Here’s the new book on Amazon.com.
Dr. Tom Sowell was on Dennis Prager’s radio show today.
Dennis: “Are we headed towards Greece [style bankruptcy]?”
Tom: “Yes.”
“The debt ceiling has not limited debt. It provides political cover for presidents to engage in runaway spending.”
“The plan that appeals to me the most is that suggested by Moodys. Get rid of the debt ceiling.”
Dennis: “If you had two minutes to speak to the American people, what would you say?”
Tom: “Move to Australia. The Australians have better immigration control than we do.”
Dennis: “So we couldn’t get in.”
Tom: “I’m quite pessimistic [about the debt ceiling fight].”
“The idea of naming deficits and surpluses for presidents shows how unserious people are. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives.”
“The Obama administration is pressing lending institutions not to foreclose on people who are unemployed for up to a year. There was a time when individuals were expected to take account of the fact that they might become unemployed. Therefore you don’t spend your money up to the last penny. You don’t take on obligations you can only meet if everything goes according to plan. Everything almost never goes according to plan. But now some people are selected by the government and they can be as irresponsible as they want and the government will rescue them at the cost of other people who are not in favor with the government. A country run like that lives off the cultural capital of the past, which we’re using up without replenishing.”
Dennis: “What do you believe this president believes in?”
Tom: “He believes first and foremost in himself. I’ve never believed that Barack Obama has the best interests of the United States at heart. I haven’t seen one speck of evidence of that. I’ve seen tons of evidence to indicate the opposite.”
“This whole business to force banks, which is to say people who deposit money in the banks, people who save their money should be the ones to bail out those who didn’t save their money and who took out mortgages they can’t afford but now they must be kept in those same houses. It is not a question of throwing them on the streets. There are apartments… Because they happen to be there, they have squatters right and it is up to people who put their money in the bank to subsidize their irresponsible behavior.
“It doesn’t take more than a few generations of that and you have a different ethos in the country. A recent study shows that 90% of high school students admit they have cheated. In a society where everyone feels it is OK to cheat, that society comes apart.”
Dennis: “The origins of the housing crisis. The Democrats tell us the origins are all Wall Street.”
Tom: “The one key fact without which there would not have been a crisis was that people stopped paying their mortgages. If people had kept paying their mortgages, it doesn’t matter what foolish policies were followed. When the money stopped coming in, the system is going to collapse. How come the money didn’t keep coming in? The government forced lenders to lend money to people they didn’t want to lend to but the politicians wanted them to lend to but people who did not have the credit rating and whatnot to be good risks for a mortgage. Politicians have learned they can get away with it. The Justice Department is already warning lenders again that if they don’t lend to enough minority mortgage applicants to suit the Justice Department, they will be sued again. That is no favor to minorities because they’ve been harder hit when the whole thing collapses.”
