Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/16/2017 -- For eight years, we have been spoon fed a narrative of increasing prosperity. The message has been carefully crafted by the executive branch, seasoned and served by a complicit media. And many of us have all too gladly accepted it, believing the proposition that the "new normal" is now simply "normal." The nonsensical market reacts to bad news by surging up, giving officials and pundits something to point at as "proof" of their claims, despite the fact that fundamentals continue to weaken under massive debt and weak global demand. Money printing and central bank stimulus continues blowing air into this unsustainable bubble, though, and many have become complacent, ignoring the yawning abyss that we're perched right on the edge of.

This same narrative would have us believe that President Trump has inherited a strong economy, an economy on the move up and up to new heights. Trump himself has muddied the waters by pointing at gains in the DOW and issuing executive orders at such dizzying speed that it seems that progress must surely be happening. And it's true that his plans for reigning in regulation, rationalizing tax policy and encouraging the repatriation of American manufacturing seem to offer the promise of growth.

The problem, though, is that the economy is not on the ascendant. Trump is being set up to fail by the financial elites, the globalists that have been running the Obama administration's economic policy and the Federal Reserve. Our Humpty-Dumpty economy is bound for a great fall, regardless of the current President's best intentions, and the most deeply important question of the next four years is who is going to be putting the pieces back together, and how they do it.

Trump talks about "draining the swamp." In addition to the morass of Washington politicians and professionals he references so successfully, I believe there are four economic swamps looming ahead that lie between us and full recovery from the fairy-tale economics of the last eight years and the crash that seems imminent.

The first swamp is our massive and uncontrolled national debt. There is no agreement in Washington on how to hold down or reduce our mounting debt, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, interest on the national debt is going to balloon and become greater than all other budget spending categories by 2050. Many experts agree that Trump's program to rebuild America cannot be accomplished without adding many trillions to the already existing $20 trillion dollar-bonded debt total. That's the first swamp that needs to be drained, and we haven't addressed it yet. The system needs to be cleansed before we can truly move forward.

The second swamp is our hidden fiscal gap. Off the books government obligations are estimated to be as high as $50 to $100 trillion, if you can believe that. No audit has ever been officially published or acknowledged. This obligation is like a hidden credit card bill containing purchases the government has made for decades and keeping out of public view. This is something else that President Trump will be forced to address if he wants to strengthen and rationalize our economy and financial system.

The third swamp is short-term debt maturity. Sixty percent of the nation's $20 trillion in public debt is coming due, and will be payable during Trump's first term. In the next 48 months, $12 trillion will need to be printed or borrowed at a higher interest rate to pay holders of maturing U.S. Treasuries. If anyone can figure out how to find this money, it is Donald Trump, and I hope he'll do it smartly and not just continue printing dollars, which will likely weaken in the face of the difficulties we're facing.

And the final swamp to be drained is suppressed double-digit inflation that I think is on the way. Wages and prices both have been held low for decades by low GDP, and as growth strengthens, they will soar, taking inflation up with them. Trump's projects of infrastructure modernization and rebuilding the military will inject hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy, which again could easily lead to double-digit 1970s style inflation. As Trump takes the brakes off by removing regulations and barriers to production that have been in place for several administrations, requiring massive amounts of capital. It will certainly look insane, but it's the right thing to do.

In case you wonder if I'm a lone voice crying in the wilderness, I can assure you that I have company. Economist James Dale Davidson, who correctly predicted the collapse of 1999 and 2007 said recently that key indicators combine to spell out S-E-L-L, adding that a 50% collapse is not just looming, it's on our doorstep. Mark Faber, publisher of Gloom Boom Doom, says that 2017 is the year that a U.S. economic crisis a world economic collapse. He goes on to assert that Trump will not be able to stop a dollar crisis, a stock market crash, or a rise in the prices of gold and silver. Andrew Smithers, and economist with an unsettling history of being prophetic, was quoted as saying that U.S. stocks are about 80% overvalued, backing up his predictions using a ratio leading to the conclusion that the only times in history stocks were this risky were in 1929 and 1999, and we all know what happened in those years: stocks fell by 89% in 1929 and by 50% in 1999. Ann Rutledge of Forbes believes that a slide began in 2013 and is well under way. And Peter Costa, President of Empire Executions, has made the surprising move of pulling out of the market, believing a major correction is on the way.

This is not the time to stay complacent and start humming "Happy Days Are Here Again." It is, instead, time to gird your loins and make tough choices about how to protect your hard-earned wealth. Look at cash and precious metals, look for ways to preserve what you have during what seems certain to be a very rocky 2017 and beyond.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/13/2017 -- BENNETT: Steve Milloy is the publisher of the popular website Junk Science that debunks popular science myths, which I have no doubt led him to his new book, Scare Pollution: Why and How To Fix the EPA. Steve is the perfect guest this week as a Senate panel last week approved EPA critic Scott Pruitt to head the agency. Steve, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

MILLOY: Thanks for having me, Dawn.

BENNETT: Steve, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a climate change skeptic, right? He has fought EPA regulations on carbon emissions and now he's a clear step closer to heading the agency's leader. Is there an issue that Pruitt approaches regulation from the perspective of a "polluter"?

MILLOY: That sounds like a loaded question, but no I don't think there's an issue. One of the great myths that the environmentalists have successfully perpetrated is that our air is polluted. Our air is clean, our water is safe. It's no longer 1970 or 1960 or 1950. EPA and Americans and states have spent the last 46 years cleaning up the air, and the air is clean. As a matter of fact, the air was clean 25 years ago. The reason Scott Pruitt has sued EPA almost a dozen times is because EPA regularly engages in regulatory overreach. By that I mean they are exceeding the authority granted to them by Congress, and so as AG of Oklahoma, Scott has had to sue them to try to put them back in their box.

BENNETT: He also has significant conflicts of interest. Is that going to be a problem? He has significant ties to the oil and gas industry.

MILLOY: Well, he's from Oklahoma. There's a lot of oil and gas out there, and he's representing his state's interests. That's been his job. As EPA Administrator, he is going to be working for the president, executing EPA's authority. EPA has various authorities, for example under the Clean Air Act to make the air safe. The air is safe. Scott will make sure that the air remains safe. What's the conflict of interest? As long as the air is safe, there's no conflict of interest.

BENNETT: Do you think that he lacks experience in environmental protection?

MILLOY: I think Scott knows more about the EPA and the wickedness, if you will, of the agency, than most people, because he has sued the EPA almost a dozen times. He is well aware of how the EPA overreaches, and he's probably the perfect administrator for reigning in the EPA and bringing this rogue agency within the law.

BENNETT: So you don't see what his counterparties are saying, that he has a lack of experience in focus on environmental and public health protection?

MILLOY: You know, I've worked on EPA issues for 25 years now, and to be perfectly honest with you, I have yet to see the environmentalists not lie or distort or otherwise befog the truth. They don't like Scott Pruitt because Scott Pruitt is not going to implement their agenda, which is an ever-expanding EPA, to hell with the economy, we want to control the economy. That's what's been happening for the last eight years, and of course our energy industry has suffered because of that, and consumers have suffered with higher prices.

BENNETT: The EPA began with a seemingly innocent mandate, keep the environment clean, but today it is one of the most powerful Federal bureaucracies, with the power to regulate anything that could possibly affect the air, the water, the earth. In other words, practically everything. Do you think the Founders ever intended creating a Federal government that had these kind of broad, unchecked powers.

MILLOY: This is one of those areas where the Founders never envisioned what society would become. As societies develop, needs change. Ours changed. Until the 1950s, 60s and 70s, no one really paid attention to the environment. All anyone cared about was, and rightly so, economic development. When we became wealthy enough that the environment started bothering us, well, we took action, and over the past 45 years, we cleaned up the environment. As a matter of fact, we cleaned it up a long time ago, it's been clean for a while. There's really nothing left to do but maintain what we have, and if we have accidents, yeah, let's take care of it. But, people should not confuse that with what the environmentalists are saying, that the environment's in terrible shape and this guy Scott Pruitt, he's going to let industry run wild.

BENNETT: Let's talk about your new book, Scare Pollution. It focuses largely on how the EPA has declared the air that we breathe, filled as it is with CO2, is polluted, and therefore is enacting regulation after regulation to control what goes into the air. Pruitt made a name for himself as one of the Attorneys General who frequently sued the EPA for imposing all these rules. What do you think the people at the EPA, who spent years fighting the likes of Scott Pruitt, make of his potentially becoming their boss?

MILLOY: Well, I think they realize they're in for a culture shock. They're going to be like the universities after Trump was elected, they're going to need safe spaces with teddy bears and coloring books. There's a new sheriff in town, Donald Trump, and then Scott Pruitt. Scott Pruitt is going to have a different set of marching orders from his president, and to the extent EPA staff has gotten used to, over the last 45 years, just willy-nilly writing rules that hurt the economy and don't really do anything for the environment, well, that's going to come to an end. And if that shatters their world, well, too bad for them.

BENNETT: Do you think he's going to reduce the size of the EPA dramatically?

MILLOY: I think Mr. Trump promised during the campaign that he was going to basically whack EPA back to a very small portion of what it was. And that's not as harsh as it sounds. When EPA was formed 46, 47 years ago, there weren't any state environmental protection agencies except maybe California. 46 years later, 85 percent of environmental protection is done locally by states and local governments. There still is a role for a federal EPA, but it's a much smaller role. It has to do with interstate issues, maybe some international issues, and something that's national like pesticide registration. But the fact is that most environmental protection is done by the states. We don't need this massive, economy killing federal EPA.

BENNETT: If Pruitt is indeed our new EPA administrator, what do you expect he'll do? And what should he do? What, in your opinion, are the most badly needed EPA reforms.

MILLOY: Well, I think as Mr. Trump promised during the campaign, the first thing that's going to be happening is EPA's war on coal and the climate rules are going to end. There will be no more federal government climate bed-wetting, if you will. President Trump is going to roll back the mindless restrictions on the coal industry and let the coal industry compete with the natural gas industry for providing energy.

BENNETT: What about other functions? Most Americans believe we need the EPA to keep our water clean, and the air we breathe.

MILLOY: That's not going to change. Most of that is done on the state level, and you can even see where the crisis in Flint, Michigan last year, was a problem because not only did the local guys drop the ball, but so did the federal EPA, which ignored that situation for a long time. The cuts that are coming to EPA are not going to effect those water programs, and I think Mr. Trump and Mr. Pruitt are going to make sure that EPA fulfills its statutory responsibilities. EPA let that Flint situation get out of hand while it's worried about the silly issue of carbon dioxide in the air.

BENNETT: For young listeners out there, can you tell us a bit about the world before the EPA existed? Was pollution entirely out of control, and honestly, can the EPA take credit for cleaning things up?

MILLOY: That's a great question, and a complicated question. For most of the 20th century, we were just focused on economic development. We had two world wars, we had the Cold War, and no one was really worried about the environment. But about mid-century, people started cluing in, people didn't like dirty skies and dirty water. Several times during the mid-20th century, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. So, we stopped dumping. We stopped just spewing whatever into the atmosphere. You know, Congress set up the rules that the EPA is implemented. It's really been a national effort. I know the EPA likes to take credit and the environmental groups like to take credit, but it was really sort of a collective consciousness, and the fact is that we had the wealth to do it. You need a lot of money to have a clean environment. You look around the world, the countries with the worst environments are the poorest countries. The first requirement for a clean environment is wealth. We had a lot of that, so it was really sort of a team effort. That said, I think it's important to realize that, as bad as pollution was in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the peak of our sort of uncontrolled industrial development, as ugly as the skies were, and the river caught on fire... the environment was never a public health problem. Never.

BENNETT: That's interesting. Your book contains some fascinating and even horrifying information about the EPA itself intentionally exposing unwitting Americans to toxic gasses. Can you explain what happened?

MILLOY: Sure. My book is largely about the EPA's one of flagship regulatory programs, its air quality program for particulates or soot in the sky. EPA has gotten to the point where they claim that one out of four deaths in America every year is caused by soot in the sky. All they ever had to back this up was some really lousy statistical studies, and to provide their statistical studies with some actual medical or scientific plausibility, they started conducting experiments on humans where they would expose old people, sick people, asthmatics, combinations thereof, to extremely high levels of pollution, treating them like guinea pigs.

BENNETT: That's awful.

MILLOY: Of course this is illegal. We have laws and rules against this. They're actually trying to hurt these people to prove their lousy science. I discovered this, exposed it, there are several lawsuits, and investigations by the EPA Inspector General and the National Academy of Sciences. So, that is coming to an end. But yes, that was a pretty shocking program. EPA even experimented spraying diesel exhaust up the noses of ten year old children.

BENNETT: What year was that?

MILLOY: That was in the mid-2000s.

BENNETT: Not too long ago.

MILLOY: Right. The story's in Scare Pollution.

BENNETT: The left likes to describe itself as pro-science, and people who question, the global warming theory, are derided as deniers or anti-science. Your book contains some damning information about how the EPA faked data just to justify its power grabs. Is the EPA really pro-science if it has to resort to those decidedly anti-science tactics?

MILLOY: No. When I first started working in this area more than a quarter century ago, a group of EPA science advisers issued a report saying the EPA adjusted its science to fit policy. And it got worse from there. EPA is terrible at science. What they wind up doing is they shovel money out the door to scientists who they know are going to produce results that the agency likes for its regulatory programs. And then, to make matters worse, EPA hires those same scientists to review their own work. Imagine if you got to review your own work as a student, to grade it. Crazy, right?

BENNETT: Right.

MILLOY: The program I talk about in Scare Pollution was $600 million in research, completely corrupted. So one of the fixes of the EPA is to take the science out of the agency. The agency has shown that it cannot handle science. The regulatory side of government and science funding needs to be separate.

BENNETT: One common gripe against the free market is that, absent regulations, as Obama frequently argues, companies would pollute the environment without thinking twice. I want to talk about something you must know about, called the Index of Environmental Indicators, which is published by the American Enterprise Institute. The basic conclusion it shows is that the countries that are wealthiest also have the cleanest environments. So in other words, as I read it, once basic needs are taken care of, we can afford to take care of luxury concerns like the environment. That would seem to indicate that the best thing we can do to clean the planet is to make our economy prosperous. You're a Libertarian. Can you be in favor of the environment and free markets at the same time?

MILLOY: Absolutely. That laid it out right there, and we talked about it earlier in the interview. The wealthier a society is, the cleaner its environment is. If you don't believe me, go to China, go to India. Remember what the Soviet Union was like, or go to Russia now. If a society has a lot of money, it's going to be able to have a clean environment, which is what we do in America. So saying, "businessmen would just pollute" is really just a straw man argument. That's not true at all. We have societal standards now. Now that everyone's aware of the environment, if you pollute, you get in trouble for it. It wasn't like that fifty years ago, so things have changed.

BENNETT: One final question. The EPA isn't actually a constitutionally mandated federal agency. It was only created during the Nixon administration. Obviously, if Trump were to scrap it altogether, the media would lose its mind. On a practical level, what would happen if we got rid of it? Would the water suddenly become undrinkable, and companies come up with new ways to pollute the air?

MILLOY: Absolutely not. 85 percent of environmental protection is done by the states. Issuing the air permits for industrial facilities, permits for water discharges. You know the water that comes out of factories these days is cleaner than what's in the lakes and rivers. The law mandates that. So, none of that is true. All we're looking at is stopping the regulatory overreach, the economy-killing part of the EPA, which has really put the "Employment Prevention" in EPA. We can do reasonable environmental protection so that it doesn't hinder the economy, and that's what Trump wants to do.

BENNETT: Steven, thank you for coming on Financial Myth Busting.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/13/2017 -- BENNETT: Dr. Herb London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is a noted social critic whose work has appeared in every major newspaper and journal in the country, including such publications as National Review, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Washington Times, New York Magazine, and New York Times. He is the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including the new book, The Encyclopedia of Militant Islam. One reason I have him on today is that I enjoyed an article of his following the November election titled "Why the Forgotten Citizen Elected Donald Trump." His thinking was that these forgotten citizens are facing dwindling employment opportunities, sensing the collapse of traditional culture, and are understandably angry and resentful. They don't fully understand what has been happening to them, and see a Washington more concerned with Black Lives Matter and the LGBT community than their own issues. Dr. London, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

LONDON: Pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

BENNETT: There is so much economic despair in the United States today, it's as if there are almost two USAs: one that you see on TV in the media, which is portraying happiness and wealth; and then the second America, composed of vast numbers of those forgotten citizens you wrote about, left behind. What's fascinating to me is that despite the enormous suffering of these millions who are suffering quietly and in solitude, they're not the ones marching in the streets. Why do you think that is?

LONDON: They're not marching in the streets partially because of the despair. One of the things that you have to understand is that the level of labor participation in the United States circa 2017 is roughly the same as it was in 1936. That means that there are more than 50 million Americans who are idle, who are idle, who are not in the labor markets. They don't count in unemployment statistics--they are no longer counted at all. And they recognize the fact that they aren't counted economically, and they don't count socially. These are Americans who are left out of the equation. They are not variables in the American equation, and that is one of the reasons there's resentment. And you say, "Why are these people angry? They're angry because those people that march up and down the corridors of K Street in Washington, DC, those people that are in Congress today, by and large don't concern themselves with people who are not in their labor market. They don't concern themselves with people who no longer count. They don't concern themselves with people who aren't very much a part of what makes this country vibrant. They do make the country vibrant, but as I said, they are lost in the swell of interests that are obviously far more important from the standpoint of the New York Times than these people who are forgotten Americans.

BENNETT: Do you think the despair and desperation that we've seen so far is just a hint of what's to come?

LONDON: Well, I think that Trump has the right idea. I mean, look, the Trump campaign was based on the proposition that these forgotten Americans need a voice. He became the embodiment of that voice. I don't know if he's the right person to play that sort of role, but there is no question that history has imposed this on him. That is his role. So this billionaire is now the spokesman for the forgotten American. Very odd, very strange. A lot like King Saul in the Bible, an unlikely candidate to be the leader of the Jews and yet he does become the leader. So, we find ourselves in the position where many of the things that Trump was saying, including the infrastructure development that is necessary in America, with the creation of jobs that comes along with it, very very sound thinking. There is no doubt that he is thinking about lowering the tax rates so that we get not only simple taxes but so that the rates are lower so that there's greater incentives for involvement in the economy. And we'll see economic growth at the three and a half to four percent level. We get up to four percent growth in the United States and many of the problems we have had in the past are largely mitigated. I think that he's moving in the right direction. Can he sustain that? Hard to say.

BENNETT: You always wonder what's going to be the first domino to fall. What is going to actually tip this off. I wonder if it is Brexit. Britain's supreme court has effectively cleared the way for the UK to do what voters sought to do and leave the European Union, but the EU seems intent on making the process as painful as possible. Do you think that might be the instigator, or are you confident that the UK can detach itself and be stronger as a result?

LONDON: One of the things that happened was that the first meeting Donald Trump had with a foreign dignitary was Theresa May, and that in a sense was quite symbolic. What he was saying to Theresa May, I think, although I of course wasn't privy to what went on, was 'Let's create a cross-Atlantic trade organization with the UK and the United States,' which may even be a pathway to an Anglosphere trade organization that would include Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the UK. That is an extraordinary development which even sent a message to the Chinese about their desire for a Silk Road. So, I think that by and large, this is an opportunity for the United States and for the UK, and even if the Europeans are very unhappy, the independence that has now been granted to the UK also provides them with independence for economic decisions.

BENNETT: Trump has been notoriously cool on expanding free trade, though. How do you feel he will do on this front?

LONDON: I think, as far as trying to create new trade agreements, it is Trump who has been the beneficiary of Brexit, in a strange way. People in the UK, who are very concerned with these faceless bureaucrats in Brussels telling them whether they can use an electric teapot or not, not unlike those Washington bureaucrats who make decisions for people without having the foggiest idea of what the citizens' lives are all about. Why are they doing this to us, and who are these people? These are the kinds of concerns that Trump has raised, making the point that Washington, DC is a problem. It's not unlike the problem that was raised by Ronald Reagan when he was President.

BENNETT: What was fascinating out of this is that they were pictured holding hands, and May said that Trump represents America's best hopes and aspirations. It was surprisingly more upbeat than expected we would ever see from Trump. Do you think Trump might be more of a statesman than any of us gave him credit for?

LONDON: During the course of the campaign, what you found was a man who didn't appear to be, let's call it intellectually adept. He appeared boorish. He appeared uncouth. So, you might get an impression based on what happened during the course of the campaign that this is not a man who is going to be able to provide the kind of leadership that the country needs. And yet, remarkably, within the first ten days of this administration we find ourselves in the position where we're looking at Trump and I must say, I've been startled, absolutely startled. I have a very positive impression. Again, it's very difficult to know if what happens during the course of the campaign is what will happen during the moment of governance.

BENNETT: That's true. Trump is certainly an unorthodox leader. I can't think of an earlier American president whose path he seems to be following. He is reportedly a fan of Andrew Jackson. Do you see any analogues for Trump, either from American history or on the world stage? Anything to help us anticipate what to expect from a really unpredictable man?

LONDON: Well, the one thing you can predict, which was true of both Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump is that they're both populists. They both reach out to the average guy. Neither of them was actually an "average guy," though. Jackson was an elitist. Trump is a billionaire. It's very interesting and unusual, for anyone in American history, for someone with the kind of background that Donald Trump has to be the voice, as I said before, of the forgotten American. He has capitalized on that very effectively.

BENNETT: I agree. I think Trump is largely governing much as he said he would, much to the chagrin or delight of the voters and the media. If you were to give him a performance review, how would you say he's doing so far? Obviously he could have done without the petty squabbles over his Inauguration crowd size, and the rollout of his travel ban from certain Middle Eastern countries was problematic, but how would you review him over all?

LONDON: I was involved in university life for many years, and I'm a pretty tough grader. I would say I give Donald Trump at least a B+.

BENNETT: That's a pretty good grade.

LONDON: That's not a bad grade. It's true we live in the age of grade inflation, but I give him a lot of credit for the direction he's taking the country, for the rhetoric he's employed as president, and for being the person that represents so many that need a voice in Washington, DC.

BENNETT: Speaking of his governing style, and moving back to Theresa May, I know that May was trying to seek the preservation of the NATO security alliance, which Trump infamously derided as obsolete. From what we see of Trump's cabinet appointments so far, do you see any major alliances as a result of his ascendancy?

LONDON: It's difficult to say so far. I think the National Security team he's assembled is first-rate. I hold Mike Flynn in very high regard, Jim Mattis is outstanding, John Kelly is terrific. So, I think that he has assembled a very good team. In fact, if I look at the cabinets of the last five or six presidents, I would say that this team is as good as, if not better than, what has been assembled in the past. So, I give very favorable grades to Trump on this score as well. He's got the right people. Now, when you talk about foreign affairs, there are lots of imponderables, in part because whatever actions we take may not be related to actions that are taken by an enemy or a potential enemy. We have no idea how the Chinese are going to respond to Trump, we have no idea what Putin is actually going to do. Will Putin try to defang NATO, will he be engaged in more saber-rattling over the Baltics. Will there be new contests that occur in Ukraine. There are all kinds of unknowns.

BENNETT: You recently wrote a very compelling piece on the real Russia under Putin. You painted a very dark picture of how the country's government speaks out of both sides of its mouth, and pursues often ruthless means toward achieving Putin's goals. Do you think Trump, who often appears smitten by Putin's flattery, truly grasps what Russia is up to? What part do you think Trump plays in Putin's larger geopolitical chess match?

LONDON: Ultimately, the president of this country, like the president of every other country, represents the interests of that state. Every country has its own interests. So, the question is, Putin is acting in a manner consistent with Russia's goals, which is dying at home but succeeding abroad. The reclamation of these glories of the past is the reason why Putin remains in power. So he's got goals in mind. At some point, these goals are going to diverge from American interests. When they diverge, Trump is going to have to make a stand, and that stand becomes critical. Now, we don't know when it's going to happen, but it will happen. Will it happen in Syria, will it happen in the Crimea, will it happen in Eastern Europe? It's difficult to say, but it will happen. That's the real test, when all of this 'they're good friends' doesn't matter. What will really count is how Trump responds when the interests of the two nations diverge.

BENNETT: Let's talk about that, because the Trump administration has signaled that it's going to roll back the sanctions that the Obama administration placed on Russia as a payback for its hacking. The friendship still seems to be working to Putin's advantage.

LONDON: Well, at the moment, it may be working to Putin's advantage, but for years what we've seen is a retreat from the United States' involvement. When Russia got involved in Syria, there was no pushback from the feckless Obama administration. Not recognizing that Russia had its own interests in mind, we delegated to them, said, 'Here, you deal with this problem.' We invited the Russians back into the Middle East when they were forced out of the Middle East by Sadat in 1973. Again, part of the difficulty was they way the United States conducted itself vis-a-vis Russia. Now, of course, there's a new sheriff in town, and we don't know how Putin is going to respond when Trump comes to the realization that he's not happy with they way they're conducting themselves. Of course, you start out any negotiation by being positive. Trump is going to say to Putin, 'Where do our interests converge? Where are the areas where we can work together?' Can we work together dealing with militant Islamic groups across the world? Is that something we can work on together? It may be, but again I also can assure you that when you look at interests across the globe, you will find that America and Russia have interests that clearly diverge in many areas.

BENNETT: The other big foreign policy news came as President Trump told Mexico's president not to bother visiting if Mexico wouldn't agree to pay for the border wall. Nieto agreed and cancelled his meeting. Is this a relationship that has any chance of surviving Trump's personality and his administration?

LONDON: Absolutely. It will survive. Nieto said, 'I'm not coming to the United States.' Boo-hoo. So what? I mean, do you find that your life has changed in any way? Has this been a dramatic policy venture of some sort? The United States and Mexico have a lot of reasons to remain good friends, and that will continue. Again, Trump has his notions about the wall. These issues are almost pettifogging matters, and yet a relationship will emerge.

BENNETT: How should Trump both make good on his pledge to secure the southern border while not completely alienating our ally in Mexico?

LONDON: First of all, people forget that money has already been allocated for the creation of a fence. The fence has gone on for more than a thousand miles. So, when Trump says he's going to build a wall, what he's really saying is that he's going to complete the fence that has bi-partisan support. One of the things he wants to do is prevent the drug trade from spilling over into the United States, where you've seen the adverse effects all across America. So, Trump has an argument here, but payment of it will probably come from, I don't know, a trade agreement or perhaps it's going to be in entry and exit strategies. There are a variety of ways in which you can pay for it, but the idea that Mexico is going to write a check and hand it to Donald Trump is absurd.

BENNETT: My last question to you is about Trump's Supreme Court nominee to replace Antonin Scalia, Neil Gorsuch. He says this fulfills his campaign promises, and it seems to also be politically smart, because he was already confirmed to the federal bench with complete support in 2005. What do you make of this pick?

LONDON: Keep in mind, the Democrats supported him then without anyone opposing it. There wasn't one Democrat that opposed Gorsuch. So now, what has happened in the last couple of years to make Gorsuch unacceptable to the Democratic Party? Nothing, except that he's a Trump nominee. He's the same guy. Went to Columbia, went to Harvard Law School, went to Oxford. Same person. Same guy who wrote very Scalia-like opinions, the same guy who was an originalist then and is an originalist now. It's absurd for the Democrats to say he's unacceptable.

BENNETT: Thank you so much, Dr. London, for being on Financial Myth Busting.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/26/2017 -- Last Friday Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. His Inaugural Address was a call to arms and a promise to tear down the failed and false edifices built up by the last administration. It was also a declaration of war, and one much more dangerous to President Trump than any foreign war could ever be. As economist and journalist Paul Craig Roberts said, he declared war against "the entirety of the American Ruling Establishment. All of it." In Trump's speech, it was clear that he sees America's greatest enemies to be here at home: the entrenched interests that believe America should impose itself upon the world, the politicians that serve the money provided by those interests rather than the American people, the entire establishment that has run America into the ground while making themselves rich along the way. In sharp contrast to the last eight years of presidential speechifying that focused on the President himself, Trump said "we" fifty times during his address, and "I" only three times, continually bringing the focus back to the American people, their individual and corporate struggles, and his intent to focus on restoring their way of life.

Trump wasted no time in starting to break apart one of his main focuses during the campaign, Obamacare. Not long after the Inauguration, he was signing an Executive Order instructing the Department of Health and Human Services and other responsible agencies to institute changes to make the Affordable Care Act less of a burden to businesses and individuals and allow states more flexibility. It is clear that Obamacare is neither mathematically nor actuarially sound, and the 22 million Americans covered under ACA exchanges and expanded Medicaid under the law are vastly outnumbered by the millions who see Obamacare as a disaster either in fact or in the making. While it will take Congressional action to repeal the law, this order was both symbolic of Trump's intent to follow through on his promises and substantive in providing direction within the framework of the existing law to the government employees responsible for its implementation.

The question, of course, is what Trump will be able to build to replace what he is tearing down. As House Speaker Paul Ryan puts it, "Can we in this country have a health care system that gives us access to affordable care without the cost of a government takeover and death spiral, which Obamacare is giving us?" He believes the answer is yes, as the President clearly does, and now it's up to the administration and Congress to push past the entrenched interests and make it happen.

There is indeed much to be hopeful about looking forward into the Trump presidency. Many expectations have been set for a growing economy, with fresh infrastructure and renewed hope for the average worker, but the truth is that we have to fix what has been broken, which won't be free of pain. While the stock market is on a roll, I believe that the market itself is still, to borrow a term from the President himself, "fake." The market is moving up not because people are buying into it but due to continued central bank intervention and derivatives.

There are signs behind the scenes telling us that maybe things aren't really working, and it seems that foreign interests may be seeing things that Americans aren't. There has been a wholesale liquidation of U.S. Treasuries that continued in November. The TIC (Treasury International Capital) data came out for November, and foreign central banks sold another $936 million in U.S. Treasury paper. This is ongoing, and more than the previous year, and I believe it may indicate a lack of confidence in America and the Trump administration's ability to fix the problems of the past eight years. Newspapers aren't reporting this, the media aren't talking about it, and I have to wonder why. Japan and China have sold off Treasuries in the billions in the last four to six months, and China now has its lowest Treasury holdings since 2010. Even our own allies are selling, and my best guess is that they will continue to sell. Perhaps they think that the United States won't be able to pay off the debt, along with concerns that we are going to be raising interest rates. Throughout 2016, it's been increasingly obvious that foreign central banks, sovereign wealth funds, reserve managers, and virtually every other institution that holds U.S. paper are liquidating. Who are they selling it to? Individuals, retail investors are the ones buying and the ones that will be the last to hold the bag.

Will these foreign investors ever come back? Maybe if Trump manages to clean up our debt and our central banks are run smarter or possibly even eliminated, and if the dollar is stabilized. In the mean time, the Fed needs to determine how they are going to soak up all this excess supply, along with rationalizing their current interest rate experiment. In the mean time, it's up to us to make sure that we don't become the final bag-holders.

There are other signs, as well. Our retail industry, so fundamental to the American economy and lifestyle, is going through its own kind of apocalypse. Chains like Sears and Macy's are shutting stores and even Walmart seems set to lay off nearly 1,000 employees at their Bentonville, Arkansas headquarter. The LA Times reported that Boeing is about to make another round of cuts in their engineering workforce and a Boeing spokesperson said that similar cuts are coming to other job classes. We need only look at our own experiences. For eight years, things have gotten tougher and tougher for millions of American families, as the cost of living has grown faster than their paychecks. Former Obama administration officials are admitting that the vast majority of the "new jobs" the last president crowed about creating were part time, and part time jobs don't pay the rent.

Obama said as he was leaving the White House, "I've made America a better, stronger place for the generations that will follow." When governments and institutions are dumping U.S. Treasuries, that doesn't mean America is better and stronger. When Americans are still struggling to make ends meet, that doesn't mean America is better and stronger. We must hope that Trump can stand up to the Deep State, the entrenched interests that have been running the country for their own benefit. We must hope that he can break through the falsehood, self-interest, and incompetence that has for so long prevailed. We must hope that he can build something real and strong to replace what he tears down.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/25/2017 -- BENNETT: For eighteen years, Jordan Goodman has worked as a journalist at Money, the foremost personal finance magazine in the U.S., and is the author of fourteen books, most recently The Ultimate Guide to Student Loans. He's also the host of the weekly national radio show called Money Answers, where he's been following Donald Trump and has become somewhat of an expert on our new president. Jordan, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

GOODMAN: Great to be with you again, Dawn.

BENNETT: Jordan, Trump's inaugural address was provocative. From the beginning he stressed that his presidency would be a real break from the last eight years. Do you think Trump is going to give us the future that he presented to us during the campaign?

GOODMAN: Very much so. The inaugural speech was very much like his campaign speeches, actually. It did not have the usual soaring rhetoric that people are used to in these kind of things. It was "America first. Hire American. Buy American. Forgotten people." It was very much like his campaign speeches, and I think he's going to continue the same way, whether people like it or not. He was clearly speaking to his base, who loved it, and then all the people who showed up in Washington the next day did not love it, to put it mildly.

BENNETT: To me, the most memorable phrase was "American carnage," versus what these speeches are usually like. Usually they try to get Americans to associate with pride and dreams and prosperity and freedom. This just felt a little... off.

GOODMAN: Well, if you're in Chicago, there's a lot of carnage going on there. There are places in this country where that is appropriate and accurate. Not most of the country. We're not like Zimbabwe, killing each other all the time. Over all, crime rates are way down from what they have been in previous decades. Crime was up about four percent in 2016 over 2015, but 2015 was an all-time low. I think part of that's demographic. Younger people commit more crimes, and as our population gets older, we commit fewer crimes. That has nothing to do with Trump whatsoever. I think there are places, not just murders in Chicago, but all the terrorist things. The night club in Orlando, San Bernardino, I won't go through the whole list, but that's carnage as well. It's fresh in people's minds.

BENNETT: So, Trump is now the 45th President of the United States, and he's coming with an entirely new approach to running Washington, so as you stated, there's clearly a strongly divided opinion on whether this is going to be a good or bad thing. Where do you come down on this?

GOODMAN: I'm quite hopeful. I really am. He's a businessman, and it's going to be run like a business, which I think has certain advantages. It's the government, different from business, but getting regulations down... we're vastly over-regulated. The industry that you're in, the financial services industry, this fiduciary rule that's coming is a good example of massive over-regulation for a problem that didn't exist that much, and it's going to hurt a lot of people, both financial advisers and customers. I think that could be rolled back or eliminated. I think in the energy industry, we have a huge amount of regulations that are preventing drilling, environmental regulations and so on. I could go through a whole series of things. With Obamacare, 20 million more people have gotten insurance than had it before, but at a huge cost. People can't afford these premiums, which on average went up 25 percent on January 1st. Arizona, 116 percent. Many states over 50 percent. That's because of regulations. So, if you get regulations down, you're going to free up what John Meynard Keynes, the economist, used to call the "animal spirit." I think you're already seeing that, certainly, in the stock market, so that's why I'm hopeful.

BENNETT: Let's talk about the stock market. It certainly hasn't been a free market. It's controlled by the central banks or the Plunge Protection Team, you've heard it all. Something's just wrong with the market. That's actually been hurting our industry more. People have dropped out, mutual and hedge funds have closed, nobody can make money in this market and they haven't for a number of years.

GOODMAN: A lot of money has gone from actively managed to passively managed.

BENNETT: Is that one of the short term changes you think Trump is going to make? In order to take this market off remote control, it's going to have to be on its own, and certainly corporate earnings and revenues haven't been as strong as they were eight years ago, so I don't know what will happen at that point. That is going to affect American's pocket books.

GOODMAN: Very much so. We've had this rally, the DOW's been up about 8 percent since the election, which is one of the best gains between election and inauguration that we've had in quite a while. But, I think it's anticipating what's to come. If regulations come down, if corporate tax rates come down, if we repatriate a lot of the two and half trillion dollars sitting overseas and bring that back here, and corporations either invest it here or buy back stock or raise dividends, these are all positive for the U.S. economy, and that's what the stock market's been anticipating. There's going to be winners and losers, though. The winners avoid his Tweets and the losers get tweeted to death, whether it be a drug company or General Motors or Boeing or whoever it may be. In the Tweet market, you never know who's going to get hit next. Overall, if you get corporate earnings up, which I think all of his policies will do, that supports higher stock prices. We've been floating around 20,000 in the DOW for a while here, but I'm predicting we're going to end 2017 at about 23,000. I think we have a lot of room to go up.

BENNETT: You're more optimistic than I am, I've got to tell you. But, what about the downsides? There is a mixed bag, as with any presidency.

GOODMAN: What I'm most concerned with is trade wars. With Mexico, Japan, and China is the big one. He has very strong rhetoric, and maybe that's a bargaining ploy, and maybe it will work. Maybe we'll get better deals, maybe our trade deficit will come down with these countries, but I think the opposite could happen. If we don't get a deal we want, and he does put a 35 percent tariff on them, they're clearly going to retaliate and make it hard for American goods to go there as well. That's my biggest economic concern. Then politically, I'm concerned about wars. In the South China Sea, or if we move the embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and that causes a Middle East war. Those are the kind of things I'm most concerned about on the down side. He didn't get elected in China, so the Chinese aren't his constituency. So that's what I'm most concerned about is getting into trade wars.

BENNETT: He does own businesses that work in China, and has for a long time. It's not like he doesn't understand.

GOODMAN: Right, he does. But it's a posturing thing. And the same with Mexico. The peso has plummeted since Trump got in. Putting up the wall, and the Ford factory that was going to Mexico that's now staying. The Mexicans are really hurting, and he's been in office for two days. There's two ways to react to that if you're in Mexico. You can kind of give in and say, "Okay, we're getting hurt, let's work this out and find a better trade deal," or you could react against it and have another trade war. We buy about $50 billion more from Mexico than they buy from us. There's a big trade imbalance there. The president of Mexico is extremely unpopular in Mexico right now: he's got 10 percent approval ratings or something, because of the way he's handled it. It's very volatile. And the same thing in Europe. We had Brexit, which Trump very much supported. This year, we're going to have French elections, German elections, Dutch elections, and I may be wrong but I think the far right could win in all three. Which means in France, Marine Le Pen with the National Front as they call it. There's a similar right-wing group in Germany, and in the Netherlands a guy named Wilders. This could be following on Brexit, could be the end of the European Union. If Marine Le Pen comes in, she specifically says she will hold a referendum on whether France should stay in the EU or not. If she wins, it could be the same thing as what happened in Britain. Imagine France pulling out of the European Union.

BENNETT: Imagine many of them. I'm thinking that they're anticipating that, because after his "whatever it takes" threat four years ago, Mario Draghi is now saying that a country can leave the Eurozone, that's fine, but they have to settle their bill first.

GOODMAN: France would have a big bill. Or Greece. The disintegration of Europe as an economic bloc would have major implications world-wide. And it's possible. The refugee crisis. And they have incredibly high unemployment, and their economy is still quite weak in France and Spain. We would never put up with the unemployment rates they have over there. So there's a lot of very disaffected people, and to them the solution is very similar to what Trump's talking about: France first, Britain first, nationalistic. Kind of anti-globalist, and I think that's sweeping around the world right now.

BENNETT: I agree. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel came out after Trump's inauguration speech came out and said it wasn't a speech, but a declaration of war. I think they're all very afraid, because our passive president from the past didn't care or didn't understand, where Trump does. Let's talk about his cabinet. Steve Mnuchin first. He's a former Goldman boss who's Trump's nominee to run the Treasury. He had a rocky confirmation hearing where he indicated support for raising the debt ceiling quickly and expanding the IRS. Is he really the kind of guy that's going to shake things up?

GOODMAN: In some ways. Expanding the IRS produces revenue for the government, which I think is something Trump would like. Who knows the exact number, but something like $300 or $400 billion isn't being collected because there aren't enough IRS agents out there. I think people should pay their taxes legitimately, I think that's a good use of the government actually, to make sure people pay their taxes. They know there's a huge underground economy that's not being taxed. I think Trump's all about creating revenue, so that's a good thing. And yes, the debt ceiling has to be raised. We can't default on the national debt a month into his presidency. It is what it is, we have to raise the debt ceiling. What he got into trouble with in his hearings was not his current policies but what he did during the financial crisis where his company, which was called OneWest, took over some incredibly bad defaulted loans and foreclosed on a lot of people. Those people shouldn't have been in houses in the first place, in many cases. They tried to do loan modifications, but that's what the rocky hearings were about, not his current situation.

BENNETT: You've written about trying to run Washington like a business, and we've spoken about it here. That always sounds good, but the issue is that government simply isn't the private sector. They don't hire the type of people that private enterprises hire, they're just a different group. How do you think some real-world business backgrounds will end up altering Washington, DC? He's bringing in a lot of billionaires who have built something from nothing.

GOODMAN: Dramatically. In ways we've never seen before. To have Rex Tillerson, the head of Exxon, at the State Department. He's the ultimate business man, and the idea is to have better business deals and better trade deals. They're going to do the same thing that Trump was doing in kind of bullying his way into better deals, whether it was threatening Boeing on Air Force One or Lockheed Martin on the F-35, all of his Cabinet people are going to do the same thing. The guy he has for trade minister with Japan in the 80s, and he's going to do the same thing with China. Wilbur Ross, who was the ultimate vulture capitalist, taking over destroyed businesses and bringing them back, is running the Commerce Department. They're all in Trump's mold, and we've had some business people but never that many, certainly not at the top like this. It's going to be very different, and maybe it's going to work spectacularly. There's a real upside here, Dawn, as well. Say all this works, say we get better deals, the economy grows at 4 to 5 percent, we're going to run out of workers.

BENNETT: And that would be a great problem to have, but you have to clean up the past eight years. How do you get from now to then? He's going to have to tear down some of these agencies to rebuild them. How does Trump do that with the debt crisis, a potential financial breakdown looming, wars, civil unrest, terror attacks and everything else?

GOODMAN: The solution is to cut down government. What he did by Executive Order, shutting down the National Endowment of the Arts and the Humanities, is small dollars, but it's symbolic that the government isn't going to be in a lot of operations that it was in before. That's dramatically different, we've never had anything like that. That was in his first day. The solution is growth. If the economy is growing, say 4 percent, and it's been less than 2 percent, that growth creates the revenue to get the debt down. We could even go into surplus, possibly. The deficit is now $400 billion, and when Obama came in it was $1.2 trillion, it's down a lot from where it was. Get the economy growing even more and you can start paying down the debt. It's conceivable.

BENNETT: As confidence is growing, there are still so many economic warning signs out there. The dramatic sell-off of Treasuries by foreign entities, even our own allies. Japan has been selling rapidly. It's as if they're seeing us heading into a trap that the American people don't see.

GOODMAN: I think they're doing it for other reasons. China and Japan are the biggest non-domestic holders of Treasuries. China's been trying to invest domestically, and Japan the same thing. I don't think it's a political statement, I think it's more that they need the money internally than they did in the past. The dollar has risen sharply since the election, and I think will continue, because the U.S. still looks like the best place to invest, certainly compared to Japan, which is dead and has deflation. China is slowing down. Europe is a mess, as we just talked about. Compared to the rest of the world, we look like a pretty good place to invest. That's why the dollar has been rising. Trump said earlier that the dollar should be weaker, but with the fundamentals he can't really stop it from rising. That's got positives, it means that when we buy things from overseas it's cheaper, but it's clearly got negatives as well. It's harder for our companies to export when the dollar is so strong. But I think the dollar is going to go higher, and I think interest rates are, as well. You talked about bonds getting hurt. I think they're going to get hurt a lot more.

BENNETT: Jordan, how would you invest in an environment like this? What are you saying to your listeners?

GOODMAN: In the short term, I think interest rates are going to go higher this year. I think it's dangerous to have your money in traditional fixed-income vehicles. Bonds, bond funds, or what I call bond surrogates, like utilities, real estate investment trusts, Master Limited Partnerships, because as interest rates rise, those are going to fall. They've already fallen sharply since the election, and I think they'll fall further. What I'm doing with my money are called Commercial Real Estate Income Funds. That's a way of earning 8 percent and not having any market fluctuation whatsoever. No commissions or fees of any kind, you can get monthly checks, and if you like you can have it reinvested as well. And that's because real estate is going to do quite well here. There's a website where people can find out about that, which is commercialrealestateincomefunds.com. What happens is they're lending money to high-quality commercial projects who use it to renovate their projects over the next year or so, and then when the projects are sold, fund shareholders actually get a piece of the property and they get a quarterly profit share, as well. If you're in the fixed-income area, I would avoid things like bonds, utilities, REITs and do something like this where you get a higher yield with no market fluctuation.

BENNETT: But there's always risks. The risk to that would be that, whatever our hopes that Trump will be bringing businesses back to the U.S., the commercial real estate wouldn't get leased. Correct?

GOODMAN: Well, this is not about leasing. You're not getting rental income. You're getting the interest from the builder/developers who are improving the properties. By the time they're leased, it's already been sold. I'll give you an example of a recent project. The guy had a big house in a university town, I think it was Boulder, and he was renting it to two students. He got a loan from the fund and he renovated the same house over a year to make it into four apartments, so four bathrooms, four kitchens, four doors. A year later, the value of the property had increased dramatically because the revenue had doubled, and he sold the property at a profit, and gave part of that profit to the fund. It's not about revenue. He was paying interest as the property was being renovated, and when it was completed he sold the property for a profit because the cash flow had doubled. That's an example.

BENNETT: What about geographically? There's a potential alliance between Russia and China, and Putin's very smart. He's not waiting to see what will happen with Trump. Is Russia a possibility, or India or Asia?

GOODMAN: I think India could do well, but China is just a massive bubble. I was over there recently and the amount of overbuilding is staggering. Not only residential apartments but factories and shopping malls and office buildings. It's outrageous. They were building not for people to occupy it, but to keep the workers working. So I think they're going to keep slowing down, and all that was done with debt. The amount of debt in China is way more than we have. I think in 2006 China had $3 trillion in debt and now they have $36 trillion in debt. Way more than we have, which is $20 trillion or so. I'm actually short China. There are some ETFs that go short China, so I would not be a Chinese investor. India, on the other hand, I think has a more capitalist view. I would not go into Russia, because I think it's just totally a rigged game there. I think the energy sector is going to do better, it already has with oil prices stabilized in the mid-$50s now. Domestic oil companies like EOG or companies like that would do well. And the other area I like would be bio-tech. I think the new guy he's going to bring at the FDA is going to approve drugs a lot faster and get them on the market. You could do the individual companies like Celgene, Biogen, or you could do the Exchange Traded Fund, the ETF, which is IBB, which is like 20 of the big bio-techs. I think that's an area that's going to do well going forward.

BENNETT: But of course short term, if we have some sort of market correction as thinks get fixed here, do you see this as a "buy now" or do it later?

GOODMAN: I'm never a market timer. Buy now

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/25/2017 -- BENNETT: Michael Auslin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World's Most Dynamic Region. In this book, he argues that Asia's future is increasingly uncertain because it is a fractured region threatened by stagnation and instability. Michael, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

AUSLIN: Thank you.

BENNETT: Your new book argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the 21st century will not be Asia's century. In fact the 21st century could witness an Asian implosion. Trump argued throughout the campaign that China was stealing America's jobs and getting rich at our expense. Do you think he's mistaken?

AUSLIN: Well, I think that the danger is that we have gotten ourselves into a mindset where China is a 12-foot tall monster that can do no wrong when the reality is that the golden era of China's growth, as for almost all of Asia, is over. They've had an incredible run for a long time, but what they didn't do was resolve many of the fundamental structural problems in their economies, and so we're seeing a slowdown throughout the region. The bigger danger is that we're going to have to worry about a weak Asia and a weak China than we will about a strong one.

BENNETT: Interesting. Why do you think that?

AUSLIN: Again, one of the big problems has been the breakneck pace of economic growth really papered over so many of the deeper reforms that had to be undertaken. For example, financial strength. A lot of the financial systems throughout Asia are very weak; a massive debt problem. Problems in things we take for granted like innovation and research and development, that Asia's actually not very good at. There are labor problems all around the region, including China because of its One Child policy. And the state in many of these countries is just too involved, and that makes it too difficult for entrepreneurship and innovation and the like to take place.

BENNETT: So you think Trump is wrong, that they won't be stealing American jobs?

AUSLIN: Well, what they're going to steal is what they've been stealing all along, which is our trade secrets and our intellectual policy and the like. A lot of our jobs have already gone. The jobs have been leaching away from America for decades, and we've really already hollowed out our industries. Some of the things that Trump is against, for example the Trans-Pacific Partnership, really was designed to get us access to markets that had still a lot of barriers, like Japan, against American goods. It wasn't the case that TPP was going to see Japan steal American jobs. Those jobs left a long time ago.

BENNETT: Back in the 80s, Americans thought that Japan was taking over all of America, remember that? Since then, they've experienced almost three decades of stagnation thanks to some really poor management of their economy, some of which are the same things you just mentioned about China, and yet despite having failed to engineer growth through perma-low interest rates, they're still sticking with Keynesian central banking, as Prime Minister Abe began a campaign of inflating the yen to juice the Nikkei. Are you predicting rough seas ahead for Japan, and how would you relate this to China? Do you think China might go through its own form of correction but stay alive like Japan has managed to?

AUSLIN: That's a great question. There are a couple of big differences between Japan and China. First of all, Japan was a much wealthier nation when its slowdown hit, so that it was able to deal with it in better ways that didn't cause so much despair among the population. There were high standards of living and there were already social mechanisms in place and entitlements and the like. China doesn't have that, and China being still a developing nation that's fairly poor, it's going to be harder, in fact, for China to deal with its slowdown than it was for Japan. In Japan, it's been two and a half decades now, and they've really found a sort of modus vivendi, being able to deal with lower growth and yet maintain higher standards of living and the like, so I'm actually more bullish on Japan's ability to weather a continuing slowdown and an aging population.

BENNETT: You are predicting rough seas ahead for Japan, though. How are they going to survive this? They're in a similar situation to ours, with tremendous debt and a controlled or manipulated market. How are they going to survive this without going through some form of a major correction?

AUSLIN: Well, the big problem for Japan is literally survival, as you pointed out. It is the demographic decline that is going to really tax the government. It already is, but it's something where, being a wealthier nation, they're able to handle it. You know, Abe-nomics, which is the reform plan from the current Prime Minister, has already done everything it's going to do in terms of loosening up the economy, changing some of the rules on agriculture, and other things. We'll have to see if it really bites and improves competition and openness in Japan. Again, the bigger question is China. In Japan, you're able at least to have the accountability of a democratic government, the Japanese are able to change paths if they want and make their desires known. You don't have that in China, so China's reliance on cheap and easy money, which it has for a very long time, very arcane regulations and no transparency whatsoever. The world, I think, should brace for a much rougher ride from China going ahead than for any other Asian nation.

BENNETT: Let's look at it from a demographic point of view, populations. Countries like South Korea and Japan are facing steep demographic drops as the younger generation appears unusually uninterested in getting married and starting families. What's behind this cultural shift, and what does it mean for the economic future of those two countries versus China, of course, which has 1.3 billion people. Is that an advantage to China?

AUSLIN: First of all, these are choices, certainly in the case of Japan, that were made decades ago. Japan fell below replacement rate in its birth rates back in the 1970s, so they've had nearly half a century to figure out what to do with this, and the truth is, they haven't done anything. This is the central question facing the Japanese nation, is "What do you do?" Do you become a nation that depends more on robotics for production? Do you think about immigration? These are all questions that they're having to start struggling with. Same for South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, all the advanced economies. Again, the difference between them and China is that they're wealthy and so they're able to deal with the demands of the population. China, because of the One Child policy for forty years, is also facing a demographic slowdown, and will in fact face a demographic dip in coming years. They got rid of the more stringent elements of the One Child program last year, but that's not enough. They're already going to have this demographic easing. So, the problem there is that older people without family or kinship networks are going to be demanding support from the government and that is something the Chinese government has never provided before. Really, the country to watch in terms of how to deal with this stability and politics and the like is China.

BENNETT: So China has the opposite problem, overpopulation, and the One Child policy has caused something of a retail boon as parents spend on their child and themselves. That must have actually helped the economy.

AUSLIN: I think in the short run that's worked, but in the long run it's going to mean more problems for a country that, again, has not attained middle-income status evenly throughout the country. In fact, one of the problems facing the Chinese economy and Chinese businesses today is that they have a growing labor shortage. They have basically absorbed all of the available labor, especially all of the skilled labor, and so wage prices have gone up dramatically. Again, at the micro level, in the short term, that's good for the worker and therefore the consumer, but in the long run it's bad for Chinese businesses because it makes their goods less competitive around the world. So you see other nations trying to step into that gap, like Vietnam and Malaysia and others, and offer quality lower-priced goods because they have lower wage levels.

BENNETT: Which is why Malaysia and Vietnam are doing so well.

AUSLIN: It's one reason, yeah. I mean, they all need reform. I think one of the themes of the book is that there is a failure of economic reform throughout the region in both democracies and autocracies. Vietnam, again, is a country that we've looked at as maybe the next great growth model, but it has major problems. It flirts with inflation up and down and still has a centralized economy with a big state-owned sector. And India, a free-wheeling democracy, still has in many parts a quasi-socialist economic system and an enormous labor problem, not because they have too little of it, but in essence too much. So wages are depressed and there is just not the intensified focus on innovation in India as you would have in other companies because you have so much cheap labor.

BENNETT: Let's move on to geopolitical issues. I think the biggest geopolitical issue in Asia, at least for many Americans, is the South China Sea, specifically the satellite islands China has built as a means to expand their territorial waters. China recently stole an underwater drone from the U.S. Navy from these waters. What do you think China's intent was, and how do you see these islands playing into their larger long-term strategy?

AUSLIN: That's a very good question. It's actually flummoxed American officials for a while, because they have tried to figure out why China is acting more assertive and more belligerent the wealthier it has become. Our assumption and hope was that as it became wealthier, it would in fact moderate its behavior and become more willing to cooperate and more willing to deal with international law and the like. And unfortunately, just the opposite has happened. These islands you mentioned are very significant, and what they've done is actually extended Chinese territory into the South China Sea, and China claims these islands now as sovereign pieces of territory: they have civilians on it and schools and post offices and the like. So, they're really claiming that these are now parts of China's national territory. And they are militarizing them, turning them into usable bases, which allows them to operate at much greater range throughout the South China Sea and the rest of Asia. What that does is it intimidates other nations in the region. It makes them more worried about their own security, their own territories, and really China's intent, as far as we can tell, is to get these nations to essentially accede to China's views on territorial disputes and rules such as freedom of navigation. This is going to be a major test for the Trump administration. This is not something that the Obama administration ever satisfactorily solved.

BENNETT: I don't think they had a lot of respect for Obama. You can tell that by how they treated him when he went for meetings, or even when he took pictures. He was always with the wives.

AUSLIN: I think that's right. They knew that he was hesitant to challenge them, as other presidents have been. They've all been worried about harming the economic relationship. They're very worried about President Trump, you know, he talked very harshly about China during the campaign and then of course the policy of taking the Taiwan call after the election, and then talking about upending the One China policy. I would say for the first time since normalization of relations, which is over forty years ago, that the Chinese are actually really worried. They're worried that their's going to be an American president who either will stand up strongly to them, or maybe over-react. So this is a time, I think, when you can be concerned about how the Trump administration will put together its China policy, but we are overdue for a re-evaluation of it.

BENNETT: Let's talk about Trump's noisy start in that regard, when he had that phone call with the President of Taiwan, which no American leader has done since Nixon created the One China policy. What are you thoughts on that? Was this smart or ill-considered?

AUSLIN: Let me start by saying that it is undoubtedly true that we should be supporting Taiwan more. It is a vibrant democracy. It is a Chinese democracy, so anyone that argues that the Chinese can't have democracy only needs to go to Taiwan. My concerns about the call were that it was so abrupt, and then President Trump sort of doubled down during the period between the election and the inauguration. And he hasn't been able to have a full policy review. It's one thing to change your policy when you've had the input of the entire government, when you've walked through all the scenarios and you've really decided carefully what you're going to do. I do think we need to be stronger vis-a-vis China, but when you're saying it more out of an understanding of what you feel is wrong, but you haven't had that full review, then it's harder, I think, to calibrate your position and also figure out how you're going to respond to things that the Chinese do. They have been slowly ramping up the pressure on U.S. allies, and certainly warning very strongly against going down this path.

BENNETT: No conversation about Asia in the 21st century is complete without talking about North Korea. Kim Jong Un appears to be even more bellicose than his father, and he's now claiming to be close to having nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of striking the U.S. How seriously should we take him, and longer-term do you foresee an eventual re-unification with South Korea? How much longer do you think the Hermit Kingdom can hang on?

AUSLIN: Well, I think we have to start by acknowledging the failures of previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, that have put us into a position where, quite honestly, there are no good answers for dealing with North Korea. We should be very worried about them because of the nature of this regime, the things that it has done, its track record, and the fact that, as you say, it is becoming a nuclear and ballistic missile capable power. The one thing the North Korean regime wants above all is to survive, so there is from that perspective, I think, an element of rationality. What they have figured out, though, is that everyone is so worried about what they might do that they can get away with almost anything so far, whether it is sinking a South Korean ship or kidnapping Japanese citizens, or launching cyber attacks, let alone all the illicit activities they undertake. So, they've figured out that they have us in a box. This is a major challenge for the Trump administration, and I think to some degree we have to give them a little bit of slack, because they're inheriting what is just simply an American failure. The Obama administration did nothing about North Korea for eight years, except for one ill-conceived agreement that was broken by the North Koreans right away. That doesn't excuse the Trump administration from trying to figure out how to really target this regime with serious sanctions that effect the family, how do you work even more closely with our allies, and basically, decide how far you want to go in punishing North Korea if it undertakes any other type of provocation and aggression. Otherwise it's going to keep doing it and keeping us all on tenterhooks.

BENNETT: Do you see them ever re-unifying with their brethren in South Korea?

AUSLIN: That is a very, very difficult situation. First of all, a lot of young South Koreans don't want reunification. It's simply too expensive, they don't feel the connection to North Korea that their elders do. There's actually less support in South Korea for reunification than there was ten years ago.

BENNETT: Michael, thank you for being on the show.

AUSLIN: Thank you.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/27/2016 -- There has been a recent outcry against so-called "fake news," and rightly so, given the impact that slickly packaged clickbait fictions had on the discourse regarding the recent election. Outrageous fabrications, such as Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza joint, or supposed Democratic intentions to impose Islamic Sharia law in Florida, or thousands of Trump supporters repeatedly chanting "We hate Muslims" at a Manhattan rally—these are the sorts of stories, masterfully manipulated to seem legitimate and engineered to go viral and spread through the Internet, that are receiving the majority of the outcry. Even Facebook is vowing to "do something" about fake news, if that's even possible.

These obvious (to many of us) fakes aren't the whole story, though. Looking at the history of reporting, we see a landscape littered with exaggerations, lies, and setups: the recent Rolling Stone coverage of a gang-rape hoax at UVA; Janet Cooke's imaginary 8 year old heroin addict; the 1993 Dateline episode where a truck was rigged to explode when the presumed safety flaw (fuel leaking from the tank) didn't provide the hoped-for dramatic effect. Historically, there is the case of Walter Duranty, whose reporting in the New York Times helped Stalin's Russia conceal the Holodomor, the intentional famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933, from the United States and the world. Duranty's work even received a Pulitzer which has never been withdrawn.

Beyond these specific examples, the glaring fakes and the willful fabrications, there is an even deeper problem that we as citizens and investors must contend with: a systemic and systematic degradation of the quality of the news we receive, a willing collaboration between mainstream media and government institutions that provides all the "good news" that can be manufactured. Cable news parrots the relentlessly upbeat message of recovery and growth being spouted by the Fed and the White House, and we are left without facts, having to dig through questionable reports to find the real numbers.

Let's look at that supposed recovery and growth. The Gallup organization was recently asked by the U.S. Council on Competitiveness to perform a comprehensive study on growth and productivity. Among their findings was this: since 2007, United States GDP has grown by a total of one percent. One. Percent. In nearly nine years. Their conclusion? "The Great Recession may be over, but America is dangerously running on empty." The only real way to fill America's tank is to increase growth and reduce inflation in America's three biggest costs (healthcare, housing, and education), but we simply won't have the will to do this as long as the government promotes and the media repeat the "conventional wisdom" that we've recovered, and growth is going just great, thanks!

It's not only the media that lie to us, though. We lie to ourselves. The post-election run up in stock prices and bond yields is an example. The election of Donald Trump resolved a long, ugly period of political uncertainty, and in relief the markets have surged, but corporate earnings have not. The S&P 500 is trading at 27.9 times the corporate earnings of the last ten years, a level last seen just before the market crash of 1929. Energy companies have exorbitant p/e ratios, their stocks priced for $115 oil rather than the actual $55. The financial sector is full of problematic stocks that are likely to get a beatdown during earnings reporting season. Add to that the fact that many investors are delaying profit-taking for what they perceive to be tax reasons who will be stuck in the middle of the rush to sell, January 2017 seems set to be a bloodbath, the worst we've seen since last January's selloff. And that doesn't even take into account the effects of the Fed's interest rate hike, which happened just before a quad witching day when stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures expired on the same day last Friday.

The Bank for International Settlements, essentially the central banker to the central banks, released a quarterly report this month where they write that the economy is due for a "paradigm shift." In the report, they say that the markets seem to think that everything is going to be fine and they're viewing the transition over to Trump with complete assurance but ignoring the $20 trillion in debt that we're sitting on and the poor economic numbers we've had for the last 8 years. It's not an economic nirvana out there. We're just borrowing growth from our future. We as investors need to heed this warning, pay attention to the warning signs.

Are we living in a fake news, post-truth world, a post-reality economy? When we can't agree on basic facts or even that there are such things as facts, you have to ask yourself 'How do we talk to each other?' My answer is as it so often is: we must dig for the facts ourselves, be on the offensive against passively receiving news that could truly impact our lives and well-being from our social media feeds, the mainstream media, and even the government and our elected officials. This is not only essential to protect ourselves, but is a basic act of patriotism, of caring for our neighbors and our society.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/20/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: According to global entrepreneur and political author Dick Sim, we need fewer laws, less regulation and stronger cultural norms. Sim, who has spent the last three decades traveling the world overseeing global industrial operations as CEO and chairman of two New York Stock Exchange traded public companies, is addressing all of this and more in his new book Freedom To Argue: We the People Versus They the Government. Sims has intimate knowledge of global capitalism, cultures and the role that technology plays in transforming the society. I think Dick is the perfect person to discuss with us this coming clash that we're going to have between the U.S., the European Union, the Middle East and Africa and how these disparities are fueling geopolitical changes. And this is where I want to start. Dick, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

DICK SIM: My pleasure, Dawn.

BENNETT: Dick, I believe the reality today is America's fighting for its life. Most Americans don't seem to understand the gravity of the challenges we're facing. In fact, it seems to us the U.S. is fighting for its existence on three fronts: economic, cultural and physical. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on each one of those. For example, on the economic front. My personal goal, and I think yours is the same, is the government's got to get out of the way. But where would you go with that?

SIM: Well, I think the government is a part of the problem, particularly for certain segments of our society. I mean, the United States economy for up to 50 years, 1950-2000, GDP grew, welfare state grew, everyone was sort of dumb and happy. But lately, the last decade or so, economic growth has been weak and there's large segments of our society, the bulk of them the working people, who are really suffering. We still have a bunch of people that do really well: the big business people, the big politicians, the think tanks, those people that are surrounded and interact with them they are doing very well. So, we have a sort of fragmented society and that's part of what we saw with the Trump force. So we're sinking the bottom of our society, economically, but that's connected to cultural issues, it's also linked, I think, culturally. And then I think we're facing issues in the world and some of our political elites have been very enamored over the last decade or so with the idea of global government but they should put that in their back pocket right now. There is no global consensus as to how we should behave. Other countries are pursuing their what I would call 'naked self-interest'. And certain parts of the world that are really in deep trouble – I would say Africa is a continent that is really in bad shape: very, very poor, still a very growing population, the governments are generally corrupt and don't work, and none of us want to talk about it and one reason we don't want to talk about this is political correctness and that's because a lot of these countries were colonies back in the 40s and 50s and if we talk about it then you get back to being called a racist, a bigot. So we have a whole continent that's failing and because it's failing the people want to get out. I don't blame them but if we let all these people arrive in Europe and in the U.S., which they're increasingly doing, it's a disaster, I think, for them and for us.

BENNETT: But what about this mass exodus out of the Middle East, for example? I understand both sides of the argument. You don't want to drown your country with refugees who don't fit in and don't contribute but you also don't want to sit there as thousands of migrants drown while trying to escape oppression by fleeing across the Mediterranean. Is there any historical precedent that might offer some clues as to how to handle this moral quandary we're in?

SIM: It is a moral quandary, but Australia has been dealing with the same issue in terms of people trying to come across from Indonesia in boats and basically they solved it by picking up the boats and taking them back to camps there, not letting them come to Australia. That's what they've done. And right now if you look at Italy, which is a country that I know very, very well and I've spent a lot of time there. What happens there is people smuggle people in big rubber boats that take them out of the Mediterranean towards Italy and abandon them and then other boats pick them up and bring them to Italy. What we need to do is be able to pick them up and take them back to Africa. Of course, unfortunately Libya right now is an unstable environment with its issues there, but bringing them all across doesn't make any sense. And if people want a moral justification for doing this, and I'm all focused on the United States, then we need to say 'Well, don't we have an obligation to help all these people around the world?' Yes, we do. And we should help them over there. But the biggest contribution America makes to the world today is, if you look at practically all the new technology that's been industrialized since the Second World War that came out of the U.S., it has immense implications in terms of the wealth of the United States but also throughout the world in terms of relieving global poverty and suffering. So it's very important that the U.S. continue to perform this vibrant, high added value, technical, innovative work. We need immigration policies that support that, and it's very important we continue to do that. So that's our moral justification for saying 'We need to be selective about who we bring over here.' We can't help everyone and we need to keep doing what we do because the world needs what the U.S. does in terms of inventing new technology in agriculture, computers, software, medical technology. You can go across the board in terms of these. And we have a particular way our society is organized structurally but also culturally that does that. We don't often talk about that and we don't teach it to our children. It's a very precious reality that we need to care more about and protect more.

BENNETT: In regards to the core values that made America strong or Europe strong, I think that many are worried about the clash of values, about when migrants come over will there be a real assimilation into Europe or even America or would that almost be impossible because of differences in cultural values. I just wonder if this continued migrant crisis is going to impact the politics and the economy in America, for example?

SIM: Yes, I think that you have a double-barreled issue. You have immense amount of poor people who want to get out and come and then the second part of that is many of them are Muslim and we struggle mightily with that. If the U.S. wants to understand that phenomenon they need to look at Europe because Europe has been dealing with significant Muslim immigration for 50 years. Right now, in the United States the concern understandably is terrorists coming in and that type of thing but that's really not the big issue. The big issue is the evidence in Europe is that Muslims—not all Muslims but a lot of those who come to Europe—they do not assimilate, they set up communities that are self-segregated and they continue to live by the values of conservative Islam. And these values, in terms of the treatment of women, gays—you know, you've got sexual crimes honor killings, female genital mutilation, a bunch of stuff that are unacceptable in the west but they continue in Europe. We have these issues on a much smaller scale in the United States. People might be surprised to know that the U.S. just issued a report a number of years ago. They looked at honor killings. There is likely there's something like 25 to 27 honor killings in the United States every year but it's below the radar. We don't talk about it. It's not reported. But in Europe it's a big issue right now and it's been growing and growing and growing. And right now in Europe in every country there's a political party that's organized around being anti-Muslim. And they're trying to deal with it. That's late in the day but they're trying to deal with it. Right now they are trying to confront it and it's one of the things that is tearing Europe apart and of the other things tearing Europe apart is the economic issues. The cultural issues are tearing Europe apart. The long-term issue is the lack of assimilation and the United States should learn from Europe. It's not a question of—we believe so much in freedom of religion that it's very, very difficult for Americans to say 'Well, I wish we can discriminate against Islam.' The way to think about Islam is not as a religion, but as a way of organizing a complete society. If you look specifically Islamic countries, if you go to pure Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia does not allow any exhibits of any other religion except Islam so there's no Christian churches, there's no temples or anything like that, and the role of women, the way sharia law controls everything, the life of the family is all very defined. And that's what these people are taught to believe, and when these people come to the United States or to Europe you can't expect them to give up everything they've been taught. You just can't expect this. It's kind of like saying, 'Okay, if you're a very devout Christian and you're going to emigrate to China you have to stop being a Christian to do that.' You can't ask people to do that. People need to think about it from these practical terms. As I said, the issues are very real in Europe and they've been growing over the last 50 years and they get worse and worse and Europe is now starting to confront it. The United States is still a very small Muslim population but we have some of the same issues but they're under the radar. The newspapers don't report about them and we don't talk about them but we do need to talk about them but it's very difficult to talk about them because of the political correctness. You know, if you talk the way I'm talking right now, people start calling you names so it's hard even to have the right discussions about these things respectfully without being derailed because of political correctness.

BENNETT: I know you're from Britain, as you stated, but I recently read a story about London University students – this is all part of this – that demanded white lecturers be banned from campus and then called for a ban on major British newspapers on campus. I mean, does the millennial generation actually believe in the freedom to argue? Have we lost sight of the importance of debate and the marketplace of ideas in Europe and in America?

SIM: A certain percentage of young people at universities and colleges today, and I don't think there's a real good data in this but I put it like 25 percent of them are into this microaggression, diversity, social justice movement. Now no one's opposed to social justice but these people are too fragile for this world.

BENNETT: I agree.

SIM: And you wonder where they come from. They always say they come out of an environment in the schools today where they try to manage the environment in an excessive way and these kids grow up with ideas that America is unjust because they're taught that in school. And because they feel the America is unjust they feel their mission in life is to fix these issues. America is the most just society in the world. It's not perfect, it never will be perfect, but it's a lot better than it was 40-50 years ago. By any comparison, if you look around the world today, the United States is by far the best country in terms of the economy, standard of living and justice. To know that you have to live outside the United States and I've spent half my life living outside the United States. I've controlled businesses all over the world, I've had employees of all races and religions, and if you traveled around the world a lot you know the United States is the best place in the world. For the last 20, 30, 40 years we've had people, particularly in our universities and colleges teaching our kids the western civilization is based upon injustice and consequently there's something really bad about this society. And it's just the message that is, I think, out of context. Obviously there's all these things that are not quite right.

BENNETT: Many Americans today almost feel like we're back in the 1960s. I mean, they're angry with the government. Certainly, the government for the last 8 years here in the U.S. has interfered more with our lives, but they also blame it for not providing them with happier, prosperous life, much more what we had in the 70s and 80s and 90s. As an entrepreneur who was able to create your own happiness, what do you blame this changing cultural trend on? Or is it just the administration that we had?

DICK SIM: Well, it's a complicated mix of things and it's no one thing, but obviously the welfare state that we ushered in the 60s and has grown since then. It does a lot of good but also has certain destructive aspects that culturally lead to families being destroyed particularly at the lower end of our society. That's immense implications for our children. If you look at it from a pure business point of view, over the last 10 years the big business, global business continued to do very well. The small business in this country, which is the heart of our economy, has been really hammered. There was a period of years there where there were more small businesses going out of business than being created, which is very unusual for this country. So the small business component, which tends to be hidden in the society and that's created so many jobs, has really suffered over the last 8 years and that's part of the reason there is a shortage of the jobs and it's part of the reason there's shortage of growth. And again, part of that comes back to the government. Right now they take nearly 40 percent of the GDP and as they're taking 40 percent of the GDP that's less that can be used to go and invest and create jobs. So we're out of balance, I think, in terms of too big government, too expensive government, but we also have these cultural issues that have gone back over the last 40-50 years and I blame my generation for sex, drugs and rock & roll solution for happiness. It hasn't worked too well.

BENNETT: That was my generation too. Finally, I do have a question about politics here in the United States, about Donald Trump. As everybody knows, he's set to take over in January and one hope is that he'll pass major tax reform which will hopefully clean up a tax code that hasn't been significantly reformed since Reagan's tax cut packages in 1981. And Hillary, by the way, you know that she wanted to go where the money is and levy new taxes on the richest. You've written about how that makes no sense. If you were advising Trump right now, what would you suggest?

SIM: I think what he wants to do seems to be the right thing, which is to cut taxes, put more money in the pocket of people and the people that need it the most are the middle class. Hopefully he'll be able to do that. The thing that I talk about in the book is that Bernie and Hillary are competing with each other to vilify and say 'Let's tax the rich more.' Yeah, you can tax the rich more but it's not going to bring you a lot more money and the evidence for that is very clear. If you go back to 1950, the marginal tax rate in this country was 92 percent. Right now it's 39.7 percent so it's more than double. It stayed up in the 90s in the 50s and the 60s and then it dropped down eventually to about 70 percent. So we appeared to have 20 years with very, very high tax rates. And the amount of money the government brings in every year seems very steady – somewhere between 60 to 90 percent of GDP. And it's kind of a curious thing but if you raise the taxes on the very rich you bring a little more money but it doesn't solve our problems in terms of national debt. The fact we're running a big deficit can be a little bit of a contribution, but it's not the panacea that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton presented to be. So what Trump wants to do in terms of cutting taxes to help small business is particularly very important. That will create jobs, cut taxes to put a little bit of money in the pockets of the middle class, and I think what Paul Ryan wants to do – he's got a program ready, it's called 'A Better Way'. It's not very well-defined but I think the right kind of welfare reform—that's difficult to assume, but the right kind of welfare reform can be very helpful in terms of encouraging people to get jobs and have jobs and create lives around these jobs. There's a number of things they're encouraging and I think that Trump is on the right track and I think that Hillary and Bernie were just kind of mistaken.

BENNETT: Do you think that Europe is excited that Trump's becoming president?

SIM: Europe also gets off-balance, I think. They worry about Trump because they don't know. In fairness, we really don't know yet but everything is very positive. And I think Trump's got two big contributions to make: one is economically; equally important is the cultural thing. He's breaking the taboos of political correctness in terms of freedom of speech and ability just to talk to each other. Clearly, Trump is making immense changes on the cultural level and that is probably as important as any economic policy he puts into place.

BENNETT: Dick, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. Everybody, you need to get his book Freedom to Argue: We the People Versus They the Government. Thanks, Dick.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/20/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: John Rubino publishes the financial news site dollarcollapse.com, and is the author of five books with the most recent in 2014 titled The Money Bubble. It's a great book, you need to get it. Recently though, John published two articles that I took a tremendous amount of interest in. The first one is titled 'Another Election Year, Another Bunch of Fake Numbers' and the second one is titled 'Why We're Ungovernable'. Both are the perfect place to begin. John, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

JOHN RUBINO: Hey, Dawn, good to talk to you again.

BENNETT: I love this article, 'Why We're Ungovernable'. Would you mind just touching a little bit on that so we start there with our listeners?

RUBINO: Sure. You know, the point of that series is that when you borrow too much money, if you're a country or an individual or a family, it kind of plays out the same way. Your life becomes unmanageable. And for a country, what that means is that the old ways of buying votes for constituencies stop working because you've used up all the money that you have to play with so you can't provide good jobs for people and elections become harder and harder to run, and that's what we're seeing around the world right now, whereas what used to be slam dunk election. Like Brexit – Brexit wasn't supposed to pass in Great Britain; they weren't supposed to leave the European Union. And yet they did, even though the polls right up until the end said that they would stay. And then Donald Trump wasn't supposed to win here. It's like that around the world, and the reason is that people no longer trust the big systems to work for their benefit. Workers in the U.S., for instance, see all these free trade deals being passed and at the same time they see their factory jobs being moved to Mexico or China. So free trade is not a good deal for them. They see interest rates being cut in an ostensible attempt to make the economy grow faster but what that really does is it evaporates the interest income from your bank account. You know, if you're a regular person without a ton of savings probably most of your money is in a bank account, which means you can't save for the future anymore, you can't put your money to work because it doesn't earn you anything. So your life gets harder and harder and you then are open to voting for people who point that out. Donald Trump stood up there and said 'The systems don't work for you anymore. It's rigged, and I'm going to fix that.' And he said a lot of crazy things after that but people just heard the first part so they voted for him. And that's the world we're moving into now where these big systems don't work and every election is this major cultural upheaval, so we're headed that way fast and it's only going to get worse. There's a long series of elections scheduled for 2017, possibly the biggest of which might install an anti-Euro, anti-EU administration in France and also possibly in Italy. So, yeah, turmoil as far as the eye can see which will feed back into the financial side of life and cause financial problems which in turn will cause political problems. We've got a system that's spinning out of control at this point.

BENNETT: Speaking about Italy, last week Italy voted in the latest Brexit-style revolt to throw out their EU-aligned government and its plans for consolidating power. The Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has since resigned. Since then we've seen the euro falling against the dollar although so far it seems like the massive crash forecasters predicted hasn't arrived. Were they wrong or is this really a significant financial event for us here in America?

RUBINO: Yeah, the spinning out of control of the Eurozone and the European Union is a very big deal for us because the European Union is the biggest economic entity in the world and if it sees more and more countries leave, which is what it's looking like now, you know, the next administration in Italy is probably going to be anti-EU and anti-euro and then the one in France may also be, if that starts to happen that means, for instance, to take just one possible outcome, trillions of dollars of supposedly high-grade bonds are denominated in euros but for instance, the Italian part of that bond market would have to go back to lira if they left the European Union and the Eurozone and then those bonds would be devalued really dramatically because they'd be paying in a weaker currency, so the big banks and hedge funds on those bonds would have to report massive losses and that would possibly screw up the financial system of Europe which in turn would screw up the U.S. and so on around the world. It's all interconnected and when a big entity runs into trouble all the other big entities also run into trouble. So, yeah, the trouble in the Eurozone in 2017 might be the main story in the global financial system.

BENNETT: And even here in America. Something we've been discussing on Financial Myth Busting is whether Trump, even if he brings all the right people aboard, can actually stop the market crash we've been forecasting for some time now. I mean, basic economics would suggest Trump doesn't have the power to stop an economic crisis so many years in the making. I feel like we're going through a great melt-up. It's just odd to watch on a day-to-day basis.

RUBINO: Okay, two parts to what you just said there. Yeah, Trump cannot fix what's coming because we've already borrowed the money that's going to cause us nightmares in the future. You know, we can't pay back our current debts so it doesn't really matter if we borrow more and try to grow the economy in the future, which is Trump's strategy. You can't fix excessive debt with more debt. So that crisis that's heading our way is baked in the cake already. What's happening now in the financial market is just a typical political honeymoon. We're seeing the potential benefits of new stuff and we love new things, the human mind is designed to focus on new stuff, so for a little while the new stuff is what we focus on but the negative side of future policies will only become apparent with time. Sometime in 2017 I think there's going to be a reckoning in which it becomes clear that the system is broken and nothing that Donald Trump or anybody else around the world is doing will fix it and then at that point you get this massive panic. That's what's out there, you know, everybody heading for the exits.

BENNETT: It does almost feel like they're setting Trump up, the marketers.

RUBINO: It could be, because he's going to be blamed for what happens and it's—you know, leaving aside whether you think he's a good person or not, what's coming is not his fault because we created the conditions for it to happen before he got here. But the person in charge, for better or worse, gets the credit and blame for what happens. It's completely possible that the system doesn't like Trump. You know, the deep state is not a fan of Donald Trump and he's a threat to it so they're engineering a blow-off stage of the bubble right now so that the minute he walks into the White House door and sets up shop they're going to pull it apart. That could happen.

BENNETT: Exactly. You talked about America's massive national debt, which is on pace to expand about $2 trillion this year alone. I think it's creating an economic crisis, as you stated, regardless of who's in Washington. But, of course, Trump will be blamed for it. How can something so structurally unsound continue as long as it has?

RUBINO: Well, that's the nature of financial bubbles. They always go longer than you think they should. The tech stock bubble in the 1990s went several years longer beyond historically high stock market valuations. The housing bubble in the U.S. – you know, home prices should never have gotten to the point where they got but they got there. And this is the biggest bubble of all time, what we're living through right now, because it's global. You know, it's the world's money that's being blown up. So it shouldn't be a surprise that we're going further into the twilight zone in part of this process than you would think based on just rational analysis. But bubbles always end the same way. The imbalances become untenable and they blow up. That will happen this time around. We can't say when exactly but we know that the dynamic of a bubble is pretty much etched in stone, you know, it expands and then it pops. So when it pops it's going to be unlike anything we've seen in our lifetime certainly because we've never had this kind of an imbalance. Therefore the bursting of this bubble will be bigger than anything that's come before.

BENNETT: It's going to be another shock to the system. You've written that in the aftermath of Trump's victory which, of course, was a major shock to the U.S. system and I think the world system. The elites who voters rebelled against never fully appreciated what happened, much like what happened with Brexit, where the elites are fighting Brexit in court. So instead, elites are pointing fingers confident this is merely a passing fad. But do you think this is only the beginning of the process?

RUBINO: Oh, absolutely. This is going to go on for quite a while because, as you said, the guys in charge don't really get why it's happening because to them this is a great world. You know, if you're a well-educated simple manipulator free trade is great for you because it means you can sell your stuff everywhere in the world. And if you're a factory owner or just a generally rich person open borders are great for you because it means cheap nannies and cheap factory labor. So for most of the people free trade and open border are not necessarily a great thing and they're willing to vote against you but you don't get that because all your friends are like you if you're part of the elite. You know, they all see the world rewarding them for their brilliance and it's hard to say that's a bad world when it's rewarding everything you do. So they don't get it and they won't get it until we have kind of a French Revolution type event where figuratively speaking we take the one percent out and decapitate them. Not physically, hopefully, but they just get kicked out of their cushy little spots in the global economy. And that started in the U.S. That did spook people, I've got to say. When Trump got elected you got the elites around the world thinking 'God, if that can happen, what can happen here? Could Beppe Grillo be the next prime minister of Italy or Marine Le Pen be running France by this time next year?' So they are spooked now but they still don't understand why because they don't see it firsthand.

BENNETT: Let's talk about somebody who I think doesn't understand – Janet Yellen. She recently testified that among other things she's likely to go forward with a rate hike this month, although we haven't seen it. Many are forecasting that it's going to be the pin that pops the bubble that the Fed's been inflating since the housing crash in 2007. She likely knew this risk which is why she postponed it until after the election. Again, this is back to my thought are they trying to set Trump up. Do you think she'll raise rates this month? And if she does, will that spark another recession? Is that going to pop the market bubble?

RUBINO: Well, everybody thinks Fed's going to raise rates. And maybe they are but you can't read anything coherent into what federal governors say or do. They don't know what they're doing now. Their models don't work anymore so they're bereft. You know, they're academics who've devoted their lives to a given model and the model doesn't work. So they're completely lost, and you get that from what they say. You know, they send all this talking heads out from the Fed to say things and what the Fed talking heads say is completely incoherent. They contradict each other and they don't make any sense in the first place. So whatever they do is not going to be part of a coherent plan with some reasonable outcome out there in the future. You know, they're just winging it. They've been trying to get through to the next election cycle in the U.S. for the last year. And now who knows what they're doing. I guess they're going to try to keep their jobs, probably. They'd like to be reappointed by Donald Trump but it's not clear they know how to do that. So don't expect anything from the Fed that makes sense. The system is way, way beyond making any kind of sense. We're just in the 'spinning out of control' part of this process and the people making decisions are going to make almost random decisions going forward because they just have no idea why what's happening is happening.

BENNETT: If we go into another recession or depression unlike we've ever seen in our lifetime or maybe even worse than the Great Depression, do you think that would inspire Trump to get rid of the Federal Reserve altogether?

RUBINO: Well, you know, trying to predict what Donald Trump is harder than predicting what the Fed is going to do because I don't think he came into this necessarily expecting to win. He's like the dog that catches a car that he was chasing—

BENNETT: Accidentally.

RUBINO: Yes. What do you with it after you catch it? So who knows what he'll do? It's anybody's guess and, again, it really doesn't matter. He could kick everybody out of the Fed or order them to raise rates or order them to lower rates or who knows. It doesn't really matter at this point because in the end we've already borrowed too much money and we have to pay the piper for our past mistakes. It's going to be very serious when it happens because—these imbalances, you know. Speaking of the Great Depression, the financial imbalances in this system are vastly bigger than they were in 1929. So if that's the relationship or in other words the imbalance gets to a certain point and then you have a commensurately bad experience after that then our experience of the next few years should be worse than the Great Depression. I really don't know. We've never been here before. This is bigger than anything we've ever seen so you can't say for sure how it's going to play out but you can say with a high degree of certainty that it will be chaotic and it will be scary and bad for most people. You just can't say exactly what will happen in any kind of detail.

BENNETT: John, I'm going to thank you for being on Financial Myth Busting. And to everybody out there, it's John Rubino. You need to go to dollarcollapse.com. It's a great column. And you put a new column out every week. Is that correct?

RUBINO: I put it out several times a week. I publish something new. You know, I'll sit down after we get off and do something else today probably. But it doesn't have a regular schedule so you can get on the mailing list by going to dollarcollapse.com and then they'll just come whenever I put them out.

BENNETT: Thanks, John.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/21/2016 -- I believe the election of Donald Trump illuminates a true paradigm shift in American politics, a shift away from a politics driven at base by issues to one driven by identity. In the rise of both Bernie Sanders' progressive populism and Donald Trump's nationalist populism, we are increasingly seeing voters choosing a new sort of Internet-era tribalism, banding together in communities so like-minded that they serve as echo chambers for shared hopes and fears alike.

This new tribalism is both enabled and exacerbated by technology and the Internet. Increasingly, there are no gatekeepers, and the barrier to entry into the larger discourse is so low as to be non-existent. As a result, smaller groups can have a larger voice, and our political institutions have become increasingly fractious coalitions of polarized factions. The Democratic Party tries to coalesce Bernie's socialist tribe, the mainline Clinton progressives, environmentalist groups, groups defined by gender and race, and more. The Republican tent holds mainline fiscal conservatives, the Tea Party, Trump's nationalist populists, religiously motivated groups, and several flavors of libertarians. It's messy, much more gray area than the clearly drawn lines we wish existed to make our choices easier.

There's a dark side to tribalism. It tends to produce an us versus them feeling: "If you're not with us, you're against us, and if you're against us, you're the enemy." We're seeing some of this in the week since the election, with not only group demonstrations against Donald Trump but a rise in individual verbal and physical attacks that seem motivated directly by the election's outcome.

That said, tribalism also has its advantages. With such commonality of purpose and belief, these tribes can be very passionate, enthusiastic and creative and compelling. They produce leaders like Trump, who are willing to takes risks, to challenge what has gone before, and to inspire others to do the same. And if that energy can be harnessed and not allowed to run amok, I think we actually have the potential to meet our challenging global future.

The election is over, but the challenges facing us are far from it. Eight years of sweeping economic fundamentals under a rug of bailouts and quantitative easing has left us in a fragile, volatile and dangerous position. Individuals, corporations and nations are overleveraged, with almost nothing left in the toolbox to deal with the next crisis. To stand up and deal with these problems we have to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. Our tribes, those groups that support our views and beliefs, that hold us up in times of uncertainty, that fight for us when we need fighting for—those tribes are social constructs. No single tribe can fix the problems facing our country, and no one can rely on their tribe to fix their individual problems.

As is so often the case, my advice in this time of change boils down to this: gather your own information, listen to many viewpoints, and in the end make your own decisions. Protect your wealth, protect your future. By doing so thoughtfully, you will of necessity be engaging beyond your own tribes, and your voice will have a chance to contribute to the conversation that must take place to lead our country into the future.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/17/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: Chris Whalen is a senior managing director and head of research at Kroll Bond Rating Agency, and over the past three decades he's worked for such financial firms as Bear Stearns, Prudential Security and Tangent Capital Partners. He's also a writer. His first book was published in 2010. Its title was Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream. And then in 2014 Financial Stability: Confidence and the Wealth of Nations. All this experience in the financial markets makes Chris the perfect guest on Financial Myth Busting this week as we game out what Trump's surprising victory means for the markets through the end of the year and how Trump's views on monetary policy will impact the larger global economy. Chris, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

CHRIS WHALEN: Hey. Hello, Dawn. I've got another book coming out in the new year, probably January, on Ford. It's called Ford Man. It's the study of the company and the family and their interesting interactions over the century.

BENNETT: Great. Well, with the election over and Trump somehow set to take over the White House come January, all eyes are now looking toward the Federal Reserve which notably avoided raising rates before the Election Day? I think the expectation is that Yellen now has no reasons not to raise rates come December. I don't think Trump was her choice so there's no personal reason and there's no political reason. Do you agree she's likely to raise rates and do you expect doing so this is going to elicit a difficult stock market or recession or any type of other economic fallout?

WHALEN: Well, I think first and foremost you've got to look at the bond market. What the bond market tells you that since June when yield for the 10-year really reached their lows, yields have almost doubled. So the 10-year is headed to about 2.2 percent. I think it's going to go higher. And that has to catch up with the market, Dawn, it's what it comes down to. Mortgage rates are going up and bondage and linkage are coming back.

BENNETT: A piece of data that I saw last week was that the bond market worldwide after Trump was elected lost close to 300 billion in value. Does that sound about right?

WHALEN: Well, sure. You know, yields are going up and prices are going down. We had almost 10 years of kind of managed stability care of the central banks and now I think that people are looking at Trump's spending program, cutting taxes, various other things and also I think the fact that politically the Fed cannot continue to monetize debt the way it was during quantitative easing when they were buying bonds and they basically got to hold them to maturity. I think that all of that is now putting the market back into the hands of investors who have been on the sidelines in terms of the direction of interest rates for years. I think you're right. They are going to have to raise rates just to catch up with where the market is.

BENNETT: I think we're in a pickle. President-elect Trump has to contend also with Obama's massive debt burden that has built up over the last 8 years. But he has to do it at a time when we are at this epic point of accommodative monetary policy. There's just no room for him to continue that, I believe. We talked about unlimited amounts of Treasuries bough in the past by our Federal Reserve which at the same time has suppressed the impact of Obama's federal debt balance. What's going to happen? What do you honestly think is going to happen when rates go up?

WHALEN: Well, you know, the equity markets for the past few years have been substituting debt for equity and I think you're going to see a lot of big corporate issuers slowly let that debt run off and they're going to have to issue more stock. Now, the markets are hungry for stock. You haven't had much in the way of quality issuance going back to the crisis. However, it's going to put pressure on stock prices simply because IBM and many, many other big industrial companies—even companies like Apple, for example—were out buying back shares and issuing debt. That's going to reverse itself. And I don't see that as a catastrophe. A number of analysts are predicting the end of the world. I'm not an 'end of the world' kind of guy. I think we need conservative values and practical solutions for investors, right? How do we survive today? So I think you've got to just be cognizant of the fact that bond yields are going to go up, The pricing on your portfolio may suffer as a result but hopefully you can sit with it, and at the same time I think you're going to see a lot of companies desperately trying to rebalance their balance sheets in terms of the debt/equity mix. It got very lopsided over the last few years.

BENNETT: American investors have a very short-term point of view about many things. So when you say 'sit with it,' if Trump does this correctly it's not going to take just 30 days or 60 days or the first quarter of 2017.

WHALEN: Oh, no.

BENNETT: So let's be realistic to our listeners. I think it's going to be more like a year or two. Or more.

WHALEN: Look, I'm a credit guy, Dawn. So when I buy a bond or when I look at a bond I think 'Do I like the credit? Would I be willing to hold it to maturity?' Now, the good news is I think, for a lot of investors who've been punished by the central banks over the last few years, in terms of artificially low yields, they're going to have an opportunity to start getting more carry in their portfolios, more income. And that's great. I also think that a lot of equity issuers are the same way. They're going to have to offer investors more. You know, you pointed it out perfectly. There isn't a lot of room for the federal government to expand spending. They can cut taxes and all the rest of the things that Trump has said. Can you get higher growth? Yeah, on the margins. But really the big constraint on growth in the United States is that the population has grown at half to 1 percent versus 2 percent after World War II. You know, we have a relatively slow growing economy and you see that all over the world. You see that in Europe, you see that in China. So the real constraint on growth is not taxes or spending. Public sector spending doesn't help a lot. We know that. But it's really the fact that you don't have huge amounts of growth in population which is what really drives wealth. If you look at it over the long term, GDP and population growth – those are the two main factors behind real wealth creation after inflation.

BENNETT: The Congressional budget office came out with a forecast and I'm wondering if you think this is accurate. We're talking about rising interest rates, increasing yields, and what they said was that the outlays for the interest payments on public debt alone right now could rise over 300 billion over the next 8 years which would be more than a 50 percent increase in the current budget deficit. I'm wondering how can Trump handle that. How can our economy handle that? Is there a policy out there that can accommodate that?

WHALEN: Well, sad to say I think we already know the answer to that question which is that if the U.S. Treasury gets into trouble in terms of being able to issue new debt and fund the deficits then the central bank will buy it. We already crossed that Rubicon and I think politically that's going to be very difficult because Republicans in Congress don't like it. They're adamantly opposed to that. But you're right. We had a free ride since 2008. The central banks have taken the politicians off the hook and you've seen a huge expansion in debt, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and in Asia. It's been a party. The low rates were supposed to help to manage the existing problem and instead most of the governments in Europe, for example, doubled down and they borrowed more to maintain current consumption levels. So I think there's a global problem here and what we've seen is that the central bankers have been willing to monetize that debt and essentially take it out of the market and punish savers at the same time by driving rates down. So I think that is your solution, Dawn, and I think they'll do it again.

BENNETT: With headwinds already baked in to the federal budget from ballooning debt, which we talked about, and entitlement spending, how is Trump actually going to deliver on some of his promises like tax cuts and infrastructure projects? I know you're also forecasting some kind of major tax and spending reform package. What's your feeling on that?

WHALEN: I think in the near term the easy stuff, as we wrote last week, is going to be regulatory reform. I think you could see some changes specific to the mortgage industry and the banking industry. If Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee taxes the Affordable Care Act, those are more difficult equations. You know, it's going to take a lot more time and a lot more negotiation with members of both parties on the Hill before you can get those things done. Lots of heavy lifting.

BENNETT: Do you think that he's going to be able to herd the Hill? Trump isn't a politician and people either like him or they loathe him. There's no in-between. Do you think he has that ability to bring everybody together?

WHALEN: I think Donald Trump is very astute. I mean, if you look at the way he managed the campaign and the way he managed the media even though 90 percent of them were against him. That's how he won. You know, I think he understands the modern media world very well and if he can continue to use that sounding board as kind of a counterpoint to the discussions in Washington I think he'll have some success. But let's face it. Washington is a dysfunctional city. And as we wrote last week, in the perfect world, sure, you'd get all these things done in the first six months. Generally, in Washington, Congress can only handle one major piece of legislation a year, so he's going to have to pick which fights he wants to have first.

BENNETT: Do you believe one of his first priorities will be passing a law loosening financial regulation, then? It's just destroyed our industry. He has said he's just going to throw Dodd-Frank completely away. What do you think he'll do and why do you think this is such a high priority for him?

WHALEN: Well, I think passing Hensarling's Financial Choice Act would be a good move because it would make the economy more receptive if in fact you cut taxes and try and have more spending on the infrastructure, for example.

BENNETT: So it's a smart first step.

WHALEN: Yeah, and it's relatively easy. It would have enormous support from a lot of different constituencies – the housing sector, the banks, small and large, by the way – there's a lot of relief in there for community banks and regional banks which is long overdue. And I think in big picture terms what we're talking about is changing the atmosphere of punishment and punitive regulation into something a little more balanced. It would turn the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau into an agency, like the other independent agencies in Washington, and it would no longer be run by one very angry liberal Richard Cordray who I think is going to go off and try to run for governor in Ohio, believe it or not. I think Americans want growth and they want relief, especially small and medium-sized businesses. They do not want to be punished anymore. And that was a big mistake, I think, of both President Obama and Hillary Clinton thinking that this punitive Spanish Inquisition type of regime was actually politically popular. It's not. It's funny how politics is.

BENNETT: It is. Talking about U.S. companies, the Bureau of Labor statistics released last week that the American economy under Obama only created 220,000 new companies in the United States and that's down from 246,000 created in 2015. That's the biggest collapse in the creation of new companies in American history. Do you think Trump is going to be able to turn that type of statistic around?

WHALEN: Well, politicians don't create companies and they don't create growth but they can put in place environments that are either encouraging or discouraging to private sector activity and I think Trump will definitely be much more of a positive influence on the private sector. You know, it's really difficult for people to understand just how bad things have been, for example, in housing and in the mortgage lending, mortgage servicing business under Dodd-Frank. It's been quite abysmal even though we're going to have a good year this year. Now, interestingly, because interest rates are going up, you will probably see refinance activity in the mortgage market trail off. It will slow down.

BENNETT: You don't think they're going to use the last month and a half here in 2016?

WHALEN: Well, they'll try but spreads have already moved. You know, before the election, mortgage companies were selling their paper into Fannie and Freddie 3 percent coupons. Now we're closer to 3½. So, mortgage rates have gone up about a half a point if you look at the execution that a mortgage company gets when they sell a loan to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

BENNETT: Chris, mentioning Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—another major issue you said Washington is ignoring at its own peril is the massive growth of Ginnie Mae which, of course, is another government-supported enterprise that most Americans don't even know about. I want explore what Ginnie Mae is for our listeners, and why the issue is going to get so critical.

WHALEN: Yeah, it is. I mean, Ginnie Mae has the full faith and credit of the United States, unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it has become the only real market for below prime mortgages. So you have a lot of mortgage firms that have a customer with a 620 or 600 FICO, and they sell the loans to the FHA and the taxpayer is on the hook in the event of default. The market is growing very rapidly. It's at about $1.6 trillion now and it's going to be over $2 trillion by the middle of next year. My friend Ted Tozer is the president of Ginnie Mae. He's an extraordinary public servant and he's probably going to be leaving, Dawn, so we need to find somebody who understands the mortgage market to take his place. I would say, both for myself and for everybody in the industry, we're very concerned about that because Ted's been there for 7 years and he doesn't control policy. He runs the place and it's the second most important bond market in the world after the U.S. Treasury market.

BENNETT: But it's a complicated market too. These are complicated structured products. Yes?

WHALEN: Well, yes and no. As an investor you see the prepayments. If somebody refinances their mortgage you're going to get less interest and you're going to get a principal repayment back. So that makes them different than a normal bond. But other than that it's a high quality security and they're very popular with investors.

BENNETT: Yes. And even in the low interest rate environment they've been very popular. And writing about the presidential election, you noted that neither candidate spent any time discussing the dangers posed by the slow motion disintegration of the European Union that we're currently witnessing. If you could talk to that, why is it so important for America to focus on? And also my understanding is they're not a fan of Trump so I don't know if he's going to help them or not. What do you think?

WHALEN: Look, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton started the process of disintegration to really accelerate the war in Syria, this extraordinarily ill-advised campaign to remove Hafez al-Assad. So you have the Israelis, the Saudis, the French, the U.S. all behind what is essentially ISIS fighting Mr. Assad. And then you have the Russians, the Iranians and a number of other countries effectively protecting the population and the Assad government. So it's a mess. All of the refuges went to Europe creating this crisis and I think largely propelling the Brexit vote in the UK. And you have a vote in Italy coming up before the end of the year. I think again the anti-government forces are going to win so the momentum created by our adventure in the Middle East is accelerating the process. It was probably already going to happen anyway but I think the EU is in desperate trouble. I think we may not have EU in a couple of years as it exists today.

BENNETT: Do you think that it's going to disintegrate one country at a time, as with Britain and now Italy and maybe Portugal, or do you think it's just going to go all at once?

WHALEN: No, I think what will happen is that the countries or southern Europe, which tend to have higher inflation rates, and don't really want to live like Germans, are going to be forced out, including Italy. These are countries where they've lost the ability to compete because they're locked in the Eurozone. The main beneficiary of the euro, Dawn, is the Germans. They get a slightly cheaper currency and it helps their export. Even the Dutch, frankly, because of immigration, not because of inflation or economic issues, but because of the immigration issues, they may get out as well.

BENNETT: If Trump were to call Chris Whalen for advice on where to focus his energy to get things back on track as quickly as possible, what advice would you give him? Go.

WHALEN: Fix the regulation in the mortgage market. Same thing with the banking industry. We're not creating enough credit. And I think also look selectively at taxes, both corporate taxes and individual taxes. There are things that can be done there to help growth and job creation.

BENNETT: And, Chris, please remind us of the title of your book and when do you think it's going to come out?

WHALEN: The new book is called Ford Man: From Inspiration to Enterprise. And it should be out January timeframe, at least up on Amazon. It's really my first book and it didn't have a happy ending at the time. I finished it about 11 years ago when Ford was just going into a restructuring process. And now Bill Ford has done a good job of turning things around and I thought he deserved a victory lap.

BENNETT: Oh, good. Have you given him pages of the book to endorse?

WHALEN: No, I did not cooperate with the company. I felt using public sources was better. Most of the Ford books have been published with the active cooperation and oversight of the Ford PR department and I wanted to remain independent.

BENNETT: Good for you. That was Chris Whalen. Thanks, Chris.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/16/2016 -- Dawn Bennett: Chris Koopman is a senior research fellow with the Project for the Study of American Capitalism at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He specializes in regulation, competition and innovation with a particular focus on public choice and the economics of government favoritism. He's also a contributor at the Hill and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016 for law and policy. This, of course, makes Chris the perfect person to ask about what is being labeled as 'America's dumbest generation' which is centered around millennials' unashamed embrace of the socialist label and their growing ignorance of communism's dark history and why, according to Koopman, if you dig, survey data reveals a cause for optimism. Chris, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

Chris Koopman: Thank you so much for having me on.

BENNETT: College campuses have seen a spike in so-called safe spaces in the wake of Trump's victory Tuesday. Yet according to the stats, millennials didn't vote in high numbers this week although they did break heavily for Hillary. Besides being terrified of opinions they don't like, what has this election told us about America's rising generation, politically speaking?

KOOPMAN: I think the important thing here about millennials as a political force is that we now match baby boomers as the largest demographic in the electorate. So how millennials think, how they feel and how they vote should really matter to people and it should be taken seriously. And I think that's why this past election cycle there were a lot of questions about how do millennials feel about the future of capitalism and how do they feel about the future of free market. And more often than not, millennials are being pegged as embracing socialism but I think it's more about distrust and just growing frustration with the current system more so than capitalism per se.

BENNETT: You recently wrote that the youth or millennials really don't know what to believe. Do you think that's because there's just no single theory of governance and the economy that amounts to conventional wisdom? I mean, there's almost no agreement on anything related to politics.

KOOPMAN: I think it has a lot to do with that. I also think it has a lot to do with mislabeling the current system. I think that, as a generation, millennials are being told that we live in a capitalist system. And for the most part that's true, but for many big fundamental pieces of it this really doesn't represent a free market system. Millennials are getting the raw end of that deal. They don't like it and therefore when people ask them how they feel about capitalism they respond that they don't like it. Earlier this year a survey was done where almost a third of millennials came out in support of socialism. Not that surprising given college students and how they typically feel about the world, but probably the more disconcerting thing was less than half of them came out in support of capitalism. And I think that sort of reinforced this idea that millennials don't understand the world that we live in and we're sort of chasing dreams as opposed to living in any sort of reality about our current situation. But I think that kind of misses the mark when you put it into the context that millennials live in. That our generation is being brought up in and we came of age in a post-recession world. You know, we look out at the current system, and what have we known? Nothing but Wall Street bailouts, corporate greed, political scandals, tax codes riddled with loopholes for the wealthy and well-connected. And for the bulk of millennials this is all we've ever known. So when people ask us how we feel about it of course we're going to come out with a resounding negative response.

BENNETT: You've also written that in surveys it shows millennials really heavily favoring the term free market system over government-managed economy indicating perhaps this preoccupation with the word capitalism itself, right? So, would you suggest millennials' instincts are more free market?

KOOPMAN: Yes, I think as a generation, millennials are certainly much more free market than we are given credit for. Just to put it into context, think about something like occupational licensing. Our generation, more than any other generation before us had to beg for permission to practice our chosen profession. You know, one in three of us have to get an occupational license where if you go back just a generation or two, and it was like 5 percent. Now it's like 30 percent of the people require a license. These are things that have become just embedded in the system and people are attributing that to capitalism. It's no wonder they're frustrated but then you turn it and you say, 'Well, what do you feel about free market versus government control?' and, like you said, a resounding positive response comes from millennials when you talk about free market system versus government control. Something close to three quarters of millennials respond positively to the term 'free market system'. So it's not that we're misinformed. It's not that we're lazy or unable to think for ourselves. It's that we're frustrated. You compare us to other generations at this same age and we're poorer, we're more in debt and more out of work. And when you start thinking about it that way you can't help but to sympathize with the generation that says, 'Gosh, this hasn't really gone well for us so far in our adult lives. We're not very happy about it.' And I think you go back to the 2016 election earlier this week and you look at some of the numbers that are coming up and you see that 10 percent of millennials that voted, voted third party. So you go back and you see in 2012 that was somewhere near 3 percent. So this doesn't spike in an entire generation saying 'We're looking for a new way, a different way.' The Green Party and the Libertarian Party – granted, they're not similar in a lot of ways but it's still this need for millennials to find a different way. And you go to some states like Colorado: 20 percent of millennials that voted in Colorado voted third party. You have this desire in an entire generation to find a different approach, a different way, because they're just flat-out tired and frustrated with the current system as it stands.

BENNETT: Do you think the overall dissatisfaction that you're talking about is with the status quo and that's leading people to adopt any manner of anti-establishment beliefs?

KOOPMAN: I think you could look at it that way. In many ways people say 'We don't like what's happening. We want a different way,' and they will latch onto any different way. Especially a generation that is full of ideas but maybe not real world experiences is willing to try something different although it may have been tried before and turned out disastrously. I think that's something to be concerned about as millennials continue to rise in prevalence in the electorate but it's also something that should be a bit of a bright spot here, is that you have an entire generation just waiting to be won over. Anyone that would speak to them from their perspective and then advocates for free market – this should be a huge, positive spot here in sort of the postmortem of the 2016 election, is that you have this entire generation just willing to be spoken to if you're just open and honest with them about the fact that the current system clearly has failed them but we shouldn't confuse that with capitalism. Capitalism and free market economics has much more to offer than what they've been told.

BENNETT: You recently wrote in a piece for The Wall Street Journal about how millennials and their feelings towards the economy, which isn't necessarily anti-capitalism as you've said, but anti-current 'mutant system' – to borrow your terminology – that we have today. What do they see in today's economy that they find just detestable?

KOOPMAN: Yeah, I think it goes back to something I was mentioning before and that is the fact that, as a generation, our experience with the economy is the last 8-10 years, right? It's been this post-recession government intervention in the economy and we're looking at things like Wall Street bailouts, you know, things like just corporate greed and political scandals and tax codes that benefit some at the expense of others. So much so that when you ask millennials to free associate with capitalism and say 'What word comes to mind when you think of capitalism?' The three most frequent terms that millennials come up with are greed, corrupt and control. None of those really have to do with capitalism per se – corrupt and control – but it has to do more with the current system that millennials have been brought up in, that they came of the age in. And it's just this idea that most people who are free market advocates and people who are not have more or less come to the agreement that the current system is capitalism or some brand of capitalism and so millennials are saying, 'Well, we don't like this. Clearly, we're not doing well. We're not faring very well in this system.' And our moms and dads are telling us that this is capitalism, American capitalism, and they're responding with 'We're not doing well and we don't like that. So we don't like capitalism.' Really what it comes down to is they're not anti-capitalism per se. They're anti-whatever the heck this current system is. You can call it mutant capitalism, crony capitalism. Whatever term you want to put on it, I think it's really important for people who want to make the case for free market and for capitalism that this system really isn't that textbook definition. This is something far beyond and grossly mutated from the idea of capitalism or free market as they exist in theory.

BENNETT: Do you think millennials just have a different outlook. For example, they see themselves as hip and sophisticated and see traditional values as square. You know, they like political correctness rules. You know, Kardashians seem to be the new role model. I don't know. I mean, the very idea of America is in this dispute and held in contempt. Is that what you're thinking the millennials are right now?

KOOPMAN: That could explain some of it and I think that isn't something unique to this generation but every generation sort of goes through that phase. I mean, you can go back to every decade of it almost the last 50 years and see some strand of that occurring. You know, you get to a certain age and you say, 'I want to find my own way.' As a generation, we go through this. But I would also say that a lot of the things that have been attributed to millennials—you know, this idea that millennials are lazy or entitled or unwilling to work or unwilling to be challenged and challenge others—I think some of that explains pieces of this generation but not all of it. When you think about something like the most innovative part of our current economy right now, I would argue the sharing economy – you know, Uber, Lyft and all of these apps and platforms that are coming up over the last three or four years – it's really being driven by millennial preferences, millennial tastes and millennial entrepreneurs. So the idea that millennials aren't go-getters or millennials aren't willing to go out and work hard and aren't capitalists—these are all profit seeking ventures. Maybe they're built on ideas different than business models before them but they're all being driven by, I think, this unique strand of capitalism that exists in millennials.

BENNETT: There have been a lot of disturbing reports since Trump got elected. You almost wonder if real civil war is possible out there. In The New York Times it was reported that millennials are increasingly turning against free speech, describing various student led movements on college campuses. Another survey showed that millennials have no clue about communism's dark history of mass murder. How much do you view these kinds of trends as a consequence of our schools or just the sign of the times?

KOOPMAN: It's probably a mixture of both now. Keep in mind now I haven't been following those issues specifically so the free speech issue, other than what comes up in the headlines—I think there were reports recently about millennials misunderstanding the Stalin regime in Russia. I think some of that is a failure of education. I think some of that is just millennials unwilling to accept reality as it is and I think some of it has to do with the fact that people on both sides, not just in the traditional education system but people who actually want to advocate for ideas like free market and capitalism have not been doing a good enough job teaching and communicating to millennials about the benefits of things like free speech and entrepreneurship and the free market while at the same time they haven't been doing a good enough job educating people about the failures of communism and the failures of socialism. It's just a matter of understanding our history. And again, it goes back to—you strip away the titles of capitalism and socialism and you see that there is an overwhelming majority of millennials that are in support of a free market system and it's just a matter of people, who want to reach this generation and talk to them about things they care about, need to recognize that trying to use particular labels may fail right off the bat. You're not going to reach them if you go in and start talking about capitalism and socialism. It's a matter of understanding the context that they come from and being able to speak to them about what they care about and that's free market, that's getting them jobs, that's having them realize their potential and their opportunity. And that's about free enterprise, it's not about government control. It's about a free market system.

BENNETT: Do you have any ideas on how to help the millennials understand the actual causes of the economic turmoil. I think we're heading into a pretty tough time here. Do you think that's even possible?

KOOPMAN: Yeah, I think it's a mixture of two things. I think people who really want to reach millennials have to understand that they aren't thinking about it the same way that we were 20 years ago, but at the same time it's incumbent on this generation of millennials to educate themselves.

BENNETT: Thanks, Chris.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/15/2016 -- On Tuesday, to the shock of pundits and prophets alike, Main Street once again voted its pocketbook and swept a black swan Donald Trump presidency into the White House. Not only did he win, but he brought in many of the Reagan Democrats and nearly half of the union voters, and against all odds, he even seemed to have coat-tails. Even among supporters of Trump, though, there is an undercurrent of unease. Can he make the transition from what former New York governor Mario Cuomo called the "poetry of campaigning" to the hard work of the "prose of governing?" Will the Trump of previous years, the one who in 2012 called Mitt Romney's policies on deportation of illegal immigrants "maniacal" and "mean-spirited," return once the dust has settled, or will he maintain the course he set during the campaign? Can President Trump, could any president accomplish what really needs to be done to heal the economy and security of this nation and its people?

At its best, Trumponomics could be Reaganomics 2.0, rebuilding the economy through reduced regulation, sensible and needed tax cuts, and spending on infrastructure. But between us and that outcome lies a wide period of volatility and risk. Our massive public and private debt, years of quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates, policies and public statements that have not only ignored but obfuscated the basic fundamentals of the economy—these factors still exist. With Trump elected to the nation's highest office, Janet Yellen and the Fed no longer have the personal or political incentives to keep the economy and markets in suspended animation, and I strongly suspect we will see interest rate hikes in the near future, with dire consequences for the short-term market.

Some of the stated policies of Donald Trump won't be without their own sort of pain, either. His stated intent to force American companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs would be an effective tax on corporations like Apple, IBM, even Nabisco. Until the consequences of such policies become normalized, written into the markets, we could see a 10 to 20 percent drop on the basis of that alone.

The market ran up last week, I believe primarily letting off steam in relief that this poisonous election season is finally over. This rally has already begun to fizzle in the face of a new uncertainty in what the future will actually hold. Already, the lack of correlation between markets and fundamentals has driven many individual investors to highly conservative positions. On Wall Street you hear story after story about how money managers and hedge fund managers and financial advisers are just leaving the business because the central banks control the market and it makes it impossible to make money in any rational way.

Conventional wisdom has held that high frequency traders will still profit even if the average investor doesn't, but one of the high frequency legends, Teza Technologies, is closing down. In their last regulated filing, they provided some interesting insight into why, saying, "Assumptions regarding the existence of relationships that appeared to hold true about the market or in fact held true in the past in the market may not exist or hold true in the future." Fundamentals don't matter, research doesn't matter, technical charting doesn't work anymore. It's a topsy-turvy market, and it's not as if this is just the last six months we're talking about, but rather the last eight years.

Another point Teza raises speaks to volatility and predictability in the markets. Teza says that six-sigma events are becoming nearly as likely as one- and two-sigma events previously were. What? Sigma is the Greek symbol used in statistics to indicate the "standard deviation," a measure of the variability of a set of data. A data set where the values cluster near the top of the bell curve, the "average" of all values, is said to have a low standard deviation, where a data set with a flatter curve and more variance in values is said to have a higher standard deviation.

And so, back to Teza pointing out the increasing frequency of six-sigma events in the markets. What they mean by that is that data values form clusters six standard deviations outside of expectations. This should be exceedingly rare, and the fact that it is becoming less so indicates wider volatility. This seems to be yet another sign of our markets becoming decoupled from the underlying economy, and it presents huge risk to investors. Interestingly, a six-sigma event could also be termed a "black swan," much like the election of a casino-owning reality television star to the White House.

I hope that President Donald Trump will be truly great. He has the potential, and America truly needs great leadership in a moment that presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a paradigm shift, the kind of leadership that was promised eight years ago but never materialized. Yes, I hope that our next president will find a way to work with his own party and those across the aisle. I hope that his agenda will materialize in a thoughtful and straightforward way. But, in the meantime, there's a bumpy ride coming. Protect your savings, diversify not just in terms of asset classes but in terms of geography. Look into assets that preserve wealth in the face of increasing volatility and risk. And God Bless America.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/09/2016 -- BENNETT: This is Dawn Bennett with Wayne Allyn Root. He's here again. He's the author of The Power of Relentlessness: 7 Secrets to Achieving Mega-Success, Financial Freedom, and the Life of Your Dreams. In 2008, Root was the vice-presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket. Since then he has been a regular on Fox News and hundreds of local and national radio shows. This past week, Root wrote a piece titles 'It's Trump or the End of America' which was a very fascinating and exciting title. Since Election Tuesday is here so soon, I think this is the perfect place to start. Wayne, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

ROOT: Hello, Dawn, how are you?

BENNETT: Good. I love the title of your piece, 'It's Trump or the End of America,' but I also think it's pretty terrific how you started it. Would you mind if I read the first paragraph and a half to our listeners?

ROOT: Sure. Go ahead. Be my guest.

BENNETT: 'I wrote a book called Angry White Male that had nothing with race. It simply was my personal testimony. I can't speak for anyone else but I'm an S.O.B., son of a butcher. I was raised as a white middle class kid in the greatest country in the world. I was taught by my wonderful, true red, white and blue patriotic, salt of the earth American parents that certain specific things made America great. And here they are: faith in God, prayer, love of country, family and belief in American exceptionalism, capitalism, Judeo-Christian values, Constitution, limited government, personal responsibility, economic freedom, the military and police.' That's great.

ROOT: And they're all under attack. Every one of them.

BENNETT: Yes.

ROOT: Name them one by one. They're all under a horrible, horrific attack the last 8 years and Hillary has said that she wants to be the third term of Obama so they'll continue under attack, horrific attack for the next four and they won't survive, I promise you. We won't survive. That's why I say it's Trump or it's the end of America.

BENNETT: Is that why you think the stakes are so dramatic?

ROOT: Yeah. I mean, look, all you have to do is look at California. I mean, I love California. I lived there 15 years. It's the most beautiful place on earth. There's nowhere else I'd rather live and I haven't lived there in 15 years because I can't live there because I can't afford the taxes, the regulations, the people are too liberal – they drive me crazy. It's ridiculous! And what happened in California—well, all they did, the model is so simple and it's the same model that liberals are using to ruin America. First they ruined California which used to be a very Republican conservative state. Ronald Reagan as the governor! And what they did was they opened the borders and they let tons and tons, millions of foreigners in illegally who all believed in socialism because they come from socialist cradle to grave welfare states and every one of them came to California expecting cradle to grave welfare checks and pretty soon the whole state was flooded with foreigners and they didn't have any of those values that I just named. They don't care about our military, our police, Judeo-Christian values, the Constitution. They especially don't care about capitalism. So they ruined the voting patterns of California so to this day no Republican can ever again be elected on a statewide basis. Never again in the history of California, you'll never see a Republican on the statewide basis unless they change their stripes and they say, 'I'm a Republican,' but they really are extremely liberal. That's the only way you can even possibly see a Republican maybe one time as an exception get elected statewide. That's what they're trying to do to America, Dawn, and if Hillary is elected you will never again see a Republican president in our lifetime which means forever. That's it! Because they're flooding the country with illegals and there's even a tape out today. It's a headline on the Drudge Report as we do this interview. They have an interview. It's not like anybody makes anything up. It's an interview with Barack Obama, it's on screen and Barack Obama is asked, 'If you're illegal and you vote can they come to your home and take you away and send you back to Mexico?' And Barack Obama says, 'No, there's no repercussions if you're illegal and you vote so I encourage you to go vote.' What?! This is how we've lost our country. We're allowing illegals to vote. No one is allowed to ask you for your ID but I, Wayne Root, who's been in this country 55 years, who's made millions of dollars, who's done millions of great things for the country, given millions to charity and built a beautiful family and my daughter graduated from Harvard and I own businesses and I'm a TV star and I write bestselling books—if I buy a $3 bottle of water at the airport the girl behind the counter asks me for my ID. This is insane! We've wrecked our country. And the single most important issue is voter ID and that's why Democrats make a big deal about it and say, 'Poor people can't be expected to get voter ID.' Really?! Well, they were all on ObamaCare and you can't get ObamaCare without voter ID. They were all on welfare. You can't get welfare without voter ID. You can't get food stamps without voter ID. There is nothing you can get from the government without photo ID issued by the United States government. That means every poor Democrat in America who votes that says, 'You're racist if you ask me for ID,' every one of them has a photo ID and they're demanding we don't use it because that's how they're stealing elections and that's how they're taking the country away from us.

BENNETT: All right. Wayne, I know that your argument largely centers around immigration and how Democrats seek to flood the country with new voters turning the country forever blue much like what you said has happened in California. But aren't there benefits to new workers and don't aspiring Americans potentially support the ideals embraced by conservatives?

ROOT: Sure. I do. I support legal immigration. I don't support illegal immigration. I support letting in all the people who want to come here who have the right pedigree, hopefully many of whom are educated, who agree the minute they get here they'll learn English, who should never be allowed to ever again vote in anything but English, who come here with no goal of getting welfare or food stamps. It's kind of like if you came home and someone had broken in your house and it was a family of four. Not only do they break into your house and they don't think they belong in jail and they expect you to help them stay here but they say, 'Sorry. Now that we broke into your house you are responsible for us financially for the rest of your life. You have to pay our legal bills. You have to pay for all our food. You have to pay for our cars and when my kids go to school you have to pay for it.' They're breaking into America illegally and then they expect us to pay for it and I've got all the facts laid out in my new book, Every White Male, and the facts are that of all groups who've ever come to America the group that takes the most welfare and the most entitlement checks and the most handouts is exactly what the liberal media has told you is not the group that does. 'They're the hardest working people in the world,' they tell you, 'and they are not hurting our country.' Of all the groups that have ever come here, Mexicans and Central Americans are the groups that take the highest amount of welfare. So they're breaking in and then they're demanding that we pay for them and that's why America is broke. That's why we're $20 trillion in debt and the average person, especially the average liberal, doesn't understand any of this so I'll make it very simple, Dawn. Because you have a financial education and literacy show I'll make it really simple. You make $30,000 a year. You get a $1,000,000 credit card credit line in the mail and you show it to your wife and you go, 'Honey, we're rich.' We're not rich! It's a credit card line. You owe it all back. You're going to be bankrupt. Your life is going to be ruined. You have no right to use any of that money and on $30,000 a year you can never pay it back. That's America. We're a debtor nation, horribly in debt. We are going to come to an end like Zimbabwe or the old Weimar Republic of Germany that turned into Nazi Germany. Name any country that ever went bankrupt. Greece has gone bankrupt 20 times. The Roman Empire went bankrupt. We are those countries. We're Zimbabwe times one million in size. It's going to be a very sad ending to a situation where whole world moves to your country and demands welfare. You can't! It doesn't work.

BENNETT: You're based out of Vegas and you've also written that you're betting on Trump to win. For the record, you've been saying this since before his recent surge in the polls. What's your current expectation?

ROOT: Well, as long as the election isn't rigged I think he's going to win. I mean, look, if you look at polls—there's two kinds of polls: there's ones that I don't believe in and there's ones that I believe are really accurate. The ones I don't believe and are completely rigged and fixed and they're made to kind of demoralize all of us who like Trump, they wanted us to believe that no one really likes him, no one believes in him, no one's voting for him and they oversample Democrats by like 30 percent and then they tell you Trump's losing by 6. Reuters is an example of that poll. Trump was winning the Reuters poll and they changed the demographics of it and suddenly he was losing by 6. Then he was losing by 9. The more Democrats you add to the poll, the more you lose. So they wanted to demoralize us. Now let me give you an example of a great poll as an example: Investor's Business Daily was the most accurate poll of 2012. It predicted the election exactly. It said Obama would win by 3.3 over Romney. He won by 3.3. That poll doesn't even start until two weeks ago. In other words, they're so smart they realize the election doesn't matter. You can't poll people so you get within three weeks or so of the election. That's when the voters pay attention. That poll, as of this morning, shows Trump winning by 1. So is it going to be close? Sure, it's probably going to be close. It's going to be a tough race but I think we're going to win. The LA Times/USC poll is even better in my opinion because most pollsters—here's how they do it: they call 500 or 1,000 random people out of 320 million of us and they expect that's accurate. And if they get—a week goes by and they call a different 500 and whatever that result is they tell you that's accurate. Well, how do you know the new 500 are the right representative of people that are actually going to the polls. The LA Times, Dawn, polls the same 3,000 people that they believe represent America exactly who are absolutely going to the polls and they poll the same 3,000 people for like 4 months in a row and each day they see if they changed their mind, where they stand. That poll as of today, which I believe is the last one, today's LA Times/USC poll: Trump up by 6, the most he's ever been up.

BENNETT: And that's an LA poll?

ROOT: No, it's a nationwide poll taken by LA Times. Nationwide poll: up by 6! Now, keep in mind he's been down 2, he's been down 3, he's been down 1; he's been up 1, so it changes on a daily basis. Today is the highest point he's ever been. Up 6! That tells you he's peaking into the election just like Ronald Reagan did in 1980 when he was down 8 with a week to go and everyone changed their mind at the same time in the last 7 days and he wound up winning in a 44 state landslide. So is Trump going to win in a 44 state landslide? I don't think so, because America's demographics are far worse than they were then. Way too many foreigners in this country and way too easy for foreigners to vote. So he won't win in a landslide but I do believe he will win.

BENNETT: So do you think that Trump is actually gaining support because this week and last week the FBI made a number of stunning announcements, one of which was that they're reopening its investigation into Hillary's secret server? The other is the FBI leaked details about its investigation into the Clinton Foundation and how it's more like a political group than it is a foundation. I mean, nobody even knew all this was still occurring. Do you think that Americans are actually seeing for the first time that maybe Hillary number one, is going to be treated like any other American being investigated for various federal crimes but also that this is going to influence late breaking voters.

ROOT: Well, I think it's having some effect but only to people who pay attention. It's still not major news. It's amazing! You know, as of this morning so many new things have come out. First of all, we found out in the latest WikiLeaks stuff that came out this morning that John Podesta and head of the Clinton Foundation, Doug Band discussed that Chelsea Clinton's a thief. They said 'She paid for her wedding out of our donations.'

BENNETT: Yeah, I heard that, and her life, and her lifestyle.

ROOT: Yeah, her life. Her whole life is funded by the Clinton Foundation. We've always known that. I've always known that. Forget her wedding. I believe they paid for her condo, a $6,000,000 condo in New York City, comes from the Clinton Foundation. These people bring in billions and they don't use it for charity. So does the average person know that? Probably not. We found out something much worse that's onethe cover of Fox News this morning. Hillary's classified and top secret e-mails—I'm laughing because it's so ludicrous you couldn't make it up in a movie, Dawn. They'd laugh me out of Hollywood if I wrote this in a fictional script. Her classified, her top secret e-mails from the president to the secretary of state and from all the other important people; head of the CIA and secretary of state – they were all going to a personal server in her closet and they were going to a fax machine too and she asked her Filipino maid to download them all, print them and give them to her. Her Filipino maid! Folks, I don't have to explain this. If you don't get it, you're not allowed to touch or see classified documents unless you're at the highest level in the history of the greatest country in world history and there's probably like a thousand people in the whole world who have that level, maybe there's a hundred, maybe there's ten. Whatever the number is it probably includes generals, admirals, five people to CIA, five other people to president, secretary of state. So maybe it's a hundred people in the world who are allowed to see them and Hillary was calling her Filipino maid who probably isn't even legal and saying, 'Do me a favor, honey, download that for me,' and they were in her hands. She could've handed them to the Russians, the Chinese. Anyone could have died or agents could have been murdered or plans to do this or that in the world could have been read by anyone in the world and undoubtedly they were. How anyone can vote for a woman that belongs in pinstripes and chains for the rest of her life for giving away state secrets and for handing them into a Filipino maid's hands is beyond my comprehension. Having said all of that, Dawn, none of that is the reason for the surge. None of it! The surge for Trump is about one thing: ObamaCare premiums going up 25 percent. The average American only understands their own pocketbook. That's all they understand.

BENNETT: Let me ask you a question, though. Talking about WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the guy who's behind it, actually came out last week and said Trump won't be allowed to win because Clinton and ISIS are funded by the same money. What do you think of that?

ROOT: Well, it scares me. And I do believe the election is rigged. Listen, you wouldn't believe in the last week how many liberal media have asked me the same question. 'Wayne, if it's Wednesday morning and Hillary's won, will you accept the election decision?' They want me to say yes and then they hold me as a 'Trump surrogate Wayne Root says 'Yes, we'll accept it.' And, of course, they asked that question to Donald, I'm sure in every interview. They want him to say yes and then there's nothing you can do. I said, 'I know the trick you're playing. You want to rig the election and you want us to say in advance before we know you rigged it, 'Yes we'll accept whatever the people vote,' and then after we've seen that you rigged it then we're stuck with our decision. That gives you carte blanche to steal and rig all you want. I won't say that. I will say if the election is fair and there isn't any rigging or stealing, if there isn't any extracurricular activities that are illegal I'll accept the election decision but I reserve the final answer to see if it was conducted fair.' And I know it's not.

BENNETT: Wayne, we're out of time. I want to thank you so much for your point of view. This was Wayne Allyn Root.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/08/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a practicing physician and served in various capacities at the Food and Drug Administration including Senior Adviser for Medical Technology, Director of Medical Policy Development and most recently as Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs. Dr. Gottlieb has also served as a senior policy adviser at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and is a published author. On September 14th, 2016 in The Wall Street Journal he wrote a piece titled 'Clinton's Stealthy Single Player Gambit' where he begins by saying 'It looks like 2017 will be ObamaCare's worst year yet.' Scott, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Thanks for having me.

BENNETT: So do you remember when Obama toured around the country telling everyone that ObamaCare was going to increase competition and lower health care premiums?

GOTTLIEB: Well, it didn't work out that way, did it?

BENNETT: No, no. As it turns out, pretty much nothing that Obama and his health care experts predicted about ObamaCare actually came true. And now we're going into 2017 and across the country ObamaCare premiums are expected to increase on average of about 25 percent nationally. One of the hardest hit states will be Arizona where the biggest loser with the rate is, I think, Phoenix. Could these skyrocketing rates inevitably toss the entire ObamaCare system into a death spiral?

GOTTLIEB: Well, I think what's going to happen is the ObamaCare system itself won't crumble. It's just going to be fewer choices as it is right now. But the choices that you have are going to look more and more like Medicaid plan. So the way that these premium increases are going to be held down in the future is that the plans themselves are going to be cheapened out to the point where they're basically like Medicaid plans. And in fact, if you see what's happening inside ObamaCare, the reason why choices are leaving the market right now is because traditional commercial insurers like Aetna, United Healthcare, Cigna and Anthem this week announced they're getting out of the ObamaCare market but what's growing their footprint inside these ObamaCare changes are the traditional HMOs that have serviced the Medicaid market like Molina and even some of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. So this is going to look like a Medicaid benefit. There will be fewer choices and the choices you do have will be much more like Medicaid coverage.

BENNETT: But why now? Why is this happening, this dramatic price increase, and at the same time choice decreases associated with the Affordable Care Act which we can refer to as ACA?

GOTTLIEB. Well, I think initially the insurance companies drank the administration's Kool-Aid, quite frankly. They thought this was going to be a more viable market where more young consumers, healthy consumers would be getting into the market and they'd have more people entering ObamaCare. But people are rational economic actors and they realized that this, except for a very narrow income demographic, this really isn't the good financial deal so fewer people got into the market, fewer healthy people got into the market and now the insurance companies are realizing this isn't the viable risk pool that they can service. With a higher cost, higher margin product, that offers more choice but that's also more expensive to administer.

BENNETT: Even if we didn't know it before we now know that this current model of ACA is not sustainable, even in the short term. Because we've already gone through the short term and many are leaving and obviously there's no long term there. But I think the thing is what's going to happen. The ongoing financial impact on the insurance industry, on the lives of the American people and on the federal government won't permit that problem to linger much longer, I would think. So which is it going to be? A greater market-based health care solution or increased government control of health care?

GOTTLIEB: I think it's going to be a little bit of both. I think you're going to have more government regulation on health care and certain things that the government feels these plans are now trying to skimp on in order to save money but the government wants to mandate them. So, for example, the ObamaCare plans mandate first-dollar coverage or surgical sterilization. So you might not be able to get your cancer drugs paid for but if you need surgical sterilization the government will pay full freight on that so there are certain politically favored things that the government is stepping in now to mandate full coverage of, first-dollar coverage of. But I also think the bigger piece of this is going to be the plan's just not offering certain benefits. So if you look at, for example, the drug coverage, I think the reason why consumers are now feeling a lot of hardship with respect to their drug spending isn't because drug costs have gone up exorbitantly over a very short period of time. These true drug costs are going up over time. But they haven't actually gone up that much in recent years relative to historical norms. On average, drug costs are increasing about 4-5 percent and certain pockets of drug spending are going up faster than that but what has really changed quite dramatically in short period of time is the nature of coverage for drugs where more of these ObamaCare plans are closed formularies meaning that if your drug doesn't make it on the formulary list you're completely uncovered and you're completely out-of-pocket for whatever you have to spend. There's no coverage whatsoever and more of these formulary lists are very skimpy meaning most drugs aren't on the formulary list. And so now what's happening is the same sort of constructs that have been created in the Affordable Care Act to make those plans somewhat affordable and being rendered politically acceptable by the federal government now are being imported into the commercial market.

BENNETT: Is this the ObamaCare tipping point, the significant sticker shock we're experiencing with health care coverage?

GOTTLIEB: Well, I think it's certainly a tipping point in terms of we're going to see a dramatic change in this market where now we're seeing the private plans get out. This isn't really going to be commensurate with commercial coverage. It's going to be a Medicaid benefit for working class Americans who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but are being forced into ObamaCare. Many of these folks are going to be people who had employer-provided coverage that might have been better in the past and now they're going to be downgraded into ObamaCare.

BENNETT: That's just horrible.

GOTTLIEB: That's the worst outcome, yes.

BENNETT: Meanwhile, the Obama Administration continues to insist that all is well with the Affordable Care Act/ObamaCare because many people participating in the exchange received taxpayer-funded subsidies which is fine, of course, unless you're one of the 1,000,000+ people in the county who purchased private insurance without the benefit of subsidies. When you want to correct a problem the first thing you've got to do is admit it. Why aren't they just simply admitting it?

GOTTLIEB: Well, even with the subsidies, people are getting crushed—I talked to one patient on Friday, a middle class guy who manages a store in a small town. He was on ObamaCare with his wife and his child, paid about $200 a month for a premium. His child got a job so now because the household income went up his premiums were going to go up a lot so he took his child off his plan. She got her own separate insurance. His wife's premium along with his now went up from $200 to $600 because they were only a two-person household and not a three-person household and then they found out that because his daughter had gotten her job halfway through the year but they hadn't reported that their household income went up even though they tried, they owed back their subsidies that they had gotten for that year and it was $6,000 that they owed back. They had two years left on the mortgage on their house. They had to take out a 15-year mortgage to pay back the government the $6,000 to cover the increased premium costs. That's the type of middle class family that the ObamaCare architects purport to help. I'm writing up this story for Monday on Forbes.com because this is exactly the target demographic that ObamaCare was created for and that's what's happening to these folks.

BENNETT: On Tuesday Americans will likely decide the fate of ObamaCare, I think, and indirectly President Obama's legacy. Now, it's no secret he realizes this and he's campaigning hard for Hillary to become his successor. Before we talk about Trump, you recently wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal about how Hillary plans to use the collapse of ObamaCare to push the single payer system. She would even go about it with the Republican Congress. I want to know how she's going to get that done.

GOTTLIEB: Every time she talks about single payer she talks about the states being active in helping to support single payer. What she's referring to there very cleverly is that section of ObamaCare called 1332 Waivers which basically gives the states the ability to collect all of the ObamaCare premiums and subsidies that their residents would otherwise be eligible for, and use it to design their own health plans. There are a number of states – Vermont, Colorado, California, Minnesota – that are now trying to use this scheme in order to create a state single payer plan. So that what she's going to try to do. She's going to try to allow states that want to create their own single payer scheme to use the ObamaCare subsidies under section 1332.

BENNETT: Donald Trump has been less specific about what he plans to do with health care, so let's focus on him. As far as I understand, he's taken to saying ObamaCare is a disaster and he's promising to repeal and replace it within the first days of his presidency. Do you have any further insight into what Americans can expect from a Trump presidency with regards to health care and how would this contrast with Hillary's plan?

GOTTLIEB: I think that the Republican and Conservative playbook on the replacement for ObamaCare has been pretty clearly written. There's about five substantive long plans out right now: one from Congressman Price, another one from Senator Hatch, a group of senators. We put out one at the American Enterprise Institute. And the reality is they're basically all the same plan. I mean, there's variations between the plans but the basic architecture is the same. And I worked on one of those. We put out a 70-80 page version of that so I can fairly admit that they all look pretty similar. The replacement plan's been written for what the replacement to ObamaCare would look like. The question is whether or not they would repeal ObamaCare right away before you had the replacement in place and I think the answer is they probably would. That's what Trump has intimated, that he would have a special session meeting. He would try to do it through reconciliation early on, repeal ObamaCare and then come back in with a replacement plan.

BENNETT: On the off-chance that Donald Trump happens to do as he predicts and shock the world with a surprising 'come from behind' victory next Tuesday and then nominate you, Scott, to head up the overhaul of ObamaCare, what would you propose?

GOTTLIEB: I would propose to try to repeal or replace it altogether or at least when you're repealing it put in place a plan that will allow people who are now on ObamaCare to have some form of coverage during an interim period before you can get a broader replacement plan in place. I think there are mechanisms to doing that and there's funding available in ObamaCare to do that so that you make sure you don't displace people and leave them uninsured because I think as bad of a product as ObamaCare has turned out to be in terms of underinsuring a lot of Americans it is providing insurance to about I would say 5 million Americans who previously didn't have insurance. If you look at the total ObamaCare numbers of maybe 12 million insured, a little more than half of them had coverage previously but were forced into ObamaCare. About a half of them didn't have coverage before. You want to make sure you're not going to leave those individuals uninsured.

BENNETT: When we start looking towards 2017, I think Americans are facing an increasingly grim reality when it comes to health care. And with the three major insurers fleeing ObamaCare exchanges nationwide I think most Americans are facing only one or two choices of providers. Meanwhile, prices are rising and plans and deductibles are spiking. Why does Obama think this lie is a success? I'm still unclear how he could go out and talk about it this way.

GOTTLIEB: Well, I think that they view success differently than maybe you and me might view it because I'm looking at the quality of the coverage that's provided and the amount of choices providing consumers. And I'm also looking at the fact that I think a lot of people have seen their coverage downgraded as a result of ObamaCare so it's actually made health care in this country less egalitarian. I think they're looking at it in terms of it gives the government more control over health care benefits to make sure people are getting what the government thinks they should be getting in the context of a benefit. And it also makes sure that it's harder for people to fall through the cracks and become uninsured. So at the end of the day, if you become unemployed you can get onto ObamaCare or Medicaid for that matter, so it's harder for people to become fully displaced but the reality is that this whole notion that there were a lot of people who had pre-existing conditions who couldn't get coverage or who were falling through the cracks before, there were Americans who faced those hardships but there weren't that many Americans who faced those hardships. So we could have provided a very targeted set of benefits for those folks without disrupting the entire insurance market.

BENNETT: President Obama also blamed young people for the spiking prices being felt by the families. Why aren't more young Americans signing up? Are they realizing this is all a big scheme whereby the older people take the younger person's money?

GOTTLIEB: Well, it's exactly what you said. It's just unaffordable for young Americans and especially young Americans with jobs. The only place where ObamaCare is frankly a good economic deal is if you fall within a very narrow income demographic of about 175-225 percent of federal poverty level. That's about maybe 20-25 million U.S: households. That's a family of four earning about $40,000 a year in collective income, maybe a little less than that. At that income range you qualify for special subsidies called cost-sharing subsidies that buy down your out-of-pocket cost. Once you fall outside that narrow income demographic ObamaCare is not a good economic deal. If you're a family of four earning $65,000 a year of income or more you get crushed by ObamaCare.

BENNETT: I want to talk about how President Obama recently arranged some speeches specifically to trumpet what he says are the successes of ObamaCare and I want to play a little bit of that. Before we get there, though, I want you to tell me why Obama likes to cite the fact that the number of Americans who have insurance is increasing. Isn't this like his similar dubious claim that more American teens are graduating from high school?

GOTTLIEB: Well, the number of Americans who have coverage has increased. The number of uninsured has fallen but the vast majority of that is because more people are on Medicaid. And I don't consider that a triumphant success simply because I see what kind of benefit Medicaid offers because I take care of a lot of Medicaid patients. It really isn't an adequate benefit.

BENNETT: Scott, I want to play you this clip. President Obama recently arranged a number of speeches specifically to talk about the success of ObamaCare and during one of these speeches he actually likened the law to the Samsung Galaxy 7, the phone being taken off the market after it spontaneously combusted. I want to get your opinion.

[clip starts]

OBAMA: When one of these companies comes up with a new smartphone that has a few bugs, what do they do? They fix it. They upgrade it. Unless it catches fire. Then they just—then they pull it off the market. But you don't go back to using rotary phone. You don't say, 'We're repealing smartphones. We're just going to do the dial-up thing.'

[clip ends]

BENNETT: So my question to you, Scott, is, as a doctor and public policy scholar, was the previous health care system like a rotary phone and is ObamaCare like a modern cellphone that occasionally explodes?

GOTTLIEB: Yeah, that's what's ironic about that comparison that he made. Look, I think the architects of ObamaCare really did view it that way. They viewed this as some higher order of health care delivery and health organization. You know, at the end of the day there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to allow people to pool based on state exchanges and get inside larger insurance pools so they don't just have to pool it by coverage at work. So that was always a very sound concept. Now it's frankly a bi-partisan concept. The problem with ObamaCare is all the heavy government regulation on what has to be sold inside those insurance pools that prevents real competition and real choice. It's sort of the fact that the architects of ObamaCare just couldn't help themselves. Once they created these insurance pools and provided subsidies for people to be able to afford coverage truly priced out of market they had to attach literally tens of thousands of pages of rules on what people had to buy and that's what made these markets uncompetitive.

BENNETT: Do you think if Hillary gets in she understands that?

GOTTLIEB: I think, once we're down this road, I think the people who are investing in ObamaCare are just going to create more rules. I don't see them doing things to reform this market in ways that are going to make it more competitive. Their greatest fear is that there might be some consumer somewhere who buys a product, a health insurance product that doesn't cover exactly what the government thinks that they should be covered for. That's what they're worried about. That's what keeps them up at night rather than making sure that the market provides affordable options for the most number of people.

Bennett: Now here is President Obama again comparing the Affordable Care Act, but this time he's comparing it to a starter home. Take a listen.

[clip starts]

OBAMA: We've also always known and I have always said that for all the good that the Affordable Care Act is doing right now, for as big a step forward as it was, it's still just a first step. It's like building a starter home or buying a starter home. It's a lot better than not having a home but you hope that over time you make some improvements.

[clip ends]

BENNETT: The final myth we should bust that Obama is spreading in the speech this week is that ObamaCare is a lot like starter home, it may not be a mansion but it's better than having no home at all. Before ObamaCare, did you think of yourself as being homeless, Scott? I know I didn't but what do you think?

GOTTLIEB: Yeah, it gets back to this conceit that before ObamaCare there were these tens of millions of Americans who were just fending for themselves and didn't have coverage. And again, it's true that there were some people who were falling through the cracks or who were stuck in jobs that they didn't want to be in simply for the health care coverage but there were far more effective, more efficient, less costly ways to address what was the problem that affected on the order of 5-10 million Americans at the most than basically assuming control of the entire health care system in this country which is what ObamaCare did.

BENNETT: Obama actually admitted the prices are rising but he says it's not the fault of the namesake law. He instead blamed the insurers themselves because they set their prices too low early on and now they have to make up for it all. But in any case, he says it doesn't matter because the tax credits are going to help offset the hikes for most Americans. I haven't seen any tax credits. I'm the business owner. What do you make of that?

GOTTLIEB: Well, that's not true. Again, the tax credit is going to offset the costs for Americans who fall within a very narrow income demographic but for the vast majority of Americans they're going to just see the higher prices.

BENNETT: Again, why aren't they simply admitting that it's just not working?

GOTTLIEB: Because this is the liberal dream of the Democratic Party to get full control over the administration of health care in this country and ObamaCare lets them do that and I don't think they're going to be willing to admit failure.

BENNETT: Thank you, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, for being on Financial Myth Busting. You need to read this piece; it was in The Wall Street Journal on September 14th: 'Clinton's Stealthy Single Payer Gambit'.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/02/2016 -- As we move into the last days of this election, an apt comparison is being floated between what we're seeing on our political stage and what TV viewers of the late 1970s saw on their screens when they watched The Gong Show. For those that don't recall, The Gong Show was a "talent" show featuring absurdly un-talented amateur performers, where the least deplorable of the lot won silly and valueless prizes. Surely after that recap, the similarity is clear? We face two equally absurdly unsuitable candidates, but the difference is that the judges (the American people) will be awarding one of them a prize that is neither silly nor valueless: the presidency.

Pop culture critics and social historians point out that The Gong Show was a reflection of its time, a response to the uncertainty of a world where Nixon had only recently been pardoned, where the war in Vietnam had just ended, where the Arab oil embargo was causing rationing of gasoline, high prices, and long lines at filling stations. Absurdity often follows uncertainty. In our case, though, that uncertainty also comes with great economic risk, and neither of the two contestants in our electoral Gong Show have shown any indication that they have the chops to lead America to a strong and vital economy, one worthy of the American dreams they keep espousing.

It is not just me that feels this uncertainty, and not just retail investors. Goldman Sachs explained this recently. More uncertainty reduces the incentive for corporations and firms and even households to engage in the typical day-to-day economic transactions that keep our GDP going, reducing the confidence for things like making investments, hiring workers, increasing warehouse sizes and purchasing durable goods. This confidence will only return with the knowledge that the government and economic policy of this country is supporting businesses. As Goldman Sachs said, "The consequences of an uncertain shock may prove more harmful than anyone could assume." Our economy and even our political system is working against the people that need it to thrive.

HSBC issued a red alert in Business Insider News over the imminent sell-off of stocks, saying the U.S. stock market is artificially propped up by the Fed, but their ability to stimulate the economy has worn out. It's only a matter of time until Yellen raises rates, and that will certainly drop stock prices. Some research indicates a minimum drop of 22% with possible worst cases in the 50% to 60% range. The IMF has issued stability warnings over Deutsche Bank, whose balance sheet crisis has been very much in the news, with Goldman Sachs backing up the IMF's comments. Deutsche Bank is Europe's largest investment bank, and overloaded with toxic debt. Its fall could topple entire countries. And Bank of America warned on CNBC that a recession is imminent, saying that we are seven years into a full-fledged, all out era of central bankers doing everything they can to stimulate the economy, and it's not working.

What can we do, then? One of the most dangerous and misunderstood myths is that you should just keep your money in cash and deposit it in the bank. You think that, once that money has been deposited, it's still yours, but it's not, it's the bank's. What you now own is a promise to repay that money. You have become a creditor of the bank, liable to get burned if the bank makes a bad bet and gets into trouble. The risk is not insignificant when banks use that money to buy into faddish schemes like mortgage backed securities. Even the FDIC, with their current reserves, could cover less than a penny for every dollar they insure. What happened in Cyprus was a wake-up call. People woke up on an otherwise perfectly normal Saturday to find that the money in their bank accounts was simply gone, and they have yet to get it back. This was a potent example of the risks inherent in being entirely dependent on a single country.

Remember, though, not everyone went down with the Titanic. The example of Cyprus is one reason I'm such a fan of owning not only hard assets like gold and silver, but assets that are politically and geographically diverse. Most people have exposure only to the U.S. dollar, so it there's a way to find exposure to other strong currencies like the Singapore dollar, you should do it. This leaves you less dependent on any single country and ensures that no single group of bureaucrats can ruin your finances. This sort of freedom can be life changing.

By the way, The Gong Show? ABC announced in early October that they were bringing it back to prime time. Just in time, it seems.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/01/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: Clyde Wayne Crews is the vice-president and director for policy and technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He's also an alumni of the Cato Institute, a premier libertarian think-tank, and a one-time libertarian candidate for the South Carolina State Senate. Clyde is widely published and contributes to Forbes.com and authors an annual piece called '10,000 Commandments' which The Wall Street Journal has called the best measure of the overall regulatory burden. Crews authored an article that was published in Forbes on October 24, 2016 titled 'Republicans and Democrats Unite Against the $86 Billion AT&T/Time Warner Merger Deal'. Now, I don't know if you've done the math, but his would make it between $105 and $110 per share for those who own Time Warner stock, making this transaction by far one of the biggest media deals in recent years. Clyde, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

CLYDE WAYNE CREWS: Well, thank you so much for having me. Good morning.

BENNETT: This week AT&T announced plans to buy Time Warner for an eye-popping $86 billion which would make the combined entity the biggest media company in the world. Before we get into the antitrust issues involved here can you explain exactly what this deal means? A lot of people think Time Warner is Time Warner Cable. Can you just give the listeners the lay of the land and perhaps what AT&T hopes to accomplish?

CREWS: Yeah, just a little bit briefly. Time Warner Cable is a separate company., a cable company that's also in its own merger negotiations with Charter Communications so that's under review now. And typically now large-scale media mergers are getting a lot of attention from antitrust regulators. It's not just one, it's the Justice Department, it's the Federal Trade Commission and also the Federal Communications Commission. Now, this case, AT&T – that's your phone company but being a big wireless company everybody now wants to be on every platform. People aren't watching TV just on the TV. It's on their streaming devices, they're streaming Netflix, they've got kids using tablets, watching from different rooms using Sling TV and all these ways that people are consuming content now. There are a lot of cross-mergers between the content sector and the infrastructure or communication or platform sectors. AT&T right now is the biggest wireless company but it also has DirecTV so that's a major platform for it to offer content across its satellite infrastructure. But by getting Time Warner, what they're seeking is to get Time Warner's big divisions like HBO which—imagine HBO going across your wireless device. That's what they really want to achieve. Then Turner Broadcasting is a big part of it, so like the TNN station and also CNN, the news channel and also Warner Bros. Studios which which competes with Disney studios and so on down the line. So each of these big mergers is bringing together the big stuff, the infrastructure you need to deliver content, but also the content itself. So everything is very, very much in flux, and because of that flux, and because of regulators being much bigger than the economy themselves when they can slam the brakes on this thing, that was why I wrote that criticism saying, 'Better hold off. Let the market respond to this rather than regulators.'

BENNETT: If I ran AT&T and just folded Time Warner's massive programming portfolio into my telecom company I'd immediately start thinking about how to prioritize these shows and movies for AT&T customers. Yet that probably runs afoul of the FCC's new net neutrality rules. Am I right about that? What might that play be for AT&T?

CREWS: If you're a normal business person obviously you want to prioritize your content but so do your competitors. That's a healthy thing, not a bad thing. However, there's a big restraint on you prioritizing in a way that ends up being bad for customers. One, the net neutrality rules – we were heavy critics of that now for over a decade. I think the idea of the federal government deciding what contents should be, regulating microphones that way, I thought it was a bad thing to do. But if you're AT&T and you want to prioritize HBO, remember I'm sitting at home or my kids are sitting at home. We don't want just HBO content. We want Cartoon Network and everything else and so the incentives in the free market economy are not to withhold but to make cross-platform deals. So at the same time you see this AT&T merger and they do get this great content that puts them in an effective bargaining position, it also does something else. It also means that, 'Boy, they better be nice to Comcast/NBC or they better be nice to Walt Disney if they want to get those companies' content onto the AT&T mobile platform or onto DirecTV and so forth like that.' So these are healthy things to have happened rather than unhealthy, in my view. That's how I look at these things. Because just imagine, a year or two from now there are going to be new kinds of mergers and new kinds of cross-platform announcements made. I mean, look at Hulu itself. That's owned by several of these big players. AT&T has a stake in it but so does Disney and others. So you see what I mean. There are lots of cross-platform deals going on.

Bennett: AT&T is basically a telecom company and Time Warner is essentially a content company. So if they do these two totally different things why the antitrust fears?

CREWS: You're right about that. Typically, antitrust in theory gets involved when you've got McDonald's merging with Burger King merging with Wendy's, when you've got companies all doing the same thing merging together. That's horizontal. This is vertical when you've got people up and down the distribution lines. Occasionally this kind of thing gets antitrust scrutiny but we're talking here about ones and zeros, you know, content delivered over the airwaves in a world where now all of us are broadcasters now. Compare this to the way things were in the 50s or 60s when we had three television stations and you had one AT&T that was protected by government monopoly. That long ago phone monopoly that AT&T had where your only choice was a black phone, that's long gone. We're in a completely different world now where competition is way beyond what we had back then back when government thought it was protecting us with an enforced AT&T monopoly. It was against the law to compete with the phone company. We're beyond all that, so I don't credit any of those antitrust arguments. I mean, what we have now is what's creating platform wealth and content wealth and the biggest benefit to consumers is when the next guy says, 'Oh, I'm angry about AT&T doing this deal,' and then they come up with a competing deal of their own to try to get customers too.

BENNETT: Clyde, you're an expert on antitrust issues and I'm going to ask this: over the years, the feds have increasingly inserted themselves into mergers and acquisitions, ostensibly working on America's behalf to protect competition and prevent monopolies yet more often than not it seems their attempts to save consumers from big business end up screwing both the consumer and big business. To take one example, Blockbuster's attempt to take over its competitor Hollywood Video fearing there wouldn't be enough competition to movie rental stores. I think that's silly but, of course, now both companies went bankrupt as the FTC dashed their only chance of survival. Do you see this a lot where antitrust fears largely stem from a failure to appreciate how dynamic market forces are and the constant evolution of industry?

WAYNE CREWS: I do, and it really galls me to think about all of the time and effort that companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had to spend and companies before that, Staples and Office Depot, when they attempted a merger, all the effort they had to spend when the retail landscape was just changing by leaps and bounds, different companies getting into the business. It's incredible to think about it but what once used to be Blockbuster where people would line up on a Friday night and rent videos is now reduced to a Redbox Store sitting in the CVS that nobody uses. It's amazing what's come to be and they pretended that there could be a monopoly in that kind of a content when behind the surface all of these things were beginning to change with the emergence of DVD and emergence of the Internet and all of these new kinds of content, new channels popping up on cable all the time to compete with movies. And that's the thing now. It's just an amazing dynamic of content marketplace. It's astounding when you think about it.

BENNETT: It really is. AT&T itself, I think, is another interesting example of what happens when overzealous federal regulators actually fear company becoming too successful. You remember back in the day, back in 1984, where the feds broke the company up into Ma Bell which is AT&T and Baby Bells like Pacific Northwest Bell and South Central Bell. Looking back the feds' decision to break up AT&T, I'm wondering if you think that was positive or negative for the consumers.

CREWS: Well, the way I look at it is now we have what we have. You know, just like we have giant electric utilities, also it's against the law for you to compete with them too. You go to jail if you run an extension cord across the street. Usually it's been the case that when there was monopoly it wasn't a natural monopoly but it was an artificial one created by government with exclusive franchises and things like that. In a free market economy—and free market doesn't mean unregulated—there are all kinds of disciplines against a company that misbehaves, like if AT&T and Time Warner misbehave here they've got Wall Street, shows like yours, consumers, the media, all these forces are readied against them if they do bad things and people can short their stock, people can make other deals, people can work around it. But AT&T is an interesting case because it had a protected monopoly for so long and in a real free market there may not be a company called AT&T today, probably wouldn't be. Because companies have lifespans typically just like human beings do and like any ordinary business. But it is here now. Its monopoly power that was created by government, not by itself, its monopoly power is gone so it can compete, it's subject to blistering market forces just like Comcast/NBC/Universal and just like Walt Disney and just like all of these entities are subject to now. Nobody knows how this is going to wind up. Amazon just came out with their new Fire Stick to offer broadcasting and being able to distribute content from all of these sources streaming it in your home. There's so many pressures on companies to come up with ways to please consumers and that's what it really comes down to. Consumers are the boss.

BENNETT: Once again, to me it seems no one at the FTC knew the cellphone revolution was just around the corner, nobody knew that we were going to go online for our movies so Blockbuster and Hollywood Video knew it. Why is it that they have all this power but they don't have the education, the foresight? I don't know what the right word is. How can someone with so much power not have the rest of the tools in order to make a very smart decision?

CREWS: Well, you know, it's a whole different set of ideas when you're talking about companies and operating in a market economy. There is such a thing as cronyism, there is such a thing as subsidies. And it's not just that if you're a solar energy company you can get subsidies from the government but if you're powerful enough and you've got an agency with your name in its title you can usually get that agency to manipulate things in your favor and often you find with antitrust interventions not asked for by the consumers. It's the competitors of the company in question that's trying to merge or trying to make some kind of a deal. And you see this in Europe with Google and Facebook. As they expanded to Europe you've seen European antitrust authorities doing very same things. Antitrust works like protectionism. It's a way of incumbent providers who don't want the new competition or want to change the competitive landscape to get the government to step in rather than to compete through the market. So you'll continue to see it as long as we continue to think and accept the idea that antitrust promotes competition rather than hinders it, as I think, you'll continue to see cases like this and you'll see them again with Google and again with Facebook, again with the AT&Ts of the world because, remember, this is an $85 billion merger but it's not going to be the last. You'll be on this show, a year or two or three or five years from now talking about the next biggest merger of $150 billion and that's the way the market goes. For my part I would love to see many more giant mergers like this because when you get the A&P stores of the worlds and the Wal-Mart stores you also get a lot of specialty shops of the world too and you create lots and lots of new niche markets and wealthy economies. So big deals for big companies also mean more medium deals, more small deals and more opportunities for wealth creation and I love to see that kind of vibrant economy. I like us doubling GDP rather than doubling regulation.

BENNETT: Well, we seem to be going in the opposite direction unfortunately. Shouldn't want our companies to prosper? Remember back in the 90s Microsoft led the Internet revolution and they helped to spur an economic boom that lasted almost a decade. The U.S. government enjoyed the resulting boost in tax revenue but they also targeted Microsoft for ostensibly being too popular. So, again, shouldn't the feds want our companies to prosper?

CREWS: They should. That gets back to the idea of—you know, there were competitors at that time to Microsoft who wanted to operate on the desktop. There's a whole thing of when companies get large, when they have a successful platform – in that case it was the desktop of Microsoft – and so others wanted access to that desktop for their content, for their competing browser and things like that, so they created a duty of the existing company saying it had monopoly power to allow access to it. If you've got an antitrust enforcer available, believe me, people will use it.

BENNETT: Clyde, we've had a great conversation so far about the AT&T/Time Warner merger deal. One of the first critics out of the gate was Donald Trump. He said combining two major media companies would concentrate too much power and too few hands. Is this not a legitimate concern? Is there any drawback when companies morph into these mega-monsters?

CREWS: I heard Trump make that comment and I wasn't surprised by it because remember, Trump is a populist in a lot of ways, he talks free market ideas in a very good way when he talks about regulatory reform and cutting 67 percent of regulations or whatever his number was and getting Washington off our backs. Remember, he has had this tendency to say big businesses are cheating the public when they move overseas and they don't bring their taxes back or when they offshore their jobs and things like that. So it didn't surprise me, when I thought about it in that respect, to see him criticize this merger. And remember, his biggest battle has been saying that there's media bias so you would expect him right out of the gate to say, 'Well, if that company has got liberal leadership and if they're buying CNN…' which he already calls it the Clinton News Network, so you would expect him to come out this way against this merger. The Clinton campaign has had some words to say about this too and the Democratic platform has talked about reining in antitrust and in fact President Obama put out an executive order earlier this year on competition, and when they say competition it usually means 'government-managed' to some extent, the government having something to say, and that's what occurred here. But remember, both parties are antitrust boosters. Senator Sherman was a Republican, so you often find Republicans, contrary to what people think, are pushing regulations and regulatory agencies as well. It was Republicans who brought the EPA, Energy Department and so on. So you don't quite know how folks are going to line up but typically just in terms of the rhetoric and discussion you'll hear Republicans criticize the use of antitrust but last week on Sunday it was Senator Mike Lee on the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee who sent out a letter saying they were concerned about this merger and were going to be holding hearings. That worries me because I know he's going to do that. He's been more minimal to antitrust and other Republicans have even though he's been terrific, I mean absolutely terrific on regulatory reform generally. So I was a little disappointed that he decided to do that but it did seem inevitable because of his position on the committee. But the way I look at antitrust is no matter how bad a deal is—and usually when the deal is bad the stock market is what reacts to it—it's never as bad as the federal government stepping in and absolutely denying a voluntary action in a free market because what happens when government does that is it's creating a whole new trajectory. So what ends up coming out of the deal isn't what the free market chose, it's what the government chose. And I always think that when government steps in or blocks a merger it's actually hurting consumers by denying them the competitive response to what those merging companies did. So in other words, if AT&T and Time Warner do not merge all of the competitors who would have been forced to respond to that in a competitive marketplace by offering something new can just sit back on their hands. That's what worries me and that's why I was disappointed with Trump and with Mike Lee.

BENNETT: Yeah. This isn't the first time for AT&T having a failed mega-deal, you know, it did back with T-Mobile because of regulatory hurdles. It was part of that other historic merger but that went through but that was also the top of the market for stock prices, so it may be another warning.

CREWS: We were using those AOL discs for coasters for our beer.

BENNETT: That's right.

CREWS: Imagine what would occur now if the government were to step in and stop this. Time Warner is sitting there as a content company, and believe me it's not wanting to sit still any more than AT&T is. So there it sits and if AT&T doesn't buy Time Warner because the government says it can't, in a year or two or three years some other infrastructure company will move in and do that. But then you've got a deal that was never the choice of the marketplace. That ends up being an artificial later suboptimal merger because the government blocked what happened before. It's far better to make the deal now and if it turns out to be bad the resources are all still there, they just get reshuffled in the free market economy.

BENNETT: If this deal doesn't go through there are a lot of Wall Street banks that are going to be big losers. I don't think people realize they have pledged close to $40 billion in loans to make this deal a reality. JPMorgan Chase alone has pledged about $25 billion to financing. And these banks desperately need business so they need this deal to go through. Clyde, I want to thank you so much for being on this show and we hope to have you back soon.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/24/2016 -- With just weeks to go before Election Day, the repugnant daytime-TV drama of the political process just gets more and more sickening to many. It seems deceit, dishonesty, and disgusting personal failings are the primary mover in this election, for both candidates, and more and more people I talk to are answering "no one" when I ask who they're going to vote for on Tuesday, November 8th, a crying shame when our country desperately needs us to participate in the processes of governance. With sexual allegations on the one hand and the dump of thousands of humiliating emails on the other, it's as if we Americans are being held hostage to a poorly written TV show, watching the race for the highest office in our land become a race to the bottom.

I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that this election, the first ever to feature a female major party candidate for President, has become in major part a contest to see whether Donald Trump or Bill Clinton is the most odious man on the stage, never mind the fact that Bill Clinton is not actually on the stage. The Democrats are now railing against the hypocrisy of the Republicans in the same way the Republicans decried Democrats' hypocrisy in the 1990s. Is this the conversation we want to be having as the struggle to the narrative occurs between two sides that no sane person would choose if there was any alternative.

And then, of course, hackers broke into Clinton campaign email servers and have started posting thousands of emails, many of which are downright embarrassing to both Hillary Clinton and her campaign. The same hackers that began challenging government surveillance and illegal wartime activities have turned their attention to the political realm, and they are using the transparency site WikiLeaks, founded in 2006, to post their finds. I do believe there is a principled argument for this sort of radical transparency: as Julian Assange said ten years ago, "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership." Over and over again the Clinton campaign emails reveal the "private position vs. public position" conflict brought out in the second debate. Her private disdain for same-sex marriage, contrasting sharply with her public support, must cause the LGBT community to pause, for instance Her portrayal of herself to Wall Street as extremely supportive of free trade and open borders when she repeatedly claims to be skeptical of both on the campaign trail also reveals an essential disconnect. Add to that other leaked emails indicating collusion between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, and the steady drip-drip-drip of bad news for Hillary is increasingly become a torrent.

In all, it just seems that no matter who wins this election, America loses. November 8th can't come soon enough as an end to the international embarrassment that is this election, and I'm not the only one in the financial world to say it. Even Merrill Lynch said last week, "Despite the descent of politics, the subjects having little bearing on financial markets, its stench nonetheless permeates everything." Honestly, I think that says it all.

Whether it happens in time for the actual election, I believe that the driving force in American politics for years to come is going to be the pocketbook, and these very issues could still drive Trump to a win. Fundamentals have too long been ignored: a poor and unstable economy; a lack of consumer liquidity; employment and income savaged by many elements, particularly poor-quality trade agreements, shifting wealth off shore. The financial system is no longer a free market system in anything but name, operating outside of reasonable norms and controls. Secretary Clinton is promising continued and even expanded versions of government programs of recent years, and we know we can't afford that. Trump is promising a change, but it doesn't feel likely that he'll be in a position to deliver on that promise.

Whichever wins, I believe the US financial markets and the dollar are going to go through some form of near-term turmoil. As much as you would think this would cause a flight to gold, I'm not seeing that yet. It almost smells like the Federal Reserve, as they did in September 2011, is suppressing the price so it appears that our economy and markets and political system are stronger than they actually are. Back in September 2011, gold topped out and then dropped 400 to 500 points. This year, gold is up about 17 percent year to date and silver up 25 percent. Perhaps the Fed has decided that's simply enough?

This is the main reason why very few investors truly expect a downturn in US stock markets. They believe the Fed has their back, and in the last eight years, the Fed has controlled the stock and bond markets and the practice of buying the dip has worked brilliantly, and it will probably continue to work in the near term unless the members of the Fed's Board of Governors change, which is only likely to happen if Donald Trump does get elected. For now, it seems the powers that be will keep markets aloft so that Clinton gets elected.

But nothing lasts forever, and every bubble eventually bursts, no matter who is inflating it. The breadth of the equity market is collapsing in recent weeks, which rarely ends well for stocks. In general, the indexes follow breadth. Bloomberg has said that these divergences, measured by comparing the S&P 500 and the number of constituent tradings above their fifty day moving average, have been rare since 1990 and generally been bad for investors. In the seven instances that occurred before this year, all but two actually portended further losses. December 1990, February 2000, and October 2008 are notable examples. After 2008, equities ended up erasing half their value over the next two years. It should be clear that our markets have no connection with reality. Earnings and revenues have dropped substantially widely across the S&P and Dow constituent stocks, and even the Russell 2000.

On Black Monday in 1987, the Dow fell 508 points. Then, that was a 22.61 percent drop. The 1929 crash was a 24.55 percent drop. There are analysts that feel we could be heading for a similar event, given the collapsing breadth of the market and our increasingly weak and unstable fundamentals. In today's market, that could be as much as 4000 points. So, regardless of how you vote, look to your pocketbook, your investments, your future. Do what you can to protect them, and be ready for when the dominoes begin to tumble.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/21/2016 -- BENNETT: Ed Klein is the author of the bestselling book Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation which is currently #6 on The New York Times bestseller list. Ed is also the former foreign editor of the Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times magazine as well as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. Klein's book is about how Hillary and her career has skipped out on justice so many times. Ed, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

ED KLEIN: Thank you, Dawn, Great to be with you and thank you for having me.

BENNETT: You have a new book out that's tearing up the bestsellers list about Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal. It's called Guilty as Sin, but according to the director of the FBI, James Comey, Clinton's actions were merely careless, not criminal. Why do you think Comey seemed to go out of his way to effectively exonerate Clinton? Is it because of his prior relationship with the Clintons?

KLEIN: No, I don't think so. I think it was his prior relationship with himself, to be a little jocular for a moment here on a very serious subject. I think James Comey thinks very highly of himself, and with some reason. After all, he didn't become Director of the FBI, a major, position, of course, in our government, by falling off the back of a turnip truck. His ambition, his desire to rise in the ranks of the criminal justice system: all that says that he's a guy who knows how to be a political player. And when it came to the question of whether he was going to recommend an indictment or not, he looked around, saw that he had the White House against him, the Justice Department against him, the prosecutors against him, the intelligence community wasn't working with him, the Democratic leadership in Congress was opposed to him indicting Hillary and, of course, then you also had the mainstream liberal media who wanted Hillary to skate and Comey decided if he did what he knew was right, which was to recommend an indictment because she had indeed violated at least one statute, the espionage statute, by carelessly handling top secret information, the entire avalanche of the secular establishment would come crashing down on his reputation and the FBI so he folded like a cheap suit and tried to duck responsibility and in doing so I think he hurt himself more than he expected.

BENNETT: So he plays the game. It was reported also this week that FBI agents who were assigned to the Hillary investigation were actually furious with James Comey and they described him as 'a dirty cop' who pursues paranoia and delusion and vindictive measures to prevent negative information leaking out to the public. But if that's the case why haven't we seen a bigger revolt internal to the FBI? Why haven't there been any resignations among agents?

KLEIN: You know, in my book 'Guilty as Sin' I do a very deep dive into the FBI and how it works and how James Comey works. One of the things that your listeners would be very interested to know is that after the investigation was over James Comey required, ordered, all the agents who had anything to do with the investigations to sign a non-disclosure agreement and in that agreement it says that if you disclose anything relating to this investigation you are liable to criminal investigation. Criminal investigation! You go to jail! You can lose your pension, your job – everything! So, what's happened is some of these agents have been talking privately to some of their friends who have now retired from the FBI but none of them, as far as I know, have actually contacted the media because a lot of them are being polygraphed as well. In random polygraphs, if you have spoken to somebody at The New York Times and you take a polygraph test and they find out that you're lying about that you can go to jail. That's why there's been no outward revolt yet. However, I believe that there will be but, unfortunately, it'll probably be well after this election.

BENNETT: Sure. Even last night, there was a story that came out that talked about how a senior State Department official repeatedly had pressed the FBI to change the classification of e-mails stored on Hillary Clinton's private server. Did you hear about this?

KLEIN: No, I didn't, actually.

BENNETT: Yeah, the State Department tried offering the FBI quid pro quo. Well, if you haven't heard about it, something that came out last night about that and, of course, the FBI denied it but they said they're going to go ahead and research it.

KLEIN: I'm sorry to interrupt, but if you want to know how the FBI really botched this investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mails, it's all laid out in my book Guilty as Sin and I think people need to know this because this has a lot to do with the outcome of the coming election on November 8. I mean, this is not just some typical corruption in Washington. We're talking about jeopardizing our security, putting American lives at stake, allowing our enemies to read about our most cherished top secrets and Hillary Clinton did this knowingly, intentionally, she had been warned about it and did it anyway and I have tons of material about that in this new book.

BENNETT: Your book does make some shocking revelations about the Congressional investigation into Hillary's server which you say exposed an act of corruption that bordered on treason. What's one of the most damning scandals that was uncovered?

KLEIN: By Congress or by me?

BENNETT: Either way.

KLEIN: I'm going to veer off the e-mail thing for a moment and say what I think is one of the biggest scandals. You know, all presidential libraries are funded by the National Archives. That means taxpayer money goes to running presidential libraries – that's Reagan Library, Nixon Library and William Jefferson Clinton Library. In Little Rock—I have a whole chapter in my book about this—in Little Rock, the William J. Clinton Library has a penthouse on the fifth floor where Bill Clinton hold private parties. I've interviewed two of the interns who work in the library. These are women in their 20s who've been invited upstairs to the penthouse by Bill Clinton and have given him foot massages. Now, this is interesting not because I want to broadcast tabloid stuff, but given the fact that everybody and his uncle is down on Donald Trump for things he did 30 years ago, Bill Clinton today, maybe even as we speak is up to his usual shenanigans in the penthouse of his own presidential library. He takes out a garden hose and hoses down women in wet t-shirt contests. And nobody's writing about this. I've written about it in my book, but none of the mainstream media has picked up about it.

BENNETT: Well, have they picked up on it and decided not to write about it? I think another thing that's coming out of the e-mails is that the media seems to be very supportive of the Clintons, both Hillary and Bill, and therefore they're not reporting anything versus, of course, Trump. They're going to take him down. It's just amazing to me how the media is just trying to embarrass Trump but not Hillary at all or even Bill.

KLEIN: You may know, if you read in my biography, that I used to work at The New York Times. I was the editor-in-chief for ten years in The New York Times magazine. That was a long time ago, maybe 30 years almost. When I was there, the guy who actually ran the newspaper and to whom I reported was a guy named A.M. Rosenthal, and Abe Rosenthal had a saying which was as follows: 'If you cover the circus, you can't sleep with the elephants.' Our media today is sleeping with the elephants. In this case the donkeys, actually, because the entire mainstream media is in the tank for Hillary. And I'm not just saying this as a Trump supporter; I'm saying this as a journalist of many, many decades standing who's sick at heart seeing what's happened to our media and how unfair the coverage has been. Donald has done a lot of damage to himself, there's no question about that, but the media has jumped on his throat and let Hillary get a pass.

BENNETT: They do seem to have a very cozy relationship with Hillary. And these e-mails, this e-mail dump—there was even a transcript in there for an interview she did with MSNBC's Chris Hayes before they even conducted the so-called interview, so they're giving her the edge every step of the way and so is the FBI and so is the State Department. There are a lot of people trying to help her get in, so I think they're just disregarding anything like wet t-shirt contest and foot rubs.

KLEIN: Yeah. Where is the outrage? Why aren't people up in arms about the media? They should be. And again, in Guilty as Sin I am in outrage and I really lay this out, why the media is no longer to be trusted.

BENNETT: For someone coming from the media, that's a pretty strong statement.

KLEIN: Well, quite frankly, I think it's an understatement because I think it's a disgrace what's happened to our media. And only talk-shows like yours and Fox News channel – that's about only place you can really get a fair and balanced view of what's going on in this country.

BENNETT: There's something else I want to bring out that's in your book for those who don't follow politics as closely as you did. What you've put in your book is that there is a big rivalry between the Obama family and the Clintons and you report that Obama actually wanted Comey from the FBI to indict Hillary. What happened exactly and why do they hate each other so much?

KLEIN: Well, there are two what I call 'mafia families' in the Democratic Party – the Clintons and the Obamas. They don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, including ideology but more importantly power, who is going to control the Democratic Party and the millions, really tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in patronage jobs, campaign workers – all that stuff that goes into controlling the party. Obamas and Clintons have been wrestling over this for years and they really, really despise each other. Now, for a while President Obama was looking for somebody, almost anybody, who would challenge Hillary for the nomination of the party. This was when she first announced she was running. He went to Joe Biden, he went to Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and some others and tried to persuade them and offered his support against Hillary. At that time, he was happy as a clam that the FBI was going after Hillary because he didn't want to see her in the White House because the Obamas felt if the Clintons got in the White House, they would be marginalized, they'd be pushed aside, they would not have any power anymore, they'd be yesterday's news, nobody would listen to them. But he couldn't find anybody to challenge Hillary except Bernie Sanders who's kind of—I think it's too strong to say he was a joke, but he certainly was never going to get the nomination. Never get elected, that's for sure. So he met with Valerie Jarrett, Obama did, who is his closest adviser, friend and power behind the throne there in the White House and she said in one of the chapters in my book: 'Getting him to endorse Hillary Clinton wax like shoving a toad down his throat.' But he did. He realized he had no choice. So at that point he did a 180 degree flip-flop from wanting her to be indicted, so that she wouldn't get the nomination, to absolutely totally against her being indicted and he threw all his weight, the weight of the administration, the presidency, the White House, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies, the Democratic leadership against James Comey, the FBI director. And it was that flip-flop that doomed the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton.

BENNETT: The Wall Street Journal actually confirms a version of that. They just reported that the Obama administration not only knew about Hillary's private e-mail server but they actually conspired along with the State Department to cover it up.

KLEIN: I think that's not only true, but I've actually proven that in my interviews in Guilty as Sin, that the Obama people knew from practically day one when she was Secretary of State what she was doing with her private server.

BENNETT: Isn't the larger issue here with Hillary and in general the Clintons really a question of trust?

KLEIN: Oh, yeah, very much so. I mean, after all, the person we elect to the Oval Office—we're investing our trust in that person that he or she will number one, protect the safety of our country. And that is a complicated issue, just that. We're talking about safety from terrorism, we're talking about safety from immigration, drugs, and we're also in a larger sense talking about keeping us safe from economic decline and from the terrible hollowing out of our middle class. So when you look at these two candidates – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – I think, and I say this in a chapter of my book called 'The Choice', you're talking about on the one hand Hillary Clinton who has said she will continue the policies of the Obama administration on steroids. She's going to do more immigration, she's going to continue this ineffectual economic policy. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump who is saying 'Look, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to shake things up. I'm going to lower taxes. I'm going to stop the immigration that's pouring across our borders and the drugs. And I'm going to help the inner cities rebuild.' I mean, there's a stark choice between these two and that all goes to the question of trust. Who do you trust will bring America back to, as Donald says, to the greatness that it once had?

BENNETT: It's interesting to me she's saying one thing to the public but in her e-mails it's another story. Like, for example, she says to the public that she is for same sex marriage but in her e-mails she says she is not for that. Or, for example, Hillary's senior advisers were all mocking the owners of News Corp for being practicing Catholics which they thought was just political posturing. It's so fascinating! I don't know what to trust. Do we trust the e-mails or do we trust the Hillary in front of the television?

KLEIN: Who's the real Hillary exactly? You can't tell. Even the private Hillary may not be the real Hillary because there is no real Hillary. There's no core to this person. She'll do whatever it takes to get where she wants and that means she really doesn't have a basic set of principles by which she lives. I've written about that now for 13 or 14 years because I've written several books about Hillary Clinton including this latest one. And people say, 'Do you hate Hillary Clinton?' No, I don't hate her, but I do very much fear the return of the Clintons to the White House because if Hillary is elected we're going to get Bill and Hillary right back there in the White House and every time they've been in power we have been embroiled in scandal and cover-ups and that's exactly what will happen again if Hillary becomes president.

BENNETT: But Americans have such short memories. Let me ask you something. Do you believe that Google is censoring search results to protect Hillary?

KLEIN: The answer is yes, but I don't know how high that goes. In other words, does it go all the way up to the CEO of Google? Is he or she ordering that or are there just tons and tons of people in the media? And that's not just newspapers and broadcasts but it's anybody in the information area who are so aligned with Hillary that they will make sure that the message that Google gets out is all pro-Hillary.

BENNETT: That's so fascinating. Where can our listeners get your book?

KLEIN: Guilty as Sin, which is climbing up the list, as you said, The New York Times bestseller list, can be easily gotten at amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. I think it's going for like $12 or $14 which is like going to the movies and having some popcorn. It's very inexpensive and it's a great, easy read. It's also available at my website, edwardklein.com, and at bookstores everywhere.

BENNETT: And you also had a book in 2015 called Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary; another called Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas which is fascinating; and finally The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, which was also excellent. I wish you the best of luck on all those.

KLEIN: Really very kind of you to say that, Dawn. I appreciate it.

BENNETT: That was Ed Klein and, again, you want to get his book Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/20/2016 -- BENNETT: Ed Conard is the author of two Top 10 New York Times bestselling books. The first, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong came out in 2012. The most recent, published in 2016, is The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class. He's also written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Politico among others. Ed, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

EDWARD CONARD: Dawn, thank you for having me.

BENNETT: Your book does exactly what we do on the show which is bust the zombie-like myths that never seem to die. Chief among them, of course, is the issue of inequality which is a source of so much conversation in this election cycle. What, to borrow from the title of your book, is the upside of inequality?

CONARD: If you look at United States, we have a very deep pool of well-trained talent which is taking more entrepreneurial risks than their counterparts in Europe and Japan, substantially more risk, and producing faster growth and higher median wages. If you look at the U.S., employment growth has grown twice as fast as Germany and France since 1980 and three times faster than Japan, at median household incomes which are 15 to 30 percent higher than those economies. And we're doing that with a pool of workers where about 25 percent score in the top third internationally on academic tests; about 45 percent of our workers score in the bottom third. If you look at Germany, it's about a third at the top, a third at the bottom. If you look at Japan, it's almost 50 percent at the top and only 15 percent at the bottom. So, with even a smaller pool we're generating faster growth at higher incomes.

BENNETT: Is the real challenge facing America today how to accelerate growth in wages? because we have too many low-skilled workers?

CONARD: Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. I would say we have too few high-skilled workers and that the ratio between high and low is very important. When you think about what a high-skilled worker can do, they really have three jobs. One is they can create innovation like the iPhone that's beneficial to everyone; the second is they can be doctors and lawyers that just keep the gears moving, and the third is that they can organize unskilled workers into companies that can serve customers more effectively that increases the productivity of unskilled workers. Those are the three functions so, to the extent if we're short on workers, one of the arguments that the book makes is that properly trained talent and entrepreneurial risk-taking are the binding constraints to growth today, not savings. What we see is savings that are unused and the productivity of our workforce slows down.

BENNETT: People tend to assume that in societies with vast inequality income mobility, where people can climb the socioeconomic ladder, is impossible. But you point out that's actually not the case. What is the reality?

CONARD: Yes, there's a landmark study done by two fairly liberal Harvard researchers and one from the University of California that show that mobility has not slowed down at all relative to the past in the U.S. In fact, if you look at absolute mobility or ability to save or earn $50,000 or $100,000, it's actually gone up over time. And there are other studies that compare the mobility of the U.S. to Scandinavia which has the most equally distributed income of all the high wage economies. What you find is mobility is virtually identical for all Americans except in the bottom 20 percent and if you dig into the bottom 20 percent, the mobility is identical for white Americans, it's slower for black or African-Americans in the bottom 20 percent. And if you dig into that, what you find is that single motherhood and high school dropout rates seem to account for almost all of the differences in mobility and that has profound effect on mobility across all races, across all income groups. So, it seems to be a sociological issue more than it is an economic issue.

BENNETT: Interesting. Now, you argue that many of the things Washington does to ostensibly address income equality – higher taxes on the rich, regulation, entitlements – only slow down growth which exacerbates the original problem. I've long argued that the Federal Reserve is also fueling inequality as the Fed prints money and essentially deposits it directly into big banks which ends up helping to run those banks but not the economy on Main Street. Do you agree and does the Fed come in for criticism in your book?

CONARD: The Fed does come in for criticism in trying to pump up growth by printing money. I don't think it will work. You've got to remember that the Federal Reserve doesn't produce anything, it doesn't create anything that would actually increase growth. But the argument I made in my first book was that the money would largely sit unused because we're bumping up into other constraints to growth which is our willingness to take risks so, for example, borrow that money and put it to work. It would sit unused and create neither inflation nor growth. So I think it's largely to destabilize the economy a bit. It's made financial markets harder to interpret but it's had actually very little effect, I think, on the economy, so a lot of risk for not much benefit.

BENNETT: Aren't U.S. government programs to redistribute income the real enemy of the middle class?

CONARD: Well, I think in some of the cases—at the high end when we slow down the payoffs for risk-taking we see less risk-taking. We've seen that in Europe, we've seen it in Japan, and it has profound effects over long periods of time. So if you look at how much capability the U.S. has produced, institutional capability, companies like Google, Facebook, Silicon Valley. There's been enormous growth in our capability to produce innovation relative to Europe and Japan. And then at the low end, the way things are done is we're giving workers a safety net, about $30,000-$35,000 a year. That is about what a full-time Hispanic male worker in prime working age can earn full-time, so I do think you are demotivating work at the bottom end of the wage scale.

BENNETT: Talking about the regulation part, I know your book proposes some ideas on how to clean up big banks and, of course, this week we saw the CEO of Wells Fargo resign after a scandal involving bankers creating fake accounts to cash in on promotional payouts. And the story is really interesting to me because even after a law as expansive and intrusive as Dodd-Frank it's still completely impossible to regulate out of existence every bad banking behavior. So, I'm just wondering how can that be done.

CONARD: Well, I'm not sure that can be simply done through regulation. I think it's just too complex. One of the worries that I had in my first book was that the real guarantors of the bank are rich taxpayers. We are saying we don't want the taxpayers to guarantee the banks. One of the things we did was push that risk back onto the banks but, of course, banks have to push it back onto their customers. Their customer is a middle class homeowner who today has a very hard time getting a mortgage as a result of all these regulations. And if you look at the volatility of bank stocks, for example, and other measures like that, it doesn't seem like the regulations have had much impact on making the banking system more stable. All they've really done is made it very, very difficult to borrow money, particularly if you're a middle class homeowner with the modest credit rating.

BENNETT: Right, extremely difficult. I want to change tracks here. I want to talk a little bit about politics. You're friends with Mitt Romney who made a big splash earlier this year when he gave a speech calling on Republicans to reject Trump. In that effort he's failed or, at least, Trump became the Republican candidate. So, as you look toward November, what do you make of the prospect of a Trump presidency and are you as down on him as your former colleague?

CONARD: I recognize why some people are leery of Donald Trump because of his undisciplined behavior, but do they need to go public and really work against him? I think that only works on behalf of the Democrats. And I think—who's more likely to rein in spending? Certainly, it seems like Republicans are more likely to rein in spending. The other place I think there's an opportunity for us to grow—I do argue in the book that there's a shortage of the most talented workers that drive growth today and by the Democrats having linked high and low-skilled immigration together we all agree that more high-skilled immigration would help growth and yet we have not been able to increase it one bit. I think if Republicans were in power they would de-link the negotiations. They would set aside low-skilled immigration and they would allow more high-skilled immigration and I do think that would grow the economy faster.

BENNETT: Do you have any ideas on how to attract high-skilled people?

CONARD: Well, I think there's—a lot of them who are dying to come here simply have very tight quotas that don't allow them to come. The second argument that I make in the book is that we should lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent in order to make it competitive and we have international competitors who want to leave the United States because the tax code is uncompetitive as it is written. I think it's foolish to run an economy that way. We should be trying to attract not only the most capable workers, many of whom are eager to come here, but also the corporations that hire those workers and put them to work to compete internationally. We're shooting ourselves in the foot.

BENNETT: Ireland, for example has a 12 percent corporate tax rate.

CONARD: Sure. And I sat on a board of a high-tech company we have about a 12 to 15 percent tax rate, so actually it's a case of the tax law as implemented does divide between local competitors, domestic competitors who end up with a very high tax rate but they probably pass that onto customers because all competitors have the same tax rate. But if you look internationally, we have forced our companies to push the money overseas, to locate overseas, because they simply can't be competitive with a 35 percent tax rate which is really significantly higher when you add state and local taxes as well. So they've all pushed to Ireland and places like that to get the tax rate down to 15 percent that it needs to be competitive.

BENNETT: Speaking about taxes, Hillary Clinton is deriding Trump's tax cut plan as 'trickle-down economics on steroids'. That's what she said. It seems that the Democrats will call anything that slightly reduces the rate of spending growth as trickle-down economics. But as the author of the book called 'The Upside of Inequality', do you think that Republicans should ever just come out and say, 'You know what? One of the best things to do for the poor is cut taxes on the rich.'

CONARD: Well, I think trickle-down is something you learned in the second grade to make you a liberal. I would remind everybody that for a person to actually pay taxes, to produce a profit, they first have to create a lot more value for their customers than they do for themselves. So, I think you can say a producer creates about $5 of value for everybody else in order to put $1 of value in their pocket. I think the number is more like 20 to 1. Ironically, I said 'It's probably 20 to 1, but let's just assume it's 5 to 1,' in my first book. And then I was quoted in The New York Times saying it's 20 to 1 and they said it can't be possible and they want and got Dean Baker, one of the most liberal economists, say it's only 5 to 1. So, yeah, let's just remind there's a lot of trickle-up. You have to produce $5 of value to get $1 to be taxed on in the first place. So, I think of it as trickle-up economics as opposed to trickle-down economics. I don't know what the government is loading in at the top. It's actually trickling down. Somebody's got to earn this money in the first place.

BENNETT: What do you think about this big government that we have today?

CONARD: Well, I do think we create this web of regulations that does two things. The first is it requires a huge amount of resources to deal with it. I sit on the boards of companies. We spend so much time talking about Sarbanes-Oxley and things that have no impact on our customer at all. So the amount of resources it consumes, instead of those resources driving up growth, it's certainly slowing down growth. The second thing it does is that the big companies and the rich investors can all hire lawyers, armies of lawyers, to look for loopholes, unintended loopholes in those regulations and use those to gain competitive advantages. We don't want people gaining profit that way. We want them to get profit by creating things like the iPhone and Google and Facebook that make us all better off. So I do think that it has two very, very bad consequences: slower growth and an increase in cronyism and income inequality. When it's produced that way, not honestly, in the competitive markets it's not good.

BENNETT: According to everything that I'm reading, it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to get in.

CONARD: 85 percent chance in online betting markets, yes.

BENNETT: She's actually going to continue the Obama administration's plan on expanding the government.

CONARD: Yeah, she wants $200 billion a year increase in spending and increase in taxes. We saw what's happened over the last eight years. We've had very tepid economic growth; we've had tepid employment growth. To the extent, we've achieved employment growth. We haven't seen any rises in wages.

BENNETT: So where is she going to get the money? Where is the money going to come from?

CONARD: Well, she taxes success, so it has a combination of two things. That would have turned into equity, that would have underwritten risk, that would have grown the economy faster. And the second thing is it discourages and reduces the payouts for risk-taking so gradually, over time, you get slower compounding effect in the institutional capabilities like Silicon Valley and Google and Facebook that grow our economy.

BENNETT: And more and more people will just end up going overseas, more Americans, more entrepreneurial Americans.

CONARD: I don't know how many will go overseas. What they do do though—we know what they do in Europe. They go on vacation. What you want your top-talented people to do is go to work, take risks that grow the economy. What you don't want them to do is say, 'I've made enough money as a dentist. I'm going to take the summer off and go on vacation,' and do very little for their fellow citizen in terms of creating jobs and organizing unskilled workers into companies that are going to produce value for customers and make those workers more productive and ultimately increase their wages.

BENNETT: In other words, they become demotivated.

CONARD: Yes, exactly.

BENNETT: Ed, will you let our listeners know where to get your book?

CONARD: Of course, you can get it on Amazon and all the online book sellers. If you go to http://www.edwardconard.com you can buy it there and watch a lot of video from TV, podcasts from radio and op-eds in the print media.

BENNETT: Thanks, Ed, for being on Financial Myth Busting. Everybody, it's The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/06/2016 -- In 1969, the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross first laid out her now-famous five stages of grief in the book On Death and Dying. In their usual order, they are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. According to Kubler-Ross, these are the steps we go through when we mourn not only the death of a loved one, but any significant personal loss, from the loss of a job to a divorce. This behavior can be seen in markets, as well, as the individuals and institutions adjust to the realities of change and instability.

Deutsche Bank has been suffering since the International Monetary Fund called it out earlier this year as seeming to be the riskiest bank in the German financial sector in terms of the threat its collapse could pose to the global financial sector. This has been exacerbated by the United States Department of Justice discussing a fine, possibly as large as $14 billion, for their role in the sale of risky mortgages before the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank is touting the latter as the big reason for the jagged downward slope of its stock, and indeed the price seesawed back up some after its recent low last Thursday when figures for the fine more in the range of $8 billion were discussed.

The I.M.F., however, says that Deutsche Bank's problems go far beyond the potential multi-billion dollar settlement. At a news conference on Wednesday, October 5th discussing a recently issued financial stability report that criticized European banks, I.M.F. officials reasserted that Deutsche Bank, along with others, was in trouble because of low capital levels, troubled if not toxic loans, and an outdated business model that cannot show profit in the current zero to negative interest rate and low growth environment.

Because Deutsche Bank has such a risk-taking culture, and because it is deeply connected to other banks and institutions (including 200 institutions in its hedge fund business alone), the risk pointed out by the I.M.F. is real. If the bank fails, the impact will be much, much larger and wider-spread than Lehmann. That risk-taking was pointed out in irony by the German politician Sigmar Gabriel, an important member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. Last week, as Deutsche Bank was bemoaning the fact that hedge funds were betting against its stock, he said, "I don't know whether to laugh or be angry that the bank that declared speculation to be its business model now declares itself a victim of speculators."

Deutsche Bank's assets, they say, are about $1.9 trillion, so from a balance sheet perspective, they have a balance sheet about equal to half of Germany's GDP. In the United States, JP Morgan is in a similar position with $9 trillion on their balance sheet. However, where JP Morgan holds a significant $52 trillion on its derivatives book, while Deutsche Bank's derivatives book is reportedly at nearly $60 trillion. Given the difference in scale, that's huge, especially considering that $60 trillion is about 15% of the estimated worldwide $384 trillion estimate of total derivatives given by the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS.

Angela Merkel has publicly stated that she will neither bail out nor bail in Deutsche Bank. If she actually means that, despite the I.M.F.'s belief that, since Deutsche Bank is of 'systemic importance,' authorities will carefully monitor (and supposedly act upon) the situation, then the fallout could be huge. And she has every reason to mean it. Germany, which has insisted that Italy and other countries in the ECB accept tough conditions in dealing with their problems, can ill-afford being seen as soft on their own flagship bank.

As things progress, with retail depositors beginning to worry and pull out, Deutsche Bank has only a few options. One is to sell their equity in order to provide much-needed liquidity. Another is to approach the European Central Bank (ECB) for a liquidity bridge, an option that has been advocated against by Merkel and denied by the ECB in the case of Greek and Italian banks. A third is that they could eliminate billions in unsecured claims and deposits, which could lead to a full-blown, systemic bank run as depositors everywhere rush to withdraw their savings. No good options here.

And here we are, mired in the throes of Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. Last week, we saw denial as the market wanted to go higher on the belief that there would surely be some sort of bail-out, but ultimately going negative. If Germany does bail out Deutsche Bank when it advocated so strongly against similarly helping Greece and Italy, there may well be a full-blown political mutiny in Europe, and the ECB certainly wouldn't be happy. Of course, the next stage is anger, and that's easy to see. "Who let this situation get so bad? Who can we blame?" Bargaining follows, as investors look for a way to walk away and take their losses without being hurt further. After that comes the depression of seeing all that money just gone, something we remember all too clearly from 2008 and 2009, when many investors lost from 25 to even 70 percent of their portfolios.

What's important, both in Europe and in the United States, is how we all handle the acceptance stage. This, this is the time to figure out a way to rebuild. Systemically, of course, this is a matter for governments and institutions, but markets are made of individuals, and how we each respond is a critical element in how the global economy will respond. If we take a defensive position, focus on assets like gold and silver that are likeliest to hold real value in a collapse or crisis, and then rebuild while demanding free markets that are actually free before we opt back in to the "system" that looks set to fail yet again, then these five stages will not have been in vain.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/05/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: John Lott is an economist, political commentator and gun rights advocate. He is also a founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. John has a new book out, The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, which reveals some fascinating facts that we're going to talk about. The first is that the book explains how the current background check system discriminates against law-abiding blacks and Hispanics, preventing them from being able to own guns. The second is that increased gun ownership by civilians lowers the rate of police officer deaths. The third is that it explains how gun-free zones actually attract criminals and mass public shooters. John, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

JOHN LOTT: Thanks very much for having me on.

BENNETT: You've written a lot about how it seems that most mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. But is that just a coincidence? Do you think that these killers actually seek out places where these victims will be unarmed or are there just more malls and movie theaters these days considered gun-free?

LOTT: Well, the vast majority of malls and movie theaters allow people to have permitted concealed handguns in them. You know, it's a very small percentage that don't, yet all the attacks seem to be occurring in those places. There's different types of evidence that we have on this. One is just simply the statements from these mass killers when they're available. We don't have this information all the time, but sometimes we do. So for example, this spring in Detroit, a father was concerned about his son's involvement in ISIS, had informed the FBI, who put a tap on the phone, and they have a chilling conversation that they recorded where he was explaining his plans to attack one of the largest churches in the Detroit area. And his number one reason for picking this church was that church had banned anybody from having permitted concealed handguns on church property. You have cases like the Charleston church shooting. His first target actually was going to be Charleston College until he'd investigated and seen the armed security that they have there. You have the diary from the Batman movie theater shooter that was released last year. In that case, his first target was going to be an airport, but when he checked and saw the amount of armed security he was concerned that he would be killed before he was able to go and kill many of the victims that he wanted to go after. In that case there were seven movie theaters within a 20-minute drive of his apartment. Only one of those movie theaters posted signs banning permitted concealed handguns. That's the one he went to. Not the one that was closest to his home or the one that's advertising itself prominently as having the largest auditoriums in the State of Colorado. He went to the only one where victims weren't' able to defend themselves.

BENNETT: This is fascinating.

LOTT: And then you have other cases, recent cases. You have the Santa Barbara killer. There, in that case, if you read his 141-page manifesto, he goes through excruciating detail about trying to pick the right venue to go on attack. His first choice had been spring break. Apparently, spring break in Santa Barbara is the hot spot for spring break for students from the western U.S. He had gone and done a lot of research, gone to the local library, viewed old local TV station footage of the events in the past and seen the number of armed police that they had around there. He wrote down that there was no way he was going to be able to kill all the police before they killed him so he wasn't going to be able to go and shoot the students that he wanted to go and shoot. But if you look at, just generally, mall shootings, for instance the Omaha, Nebraska mall shooting in 2007, there were eight enclosed malls in the city there and only one posted signs banning permitted concealed handguns. It just happened to be the mall that was farthest from the killer's home, yet that's the one he went to. Same type of story for the Kansas City mall shooting; same type of story for the Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon mall shootings. You know, at some point, one would just think this can't be random. You know, generally, if you live in a state that's a right-to-carry state, you can carry your gun pretty much anyplace in the state. There may be a few percent of the places that you're banned from being able to go and carry it. So if these attacks were random, 98-99 percent of the attacks would be taking place in areas where people were allowed to have guns. Instead, they keep on occurring time after time in those tiny areas within the state where people aren't allowed to defend themselves.

BENNETT: It often seems like the emphasis from Washington is passing a gun law, any law, just so that they can say that they've done something, even if it would have made no difference whatsoever in the most recent tragedy. One area where there seems to be some popular support is with increasing national background checks. Is there any reason not to support this?

LOTT: Everybody wants to try to keep criminals and bad guys from getting guns. You know, the problem that you have here, as you say, is it would be nice if the president, who has spoken in favor of this type of law after every single mass public shooting that he's spoken on, would be able to go and point to one of the cases during his administration or years earlier that would have made a difference, because it simply wouldn't have affected anything. He's using these tragedies to push a law that has nothing to do with the attacks that we all want to stop. The problem is these background checks that we have are a complete mess and it would be nice if somebody tried to fix them. For example, we often hear that 2.4 million dangerous or prohibited people have been stopped from buying guns because of background checks. That's simply false. What they should say is that there have been 2.4 million initial denials. There's a huge difference there. I'll just give you a simple example: you may remember the late senator Ted Kennedy—there were five times where he was stopped from flying on a plane because his name was similar to someone whose name was on the no-fly list. I assume even the President or Hillary Clinton wouldn't count that as 'five time we stopped terrorists from flying', but that's essentially the way they're counting them when they talk about this 2.4 million. It's one thing to stop a felon from buying a gun; it's another thing to stop someone, simply because they have a name similar to a felon, from buying a gun. And the problem is that virtually all—we don't know the exact number but something around 99 percent of this 2.4 million—were mistakes, law-abiding citizens who should've been able to buy a gun but were stopped simply because they had a name similar to someone that we wanted to stop. There's no reason why the government has to make these mistakes. Private companies do background checks on employees all the time. If they had an error rate that was 1/100 the error rate that the federal government has in these background checks they'd be sued out of existence. But there's a simple reason why private companies don't do it and that is they use more information in conducting the background check. When you buy a gun you fill out what's called a 4473 Form where you put down your name, your social security number, your address and your birthday. Private companies use all that information when they do a background check. The government, even though it has that information, the only things they use is roughly similar names. So you can have a completely different middle name, your name can be spelled completely differently—it's just that it has to phonetically sound similar. So you can have a John B. Smith and John C. Smyth where Smith is spelled with a Y or an I in the two different cases and they would come up as flagging that person as having a similar name. And then they just use the birth date to differentiate, they don't use social security numbers or addresses. And as you mentioned, this creates a particular problem for minorities because people tend to have names similar to others in their racial group. Like, 40 percent of Vietnamese in the United States have the same last name; Hispanics have names similar to other Hispanics; blacks tend to have last names similar to other blacks. 30 percent of black males in the United States are legally forbidden from owning a gun because of past criminal history. Who are they most likely to have their names confused with? Other law-abiding, good black males who want to buy a gun to protect themselves or their families. And as I said, there's no reason why these mistakes should be going on. I've brought this up to gun control advocates for 15 years and they have no desire to fix it. The other thing with these background checks is they're not costless.

BENNETT: Why aren't they fixing it? Why don't they have a desire to fix it?

LOTT: I've come to believe that they view this as a feature almost in the sense that it stops law-abiding citizens from buying guns. And this is even clearer when you look at the fees involved here. When President Obama talks about pushing background checks, he's doing it from DC, and in DC it costs $125 to privately transfer a gun. In some states you can do it for $55, as in Oregon, for example. I'll give you one simple example. In 2013 I got a call from some state legislators in Colorado when they were passing the background check on private transfers and I was asked what amendment would I put up on the Bill. And the one I suggested was to put up an amendment that would exempt people below the poverty level from having to pay the new state tax on transferring guns. When they put that up, with the exception of two pro-gun Democrats in the State House, every other Democrat voted against exempting people below the poverty level. And I can give you other examples from Maryland and places where you've had similar amendments not even be allowed to be voted on. And the question is: How many taxes can you think of where Democrats will fight tooth and nail against exempting people below the poverty level from having to pay? I think it really helps indicate that these people are more concerned about making it costly for law-abiding citizens to buy guns. You know, a $125 fee in D.C. may not stop you or I or the President from being able to go and buy a gun, but for a law-abiding, poor black who lives in a high crime urban area a $125 effective tax may make the difference about whether or not they're legally able to go and defend themselves and their families. You know, I think it just makes it clear that they're more concerned about having the tax there than they are about trying to get these background checks through. If they fix these two things that we've talked about, it would greatly diminish the opposition to these laws. It'd be much easier for them to pass it.

BENNETT: I want to squeeze in a political question here. Donald Trump says that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, Americans can kiss the Second Amendment goodbye. Hillary says that this is nonsense but that she does want to pass new restrictions on gun ownership. How big of an issue do you think the Second Amendment will play come November? I mean, do you think Trump is actually a reliable Second Amendment supporter?

LOTT: Well, all I can say is I think he's right when he's talking about what's at stake here. It's not that Hillary is going to put up an amendment to the Constitution to remove the Second Amendment which is what fact-checkers seem to focus on. The point is who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. We've had a couple recent Supreme Court decisions—one struck down Washington, DC's gun ban, for example. They had an outright ban of all handguns and effectively banned other guns being used. You could technically own a long gun but if you actually put a bullet in the chamber of a rifle it was a felony punished by 5 years in prison, so the Supreme Court said, 'Look, effectively no one who lives in DC is able to use any type of gun in self-defense,' and they said that goes too far and they struck it down. That was just a 5 to 4 decision, and the author of that, Antonin Scalia, died earlier this year. So right now, the Supreme Court is very closely divided. Whoever wins the presidency is going to determine whether that precedent stays in place or not. You know, it's not just places like DC or Chicago which may enact bans again. You have California, for example. Since 2001, California's 'safety regulations' on handguns have banned the sale of over 1,200 models of handguns. There's literally only a dozen or so models of handguns that can still be sold in the state and probably within a few years those will be banned. So whoever wins the presidency is going to determine whether or not handguns will be effectively banned in California.

BENNETT: Will you tell everybody where they can get your new book?

LOTT: It's available in most places. I think it's relatively inexpensive at Amazon, and they can go and check out our website at crimeresearch.org.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/04/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: Doug Eberhardt is a 30 year plus financial market veteran who's written two books on investing. His first book, published in 2010, was called Buy Gold and Silver Safely. His second book, which has come out this year is called Illusions of Wealth. It's this book that has really pulled in my focus. Doug, welcome to Financial Myth Busting.

EBERHARDT: Thanks for having me on, Dawn.

BENNETT: Illusions of Wealth has a great title, I think. So much of today's investment world is preoccupied with accumulating as many dollars as possible and in their mind they think that's what's going to make them wealthy, but rarely is anyone taking a step back and considering real wealth and what it actually means in today's world. Can you explain why you think that what many people view as wealth is actually just an illusion?

EBERHARDT: Sure. When you look at wealth, you look at it as assets that you own and if there's a time that you need to use that wealth, meaning exchanging it for cash, there's some liquidity issues that may rise up and many people are not aware what those liquidity issues might be. There's what's called 'John Exter's Pyramid' which is a perfect representation of where you stand with your wealth depending on what assets you have and the liquidity with each of those will be dependent upon who you have as a buyer for that asset and that's one thing that many people don't consider when they do their investing.

BENNETT: How do you recommend amassing real wealth? Can you give us an idea of how to take paper wealth and turn it into something tangible? What are examples, in your mind, of real wealth today?

EBERHARDT: The most liquid real wealth asset would be gold and silver, and I don't say that to push gold and silver upon people, but I do think it sits at the bottom of that Exter's Pyramid but it sits outside of the pyramid because it has no other liability associated with it whereas every other asset has some sort of a liability from liquidity down to will it be something that you'll be able to find a buyer for. For example, real estate. If you own a nice house and you have all this wealth accumulated and you want to sell that house you have to have a buyer for it. And if you don't have a buyer for it, how long can you sit on it before you need to turn it into cash, and then maybe, if it's a down-market, get much less than what you think you really own and value for that asset. So there's a lot of things that go into what real wealth is but it's liquidity again that is the most important part because if you can't liquidate it then you really don't have that wealth.

BENNETT: In terms of liquidity, do you have an opinion about what's going on with Deutsche Bank? I mean, that could be a very illiquid moment for the world based on their derivative exposure. And I don't know if it's insolvency or a lack of capital that could kill this bank off.

EBERHARDT: It's their derivatives exposure that's a major issue. If they have issues with their bank and it spreads to banks that are associated with them then it's just like the 2007/2009 financial crisis. Europe didn't really go through the liquidation aspect to their problems but the U.S. did. So Deutsche Bank is one of the largest, if not the largest, in Europe and for them to have the issues they have and their stock keeps hitting record lows outside of last Friday, you know that there's problems going on and that will spread just by default.

BENNETT: Since Deutsche Bank is suddenly experiencing this sharp 'liquidity event', do you know how much liquidity does Deutsche Bank even have access to as of this moment to offset this event? I don't know if this is an easy answer. I just wonder if we're going to be able to sidestep this event because otherwise I think it's going to push this bank into the grave along with the hundreds of institutions that are connected to it.

EBERHARDT: Well, it's a very good question, and one thing I wrote about in the book—and I write about primarily the U.S. banks, and I do dive into European banks and the issues there as well as China—and the one thing that you'll find is we resolved our financial crisis by throwing close to $7 trillion at it. There's going to be money that comes from somewhere. It will come from central banks, the IMF, whoever is needed to help out any bank no matter what country they're in, especially the larger banks. That's one aspect where they have an advantage through central banks, through a printing mechanism or in this case a credit mechanism where they can just pull money out of thin air and take care of the issues. Sooner or later, though, there has to be a credibility problem or a leak in the system that's cracking and that's where, of course, the gold and silver side comes in.

BENNETT: Do you think that's happening now? Merkel actually came out last week and said they're not going to bail out or bail in Deutsche Bank.

EBERHARDT: Yes, that's talk in the sense that I don't believe it. It was kind of surprising to me to actually hear that. Usually they're like, 'Everything is fine and we're just going to go along and let things be the way they are,' but Merkel surprised me and I don't know why she said what she said but it really goes against what I usually hear when it comes to banks.

BENNETT: I know a solution should be physical gold and silver but, fascinating to me, last week gold and silver didn't run as strongly as you thought it would given the beginning of the event at Deutsche Bank. Do you think we're going to have one of those situations like we had back in September of 2011 where the central banks actually pushed down the value of gold and silver in order to give the illusion that the fiat currency in the developed western economies was actually stronger it was?

EBERHARDT: I do, actually. I sell gold but I'm dollar-bullish, which really goes against most people's thinking when it comes to gold dealers. And the major reason is what makes up the dollar is primarily the euro, which is 57.4 percent, and I'm more negative on the euro. I know you've had Jim Rickards on the other day talking about the dollar crash and all that September 30th, and what happened is that it's really euro-negative. The dollar only lost a little bit in that switchover from the SDRs, the Special Drawing Rights for the IMF, when they added the Chinese renminbi to it and it wasn't dollar-negative. If anything, it's dollar-bullish overall because the representation of what's going on in Euro at Deutsche Bank and everything else is going to by default push the dollar higher and it's perception that matters in this case. Do you want your money in something that is going down or something that's going up? Overall, the perception is that dollar is stronger than most of these other currencies.

BENNETT: Let's talk about part of a potential solution, although we know that that could backfire like it did back in September 2011. Can you talk about how you approach holding physical gold and silver versus precious metal ETFs as well as miner stocks more generally? I mean, do you think it's important to be weighted as heavily as possible towards actual physical possession?

EBERHARDT: With physical you have control of your wealth and with ETFs you have banks that are involved that are the custodians. The only thing that's insured with ETFs are the actual banks, not your physical metal. So I'd rather have control myself. I think that ETFs are perfect for trading short-term trends but they are not representation of real wealth in my opinion because you can't liquidate them and turn them into actual physical metal and that's one of the biggest drawbacks that you have with that. When you have control of your wealth with physical silver and physical gold you can store that in your house somewhere. My recommendations are always, 'Buy a little safe and put some petty cash in there, but have a bigger safe hidden somewhere else.' Criminals aren't that smart. You take them to the little safe and they run with the money.

BENNETT: You also in your studies talk about triple-leveraged exchange traded funds. For those of us who don't understand that, can you give them a little bit of the definition? Why are they worth following so closely in your opinion?

EBERHARDT: I think they're very good for catching a shorter term trend. They're not long-term assets that you would buy and hold by any means because they do deteriorate over time. But I do think they're good for short-term trends, one to three days, and you can get right up if you catch the trend at the right time. For example, from a gold mining stock or gold mining ETF, that will go three times what a normal gold miner individual stock might go. So that three times leverage can give you instead of 1 percent return in a day or three up to 5 percent to even over 20 percent in that short amount of time and that's the trend that we try to jump on with our ETF trading service.

BENNETT: Are there any triple-leveraged ETFs out there that are gold and silver bullion-related? In other words, they aren't the paper or the mining version of the gold, they're actually backed by precious metals.

EBERHARDT: Well, yes. Again, these are not actual individual ETFs that have the metal set aside. They're derivatives of those. So there are some out there. They're not triple-leveraged; they're double-leveraged. We don't trade those because we want fast action. I suppose I could but I follow 46 of them that give us the most action and that's all that matters to us.

BENNETT: Most people who invest in ETFs are in for a long position, and you seem to favor a more activist approach to the ETFs in your portfolio. What exactly is the data you're trading on? What goes into whether your decision to go long or short on a particular ETF?

EBERHARDT: We wait for the trends to develop and I have a few proprietary ways of doing that. We wait for a weekly trend and that's where your best chances of profiting are. Once that trend hits then it will typically last a little bit longer than a few days. It will last a week, two weeks, sometimes a month, but we're not always in it that long. What we do is we have some trading rules and my number one rule is keeping a stop if you run. The second rule is taking profit, so if we're up 10 percent or more on trade I'll typically take half off. So there's guidelines as to when to get in. There's guidelines as to when to get out as well.

BENNETT: Do political situations play into your forecast? I mean, do you have one strategy if Hillary begins to pull away or another if Trump happens to start pulling away or are you anticipating a major correction ahead regardless of who's elected come November?

EBERHARDT: It's a very good question. You would think with the title of my book—Illusions of Wealth—that I'm a fearmonger or something like that. I'm not whatsoever. I'm bullish in a lot of different areas and I give in the book many ways to profit outside of ETFs and when it comes to politics it can be summed up in one scenario. We have a Congress that gave us a budget a couple of years ago that called for nine more years of spending and the tenth year coming in under budget, and they called this a balanced budget but it's adding about $5 trillion more over the next 8 years to the national debt which is already over $19 trillion. So no matter who's elected, and they promise this or that, there's more debt that's coming and there's nothing they can do about it because Congress has already voted again.

BENNETT: This week Janet Yellen testified on the Hill, and basically admitted that she's not going to be raising rates before the November election. This led her to being asked about Donald Trump arguing she's intentionally juicing the market to help Hillary get elected. She took offense to that and said that, of course, the Fed is totally independent of politics. Are we really supposed to believe that?

EBERHARDT: That's another good question, Dawn. And when it comes to what the Federal Reserve does and says, they say they're independent but they are elected individuals and they want to keep their job. And I do believe that if you're going to not shock the market the best way to do it is to keep things status quo. As to raising rates, I said back in December that the Fed was one-and-done and that space on the data that I read and the data that I put into this book, and I can read the data pretty well and I think most people who look at the economy and see all the negative information or economic data coming out of it can read it as well, but the Fed always talks about raising rates. The market trades on what the Fed says now, it doesn't trade on reality, and that's one of the problems I have with it.

BENNETT: This week we also saw Wells Fargo's CEO on the Hill where he received quite a lashing, most pointedly from Senator Elizabeth Warren, over a scheme that happened at Wells Fargo where thousands of the bank's branch workers set up fake accounts under customers' names so they could pocket promotional payouts. Are you surprised how actively these workers were targeting their own customers? At the same time, I couldn't help but think that this sort of thing would never happen in the smaller community banks if we didn't have Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank which have made them all but extinct.

EBERHARDT: I agree on the smaller banks. I'm much more in favor of those than the larger banks. I wrote about the top four banks, Wells Fargo being one of them, in the book and how they have been sued since the crisis—10 lawsuits each at least in the tens of millions of dollars, over a hundred million dollars combined—and they have no moral hazard. They will do whatever they want to do and get away with it with no repercussions coming towards them. Wells Fargo is the first one to really go this route and I know California and I think Illinois have pulled out and it's just a snowball starting for them and their troubles. Yeah, having your money in smaller banks would be much preferred than these larger banks.

BENNETT: By the way, I don't know if you heard this, Deutsche Bank is now being accused of that by Italy for setting up fake accounts under customer's names so they have another layer of issues.

EBERHARDT: Wonderful.

BENNETT: Can you tell everybody how to access your research?

EBERHARDT: Sure. It's illusionsofwealth.com and we just do wonderful jobs in helping people understand what constitutes wealth in today's world.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/22/2016 -- Last Tuesday, at a conference in Washington sponsored by Stanford and the University of Chicago, Federal Reserve Chair Emeritus Alan Greenspan told attendees that we are in the "worst economic and political environment that I've ever been remotely related to," going on to hope that we can collectively find a solution because America is too great a country to be "undermined, by how should I say it, crazies." When asked about that comment on Wednesday, Greenspan declined to identify which "crazies" he was referring to, in particular, but looking in from the outside it's easy to identify some possibilities. Clinton? Trump? Clinton and Trump? Janet Yellen and the Fed easy-money regime that Greenspan himself established as the inescapable de facto monetary policy of not just the United States, but the world?

Speaking of crazy, over the last few weeks Donald Trump has had the temerity to speak sanely about the Federal Reserve, baldly pointing out truths about that institution that are normally hinted at or swept under the rug. He told Reuters that Fed policies have created a "false economy" and an "artificial stock market," and followed up with comments to CNBC that Janet Yellen should be "ashamed" for keeping interest rates so low for so long. Trump also shined a light on the elephant in the room: the Fed's notional independence from politics. He called out Yellen for keeping rates artificially low so that the incumbent party isn't hit with the onset of reality before the election and President Obama's retirement from office in January. Is that crazy? The Fed is independent, right? Is it? Barney Frank advised the Federal Reserve Board during the recent Jackson Hole conference not to risk destabilizing markets, saying, "What the Fed should do this close to the election is make no waves."

This message, that politicians and the Federal Reserve are acting to benefit not the American people or the economy as a whole, but to benefit… politicians and the Federal Reserve, is becoming more and more obvious to all of us. The drumbeat of propaganda about a recovery that seems to skip the hollowed-out middle class is increasingly falling on skeptical ears, and the realization that our political and economic systems are a stew of lies and incompetence is fueling a surging populist movement.

What do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common, aside from growing up in New York's outer boroughs and a dislike for trade deals? Populist appeal, built on the kind of rhetoric that calls attention to the fact that the emperor is, in fact, naked. Despite their vast differences, the surprising successes of both Trump and Sanders reflects a growing sense among many Americans that the system is broken. The media provides broad generalizations and calls them truths: Democrats take climate change as religion, support immigration as a free pass, and believe that fairness is a government entitlement that can be provided by the stroke of a pen on an executive order. Republicans all carry guns, hate women and homosexuals and people of color, and are sitting around at Tea Party meetings plotting to overthrow the government. Libertarians? Well, the media seems stuck on generalizations except that they probably smoke a lot of pot.

In this environment, more and more of us are opting out, whether by choosing a populist "Republican" candidate in Donald Trump, someone who expresses our anger, dissatisfaction and, yes, confusion, or by simply throwing up our hands in disgust. When the free market is anything but free, when political discourse is a series of pats on the back and knee-jerk attacks, when our own government, our own media is telling us that up is down and wrong is right, what choice is there? What Washington doesn't realize, it seems, is that they created this mess.

A perfect example is this: Washington pushed banks to offer loans to people who couldn't afford them, and they did this with a right sort of goal in mind: to boost home ownership in the United States. It became popular to take money out of the supposed growth in value of these homes and spend it on day to day living expenses rather than trying to pay it down. When the housing market started to slow and people began panicking, it was no longer possible to automatically sell your house off at a profit. With a collapsing market, people found themselves in a world of debt just as the economy was slowing, and that meant more foreclosures and defaults just as the housing market collapsed. Who was hurt the most? Lower and middle income Americans who had stretched their budgets to take part in the DC-led frenzy of borrowing. So, what did Washington do? They doubled down, pumping more cheap money into the system and inflating more bubbles, which helped the banks and not the everyday Americans that had been hurt by the collapse of the last one. And then, they told us we were in a recovery and everything was coming up roses.

Not only individual Americans are opting out. The stock market itself is in the process of disappearing. According to a CNBC report citing data from the University of Chicago, there are 3,267 stocks currently trading on the major U.S. exchanges, the lowest number since 1984. Jefferies Equity Research strategist Steven DeSanctis echoed this, citing a lack of IPO activity, lack of pickup of M&A, and severe corporate buybacks as reasons that the market is shrinking. Much of the money for these buybacks, corporations purchasing their own stock in order to go private, has come from central bank quantitative easing, making this essentially the largest leveraged buyout in history. And, it's being paid for by all of us, by every American taxpayer. If the IPO market continues to dry up and companies maintain this level of buyback activity, eventually we'll run out of stock to buy and the market will disappear along with our free markets.

In the end we have to ask: who are the crazies in this scenario? The politicians and policy makers and bankers who keep doing the same thing and hoping for different results? Or is it us, the Americans who have grown angry at not just personalities and policies, but the deeply ingrained lies, incompetence, and inequities that we're asked to swallow every time we turn on the television or read the news? I'm pretty sure it's not us.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Washington, DC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/20/2016 -- DAWN BENNETT: David Stockman is the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is the largest office within the executive office of the President, under President Reagan. David is also the author of the bestseller The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, and he's got a new book out called Trumped! A Nation On The Brink of Ruin…And How to Bring It Back where Stockman writes about how 30 years of financial and political misrule by Washington and Wall Street elites has brought the US to the brink of ruin. David, welcome back to Financial Myth Busting!

DAVID STOCKMAN: Very happy to be with you again.

BENNETT: A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump took issue with the Federal Reserve stock market manipulation remarking that the Fed has created 'false stock market', and even took it so far to say that the Chair Janet Yellen should be ashamed of what they're doing to our country. Was he right to say these things?

STOCKMAN: Absolutely! I thought it was a remarkable moment that finally someone called out the elephant in the room. Economic policy today is dominated front and center, beginning to the end by the Federal Reserve, and he is right: it has falsified the entire financial market. Now, the more sophisticated way of expressing that is that price discovery has been destroyed, market false liquidity has poured into the canyons of Wall Street like a flash flood, bond prices are crazy worldwide – there's $13 trillion of sovereign debt trading at sub-zero yield which on its face is the craziest thing anybody can imagine because no government should be paid for borrowing money. You know, we could go to the stock market, we could go to the entire financial system – I call it 'financialization' – I've got one great number in the book that I think kind of illustrates why we're so off the deep end. When this all started, I called it 'bubble finance' in 1987 when Greenspan took over the Fed. There was about $13 trillion outstanding of total debt plus the market value of the entire stock market of the United States. That was a little more than double the GDP at the time, so call it 200% financial asset value to GDP. Today it's $93 trillion of debt; $64 trillion of debt plus the stock market value, and that's five and a half times the current $18 trillion of GDP. So, we've had this massive inflation of the financial system not rooted in the growth of productivity or through capitalist expansion and prosperity but simply a consequence of the money-printing policy so that we could go into the Federal Reserve. And what this has done, and that's kind of what's front and center on the book jacket of my book, is that it's created a tremendous prosperity for the bicoastal elite who own most of the financial assets and there's all kinds of secondary trickle down from that that ends up in Washington, DC as well because they can borrow money endlessly for practically free, but in the flyover zone of America except for a few islands of prosperity that live off venture capital, there is kind of parched earth economically. I use two facts that I think are quite powerful: one, since the year 2000 there's not been one net gain in what I call full-time, full-paid, breadwinner jobs in America – not one! In fact, when Clinton was packing his bags to leave the Oval Office, there was 72.4 million of those jobs and 71.5 today. Secondly, if you measure inflation honestly, and certainly that's not what the BLS puts out or the Fed swears by with the so-called PCE deflator – without food and energy. If you measure it honestly with something we've laid out in the book called 'the flyover CPI' which focuses on food, energy, health and housing, which is the overwhelming share of what main street America pays out of their paycheck. Real household income adjusted for that honest inflation measure is down 21% since the year 2000. Think about that: no breadwinner jobs, most of them fled to the offshore, and a 21% decline in the real standard of living. That's what's happened in the flyover America. On the other hand, 13 to 93 trillion dollars' worth of financial value falling onto a very small slice of population.

BENNETT: Let's go back to the jobs. I want to refer back to your flyover America. You've long argued that the Federal Reserve and Washington is hollowing out middle class America, and again, you referred to this as 'flyover America', but why is Obama saying he's engineered a recovery and created millions of jobs? I just don't understand why he's saying it. I certainly know it's not true, but people do feel like we're in a recession. They do feel like things are getting worse, not better.

STOCKMAN: First of all, his statement is essentially the same old Washington propaganda I called 'imperial city'. If you start with the job count of the BLS in February 2010, the very bottom of this devastating, great recession, and then you see where we are today according to the BLS which I think there's a whole lot of talk about why those numbers won't be sustained and aren't valid, but in any event he then gets 40 million jobs. The point I make in my book is half of them are born-again jobs. They were created between 2000 and 2008, then came to crash, we lost them all and we got half of them back. That's the first point. The second point is the other half that aren't born-again are essentially part-time jobs in restaurants and bars, retail sales jobs and so forth which I'm not saying they're not worthy jobs. They're necessary, but the point is you can't support a family on jobs that pay less than $20,000 a year in aggregate pay and that are essentially 26 hours a week and are barely above the minimum wage.

BENNETT: I get your point but the progressives out there use the excuse of income inequality to argue for more government intervention in the economy. Yet, as you have stated, especially in your book, these interventions are actually making income inequality worse. Why is this happening and do you think that these bureaucratic busybodies even realize the effect that they're having?

STOCKMAN: Well, it's like that story of the 11-year old who killed his parents and then threw himself at the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan. Now, the point is that this income misdistribution they talk about is real and I mention it in my book, but it's a consequence of bubble finance, it's a consequence of the Fed falsifying the financial markets, of turning Wall Street into a casino. But the fact is that it is not real capitalism at work and that is not permanent wealth creation, so if we look at the period since '87, the Forbes 400 has had a 1000% gain in real terms and net worth. The top 1%, a 300% gain in at least paper net worth, as calculated by the Federal Reserve. The bottom 90%, zero. Net worth today is not higher than it was in 1987. Now, that's a perversion or corruption of capitalism, as I said in my last book. And going back to where we started, finally after all this time, a politician has pointed out that the Federal Reserve has falsified the financial market. This whole mythology about "The Fed is independent. You dare not comment on their policy," is at the heart of what I call this illicit Wall Street/Washington regime that is ruining the country and that's why I say it's at the brink of ruin. Finally, I don't know whether Trump has thought through what a better direction would be. I've got a whole chapter on why we should abolish the FOMC entirely, go back to the original version from 1913 of what the Fed is to do, which is not to be the agency of national monetary central planning. I'm not sure where Trump is, but at least he us not so schooled and brainwashed in the propaganda and in the consensus of Wall Street/Washington that he's willing to speak up and raise fundamental questions.

BENNETT: David, in your book you have argued that Trump's candidacy is directly attributed both to the growing sense that the US economy out there is rigged and it's only helping those at the top, so I guess now is a good time to ask do you think Trump actually has the goods to address these problems or is he simply just capitalizing on this populist wave he sensed was building and took advantage of?

STOCKMAN: I think right now he's capitalizing on the wave because clearly—and I don't use this word in a condescending way—but I think it's a fair statement that the rubes are in revolt. They're treated as rubes by the Washington/Wall Street bicoastal elite and they've had enough and I think Trump's phenomenal rise is reflective of that. Now, how that translates into fundamental change in policy… that's a huge, open question.

BENNETT: What if Trump asks you to join his economic policy shop? What advice would you give him in terms of things he's getting wrong and what's his biggest shortcoming on the policy front?

STOCKMAN: Okay, I think the three things he needs to address are: one, the Fed and how we can basically launch a campaign that says 2% inflation targeting has to go because that is a mortal threat to purchasing power or wages throughout America; number two, zero percent interest rate or interest rate pegging has to go because that is savaging millions of retirees and savers; third, we don't need an activist Fed intervening massively in the market day in and day out, we'll need to go to a much more restrained, passive liquidity provision system, but the heart of it would be let the free market, let interest rates do their job. If we had flexible or mobile interest rates both in the money market and across the yield curve, this market would begin finally to reorient itself and heal itself from this tremendous bubble distortion and malinvestment that's occurring today. So, that'd be the first thing. I think the second thing is—although I think it's fine he's proposed a $4.4 trillion tax cut because that sounds huge but the built-in base under current tax law is $42 trillion, so it's a 10% reduction, but the failure of this in the speech which otherwise was brilliant and had some great kind of pro-capitalist prosperity rhetoric in it which we haven't' really heard recently, but we're going to have to have spending cuts too, and the starting point is defense. There's no case in increasing the defense budget. We have no real enemies in the world and at least he understands "I better make a deal with Putin," but it hasn't been explained to him that if he does, then we can actually substantially demobilize the defense budget: not just ask Europeans to pay more for NATO, but recognize we don't need NATO. So, that would be the second thing. Third, and this is probably the most important of all, the Fed is basically responsible for the massive offshoring of jobs that has occurred over the last three decades, because if you have a 2% inflation target that means that every year nominal wages get higher and higher and we become less and less competitive with China on goods or India on services, and the whole rest of the world. And I point out in my book that the nominal wage when the Greenspan started all of this, the average wage was $9 an hour; it's $22 an hour now. That means that we're dramatically less competitive with the China price or the India price, but in real terms, because of this idiotic 2% inflation, the real wages are actually lower than they were in 1987. So, you get the worst of both worlds. These good, productive, breadwinner jobs get offshored, and what jobs that remain, the purchasing power, the wages earned actually shrink. That's so dumb, so what we need to do now is say how can we reduce the cost of labor in the United States in order to make it more competitive. My answer is let's get rid of the corporate income tax entirely, number one. And second, get rid of the payroll tax entirely and replace it with a tax on imports and business sales or consumption because what we have in this country is way too few jobs, not nearly enough work to support a growing population that wants a higher living standard and all these baby boom retirees, so we need to take the burden off labor. We need a sweeping tax cut to try and rejuvenate the economy but this is a different world than the Reagan world of 1981. I think what we need now is a major reduction of the burden on labor given the fact that said policy has inflated wages to wholly uncompetitive levels internationally. So, I proposed in the book that we eliminate the payroll tax entirely. That's $1.1 trillion a year; it's 15% employer and employee combined, and a refund of that revenue source with a tax on imports, and consumption, of which we have way too much. That would actually benefit 160 million people who pay payroll tax today as opposed to the income tax cuts which I'm not against, but at the end of the day 10 or 15 million households get all the benefit because they pay most of the income tax at the present time. So, we need something different and we need to pay for it with spending cuts, and that's probably an area where a lot work needs to be done on the Trump program if it's going to make a difference assuming he's elected.

BENNETT: David, I get the sense that you're not exactly a full-throated Trump booster, but I'm also guessing you agree he probably is preferable to Hillary Clinton and the third party options. Am I correct about that?

STOCKMAN: Absolutely! I was asked the other day what my opinion was, and I said Hillary represents a 30-year old bag of deplorables. I'm not talking about her supporters like she did with Trump. I'm talking about her ideas. She has never seen a war she didn't like. She is a hundred percent behind this whole bubble finance regime at the Fed. She thinks Janet Yellen is some kind of superhero. She thinks that we can make the economy prosper by even more meddling and intervention and control from Washington and obviously we have 30 years now proving that because the economy after this limp recovery is now grinding to a halt. I think we're near the edge of a recession, and think about it – it means that in the last 16 years the average growth rate has been 1.6% or less than half of what it was historically, and that's only if you credit the inflation measures used by the Washington statistical mills. If you have an honest measure of inflation, I doubt the real economy for most of America has grown at all over the last period.

BENNETT: Since Yellen probably knows how Trump feels about her and then she's more preferable to Hillary, isn't it obvious to you that monetary change towards tighter credit won't be coming any time before the election because that would mean death to the incumbent party, right?

STOCKMAN: Yes, and I think he hit the nail on the head the other day, and again he got criticized for being politically inappropriate or saying the wrong thing. You can't say the truth of the matter is they're not going to raise interest rates next week and they're probably going to raise them before the election certainly because they don't want to upset the political apple cart. I mean, some of the members of the Federal Reserve board actually contribute to Hillary's campaign so they're not even hiding the ball. But it's not just that political thing, it's the state of mind, it's the belief that all of capitalism depends on what twelve people sitting on the FOMC conclude is the better course of wisdom. That is so fallacious, that is so wrong in terms of sound finance, economics and money... that's the heart of what needs to change if this campaign is going to make a difference.

BENNETT: Could you please tell our listeners how to get your new book Trumped! A Nation On The Brink of Ruin…And How to Bring It Back?

STOCKMAN: Well, it's on Amazon, just a couple of clicks away. The e-book is now available. We rushed this to press because obviously it's very pertinent of huge issues being raised by this campaign. The printed book can be pre-ordered right now. It will be available in a week or so, and I might say just launching this week it's doing really well because it's not – and I emphasize this – it's not a promotion for Trump, it is an explanation of the giant mess we're in.

BENNETT: Thank you, David.

For over a quarter century, Dawn Bennett has been successfully guiding clients through the complexities of wealth management. Her unique vision and insight into market trends makes Bennett a much sought after expert resource with regular appearances on Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC as well as being featured in Business Week, Fortune, The NY Times, The NY Sun, Washington Business Journal in addition to her highly regarded weekly talk radio program - Financial Mythbusting. Through prudent and thoughtful advice, Dawn Bennett has strived to consistently provide the highest quality of guidance.

About Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is CEO and Founder of Bennett Group Financial Services. She hosts a national radio program called Financial Myth Busting http://www.financialmythbusting.com.

She discusses educational topics and events in the financial news, along with her thoughts on the economy, financial markets, investments, and more with her live guests, who have included rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist. Listeners can call 855-884-DAWN a as well as take podcasts on the road and forums for interaction.

She can be reached on Twitter @DawnBennettFMB or on Facebook Financial Myth Busting with Dawn Bennett.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm