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Your money, your stories, your freedom. The Peter Schiff Show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Peter Schiff Show. I hope you all enjoyed your three day holiday weekend. Of course, most people who were celebrating the three day weekend don't realize that Monday is supposed to be George Washington's birthday. And that's because most people still refer to the holiday as President's Day. But legally it's not President's Day. It is George Washington's birthday. And I really wish that is how everybody referred to the holiday as opposed to President's Day. You know, George Washington was born on February 22, which hasn't happened yet. It's going to be 22nd later in the week. But the reason that we celebrated it on Monday was that back in 1968, they passed this Uniform Holiday act or something like that. And it took a lot of holidays. We had, I think it was Labor Day, Memorial Day and Washington's birthday and moved them all to a Monday. And that was so federal workers could have a three day weekend. That was the idea. And so instead of celebrating George Washington's birthday On his birthday, February 22, the holiday was observed on the third Monday of February. So it would fall somewhere near the 22nd of February. But around that time, I think it started in 1971, so they passed it in 1968, but it didn't go into effect until 1971. And what happened was a lot of the stores, right, they wanted to have sales for the holiday and they started calling them President's Day sales because Lincoln's birthday fell on February 12th, which we just had actually Lincoln's birthday. We celebrated Washington's birthday, I think closer to Lincoln's birthday this year than Washington's. And there were a lot of states, I don't know if it was a lot, but there were a number of states, maybe a half dozen or so that had state holidays for Lincoln's birthday. Obviously, none of the southern states were honoring Lincoln, but you had northern states. My state, like Connecticut, you know, it was a state holiday for Lincoln's birthday. So now you had Washington's birthday, which kind of fell in between Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday. So they started calling it the President's day sale, President's day. And so then the whole holiday became President's day, and it lost all significance to Washington, because George Washington was a great man. He was a father of our country. I mean, without George Washington, there probably wouldn't be a country. We should have a day to honor the father of our country. In fact, today we only really honor one person, and that's Martin Luther King. Right. His birthday became a holiday in 1983, I think. But other than Martin Luther King, the only person who has a holiday is George Washington. And nobody even knows because we call it President's day. And when we call it President's day, most people don't even think, oh, we're celebrating Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday. They think we're just celebrating all the presidents, like Joe Biden or all of them. Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama. Right. They're all the same. Let's just honor all these presidents. No, I don't want to honor all those presidents. I want to honor George Washington. I think he's the only person who should have a federal holiday. I don't even think Martin Luther King, even if you could argue he's a great civil rights leader, well, so what? He's not the father of our country. I think you diminish George Washington by having any other holiday after any other person, because nobody could replace George Washington when it comes to America, because there would be no United States of America, I don't think, without George Washington. Washington. Now, if you don't know a little bit about general George Washington, because a lot of people don't even know too much about the father of our country. So I'll give you a little bit of a background on Washington, because he was a towering figure. I mean, actually literally, too. He was 6 foot 3, which today is not all that tall. It's still pretty tall. I mean, six foot three is a nice height. But back in 1770s, you know, 1750s, that was really tall. I mean, I was probably like, maybe six, eight now. I mean, you know, you're six' three. You were pretty much. You're pretty much a giant. But he was a war hero before he became a president. He was an officer in the French and Indian wars. And that was. So the United States and the British fought the Indians, right? Native Americans and the French. And he was an officer in that war when he was young man, you know, early 20s, he was an officer, he wasn't the general. And so he actually became like a folk hero of that war because early in the war he was there as a young officer. And the troops, right, were marching down and they were ambushed by the French and the Indians. And it was a large troop of infantry and officers. They outnumbered the French and the Indians, but they were ambushed. They weren't expecting it. And the English, they wear these red coats. They're pretty big targets. And they were getting slaughtered. The Indians were just picking them off. And they had rifles back then. They weren't using bows and arrows because they also. They were fighting with the French, so they were pretty well armed. And anyway, their goal was to kill all the officers first, right? You shoot the officers and then the infantry is just going to scatter, right? You cut off the head. And then the rest of the, you know, the troops don't know what to do. So they're targeting the officers. And they're easy to spot, the officers, because they're the ones on the horses, right? They're, you know, they're tall, sitting in a saddle. And so the Indians are shooting at all the officers, which includes George Washington. Every single officer on a horse gets shot. They're all killed except Washington. He's the only one. Now, it's not like they weren't shooting at him. They shot two of his horses out from under him. So he had to get off the horse that got shot and get on another horse that got shot and get on another horse, but they still didn't get him. And when he is the last officer still on a horse, he led the troops to safety. So, you know, so they all didn't get killed. And when he gets back and he looks at his coat that he's wearing, he's got four bullet holes in his coat. So he got shot by four bullets inside his coat, but not a single bullet actually hit him. And then he was like. He had bullet fragments in his hair. Just a complete miracle that he didn't get killed. And, you know, the word spread. He became like a folk hero of this battle, like the invincible George Washington. It wasn't just, you know, the colonists, the Indians. The Indians who fought against him, knew about it, respected him. He was a guy that they couldn't be shot. I think there was one Indian that Told the story that he like, he shot at him like a dozen times. And eventually he just figured he was being protected by the spirits and he just stopped shooting because he said, this is ridiculous, I'm not gonna try to kill this guy. Because you know, the war gods are, are protecting him. And I think Washington thought it was divine providence that somehow spared him. But anyway, so he's got this big reputation. So then when the Revolutionary War is breaking out, he goes to Washington and he volunteers, right? He wasn't drafted. He volunteers, hey, I want to, you know, I want to fight. And they, they made him the general, General Washington, because he had, he had a big reputation. But, but anyway, so he was the general of the colonial army, except we didn't really have an army. There was just militia. All the various colonies had their own militia. So it's kind of like a ragtag group of guys that he has to hobble together to fight the British. The British, right. The British back then was like the American army today. They were the most powerful army in the world. The best trained, the best armed. Right? King George, he's got this huge army, right? So we're gonna lose for sure. I mean, we're just a massive underdogs. I mean all the founding fathers who signed a declaration of independence expected to get hung, who thought, I mean, how are we gonna win this war? And of course Washington would have been killed if they, you know, if they would have lost the war. There's no way they wouldn't have chopped his head off or hung him, you know, for treason. Right? Cuz you're treason to the crown you're fighting against, you're king. So you know, we have this long shot battle and somehow we, we outlasted the British. I mean it was like a six or seven year war and we won it. I mean we basically, it was war of attrition. I mean, we somehow survived, we won a couple of key battles, but it was mostly just, you know, surviving, you know, and getting. The British eventually got tired of fighting us and they, and they gave up. But we won, we won that war. Miracle of miracles. I don't know if any other general could have done what Washington was able to do with these troops. But then when he wins the war and he's in command of the army, he doesn't like, okay, this is my country now, I'm in charge. He just said, okay, we won the war, I'm going home, I'm going back to my farm. And obviously it wasn't a modest farm. I mean, he Was very wealthy. Martha, his wife, came from money. In fact, he was the richest president adjusted for inflation. I think his net worth was not quite a billion in today's terms, but 7,800 million, something like that. But he was the richest person to be president until John F. Kennedy became president. And today he's number three. Obviously, Donald Trump is the richest person to be president and he's even richer now because he's president. But I don't want to go there right now. But. So he's the third wealthiest person who's been president. But so he didn't go, he went back to his civilian life. Now after that there was a movement, a movement, a serious movement to make George Washington King of America. And if Washington wanted to be king of America, he'd have been the king. He had so much support, he was so popular that if he wanted to be king, he'd have been king. He turned it down. He did not want to be king. He didn't believe in monarchy. He wanted America to be a republic, to be self governed. So he turned down the throne. Who would do something like that, you know, and, and so he became the first President of the United States almost by default. Right. You know, and of course, even after he was reelected, he could have been elected a third time. I mean nobody, I mean he could have, he could have stayed president until he died. But he set the precedent. After two terms, he said, you know, that's enough, I'm gone, I'm leaving, I'm stepping down. And every president who followed Washington honored that tradition until Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And because he didn't, that's what prompted the constitutional amendment that limited the presidential term to two terms. But Washington didn't need that. He did it himself. Cuz that's the kind of guy that he was. He believed in the cause that he fought for. He believed in America and the concept of self government. And also just to give you an idea, the kind of guy, the heroic person that he was. So when he's President of the United States, right, The first like rebellion. So the government imposes a tax on whiskey. And there are a lot of people didn't want to pay the tax, right. You know, Americans, you know, we don't like paying taxes, right. The whole country was formed by a bunch of tax protesters, right? I mean, they didn't want to pay taxes to the king, to King George. Now in hindsight, the taxes, I mean, I would love to live in America under King George compared to what we got now. I mean, if you look at the taxes that King was imposing, I mean, they're nothing. I mean, I pay those in a heartbeat. You know, taxes on tea or stamp taxes. I mean, do you think King George would have tried to impose an income tax? You think he would have set up an IRS in the colonies and tried to take 20, 30, 40% of people's income? No, there's no way he would have done anything like that. No king would have done something that bad. Of course, everybody would revolt if a king tried to impose that kind of a tax. Now, these were small little taxes that, that, that England tried to impose, and the Americans still didn't want to pay them. And it wasn't just, oh, we want representation. No taxation without representation. They didn't want to pay the taxes either because they didn't think the king had any right to that money. And so when we have a new country and now we have this whiskey tax, there's no income tax, there's no Social Security tax, there's none of that. Just tax on whiskey, right? And so people don't want to pay us. So there's a big rebellion out in Pennsylvania to pay this as though the Whiskey Rebellion. So George Washington is the president. Well, I got to put this rebellion down. So what does he do? He puts on his uniform, gets on his horse, and he leads what we got of an army, which is really, again, calling up the militia. But he gets some troops together, gets on his horse, and leads the charge himself in the battle to put down the this rebellion. I mean, how many presidents, right? It's very easy for a president to have a war. How many presidents are going to lead the charge in that war? No, I mean, they're all a bunch of chicken hawks, right? It's easy to send somebody's kids into battle. It's one thing to go into battle yourself. And that's what he did. And he didn't just like, he wasn't in the back, he didn't, like, have a bunch of troops. And he went, you know, and he was hiding in the back. He was way out in the front, like he was going to be the first one to get shot. So, look, he was a heroic American hero. There'll never be another George Washington, obviously, there'll never be another father of our country, because the country is only fathered once. And so above all other Americans who have lived, if you're going to have a holiday, he's the man that we have to honor. And I don't care if somebody wants to say, oh, well, he owned slave who cares? Everybody owned slaves back then. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it was a different time. But if you look at what this man did for this country, the sacrifices he made, the heroism in battle, both before we became a country to make us a country and then after. That's why we need to have Washington's birthday. We don't need to celebrate anybody else's birthday. None of these other presidents can hold a candle. Yeah, I still like some of the presidents Adams and Jefferson. Yeah, a lot of those guys were great presidents. And there are even some presidents that came later that I like. Grover Cleveland, one of my favorite presidents. And until Donald Trump, Grover Cleveland was the only president who to serve two non consecutive terms. But still, I wouldn't put any other president on the same level as George Washington. So think about that next year when President's Day comes along. Celebrate Washington's birthday. We got a quick commercial break. We're coming back. I got more to talk about, so don't go away. True or false? Incognito mode makes you invisible on the Internet. False. A lot of people think that opening a private window means no one can see what they're doing. That's just not how it works. Your Internet provider can still see it. Your mobile carrier can still see it. Even the administrator of the WI fi network you're on can see it. Incognito doesn't mean invisible. That's why I use ExpressVPN. Without a VPN, your browsing activity is exposed to third parties. ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers so those third parties can't see your browsing history. It also hides your IP address, which makes it extremely difficult to track what you're doing online. You open the app, tap one button, and you're protected. It works across all my devices. Laptop, phone, tablet. I don't like the idea of my browsing data being logged or sold. And Express VPN gives me peace of mind that it's not. Now, at the lowest price ever, plans start at just $3.49 a month. That's only 12 cents a day. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com gold. That's E X P R E S s v p n.com gold to find out how you can get up to four extra months, expressvpn.com gold all right, well, I want to talk about a story that really didn't get the proper coverage, but we highlighted it in our newsletter. Shift, Sovereign and Again, if you're not currently reading your subscriptions or your free subscriptions to Shift Sovereign, make sure and go to Shift Sovereign website and sign up. So you're getting, you're getting the free letter. But the news did report that Pepsi cut prices by 15% on a number of its snack items. You know, lays Doritos, Cheetos, stuff like that. 15%. Now, of course, you know, maybe the Trump administration is pointing to this. See, I'm bringing prices down, right? It's, you know, that we don't have to worry about inflation. And I think most of the media coverage of it was, you know, consumers are pushing back against high prices. And so, you know, Pepsi is responding by lowering prices, right? Because, you know, it's getting some pushback. But that's not really what happened. You know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story what happened is JFK was kind of not jfk, rfk. I got the Kennedys wrong, but Kennedy was pushing to have states no longer allow your SNAP benefits used to be called food stamps, but to make it so that you can't spend your SNAP benefits on junk food. And that's the kind of stuff that Pepsi is selling. And that's where they, where they cut their prices. So I think about 15 or so states went along with it. And so now people who get these SNAP benefits can't use that money to buy, you know, chips. And so what does that mean? Well, it means demand goes down for those foods because the government was subsidizing poor consumers to buy junk food. And I think they're more likely. I mean, I don't eat any of that crap. I mean, rarely. I mean, I try to eat healthy, but I think lower income people who are getting these benefits are less likely to have a healthy diet and more likely to eat a bunch of crap. And the government was subsidizing that taxpayers with the SNAP benefits. And so what happens is all of a sudden people who were able to spend government money on junk food, now they can't spend the money on junk food. So demand goes down. And so what does Pepsi do in response to a decline in demand for its products? It lowers prices. That's how the free market works. But the lesson is the government subsidized consumers to buy junk food by giving them money to pay for it. And so that allowed the companies that sell that type of food to charge higher prices. When the government reduces the subsidy that it provides, now the companies have to cut their prices. Well, if it works with junk food, it works the same way with everything. Everything the government subsidizes cost more as a direct result of the subsidy. That's what I've been saying on my podcast. Why is education so expensive, particularly colleges? Because the government subsidizes students to go to college. The government gives out grants so people have money to buy college degrees. The government arranges for guaranteed loans or directly finances low interest rate loans to make it easy for people to borrow money to pay for college. Right. So what does that mean? That means that colleges could charge more because their customers are getting money from the government to buy their product. What would happen if the government stopped doing that? The government stopped giving out grants and loans? Well, just what Pepsi did. They'd have to cut their prices because demand would go down. How many people would go to college today if they had to pay for it themselves? At these prices, they couldn't get any loans, they couldn't get any grants. No, the colleges would barely have any customers. So what do you think they would do? Would they just go out of business? Oh, shoot, we can't sell any spots to our class. All of our lecture halls are empty. Are they just going to shut down? No, they're going to figure out a way to cut costs so they can lower their prices to the point where there's demand for their product and they can make money. Right, because colleges, they got to make money, Right? They got to pay all their overhead and stuff, so that's what would happen. Same thing happens with housing. What does the government do? Gives people money to pay rent. Rent subsidies, subsidizes people to buy homes. Government guarantees mortgages. FHA gives out money to buy homes. What does that mean? Well, that means real estate prices are higher because of these government subsidies. The government took the subsidies away, real estate prices would come down. Now, yes, that would hurt the people who already own real estate, but it doesn't hurt the people who want to buy it because it means the prices are gonna go down. Anything the government gets involved in, if they subsidize it, price goes up. Same thing with healthcare. Look at all the government money that goes into healthcare. Look at how much money the government gives people to pay for healthcare to go to the doctor. Right. Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act. Right. The government is throwing all this money at people to buy health insurance, to buy medical care. So obviously it costs a lot more. You know, the irony of it is they say, oh, housing is expensive, or college is expensive or health care is expensive. So the government needs to give people money to help them Pay for it? Well, because the government gives everybody money to pay for stuff. That is the reason that it's so expensive. It's not the other way around. It's not expensive. So the government should help you pay for it. It's expensive because the government is helping you pay for it. Because a lot of this stuff was very affordable before the government got involved. And the irony is, when Donald Trump was asked about this, and I mentioned it on a podcast before, very recently, about the affordability problem in housing, he specifically said, yeah, I know, but I don't want housing prices to become more affordable. I don't want house prices to go down because there are people who own homes who believe that they're rich. And I don't want to pierce that bubble. I want them to continue to believe they're rich. And so we have to maintain the high price of their homes, even if nobody could actually afford to buy them, which means they can't even sell them. I mean, what is a house worth that you can't sell? Is it really worth what you're pretending? No. But Donald Trump doesn't want to burst that bubble. He wants everybody to go around thinking they're rich. And so he doesn't care that people can't afford to buy homes because he'd rather preserve that delusion. But what he is trying to do is figure out how to extend more credit into the housing market so that more people can afford to. To overpay for these homes. In fact, I just read, I think, that the Federal Reserve is looking at. Now, maybe, I don't know if the Trump administration is leaning on them or they're just looking where the political wind is blowing, but they're proposing some type of relaxation of capital requirements for banks to make it more lucrative for banks to write mortgages and not only originate mortgages, but hold the mortgages on their books, service the mortgages. So they're trying to reduce some capital requirements to try to increase credit availability to make it easier for people to borrow money from banks to buy houses, maybe to lower the interest rate that people might pay on loans. So all of this is designed to increase housing demand. Now, if the problem is high prices, right, because if we have an affordability problem, the solution isn't to increase demand. That's the last thing you'd want to do. You want demand to go down, right? And then price will come down, or you want supply to go up. Now, of course, if supply goes up, if they really increase the supply of homes, the value of the existing homes would come down. Right. If we actually had a building spree, if developers actually started, you know, building a lot of new homes to increase the supply of homes, what would happen to the price of homes? The price would come down, which is good from an affordability standpoint. Right. Because now we have more supply at lower prices. But what does that mean for existing homeowners? Well, now their home is not worth as much because there's all these brand new homes that were just built that are newer than theirs that don't need as much maintenance as theirs. So when a lot of new houses are constructed, that reduces the value of the existing housing stock. So they don't even want that. They don't want to solve the problem. They want to make the problem worse. But all boils, you know, swings back to what happened with these food stamps or the SNAP benefits. Did you know? Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and more than 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and houseplants, all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find anywhere else. 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