Carol Roth
Appearances
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
You know, Glenn, I just found out that we've only been in this administration for a month and a half-ish.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And I feel like it's been 16 years. I know. There's so much going on that I'm just trying to process it out. When someone said, oh, it's only been a month and a half, I went... Yeah, my mind was blown.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Yes. So, you know, we've talked about before that the economic situation is not really what it was presented to be. You know, we heard under Biden and certainly during election season, what a wonderful economy we had, all of these really great statistics on employment and growth.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And it's become very clear, well, it was very clear to all of us before we've talked about it, something that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bassett talked about in a speech a couple weeks ago, is that really the economic foundation is incredibly fragile.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And what we've had the Biden administration do, which was exceptionally nefarious, is that they decided that they were gonna spend to paper over the weakness of the economy. So if you remember, I think it was back in 2022, we had those two down quarters of GDP, which is a technical recession, which for some reason, by the way, they said was not a recession.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I'm sure if Trump had two down quarters, they would say it was, but it had a D in front of it, so it wasn't. And then we came out of it, and then it was pretty clear that we were gonna go into this double dip recession. And so what did they do? They decided to increase government spending. which is very inefficient spending.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And we've been running deficits as a percentage of GDP that are at wartime levels. We're talking 6% to 7% of GDP. The historical average is somewhere around 3% or 3.5%. So about double what you might see on average. When you have a good economy, you would actually expect that to be much lower because you're getting more receipts. And that's what happened. We had more receipts.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
We were taking in almost five trillion dollars. We were spending U.S. government and they're spending even more. They're spending almost seven trillion dollars. So that was done to mask the weakness and the economy. Now that we don't have the ability to continue to kick up even more and more to show growth, the consumer continues to be tapped out from all the Biden-era policies.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And the fact that we have Doge, which is trying to cut down government spending, We're at a situation where things could get uglier before they get better or they could get uglier and they could take away the political will to make them better. And that's this delicate dance that we've been talking about, why we need this careful choreography.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
The craziest thing that's happened over the past several days is that the Atlanta Fed, one of the branches of the Federal Reserve that has a tool that predicts GDP for each quarter, they went in the last four weeks, okay, four weeks time from predicting that we were going to have almost 4% GDP growth in the first quarter to now negative 3%. in the first quarter.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
That is a seven percentage point difference in four weeks, which A, just goes to show what a joke any of this reporting and these tools and this data are. But I think also shows, hey, we've got somebody else at the helm here, so now we don't need to doctor these numbers in a way that seem a bit more friendly.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And so we potentially could be seeing something ugly, which is something that we've talked about many, many times. And this has been a setup that they knew was coming. If you if you go back to the middle of last year, you had a bunch of, quote, unquote, Nobel economists that put out a piece that said that Trump was going to create inflation. He was going to do all these bad things to the economy.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And I called it out right then and there and said, this is a setup. They know this is coming no matter what. And so they are setting the groundwork to blame this on Trump. And so, you know, get ready for the talking points. You know, Trump's been, as we said, only in there for six weeks. He hasn't even really had a chance to do anything about the economy. Congress certainly isn't helping.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And yet we're already getting the rhetoric that, oh, look what he did to our really great economy.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Yeah, it absolutely would cause our inflation to go through the roof because, you know, even with the cash in and cash out that we have, as we said, we're running these wartime level deficits. And by the way, we're financing those at high interest rates, not necessarily in the historical context, but in the context of the last 15 years.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And in a way that we have now made the interest expense on our debt, you know, what we're paying for stuff we've already bought exceed the financing charges exceed what we're spending on defense. Niall Ferguson has a great sort of maxim, if you will, that basically I'm paraphrasing here, but, you know, nations that spend more on interest exceed.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
versus debt don't remain great nations for very long. That seems to be a pretty obvious something that everybody can wrap their heads around. That we don't want to be spending all of our money paying for stuff that we've quote unquote already bought.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
and we certainly at these levels cannot afford to do that if we continue to do that and you know this kind of goes into another conversation that we've had before glad to is that you know central banks around the world who used to be our friends in support of the us being the world's reserve currency used to just buy treasuries as kind of part of the deal here on an ongoing basis.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Over the past 11 or so years, they have been net sellers of treasuries. They've actually replaced that with gold on their balance sheet. So if we don't have central banks that will just buy treasuries whenever, because that's part of the geopolitical deal, that means you have to find people who are looking at the price. They're looking at the price of the treasuries.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And basically, at these levels, even though they've come off a little bit, and we can talk about that too, but they're overall saying, yeah, we're not going to do that. We need to have a reprice here. And when you don't have enough demand, you end up seeing our yields go higher. And to the extent they add up too high, which we were dangerously close to a few weeks ago, that has come off now.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
But if you hit that, that could end up causing a debt spiral. It could end up causing So the mismanagement or excuse me, not a mismanagement, but basically a throwing up, if you will, of the Treasury market and have global implications.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
However, however, Glenn, if we cut, as we've talked about, we cut a trillion dollars and we just cut it off very carefully and we don't choreograph it like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And then we don't have that in our GDP. Then we have a shrunken economy. We're taking in less receipts and we actually explode the deficit, which could end up in a debt spiral.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
So, yes, Congress needs to do their part. But it needs to be done very surgically. And that is the ultimate challenge. That is the mess that the Biden administration left for Trump.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I mean, this is this is going to be probably a whole other segment, but I'll just throw out there at some point we need to have a discussion about these tariffs. Now is probably not the time because it's a very large discussion. OK, but we need to have a discussion about these tariffs.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
All right. So basically, what did the American people hire Trump to do? Right. They hired to stabilize prices, to get things more normalized. And yes, we have these issues around the world in terms of, you know, where we stand in trade. However, as we have been talking about, we just talked about this needs to be very surgical. We need to have Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers doing the choreography.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
We don't need to have bull in a china shop. And the tariff situation, given the precarious economic situation that Biden has left us and the fact that the citizens of the United States want price stability is absolutely maddening. I understood art of the deal. I understood the first time around that we're trying to put some pressure, show who's the big dog, get people to come to the table.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
But now, you know, we're going after our allies. We're going after we're trying to kind of separate ourselves from China. Well, we have companies who decided to move manufacturing from China to Mexico so that they could be more aligned with the United States and North America. And now we're putting these crazy tariffs on it. This is something that frankly, nobody in any economic circle that I know
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I agree. That was the first time we tried this and he got them to the table. And now we need to have sort of a different situation because the reality is that, as you said, He's made huge strides. We have a tiny fraction of the encounters at the border. So that is moving in the right direction. But things like price stability are not necessarily yet moving in the right direction.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And to throw this into the mix, At a time that is so precarious from an economic situation, even if that is the ultimate outcome, it seems like the wrong tactic to take because the situation on the economic front is so volatile. Find another path to do that. That's all I'll have to say on that.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And that's and that's going back to the surgical part. If it was something very specific, I could understand. But across the board at these levels seems really insane.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
None of us can. It's also timing. Right. So we're talking about all of these things as if we were in a normal world and we're not. We're on the precipice of economic crisis thanks to the Biden administration. And so, you know, the tactics and strategies that we may have been able to employ during a normal time are not what are required right now.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Like we said, the first time he threatened the tariffs, it worked on the immigration or the migration front. Right. We stopped the flow of illegals to the point where we haven't seen these numbers in a very long time. So take the win. But right now, what the American public needs is some certainty and stability.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And so with this very fragile economic situation, anything that is going to make it worse is not the right tactic to take right now. And we also have to decide who is going to be on our side and who's not going to be on our side. If China is really the enemy here, then maybe just say, OK, we got
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
it's a little bit of a way down with China and Mexico, or to me with Canada and Mexico and what we wanted, we're just gonna leave that and now we're gonna focus on this thing with China and keep our allies intact. I just don't think now is the time when we require this very careful choreography to get us out of a crazy economic situation
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
to be throwing around these massive tariffs, to be creating chaos in the stock market, to create uncertainty potential for a rising dollar, which would be a major issue. I know it's come down a little bit here, but if these go into place, that's going to be the outgrowth. I mean, there are a lot of big issues that are all tied up together here, and now is just not the time.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Yeah, I mean, obviously, that speaks to bigger geopolitical strategy in terms of do we want them to be aligned with China? You know, the friend of my enemy is my friend. It's kind of we have to be very careful so we can acknowledge that we think that that's horrible. We know that they are paper tigers and very weak. But still, there's a bigger picture going on.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And so we don't have to necessarily fund them. But at the same time, too, we also have to be wary of the global economic situation and how that's going to impact American lives. And that is the most fragile point. So that needs to be kind of the underpinning of everything else in my opinion. All right.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Well, it went up and then went back down.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
This has been so, you know, the first thing that happened is that we had this announcement of some sort of cryptocurrency strategic reserve.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And, you know, again, and this is this is not meant to pick on the Trump administration because obviously we know we're all we're all rooting for Trump to succeed. But there are some sort of question marks here. And this is one of them for me.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
When you think about a strategic reserve, Glenn, you're thinking about things that you need in case of a national emergency and in case of an economic emergency that you have a stockpile. And so it makes sense that we would have oil or ammunition or medicine or things stockpiled. But all of a sudden we say, well, we need to have a cryptocurrency stockpile, strategic reserve.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
The question mark is why? Why do we need that? Why is that impacting our national security? Because I think it's the same as gold. But it's not the same as gold. It's not being held by central banks around the world. It's not something that we actually even have in tangible form. And this kind of goes to the bigger feeling from the crypto community.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
When this was announced, it was not announced as a Bitcoin reserve. It was announced as a reserve that included all kinds of things, including things that bordered on meme coins and alternative coins that most people in the cryptocurrency community don't think have any intrinsic value.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And so that's been part of the frustration that if you want to make the argument for a Bitcoin-only reserve, then we can have a healthy debate and maybe there's some sort of reasoning behind that.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I think that the feeling from the community is that in terms of anything that looks like hard money, that Bitcoin is the only one that comes close to that. And that there are a lot of people in the administration who frankly have interests. In cryptocurrency, and that's why it's getting this level of attention.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
So I think that perhaps maybe there's clarification this week of what this strategic reserve looks like. As you mentioned, the holdings of cryptocurrency by the U.S., you know, I believe you're referencing the amount of cryptocurrency that we have seized from criminals and other organizations.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Or we could jump it off and pay down our debt and not have an interest that exceeds our debt.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I would just say, you know, based on his announcement, he had said that he wants to elevate the industry, which is, again, a weird thing to say when we're talking about things that should benefit Americans. It wasn't sort of clear how that ties into the elevating the industry. But I do think what is happening.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
If there's any good point from a crypto fan standpoint, that they're saying that at least he's going to bring some legitimacy to the industry and not persecute it the way the Biden administration has. So maybe there's some clarity on rulemaking and whatnot. And I think that's all positive.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
But when we start getting into strategic reserves, when we're running wartime deficit, you know, again, my head starts to spin a little.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Almost. So this is a huge victory.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
This is a huge victory. I want to thank you, Glenn, because, you know, we've been talking about this for almost a year. You've led a huge platform and fight for this. Your audience has been very active in this fight. So this is that, like you said, the CTA BOI rule that was making small businesses have to register as financial criminals or face jail times and massive penalties.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
We've been working so hard to try to get this taken away or at least, you know, put to bed in some manner. So last Thursday, the 27th, Treasury came out and said, we are not going to penalize you if you we're not going to enforce penalties. And we're going to try to narrow the scope because we don't think this is fair for small business.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And then on Sunday, they put out a press release saying, OK, we are not for anybody who is a U.S. citizen or a domestic reporting entity. So a domestic company, you do not have to do this. So this is a huge win now. Yeah, huge win. However. We need this codified still. We need Congress to codify and follow Treasury's lead, or we need the courts to win because we know what happens.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
We have a great Treasury secretary who wants Main Street to thrive. We have a president who wants Main Street to thrive, and they've done this. But if they can do that, then the next administration that is a Democratic administration could undo that. And we need to create that certainty for small businesses, housing association boards, and everyone else who is caught up in this.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
So we need for Congress to narrow the scope to foreign companies, only foreign reporting entities. So tell Congress they still need to pass that law and codify, take Treasury's lead. And, you know, otherwise, you and I are going to be talking about this again at some point in the future. But by the way, we can celebrate. All the great work. Your audience made calls.
The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
They put in statements for the record that I took to Congress. We've been working so, so hard on this. All the groups that filed lawsuits that even gave us the ability to have the time to make this happen, to allow this new treasury to be able to make this rule. So great job, everybody.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
The craziest thing that's happened over the past several days is that the Atlanta Fed, one of the branches of the Federal Reserve, that has a tool that predicts GDP for each quarter. They went in the last four weeks, okay, four weeks time, from predicting that we were going to have almost 4% GDP growth in the first quarter to now negative 3%. in the first quarter.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
That is a seven percentage point difference in for weeks, which A, just goes to show what a joke any of this reporting and these tools and this data are. But I think also shows, hey, we've got somebody else at the helm here. So now we don't need to doctor these numbers in a way that seem a bit more friendly.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And so we potentially could be seeing something ugly, which is something that we've talked about many, many times. And this has been a set up that they knew was coming. If you go back to the middle of last year, you had a bunch of quote unquote Nobel economists that put out a piece that said that Trump was going to create inflation. He was going to do all these bad things to the economy.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And I called it out right then and there and said, this is a set up. They know this is coming no matter what. And so they are setting the groundwork to blame this on Trump. So get ready for the talking points. Trump's been, as we said, only in there for six weeks. He hasn't even really had a chance to do anything about the economy. Congress certainly isn't helping.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And yet we're already getting the rhetoric that, oh, look what he did to our really great economy. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Carol, but
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Yeah, it absolutely would cause our inflation to go through the roof because even with the cash in and cash out that we have, as we said, we're running these wartime level deficits. And by the way, we're financing those at high interest rates, not necessarily in the historical context, but in the context of the last 15 years.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
and in a way that we have now made the interest expense on our debt, what we're paying for stuff we've already bought, exceed, the financing charges exceed what we're spending on defense. Niall Ferguson has a great sort of maxim, if you will, that basically, I'm paraphrasing here, but nations that spend more on interest spend versus debt don't remain great nations for very long.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
That seems to be pretty obvious, something that everybody can wrap their heads around, that we don't want to be spending all of our money paying for stuff that we've quote unquote already bought. Und wir können sicherlich an diesen Ebenen das nicht ermöglichen.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Wenn wir das weiterhin tun, und das geht in eine andere Konversation, die wir vorher hatten, Glenn, zu, ist, dass die Zentralbanken weltweit, die früher unsere Freunde und in Unterstützung der USA waren, die Weltreserve-Kurse, früher nur Treasurys verkauften, das ist ein Teil der Dealung hier auf einer aufwändigen Basis.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Over the past, you know, 11 or so years, they have been net sellers of Treasuries. They've actually replaced that with gold on their balance sheet. So if we don't have central banks that will just buy Treasuries whenever, because that's part of the geopolitical deal, that means you have to find people who are, you know, are looking at the price. They're looking at the price of the Treasuries.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Und im Grunde genommen, an diesen Ebenen, obwohl sie ein bisschen weggegangen sind, und wir können darüber auch sprechen, aber sie sagen insgesamt, ja, wir werden das nicht tun. Wir brauchen einen Repreis hier. Und wenn du nicht genug hast,
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Demand, you end up seeing our yields go higher and to the extent they add up too high, which we were dangerously close to a few weeks ago, that has come off now. But if you hit that, that could end up causing a debt spiral, it could end up causing So let me just explain this so the average person can understand what you just said. You are you're wanting to buy a new house.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
However, Glenn, if we cut, as we talked about, we cut a trillion dollars and we just cut it off very carefully and we don't choreograph it like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and then we don't have that in our GDP, then we have a shrunken economy, we're taking in less receipts and we actually explode the deficit, which could end up in a debt spiral. So yes, Congress needs to do their part.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
But it needs to be done very surgically. And that is the ultimate challenge. That is the mess that the Biden administration left for Trump.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Yes. So, you know, we've talked about before that the economic situation is not really what it was presented to be. You know, we heard under Biden and certainly during election season, what a wonderful economy we had, all of these really great statistics on employment and growth. Und es ist sehr klar geworden.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Nun, es war sehr klar für alle von uns, bevor wir darüber gesprochen haben, dass es etwas ist, das der Staatssekretär der Treasury, Scott Bassett, in einer Rede vor ein paar Wochen darüber gesprochen hat, ist, dass wirklich die ökonomische Foundation unglaublich fragil ist.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Und was wir von der Biden-Administration gemacht haben, was exzeptionell gefährlich war, ist, dass sie entschieden hat, dass sie über die Schwierigkeiten der Ökonomie spenden werden. So if you remember, I think it was back in 2022, we had those two down quarters of GDP, which is a technical recession, which for some reason, by the way, they said was not a recession.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
I'm sure if Trump had two down quarters, they would say it was, but you know, it was, it was, it had a D in front of it, but it wasn't. And then, you know, we came out of it and then it was pretty clear that we were going to go into this double dip recession. And so what did they do? They decided to increase government spending. which is very inefficient spending.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And we've been running deficits as a percentage of GDP that are at wartime levels. We're talking 6% to 7% of GDP. The historical average is somewhere around 3% or 3.5%. So about double what you might see on average. When you have a good economy, you would actually expect that to be much lower because you're getting more receipts. And that's what happened. We had more receipts.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
We were taking in almost $5 trillion. And they're spending even more. They're spending almost $7 trillion. So that was done to mask the weakness in the economy. Now that we don't have the ability to continue to kick up even more and more to show growth, The consumer continues to be tapped out from all the Biden-era policies.
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
And the fact that we have Doge, which is trying to cut down government spending. We're at a situation where things could get uglier before they get better. Or they could get uglier and they could take away the political will to make them better. And that's this delicate dance that we've been talking about, why we need this careful choreography.