or not it will continue as a conservative government, I don’t know.
Depends who they pick, maybe, and kind of what goes forward there. But I don’t think Boris Johnson was helping. He’s someone who raised taxes.
I mean, this is sort of like right now, the Biden administration is talking about raising taxes on small businesses and wealthy individuals and corporations.
I cannot imagine a stupider thing to do as we are on the brink of a recession. And make no mistake – and by the way, I think that was a mistake in England and one of the reasons that their numbers are so poor right now – make no mistake, we are on the brink of a recession, if not in one right now. And again, the problem will be how severe is it? And I think Europe is going to be a big part of that answer.
Simon: I mean, if you look at people’s 401(k)s, we’re certainly in a recession. Anybody over 60 should be panicked.
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Liz Peek” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 3.0.
