The Bookworm Mom
A weekly review of a new read by Shannon Grady.
The Bookworm Mom
Shannon Examines the Next Big Crash by Justin Trask Haskins and Jack McPherrin
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The Next Big Crash by Justin Haskins who is a vice president at The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank, and a senior fellow at Our Republic. Haskins is a prolific writer who has authored more than 1,000 articles in major digital and print publications. He writes most frequently for FoxNews.com, TheBlaze, The Hill, The Federalist, and Townhall. His work has also been published by The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Forbes, Newsweek, National Review, and many other prominent publications. Haskins has appeared on television and radio more than 400 times, including on highly influential shows such as Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, and the Glenn Beck Program.
Bye, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time of day it is you're tuning in. Welcome back to an episode of The Bookworm Mom. And today we're going to be discussing a brand new book. Came out in January of this year. It's called The Next Big Crash: Conspiracy, Collapse, and the Men Behind History's Biggest Heist. This is written by Justin Haskins. A little bit about Justin, so you know who our author is. He's the vice president at the Heartland Institute, which is a national free market think tank, and a senior fellow at our Republic. He's also a New York Times best-selling author and widely published political commentator. He has, in addition, served as the editor-in-chief of stopping socialism.com, which is something I actually want to check out. That's pretty interesting to me. One of the world's largest and most influential publications devoted to challenging socialism. And he's a co-founder of Heartland's Emerging Issue Center. And of course, how I came to know about him is again Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck typically, he seems to be the guy that he'll introduce a book, and I'm like, oh, I want to check that out. So not only did he work with Glenn, but he and Glenn actually wrote a couple books together.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's written for Fox News, The Blaze, The Hill, The Federalist, and Town Hall. He's also been published in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Forbes, Newsweek, National Review, and several other prominent publications. The books that he's written with Glenn Beck included, gosh, I know it was Dark Futures is one of them. And I'm trying to think what the other one was. Let's see if I can find it here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I know Dark Futures is one of their popular ones.
SPEAKER_00The Great Reset.
SPEAKER_02The Great Reset, yes.
SPEAKER_00So, and what's what's funny about that is again, just the name Dark Future, you know, I kind of foreboding, if you will. So it is not a cheery and lighthearted subject. But yeah, Glenn never seems to touch on those types of subjects. So but it doesn't mean it's not important. It is important. So I just kind of want to bring in understanding that's his background in a lot of ways, and in terms of what his experience has been, it's no surprise that you know the title in itself is the next big crash. So this book, again, published in January of this year, uh, it was co-authored, co-authored as well with another gentleman. And together they kind of put this together and it's it's sort of a warning of this impending center of collapse and doom that's gonna happen to our economy. Um and he he kind of goes on to say that this is a my major financial crisis. Uh he exposes what he calls the rigged U.S. financial system, and he says it's gonna leave us uh vulnerable while protecting the Wall Street elites.
SPEAKER_02That sounds about right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Seems to be um what happens in every instance these days. Uh he talks about the fact that, yeah, right now, you know, you hear Trump talk about, oh, look at the stock market, it's doing great, the economy is doing great. And sort of on paper, it appears like it's stable, you know, with these record stock market highs, but because of this massive debt that we have, yeah, uh that's a huge problem. And then there's issues with speculation. And for those that are wondering what speculation means, yes, obviously there's a speculating one term that we use. But in terms of finance, it really is talking about the per set, purchasing something like an asset, uh like buy it at a low price and then you sell it later at a high price rapidly. It's not something you hold for months and months, months or years. It's something that you typically turn over quickly for a fast profit. Um, so you know, it can be real estate, stocks, commodities, etc. Um, and then of course it also talks about the fact that we have some political failures that are occurring and have occurred and will occur. So, because of that, we have all of these uh hidden changes as well that have occurred to asset ownership. Uh, that was something I wasn't aware of, but apparently in the 1970s, and I was born in 1970, so I was just a wee less at that time, so I wouldn't have known. But they made some changes to how Americans own their stocks. Now, most people think when you purchase a stock or a bond, you own that. Well, in fact, you don't. Um, ownership rules uh changed, as I said, in the 70s, and so now your stocks and bonds and your retirement assets are actually legal, legally owned by what they call the depository trust company or the DTC. Uh that's who actually owns it. And um, since they own the securities, if there is an emergency, they can sort of take away your ownership of these things and dole them out into other areas.
SPEAKER_02Because back in the day, my grandparents would have their stock certificates in their file cabinet. Correct. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yep, you would actually own that. Sort of like um, you know, to use an ugly uh terminology, if you will, timeshare.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh you own one fifty-second of a year kind of thing. And most of them transitioned over to a point system where you own so many points in a year. I think Hilton, and they may be the only company that still does it. In fact, they may not still do it. I don't even to be fair. I know they still we have a deed with Hilton. We actually own with Hilton. So they give you a deed. So in order to be able to purchase from Hilton, at least up until 2020, you had to have a deed to demonstrate you actually own that 152nd. Whereas with Myriad or Disney or whatever, it's all a point-based system. So um it doesn't exactly work that way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So um, but anyway, he goes on to talk about the crisis that we have where you know your assets can be seized or frozen. Um, they can be used to bail out failing institutions, you know, too big to fail is what comes to mind. Yep. Um they can prioritize banks over individuals. And the framework was, according to Haskins, designed to protect large players with precedence uh in smaller scale applications and potential expansion via things like emergency powers. So, you know, imagine the president could use his emergency powers, Congress has certain emergency powers they can use, and even the banking uh institution, the Fed has certain emergency emergency powers that they could use to essentially strip you of what you think is your property.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the scariest part is the Fed, because we didn't get to select any of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, because they're not voted, Terry. Which, yeah. Well, again, that that's a that's uh another story for uh perhaps another day. We need to do that. We need to do the Dr. Jekyll Island so we can talk about how that got started and how it was set up in the early 1900s. But he goes on to talk about the historical origins of the conspiracy, you know, tracing the system's architecture to key figures, which include a former CIA officer with the Rockefeller family and USAID ties. I mean, you know, what is it with the Rockefellers and the CIA? They seem to be in everything everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and this USAID seems to have its tentacles in far too many things that Americans are or at least were oblivious until a little bird started saying, hey, let me let me get your attention over here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, it describes how Wall Street influenced state legislatures to adopt these changes with minimal public scrutiny, framing it as a quiet heist of property rights. So that's one of the things that people don't understand is a lot of times we think that the only major significant pieces of legislature that affect us directly happens at the federal level.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, the truth of the matter is it frequently happens at the state level. And at the federal level, you get a lot more eyes on, there's a lot more press at the federal level in terms of reporters checking things, and they have teams of people that go through the particular documents that are presented in the bills and so on and so forth. Literally none of that happens at the state level. There's just no, you know, gaggle of reporters out there trying to find out what's in the latest bill. Um, at least I know last year, I don't know if Jonathan Hill's still doing it for a long time. He was doing the bad bills segment.
SPEAKER_02He still is doing. We interviewed him uh just last week.
SPEAKER_00Excellent, excellent. And I I was tracking that for a while, but obviously, given what's going on in my life with the stream, it's kind of fallen to the wayside. But uh, it's very important that people understand what bills are being presented in the state legislature because that is going to have a more direct impact on you than you can ever imagine. Yes, the federal certainly has an impact, but state has a larger impact because they can do more damage to you quickly without you even knowing it's happening. This is just one example.
SPEAKER_02True. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, again, when it's happening at the federal level, nine times out of ten, somebody is going to w raise a red flag and go, wait a minute, there's a problem with this bill, and here's what it is. Whereas at the state level, even if you have a Jonathan Hill, not everybody in the state, not every voter knows who he is. Not every voter is subscribed to his Substack that knows, okay, he's going to produce this list of bills that are bad or unconstitutional and you know, or they're driving up the cost by asking for more money in the budget for this thing to be funded. Um, and so that's why people really need to pay more attention to what's happening in their state legislatures. But yeah, back to the book. So he talks about broader risk. Uh, it connects this to excessive debt, uh, again, the speculation. And what people need to understand about excessive debt is I've, you know, as a historian myself, I've read so many stories of the Romans and other civilizations that have risen and fallen. And in every single instance, you can find out that almost, well, I would say 99% of the time, maybe even 100% of the time, you can trace that to debt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They overextend themselves and they, you know, that they devalue whatever their currency happens to be to the point that they can no longer sustain their infrastructure, their government, um, their nation status. And so it is pretty clear if you look at the cyclical nature of countries rising and falling, we are not doing well.
SPEAKER_02No, no.
SPEAKER_00When you're hitting trillions of dollars in debt and we have yet to give up our desire to spend, spend, spend and buy more, more, more. Um, I mean, I I I think I think Trump said, I believe it was Trump who said it. It could have been JD Vance, but someone made the point in this administration that if we were able to curb or stop all of the fraud, that we'd be able to carve out 25% of the nation's debt or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00I submit to you it's probably closer to 60% of the nation's debt could be carved out if we stopped all the fraud, waste, and abuse.
SPEAKER_02I I agree with you on that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I think, you know, yes, I know because we had the the um the learing center that was being funded with money. Um, and then you had some of the autism centers that suddenly you went from having one child out of a hundred that had autism to suddenly there were one out of 14 children had autism and and they had all these centers, but yet they had no students actually in role. Yeah. Somehow they were they were getting funding for students that they didn't have.
SPEAKER_02Well, and then we have the sacred cows too, that people are like, well, we have to have we have to have a strong defense. Well, yes, we do, but we don't need to get $35 or $168 hammers for our security. So it it is everywhere, everywhere. There are there should be no sacred cows. Everything should be audited and checked to the hilt.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, it's funny because I I and you can if you've heard different, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe I heard somewhere in the last month or so that Trump is wanting to fund the building of a destroyer.
SPEAKER_02He is indeed, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I hate to say it because I'm I'm you know, I'm Navy, you're you're Marine. Um those are antiquated, Mr. President.
SPEAKER_02I I agree. Um they tried to put out a couple specials on how this would be different, and uh I am like, no. Uh um after after we I mean you uh I think we could make a case for the a smaller um carrier. Yeah. Um, you know, these the uh somebody proposed the drone carriers. I was just gonna say a drone carrier would make sense. And um, but it much more sense than than a destroyer.
SPEAKER_00I I I I mean what's next? A battleship? Are you gonna bring those back? Oh yeah. Um so I mean that that kind of waste and excess uh is inexplicable to me. And then again, his statement that it doesn't matter what the economic impact is on American citizens uh dealing with the Iranians and the Strait of Hormuz. He's not worried about that. He's just worried about making sure Iran never has a nuke. Um that before midterm election was not wise to say that. No, that's a soundbite that Democrats are gonna play ad nauseum. Yeah. And um, I was angered by it, you know, and I voted for the man, but I was like, really, Mr. President? There are people really struggling right now. The price of gas here is over $4. Uh in some places it's higher than that. I I think in the South we typically have lower prices because we have less taxation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But um, I didn't understand that. But again, that it kind of goes back into this whole situation of debt. And and one of the things that he campaigned on, you know, fervently was a promise that within one year of his being elected, he would have cut energy cost and gas prices by 50%. And I remember February, 1st of February, actually into January, 1st of February, he was get hitting that one year mark. And I said, Well, we don't have gas prices at you know 50%. So I said to a friend, well, we if we can get it to $2 and keep it to that range, because it was floating around $250, $260, you know, sometimes it'd bump up to $270, $280 and then come back down to $250, $260, kind of floated in between those numbers. I said, if he can get it to a solid $2, then we'll see people starting to feel more comfortable. But instead, then we had what what took place and what's taking place in Iran, and of course gas prices have subsequently skyrocketed. I would say they've they've gone up 50%.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So those kinds of excessive expenditures without really counting the cost, I think is you know, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that he is able to fulfill the promise which he's made that, you know, we're gonna make sure they never have a nuclear weapon. But the fact is this um he's only gonna be president for what, two and a half more years? Is that right? Maybe less than that. Um and that being the case, what happens when he's gone? How is he going how is what he's doing now going to ensure that they don't just pick up the ball and continue running it forward as soon as he's out of office? Right. Especially if we don't get someone else in who follows with his same line of logic. So I think you you made a point that about the only way to make sure it's not gonna happen is is to kind of follow through with his threat, which was that he was going to annihilate, you know, a race as we know it, you know, you know, destroy their oil fields and you know, the manufacturing, etc. Essentially bomb them rather back to the stone age.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, bomb them into into agriculture.
SPEAKER_00And I'm in no way advocating that. I'm just simply saying that I don't know how else he can bring that promise to fruition uh that he's going to stop them without having to do something that drastic. And that I I don't think that's gonna be something that flies. But anyway, of course, then um, you know, back to the book, Haskin goes in, he talks about some of the other things I'm very, very concerned about, and that's your your central banking digital currencies. Um I vehemently pose that. I know certain states, I believe Florida being one of them, have gone out and said, you know, it's illegal, we're not gonna allow it, you're not gonna have central banking digital currencies. And some folks say, oh, well, that makes sense. Well, I mean, I I in my dreams, my nightmares, I see how this can play out. We have a financial crisis, the government comes in and says we're getting rid of cash, there's no more cash, you have to take a CBDC, you're gonna have to take central banking digital currency. And so we're gonna issue everybody, you know, a particular sum of money, whatever. And and there are gonna be many who have zeros in their bank accounts, and suddenly they now have, you know, let's pick a number, $20,000 in their bank account. They're gonna be giddy. Yeah, yeah, man, I didn't have anything. Now I got $20,000. And they're not gonna understand that that $20,000 comes with a heck of a lot of strings attached.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And it also comes with that government oversight, um, where if you don't do something, you don't vote. I mean, think about Canada and the trucking industry when they had their um protest and the Canadian government just basically said, we're cutting off your pay, you're you know, you're not gonna be able to get gas and food, or you know, that's the kind of thing. And you look at China, yeah, where they've got uh the scoring system that if you don't score a particular, you know, rating, they can limit your travel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, their social credit score.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, social credit score. And that's really what a central banking digital currency campering about. Now there'll be lots of naysayers. Oh no, that's not true. This is gonna be a way to fix all of the problems. It's it's yeah, it's a fix. But in the literal term, fix.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and they have been irritated because the free market place has uh in the digital currency uh spectrum has created stable coin. Yeah. Which it addressed all their their I guess you'd say their scare tactic. And they're like, well, crud, that doesn't work, but we still don't have control. Well, we still need to have it. Yeah. And um yeah, it's uh uh it it's crazy. And because people are not, they don't understand currency and they don't understand.
SPEAKER_00And Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, they don't understand.
SPEAKER_02And the blockchain and and so on. And so, yeah, and and so it just uh it actually helps the people who are we're the government, we we're we're the authorities, we're the ones we're the government, we're here to help, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Roll Reagan warned, change his words you'll ever hear.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Uh and that's absolutely correct. And I'll even say this: I myself don't have a full understanding of those things, but I'm reading versifously to find out what does this mean? How does this work? Because I don't think it's if it's gonna happen, just when it's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, all it takes is the right person in the executive branch, and then a few changes in the House as well as the Senate for this to take place. Yeah. Um, so uh it is a significant concern, and people need to think about it. Um, and then he kind of goes on to talk about the implications of this next big crash he's talking about and how elites could exploit the crisis to consolidate their power, uh, potentially leading to greater control over personal finances and liberty. Again, going back to what we were just saying, that we want to have this social credit score. Um, I mean, it's as simple and as cut dry as imagine, you know, you got the Bill Gates of the world who think we shouldn't be eating beef, you know, because cows cause problems to the economy of decline, whatever. And so you go to the McDonald's and you purchase your cheeseburger, and you know, the next day you go back to get another cheeseburger for lunch and they say, sorry, you've hit your quota. You know, one cheeseburger a month is all you're allowed.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, I mean, literally, that's the kind of thing that can happen. So instead, you can't get the cheeseburger, but you can have the what is that the one that's made out of fake meat, whatever it's called anyway.
SPEAKER_02You can get one of those, or the plant-based burger. Cheeseburger, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Who knows what's really in that? Honestly, I I'm I'm proud to say I have not had any fast food in well over probably two years. We're going on two years. Wow. I haven't had anything. Impressive. Yeah. I gave up, you know, I'm doing keto. I'm keto for life now. I'm kind of changing my everything because I wanted to have a good cognition. I wanted my recall to be good. And so I did some research on it, and cutting back on carbs, particularly sugar, was one of the things. And an easy thing for me to get rid of was fast food because it's just all crap. Oh, yeah. It's not good for you. Yeah. There's nothing, even if they give you a salad, it ain't a good salad.
SPEAKER_02And now nobody can afford it. Yeah.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00So that's true. I don't think I saw something the other day, and they were saying that they went in and got, I don't know, like two hot dogs and two drinks, and it was like $25, some insane amount.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. What we used to get at a fine food restaurant or dining out. Right, yeah. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.
SPEAKER_00But which really plays into the impressiveness of Costco because they um the owner there has refused to raise their prices. You know, you go in there, you get their hot dog and a drink for $1.50.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's still a dollar fifty. Now he's losing money, lots of money on that. Yeah. But I think his his defense is that he says, I'm making it up in other areas. Right. Um, so I, you know, I applaud the guy for holding firm to that. But um, okay, so uh, you know, kind of going back, so again, they're they're saying this could lead to greater control over personal finances and liberty. And he said it could also help enable the world's largest wealth transfer in history.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00And you know, if you go back to Barack Obama when he basically said he wanted to spread the wealth around, which is a nice way of saying wealth redistribution.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And one of the best ways to do that is through things like USAID, where you take money away from the American people because we're one of the richest countries in the world, and you then dole it out to places like Somalia, where They build cities like Nairobi and Kenya and uh other countries where they've been getting money from the taxpayers and they've done who knows what with it. Honestly, we don't know. Um, we can only hope. And that's a that is the means through which they've been spreading the wealth around. They're taking money from us and giving it to other people. And so they're not bringing them up to us, they're bringing us down to them.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Uh we're not rising up. We don't see the the lower economic class in America rising because of this redistribution.
SPEAKER_02And it's part of it, and you know, I'm gonna put on my conspiracy cap, it's part of it is because Marxism doesn't work.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02And um and the only way you can get a prosperity within a country is to have capitalism. But what they do is artificially m use Marxism in a capitalist uh country like ours and steal the capital and artificially put it into these other comp countries in order to promote their Marxism. And it's uh it's crazy because it's just uh global suicide if they do that.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, I mean, and the the book is really only about 178 pages. I mean, it's 200 pages if you count actual pages, but I think I mean it looks like something I could read. Yeah, the last twenty the last 20 pages or so are just notes, end notes, but notes of sourcing. So it's not very long. I think uh I listen to it on audible and I do listen to it a little bit faster than your average person does, and so I think it took me like three and a half hours to listen to audible. So it's not not terribly long. Um and again, he is a conservative, and he is also you know writing from the free market perspective, not from the Marxist perspective, so you know understand that. And it does align perfectly with the work that he's done at the Heartland Institute, and it builds on things from prior collaborations that I mentioned earlier with Glenn Beck. And he kind of finishes it out by saying, look, we've got to make Americans aware so that we can then push for these hidden mechanics to be changed, or at least we can prepare for how we can defend against what is coming. So I do encourage folks to go out and pick up the book. It's not it, as I said, it's not terribly a long read, and it's not a complete very difficult read. Um, it is difficult in the sense that it's you know, once more not a happy, happy, you know, PA.
SPEAKER_02It's difficult because it exposes the wounds that we're exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00And then, you know, just the last couple minutes, I do want to mention, um, Tripp and I were talking just before, folks, uh, before we started, there's uh a study that's come out, it's been published talking about students in school and the heavy reliance on technology in particular, taking notes with uh iPads or laptops or whatever. And what they have found is that handwriting is the most efficient way to make sure you actually learn the information. Um, because they put these caps on the students and they had, you know, you had the one group that was using their tablets and typing in the information, they had the other group that was writing out in longhand. And what they found is that while the professor's talking, the students using the typing devices could certainly put down more of what the professor said and get it correct. But the students who were writing longhand were actually able to get more of the information that was important down and retain it, and retain it because they had to synthesize while they were listening to the professor, okay, this is what's important, all the other stuff he just said is fluff. So I'm just gonna like shorthand write down what he said. And so what happens is they're able to retain the information more and further with those caps on, they were actually able to diagram what was happening in the brain. But the students using the keyboard had one small area of their brain that was functioning because you just tap in a key, so that doesn't require a whole lot of work. Whereas the students who were writing out by hand, their entire brain was lit up, so their whole brain was having to function to be able to draw off the letters and to put together how to spell the words and so on and so forth. So it really does demonstrate that, you know, yes, technology is wonderful, but there is something to be said for the old-fashioned tradition of just writing it out by hand. I think my father-in-law, uh, who passed away several years back, would always say to me how appreciative he was that I would write him handwritten notes. I didn't send him just cards with a short, you know, love you, have a great one, whatever. I actually took the time to write letters by hand and say what was going on with his son and with you know our son has been. And so I think the the art of letter writing is one that's kind of gone away, and I hope that that comes back because um I I do believe it's it's very important and it's uh it's a way to pass on to others exactly what you feel. As much as we talk about text messaging, doesn't translate. Um I think often with letter writing, you actually put pauses in there, you put your commas in it. Some people would argue it's too many commas, yeah, commas classes, whatever. But I know when I've read letters from like my aunt, I'm reading the letter, I can hear her saying it to me. Whereas if you sent me an email, it's not the same. Yeah, it's not the same, or a text message. So anyway, so that's it for today. I hope you folks enjoyed it. And uh, like I said, go out and purchase this book, Justin Haskins, The Next Big Crash.
SPEAKER_02Well, fantastic. That's been another episode of the Bookworm Mom, which comes out every Friday. And guess what? You now can enjoy it on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01Outstanding.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So uh, if you've got a Roku device or smart TV, you can watch and listen. All right, thank you, and we'll see you next week.
