You're listening to a wake up call on demand from kf I Am six forty.
It's time for your morning wake up call. Here's Jason Middleton supporting everybody.
July fifth Day, abtre Dodger flewid game last night late lead got to
see a career first home run for a Dodger and he got a curtain call.
It was awesome. Going into the ninth inning, We're up a run,
wound up losing by two. Just a quick note to the home plate
umpire, if you're going to expand your strike zone, do it before the
eighth inning next time. I hope you guys had a great fourth seems the
among the crew here this morning. A lot of food was consumed yesterday.
Collectively, I think we were enough to pretty much cover the population of Altadena.
I think as far as the chloric intake. Got a lot of news
this hour, got some interviews as well. We're going to get caught up
all around the world. A few headlines to get as started. Ten people
are dead thirty eight people wounded in three separate mass shootings in the US over
the Fourth of July holiday. Five killed in Philadelphia, three killed in Fort
Worth, and two shot and killed in Baltimore. A federal judge is restricting
the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about their online content. The
ruling yesterday says the FBI and other agencies cannot speak with social media sites for
the purpose of removing, deleting, or suppressing content protected by free speech.
And the US and Russia are in talks about a possible prisoner swap involving a
Wall Street Journal reporter. The Kremlin says talks quote must be carried out and
continue in complete silence end quote to be clear. They're on the record saying
that we need to be quiet. Evan Gershkovitz is accused of spying by Russia.
Let's start with some other stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour
newsroom. We do lead local. An LA City firefighter has been hurt while
working to put out a fire at an apartment building near downtown LA. The
department says the firefighter injured a lower extremity extremity last night and was taken to
the hospital. The fire was out in just over half an hour. The
La County Health Department says it now will use death certificates as the primary source
of tracking deaths from COVID nineteen. During the pandemic, it was unclear how
to list a death involving the virus and whether people actually died from it or
if it was an underlying condition. The department says medical professionals who certified deaths
must now list COVID nineteen if it had any role in the death, and
if that's not clear, officials say it's okay to list probable or presumed on
the death certificate. Health officials say that the new directive is in line with
the state Department of Health and the CDC. Steve Gregory Camfie News The La
City Fire Department says the fourth of July was a busy one for firefighters.
They got more than two thousand calls for service yesterday, compared to seventeen hundred
on an average weekday. Firefighters put out tree and vehicle fire and several small
brush fires. Four people in South La were hurt when they were hit by
a car while in the street watching fireworks. Officials say flight issues are not
going away as people start to head home from the long Fourth of July weekend.
Flight Aware reported more than four thousand delays and four hundred and fifty cancelations
yesterday. Severe weather has also caused disruptions in some places. Experts say travelers
should expect more delays and cancelations today and throughout the busy summer season. In
a couple of minutes, the first topic is going to be the escalating atmosphere
of violence in the Middle East. ABC's Jordana Miller is going to join US
Life for an update first from the Southern California Toyota Dealers Traffic Center. Let's
go places, and let's check the fifteen. It's gonna be a reasy one
for your first thing this morning. As you're making way out of the high
deserts up on side through Hysperia's going to be slow going for you. From
before Main Street, almost as far back as Bear Bounty Roads have been great
towards Joshua Street or the merger of the three ninety five knock On Wood.
For the moment, it's not looking too bound for you. Further southpon on
the fifteen as you make way through the Cahome Pass looks like a good drive
into the Inland Empire. As you make Gray beyond the fifteen of the split
with the two fifteen in Divorre as you head toward the two ten. Got
an updated something slowing you down pound to fifty in your cell phone keyword is
KFI traffic about twenty two minutes for your drive at a downtown riverside right now
westbound side of the ninety one to make way through Anaheim and followed into the
five. Just a smidgeon of slowing for you from about Green River as you
make your way towards the two forty one toll road. Also Orange County looking
good anything that was coming out of the Fourth of July holiday heading into this
morning. Most cal trends projects didn't pick up until past midnight, so they
either didn't really happen or they were wrapped up by now, so not scene
too bad. Up a drive for you there. And also La County is
looking pretty smooth sailing for the moment. Okay, I find the sky helps
get to there faster. I'm Nick polyo'keny and welcome back to wake Up Call.
First topic today is a week of violence in the Middle East. Israel
made a military move into an established refugee area on the West Bank Bank over
the weekend. ABC's Jordana Miller is with us for an a big good morning
and thank you and welcome, thank you, so good to be with you.
If the Israeli Army wrapped up what it called a counter terrorists operation in
the Janine refugee camp in the disputed West Bank that is a stronghold for Palestinian
militant groups, and essentially Israel decided to go on the offensive and go in
there and instead of doing it a daily or nightly raid, to stay in
there for forty eight hours and to go house by house, a building by
building to try to arrest suspective militants, confiscate weapons, a destroy explosive labs
they found six of them, and really try to root out some of the
what they called terrorist activity in this part of the northern West Bank. It's
a part of the West Bank that is technically under the Palestinian authorities leadership,
but they've been unable or unwilling to go in there and do the test work.
Israelis have been paying the price because over the last about eighteen months there's
been an increasing level of deadly attacks coming from militants who are coming from that
refugee camp. So the violent activity back and forth this week, can you
give us a sense of scale when it comes to that, is this unusual
kind of spike or is this abnormal? I mean, the decision to basically
roll tanks into the refugee camp and bulldoze streets and cut power lines and bring
in two thousand troops is is definitely an escalation. We haven't seen that kind
of wide scale operation in the Janine refugee camp for about two decades since the
last Palestinine uprising or into Fada, So it signals that kind of change in
tactic by the Israelis no doubt, and it left a lot of destruction.
Twelve Palestinians were killed one Israeli soldier. Also more than one hundred Palestinians injured,
from what we understand, at least twenty critically injured in this kind of
sustained urban warfare that happened. Now late last night, the Israeli troops started
to withdraw and by daylight there were no troops left there. But residents are
returning and they're finding, you know, it almost looks like an earthquake hit
parts of the refugee camp. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natagnelle says this is not
a one off, meaning Israel may be changing its tactic here and instead of
doing nightly raids, may decide once a month to come into the Geneine refugee
camp and try to arrest militants. What about any We're speaking with ABC's news
correspondent Dredna Miller about the violence in the Middle East this week, what about
any political signaling on either side. You just mentioned that there may be change
in tactics that was not necessarily overtly stated. Was there any kind of precursor
to this role in by the Israeli military. Well, I think the precursor
has been the months and months of violence that Israel's nightly raids and sometimes daytime
raids had not been able to really stem. I mean, just most recently
there was a shooting attack right by a Jewish settlement, you know, where
a Palestinian open fire and killed four Israelis at a gas station. But we
could rattle off several deadly shooting attacks, and there have been pressure mounting for
a while from the political echelon and within the security establishment individual needed to take
on a kind of wider, more intense military operation to try to root out
some of these militants. Especially since the Palestinian authority right now is in such
a weak position that they are unable or unwilling to do it themselves. So
you know, it's um there were this is definitely it felt like this was
somehow inevitable, given that the violence has been sustained for so long. We
had record numbers of deaths on both sides just this year, almost thirty Israelis
on the Palestinian side over one hundred and forty in the different raids that have
been carried out. So, you know, will this solve the problem?
No, it won't. Will it create some deterrence for a short time maybe?
I mean the really this conflict, you know, it needs a political
situation solution, and it needs you know, leaders on both sides to come
back to the peace table and talk and negotiate. But that's not happening.
So in the interim we're seeing all these explosions of violence and band aid efforts
to try to stop it for a short while. Jordanna, thank you for
the update and thank you for your time this morning. Thank you. It
was ABC's news correspondent, Jordanna Miller. I'll give you the headline this week
or this morning excuse me. Israel did declare the end of its attack on
a refugee camp in the city of Janine. The raid was Israel's biggest in
the West Bank in more than twenty years. Earlier, Palestinian militants fired five
rockets from Gaza towards Israel, and the rockets were intercepted. Israel responded with
air strikes of its own on northern Gaza. Let's get back to some of
the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. A city council
member from the city of San ya Jacinto has been arrested for allegedly assaulting two
children. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department says Brian Hawkins was booked Sunday for felony
assault with intent to cause great bodily injury. The department would not offer details,
but did say it was a domestic incident. The city of Santiacinto said
it takes the allegations seriously and will cooperate with the investigation. As of Monday,
Hawkins, who was running for Congress, was still in custody. One
person has died in a plane crash in Riverside County, not far from the
French Valley. Airport officials say three other people on board yesterday were taken to
the hospital, one of them with serious injuries. The FAA says this single
engine, CESSNA one seven two, crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport.
New numbers show the homicide rate in California has dropped. The California Department of
Justice says the rate of homicides in the state went down about five percent from
twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, but property and violent crimes were both
up last year from twenty twenty one. Of counties with populations greater than one
hundred thousand, Merced County had the highest homicide rate, in Santa Cruz County
had the lowest. An overwhelming majority of homicide victims were women, just above
eighty three percent. The dj says more than half of homicides last year we're
solved. Sandy wells ka FI News. Vladimir Zelensky, Ukraine's president, claimed
Russia had placed objects resembling explosives on the roofs of buildings at the Zaprizia Nuclear
power plant, Europe's biggest. Russia's seized control of the plant in southeastern Ukraine
in February of twenty twenty two. Mister Zelenski says he has discussed Russia's dangerous
provocations at Zaprizzia with the Emmanuel Macron, who which is Francis President, who
agreed to keep the situation under maximum control together. China's restrictions on exports of
two critical chip medals, gallium and Germanium, have sparked concerns of an escalation
in its tech war with America. A Chinese policy advisor told China Daily,
a newspaper that the control the controls were just a start. Now. This
comes just days ahead of a visit by America's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She's
headed to Beijing. A woman in South Carolina has been killed by an alligator
while walking her dog near a golf course. Some neighbors say, even though
alligators are at regular site, people should not let their guard down. It's
kind of shocking, honestly, I think the alligators sometimes get too comfortable with
the people and vice versa. Officials say the alligator was guarding the six nine
year old woman's body when they found her at the edge of a lagoon yesterday.
Sheriff's deputies say it took some time, but they removed the alligator and
recovered the body. The dog was found safe. Adele has warned fans not
to throw things on stage, following a recent wave of artists being hit by
objects while performing. A TikTok video shows the singer at one of her Las
Vegas residency shows, asking the crowd if they noticed people appear to be forgetting
concert etiquette. She told fans to stop throwing things, and then joked about
throwing things at the crowd before shooting off a T shirt launcher. Right now,
though, kfi's and KTLA's intrepid tech reporter rich to Moreau is on the
line with us rich host rich on Tech here on KFI Saturday's eleven to two.
He maintains a robust Instagram feed at rich on Tech, and his website
is rich Ontech dot tv. Welcome back, Rich good to hear you.
Hey, good morning to you, Jason, Happy day after. Thank you
very much. I hope you had a great fourth Yeah, it was fun.
It was nice. That's cool, celebrated early. Oh nice. Let's
start with Instagram. Okay, this new app called threads. Do you think
that they'll tell you what. Let's let's tear it up first, say my
follow up, because I'm eager to hear what is threads and what is it
going to compete with? Yeah, so let's just give you the rundown.
Threads is basically Facebook and Instagram's version of Twitter. So we have not seen
the app and its entirety just yet. It is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning.
You can search for an invite on your Instagram. If you search the
term threads, it'll get a little ticket. You can tap that ticket set
a reminder to download the app. It's available for iOS first, Android later,
and it's basically Twitter. You get to write posts, you get to
post pictures, people can reply, people can retweet or sorry rethread and yeah,
it's basically Meta's answer to Twitter at a time when some people are disenfranchised
with Twitter. Okay, that was my follow up, kind of which is
why would Okay, let's talk about Meta's install base. Is that enough grab
alone to make it a Twitter competitor immediately? I think it definitely gives it
a good chance that people will check it out. But I find the irony
very thick because here it is people are looking towards a company that a couple
of years ago they were all hating on for their privacy practices and various other
things, and now they're looking towards towards Meta as being the savior for the
social media kind of landscape. And so I don't know if I want Meta
to have that much power with Facebook, also Instagram and now sort of the
Twitter scape as well, but we'll see. It definitely has a good chance
because it seems like you're going to follow over whatever followers you have on Instagram
will immediately come over to this new app and vice versa, so that gives
it a big user base immediately. Do you think that maybe Meta had this
in the works. Obviously it was in the works, but do you think
they pushed it out a little bit early because of the stuff over the weekend
with the limitations on what you can view on Twitter? Oh? Absolutely,
So I think they were just kind of you know, they knew they needed
this product for the last couple of years, but they just sat there and
waited for an opportunity because they seemed to come up every couple of months with
Elon Musk at the Helm, So they just said, you know what,
We're just gonna wait for the next big opportunity where people are really angry,
and then we'll announce this and then we'll launch it. And of course with
apps, you can update them, you can make them better as time goes
on. So it's not going to be complete from day one, but it's
probably going to be pretty good and it will hopefully get better. Didn't they
try to do something with audio once or twice? I mean, they've rolled
out some stuff before that's been like full of pomp and circumstance and didn't really
deliver. So this might be another hurry up and wait situation. Is that
your take too? Oh, they've tried everything. Anything that has come out,
they have copycat. They have been a copycat me too, me too,
me too? And you know, at the core, really what they're
still successful at is the Facebook feed and Instagram, and Instagram's having some success
with the reels, which is just a rip off of TikTok and of course
Instagram. What Snapchat did with their stories and made that very popular on Instagram,
people probably don't even remember that Snapchat started that that sort of storytelling ability,
and now of course we just identify it with us with Instagram. Yeah,
so we'll see, We'll see what happens with this. I just don't
see a lot of people saying, oh, yeah, let's make this my
new Twitter. But hey, time will tell, right, And I'm still
watching Blue Sky too. I heard you mentioned that yesterday won't with Wayne Resnick.
Yeah, Facebook does have a serious fomo. Let's move over to Google
and it's privacy policy. It says, what's it saying now, it's going
to scrape even more or less of us? What's happening? Yeah, basically,
Google over the weekend updated its privacy policy to say, you know what,
anything you're right online could be used potentially by Google for any and all
of its AI projects, including bard and anything else that they come up with.
And so I think the bottom line here is that it used to be
when you wrote something online, if you didn't like it later, you could
delete it. And yeah, nothing ever really goes away from the Internet,
but it was a little bit tougher to find and maybe if someone had a
screenshot or a cash of the page, fine, But now the fact that
these AI tools are scraping everything twenty four to seven, anything you say online
could potentially go into one of these large language models and It just has a
lot of implications for the way the web exists and also what we do on
there and how long it lasts. Now, when it comes to this the
scraping the AI, the large language models, Europe has traditionally, with GDPR
and others, been ahead of the curve when it comes to privacy things,
because honestly, the US used to do it does innovate these situations first,
and then Europe seems to respond. Is this going to be something that the
EU picks up when it comes to Google and its new privacy policy? Oh?
Probably. I mean, the EU is definitely very different than the US
when it comes to all of this stuff on the internet. But I think
California is probably the most closely aligned with the EU when it comes to privacy
online. But you know, the US has always been kind of like,
build, build, build, and we'll figure it out later. I think
Washington this time around is saying, let's look at this a little bit closer
the first time around, before it gets too big and before we have to
rewrite the rules and the tech companies have too much power. But at the
same time, you don't want to stifle what can be done with this because
the US wants to be seen as a leader in the world, in the
entire world when it comes to AI, So we don't want to stop the
progress, but we also want to make sure that people are reasonably safe.
Yeah, that's great, that's really good context. I mean, because the
tech sector is having its best year in forty years almost and oh yeah,
and so yeah, we're about to have that conversation about Wall Street. So
I'll just move over to Yahoo real quick, one of the Internet's oldest brands.
I still use Yahoo Finance because I'm old school business, and I find
that they're reporting in their data is pretty solid. But Yahoo's trying to look
for a larger kind of comeback. What's it going to roll out? Well,
yeah, and what you're saying with Yahoo Finance, I think is indicative
of a lot They still have a lot of users. And here's the thing.
This is the the article in the Financial Times says that basically Yahoo wants
to eventually IPO again, And I said, wait, what I thought they
were owned by Verizon. Turns out they were spun out of Horizon after they
were purchased a couple of years ago, and so now they are privately held
company. They've got the same guy that I used to work for, Jim
Land's own who used to be in charge of c net and then later CBS
Interactive. So he knows what's going on with these brands. He knows how
to build brands that people really like and in a lot of different ways.
You know, they've got Yahoo Finance, They've got you know, entertainment,
They've got a Tech Crunch as a startup. They even own AOL and so
he's saying, basically, look, we're in a really good position. We
also have AI now on our side, and I think we're ready to kind
of make Yahoo big again. And I kind of believe it because the Internet
has gone through this up and down phase with these big companies like BuzzFeed that
all tried to like, you know, eat everyone's lunch and look what happened.
And so Yahoo's kind of like been around forever and they still have what
they do really well and a lot of traffic. So what can they do
with that? We'll see. Yeah, I agree. I think this is
a really smart move and I'm glad to see them reference it as a as
an IPO because just anecdotally speaking, I've been dealing with Yahoo and a subscription
thing, and it's been pretty stuss And I have to say that what the
FDC is doing with Amazon and Amazon Prime subscriptions, I think that there's a
shadow of that at Yahoo as well that needs to be addressed. Hey,
tough to cancel, yeah, tough to cancel yeah, and tough to actually
get any kind of response at all. Well, it's not what I'm I
feel like this is very indicative of some of these companies that are you know,
and this is something I always recommend when people sign up for something,
before you sign up, because sign up is very very easy. Just see
what it's like to cancel. For instance, I signed up for this service
online, and you know, I said, okay, well you just google
like the name of the service plus cancelation and then you see what people saying
about how tough it is to cancel. And that should give you an idea
of do you want to deal with that at some point when it's your turn
to cancel this stuff? And if it's not easy as like one, two,
three click, you know, you should maybe think twice. But I
will tell you one pro tip, Jason chat GPT is your friend for cancelation.
It can craft a really nice letter that you can email to the company
and help you cancel very quickly and easily. God Rich, I tell you
there's always action items when we talked with you. This is fantastic. He
speaking to which before I have to let you go, you mentioned yesterday something
that we talked about a little bit last week. But I want to pull
it back up because it's such a cool app. I hope you don't mind.
It's not on our notes, I know, but it has to do
with the interactive product to interactive tours that you can take where. Yeah.
Yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about that one more time
please? Yeah. Absolutely. This is called voice Map, and I absolutely
love it. It's basically a GPS audio guided app. So you go to
a city, you search for the destination and there's a whole bunch of tours
typically in that city, done by local folks, casters and things like that.
You pay a couple of bucks, you load it up on your phone,
you walk around the city and you follow this map and it tells you
what you're you know, what you're seeing, and it's really really cool.
We did it in Austin. I absolutely love it. I'm going to a
couple of countries later this summer, and so I'm definitely going to fire it
up there. And you just feel smart when you take one of these tours,
because yeah, you can walk around by yourself and read the little signs
around town or whatever, but this is really like taking your own personal tour
on your own time. By the way, you can start and finish whenever
you feel like it. Voicemap is the website. Yeah, voicemap dot Ammy.
Thanks a lot for that, Rich, I really appreciate it. And
hopefully if we talk again before you travel, that's great. If not,
have great travels. Okay, yeah, we'll be back. It's it's later,
so I've got it. But yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, right
on. Well, Rich, always a pleasure. Thank you very much.
All right, Jason, take care. It's Rich Dmorrow. He hosts rich
on Tech. You're on KFI. That's Saturday's from eleven am to two pm,
and he maintains a really strong Instagram feed at rich on Tech and his
website is rich on Tech dot tv. Right now, on a wake up
call, we have the President and chief investment Officer at First American Trust,
Jerry Brockman. First American Trust is based in Santa Anna and has several billion
dollars of assets under management. And for this morning, Jerry will help us
tee up the second half of the year on Wall Street and we have to
dig into the FED and how interest rates are playing out in the financial and
investing world. If it's okay with you, I'd like to start with Wall
Street. Looks like the AI rush from this beginning of the year has been
somewhat sustainable for the first six months. What do you think that looks like
for the rest of the year. Yeah, Obviously, when we look back
at the first six months, AI was the dominant theme, and when you
look at the SMP five hundred, the six seven names that have provided all
the outperformance have been AI related. So Microsoft and did the Google, Facebook
and others really are driving that potential success story. I think when we look
at the run that has had, it becomes more difficult to see where it's
going to go forward considering the huge valuation that opportunity has already been provided,
with videos specifically being the posted child of that at a trillion plus valuation.
I think as we look forward to the rest of the year, again,
when we look at the four hundred ninety some other stocks in SMP five hundred,
they're about flat year to day, and so that's really underlying, you
know, just very few concentrated leadership and a lot of companies and their valuation
struggling with the economic grind that's happening. Yeah, yeah, I think you're
right, the head winds from inflation and of course the rising interest rates and
the cost of borrowing money going up. Yeah, and we definitely see,
you know, the Fed policy, there's a lot of uncertainty. They're about
their path going forward. We see in a me that is continued to slow
I'll be from very high you know, inflationary levels. We've seen a lot
of progress here since the beginning of the year of inflation being about half of
what it was when we started the year. So again, monetary policy is
effective. And the question is, you know, with this significant slowdown,
where does that continue? Does that start introducing recessions by the end of this
year? Yeah, exactly. It seems like the recession keeps getting pushed out
and pushed out. And I like to I like to use the old saul
that economists have predicted seven of the past four recessions and so we are we
are pessimistic by nature necessarily, but we have been pushing this one out.
Do you think that has to do with consumer spending or are we at the
limit of consumer spending given the credit card debt collectively is a trillion dollars.
Yeah, I think like most issues and most panics, right, it develops
very slowly and then something happens and then all at once people rush for the
for the exits. And we haven't had that issue yet. And part of
that is the significant stimulus that happened after COVID. And when we just look
at something like mto money supply, which is the aggregation of checking the savings
accounts in banks went from about fifteen and a half trillion to twenty one and
a half trillion at its peak, and now it's, you know, come
down almost a trillion dollars. So there's been a lot of money that was
created, which created this inflation, which created the necessitated the reaction by the
Federal Reserve and rising rates to stem that inflation. And so you have this
issue of a lot of money and there's still quite a bit out there.
And when we just look at the trend line of normalcy there's probably still another
trillion or more that's getting in that money supply that hasn't burned off yet.
Now as we look forward to the second half here, we do have continuing
challenges with money supply and also some expensive specifically student loan repayments that are scheduled
to start again in September, which will impact certainly not everyone, but a
significant amount of consumer liquidity. And the consumer with all that money has been
stronger and more resilient. So yes, it's been a slow bill. But
when you look at inflation coming down from eight nine percent on the headline to
be four percent at the last reading in that we saw again down for four
point nine percent the prior reading, you know, there's a lot of progress
being made and some of the stickiness in inflation has been attributed to, you
know, some of these things that are longer lasting, and specifically the biggest
component there is being rent, rent and mortgage payments, so shelter the component
there, we see that finally having peaked. And when you look at kind
of forward looking indicators of that inflation such as Zelo and apartment listing dot Com
where you see where rental rates are now, you know we see that coming
down, and that should continue to help inflation come down again. That's not
normally stripped out what people typically strip out as oil and food, which traditionally
have been volatile, but shelter is very much a lagging indicator, and so
which is normal. You know, people typically, you know, select a
piece of property for a long term of time, and when you do,
at least agreement, it's twelve to eighteen months on average, So it takes
twelve to eighteen months for current prices to kind of filter into that. So
you strip all that out, shelter and some of those volatile food and transportation
costs like oil and already blow two percent, which kind of leaves us,
you know, how long will the FED stick with this high rate policy on
the front end of the curve. I'd really like to dig into the FED
a little bit more, but I have to say, let's put a pin
in that one for now and maybe the next time. Because I'm happy you
mentioned shelter specifically, you mentioned residential I'm trying to keep a slow fire lit
underneath commercial real estate. Is that maybe a tipping point for us recession wise?
When you said it's a slow build to a crisis. Is that going
to be the tipper is the cri well, I think cra You know,
it's a broad asset class that has a lot of different dynamics underneath it.
So there are still places that are very strong and hot. You know,
when you think of warehouses and those type of things that are supporting the growth
of Amazon and other issues or market players, that's still a very hot segment.
I think the focus where people are really concerns are specifically, you know,
the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City office high rises. Right
what we've seen is a big change in work from home where hybrid work,
and so all these office towers are stressed. There's right to be concerned there.
I think on the residential side, the biggest challenge is that higher interest
rate, you know, more to six over six percent on a thirty year
continues to be a lot higher than it was a year and a half ago
when we're looking at at our below three. So that interest rate cost and
financing at the same time, because it's so much more expensive to buy a
house, we see a lot of seller restraint because if you sell a house
and you want to buy a new one, and now you have a lot
higher mortgage payment. So the latest reading on the real estate market is we
get a little bit by where existing inventory is kind of tied with that switching
cost issue, but new homes are starting to pick up the new home permits
and so forth, because there is an on that supply, and that's kind
of what's keeping home prices still at a relatively high level. We'll see where
that trends towards the later part of this year. Obviously, spring and summer
are great times for homes tradition anyhow, and we rarely ever see price declients.
There are those spring and summer selling seasons, but as we go out
further that will be concerned, especially if rates continue to stay at these levels.
Jerry, thanks a lot for your time. Absolutely, President and chief
investment Officer at First American Trust, Jerry Brockman right there now on your wake
up called. Jeffrey Skelly is with five thirty eight dot com. That's a
high profile polling website, usually around politics. Mister Skelly, welcome back to
wake Up Call. Hey, thanks for having me on. Absolutely, let's
get into a third party politics. Not a great track record. What is
happening now though, with no labels. Yeah. So this organization has been
around for a while pushing sort of bipartisanship, centrism and our politics in Washington,
and so you know, they have a bit of a track record for
for trying to make appeals on this front. But they are basically planning a
potential third party bid. They want to back a as they call it,
a moderate independent alternative. I think, especially if we end up with a
rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and so that that's they have some
some money behind this, some muscle, if you will, political muscle.
So it is possible that they can get on the ballot in you know,
all or nearly all fifty states and actually run somebody and at least gained some
notoriety and you know, perhaps affect the outcome of the election. Okay,
well you're the one, you're the poster. You tell me if the partisanship
has created a down the middle kind of alley for a third party this time,
because it doesn't seem like the track record is very strong. I am
definitely a bit skeptical. It's really really hard to win is a third party
in this country and presidential elections. Some of that is systemic because, particularly
because of the electoral college, most states award all their electoral votes to whoever
has the most votes, and because of that, it tends to push people
toward voting for two parties. It's it's been a long running thing in this
country. So that's that's the sort of a fundamental challenge. Now if you
look at our politics right now, there's definitely dissatisfaction with the status quo,
and you have polls were keenly saying the majority of Americans would love to see
the third party alternative just because they're sort of tired. They feel like the
two parties aren't doing the job. But the problem is, if you actually
ask people how they identify politically, you know, you'll get forty percent or
so say they're independent. But if you push those independents and say, well,
do you lean to one party? Yeah, well, three and four
or four and five depending on the survey, will say, yeah, I
lean towards the Democrats, or I lean towards the Republicans, And so you
end up with only roughly one in ten Americans saying yeah, I'm truly independent.
I don't lean one way or the other. So that makes it I
think really hard to find, as you called it, sort of that middle
lane. There's not a big middle lane. How many electoral college boats does
it take to win the presidency? You need two hundred and seventy out of
five and thirty eight, which, by the way, is the reason why
our website is called five thirty eight dot com. See I set you up
for that one. Uh. Does this third party have an actual strategy when
it comes to getting to that magic number of electoral college boats? Yeah,
I mean they're and they released a sort of a plan. They called it
an insurance plan for twenty twenty four, and they sort of they did a
bunch of polling late last year trying to identify i mean, with a very
large sample size across the country, across all fifty states and sort of going
down into the leads in each state, and they basically identified a past that
they thought they could get to two hundred and eighty six electoral votes based on
the electorates in states ranging from as red as Utah to as blue as Hawaii.
Now I think that's you know, obviously they want to sell that they
have a chance at winning this thing, but that's going to be very hard
to do at the end of the day. Because another thing that I think
is really important here. It's not just that people tend to identify with a
party. You know, people attended to identify with a party in nineteen ninety
two, and Ross Brow did really well. Yeah, I think. I
think the real challenge though, is that even since that time, attitudes toward
the other political party. So like a Democrat looking at a Republican, a
Republican looking at a Democrat, their attitudes have gotten a lot more negative.
It's this concept called negative partisanship. And so people tend to like their party
or the party they lean toward, but they really dislike the other party now
to a degree that was not the case twenty thirty years ago. And that
makes voters even more afraid of the idea of the other party getting into power.
And so that is another factor that can keep them sort of in their
camp from considering an alternative because at the end of the day, it's to
be really hard for a third party to win. So why would you risk
voting for a third party if it might actually help the party you really don't
want to see in power get into power. Right, Because you mentioned ninety
two, Ross Perot kind of took a lot of votes away from George W.
Bush's reelection campaign. Ralph Nader has done it in the past on the
from politicians on the on the left as well. I'm wondering, let me
ask you a question about methodology at five to thirty eight when it comes to
third parties or any kind of polling around this, how do you how do
you manage for that? Because if everybody, if one intent, are truly
independent voters, that's a lot of squishy area. How do you compensate?
Well, I mean, look, when you when you're when you're looking at
polling UM, you know, the polster will ask people how they identify,
they will ask who they intend to vote for, and you always have to
be open to the idea, is it there's some error in polling UM.
So so when you know, for instance, when we're building our forecast model,
which we haven't done yet, we're still away as from the actual general
election. But when you're but when you're but when you're doing that, you
know, you you you build in room for error essentially, and so when
you're saying like, oh, somebody has like a two and three chance of
winning, it's because you're you're acknowledging that there is uncertainty, and acknowledging uncertainty
is like a big part of what we do. Um So I think when
you're thinking about a third party in general, and if we actually have a
third party candidate who is polling I don't know, ten percent or something or
eight percent, you know it should be you know, on the high side.
Historically, you know that that will be uh know, that will be
an added complication for for a forecast model, and we'll have to if we
get if that's the situation, you know, we're going to have to account
for it. But at the end of the day, like to some extent,
you're still looking at the two bigger numbers there for the Democrat or the
Republican because that's probably who's gonna win. And you know, we're looking at
state level polling when it comes to the electoral College because that's how we actually
decide prosividual elections. So you're gonna be looking at what's going on in each
individual state, and historically the way that the state's move tends to be correlated.
If one state is shifting to the right, a lot of times states
nearby or have similar characteristics are also shifting to the right or left, you
know, whatever it may be. All right, well, that's I appreciate
you unpacking some of that because I think there's a definite question that rolls around
when it comes to posters and polling, and I know that five thirty eight
has been around long enough to handle that kind of question. Thank you so
much, Jeffrey, Hey, thank you so much for having me. Jeffrey
Skelly is senior elections analyst at five thirty eight dot com and of course they
are a partner of ABC News. We lead local live from the KFY twenty
four our newsroom. I'm Jason Middleton. This has been your wake up call.
You've been listening to wake up call? You know you can always listen
live on kf I Am six forty weekdays from five to six am d anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.