Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Monday to day is the fourth day of May.
Year of our Ward, twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and man, we got a lot to go
over today, and it's kind of different too. I mean,
I'll update you on what's going on with the war
in Iran and gas prices. We'll do all that which
we've been doing over and over and over, but today
I want to start with something. A lot of aviation
news today, and I love aviation. So the big story
was Friday night, Spirit Airlines shut down. That was it.
It was over. And what gets me about this is
it's being reported so poorly. And I'm sure that there's
just a lot of people in the news business who
just don't know, but they don't do any effort to
find out why. So they are blaming it on the
jet fuel prices. All all fuel prices are way up,
and they're saying, well, it's because of the war and
the jet fuel prices and that's why Spirit had to
shut down. That's so far from the truth. It is
not the truth at all. This is something And then
they do the stories that the the tear jerker stories
about oh the poor employees, they had no idea. This
caught them by surprise. And that also if this, if
you're an employee of Spirit Airlines and this caught you
by surprise, I'm sorry, you've got bigger. Everybody in the
airline industry and beyond knew that Spirit was in financial skids.
They went bankrupt, what was it a year or two ago.
They went bankrupt again just a few months ago. That
they've sold everything. They basically, as they say in bankruptcy court,
they basically sold the furniture. They sold everything that they
had to basically hang on. I mean, including the planes
that they owned. They sold those. The only thing left
were some least planes that go back to the less hores.
So there really wasn't anything to sell. I was very
concerned that the President was talking about maybe bailing them
out with taxpayer money on that. No, no, no, no, no,
they listen. Listen. They're an ultra they were an ultra
low cost airline. Maybe they were a little too ultra
low on their ticket prices. Maybe they should have charged
just another few bucks or something, because I mean, it
was it's a it's a unique airline. Because they the
joke was they charged for everything you want to You
want to pick your seat, there's a there's a fee.
You want to bring a bag, well everybody does that.
Now there's a fee if.
Speaker 2: You want to.
Speaker 1: I mean it goes on and on and on. You
want anything other than a seat to from point A
to point B, they ever gonna charge you an extra fee.
But I want to play a couple of things just
to show you how the media is getting this so
so so wrong. This is the introduction to ABC's network
newscast last night from ABC News World headquarters in the UK.
These World News.
Speaker 2: Tonight, Good evening. It's great to have you with us
on this Sunday. I'm Went Johnson. We begin tonight with
growing fears over the future of air travel. More than
twenty four hours after Spirit Airlines abruptly shut down, some
other carriers are now worried about their financial stability. The
ripple effect of Spirit ceasing operations still being felt across
the country, many stranded passengers forced to pay hundreds of
dollars more to reach their destinations. Spirit placing much of
the blame on the soaring cost of jet fuel triggered
by the war with Iran. For putting the company out
of business.
Speaker 1: Well, no, actually, the first of all, it wasn't sudden,
and secondly, it wasn't the jet fuel prices. They have
been in financial trouble for years. Then Sarah Nelson, who's
the I like her. I think she does a good job.
She's the president of the Airline Flight Attendants Association, the
union for flight attendants for a lot of them, and
she did the exact same thing, and she should know better.
Speaker 3: Here's the problem. Went out of business because of the
spike and fuel costs because of the war, and that
is causing a problem across the industry. So capacity is
being cut. That's why Spirit wasn't bought. Spirit had a
plan to exit bankruptcy, and but for those spikes and
fuel prices, they would have succeeded. So there it's difficult.
But there are some airlines hiring, although on a lesser rate,
basically on attrition.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like I said, she should know better. But they
did not go out of business because of the fuel prices.
If the fuel prices were driving them out of business,
why aren't the fuel prices driving all the airlines out
of business? And secondly the fact that they weren't bought
because of the cutbacks from other airlines because of the
fuel prices, not even close they had. They had, like
I said, they sold the furniture. They had nothing to sell.
So it's it's I'm sorry. I'm just trying to get
the honesty out there because there's so much dishonesty in
all of this. This goes back quite a ways. This
goes back to the Biden administration when Jet Blue tried
to buy Spirit Airlines, and actually Frontier tried to buy them,
and then that Jet Blue jumped in and said it
we'll pay you even more because what they wanted to
do was they realized that Spirit was not going to
make money with their low ultra low faars. So but
they had assets, and they had gate access, and they
had routes and things that were worth money. So because
it was an airline merger, that had to go before
the Federal Trade Commission in the Biden administration, and they
jumped up and down and said, no way, we want
to make sure there's still access to ultra low fares.
And that was not only the argument of the Federal
Trade Commission, but Pete Bodhajetge, that Secretary of Transportation he said, no,
we're not going to do this. So the Biden administration
was very much against corporate mergers and all they were
trying to do was basically save Spirit from going out
of business, which they now have done. Here's Pete Budha
judge from a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4: The Department of Transportation has generally not gotten involved in
these merger cases, but that's changing today. It is so
important to make sure that passengers have choices, that they
have access to low fares, that they have access to competition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had an ideological bend bent in the Biden
administration that mergers and corporations were bad, bad, bad. This
wasn't about trying to offer anything to anybody. It was
truly everybody in the airline industry knew. This was basically
trying to figure out a way to save Spirit Airlines
from eventually going out of business because they were losing money.
Hand over fist. You can't keep doing that. Sean Duppy,
the current Secretary of Transportation, had the rebuttal.
Speaker 5: The yeah, field prices have gone up. This story was
not written because of the Iran War. This story was
written years ago because of what Elizabeth Warren Joe Biden
people to judge and the DOJ under Biden what they
did to prevent the murder from happening. So again, I
love that they try to play revisionist politics and try
to come after Donald Trump again. What do they want?
Speaker 1: And nuthar iran.
Speaker 5: I mean they're blaming field prices, but you and I
both know that Democrats love higher energy prices. They fought
for four years to give us higher energy prices. Look
at California five six seven eight dollars a gallon, and
now they're trying to blame Trump who wanted American energy dominance. Again,
the insanity.
Speaker 1: Of they make some politics in there, but it really
wasn't about anything other than the fact that that sorry,
but Spirit was not making money and they haven't for
quite a few years. Scott Brenner, former FAA spokesman, He
weighs it right.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, you always hate to see a
lot of folks lose their jobs and people be stranded
in a variety of areas. But I mean Spirit for
a long time has been struggling to stay alive. I mean,
airlines don't make a lot of money to begin with.
I mean they operate on very narrow margins, and Spirit
has been struggling for some time. I mean COVID coming
out of COVID started leveraging their airplanes, started taking on
big debt, and the riding was kind of on the wall.
Speaker 1: It was just when it was going to happen.
Speaker 6: And I think, you know, rising gas prices is probably
what pushed them over the edge, but it was going
to happen eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, once again theory versus reality. I mean, Spirit was struggling.
Jet Blue was going to come in, assume a lot
of their routes, help out the folks who lost all
their jobs, basically make it into a more competitive airline,
more sustainable airline. But yet you had some folks in
the Biden administration says, well, wait a second, we could
reduce that those low fee, those lows ticket prices. Well yeah,
it did reduce them by kind of eliminating them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the concept was to strengthen Spirit but also strengthen
Jet Blue. The two together would have been a lot
stronger airline. But well, so that's water under the bridge.
Also in airline news today, actually it was yesterday afternoon.
The United Airlines a flight from Venice, Italy to Newark
and in landing at Newark, one of the shortest runway
there runs kind of east and west, and to make
the approach to it, you come right over the New
Jersey Turnpike, which is Interstate ninety five, always very very
busy with cars, and whamo bamo. The plane was too
low and hit a bakery truck and a light pole.
It landed fine. The runway was smack dab in front
of it. It landed, and they didn't discover They heard something,
but they didn't discover anything until they got to the
gate and there's a big hole in the back of
the of the plane. Not that big, but it was
a hole. And so then they started investigating. Here's the
air trap controlled talking about it.
Speaker 7: The reports for what the issue was, I got different
conflictions on the turnpikes. Yeah, they felt something over the
threshold and they stre's a hole.
Speaker 1: In the side of the airplane.
Speaker 7: So I'm going to get see on the runway here
in a moment, they said it was right at the threshold,
so it's just be a minute.
Speaker 1: Well, the plane was obviously too low and the bakery
truck driver minor injuries, some glass that was broken. He's fine.
And light pole hit a car. The people in that
car were fine. But mat iView, you always see the
planes that are coming in and they look really low,
but they missed. They don't hit the cars every day.
Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, was asked about that today
as well.
Speaker 5: So listen, this is a well trained pilot and can
you fly that route coming in from Italy? These are
good pilots. We don't quite know yet what happened. Again,
it was did did did? Did the pilot hit the truck?
Did he hit the light pole?
Speaker 1: And the way?
Speaker 5: So the NTSP is coming up today. The FA is
going to be there today as well, And we don't
want to get ahead of the facts, and oftentimes the
first facts are wrong. But obviously there was issues with
a couple of vehicles on the roadway.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And what could have happened is there was gustin winds yesterday.
And again I don't want to speculate, but I guess
I will right now with you for a moment. If
if the plane was too low and he and he
flared up, that tale will come down. So we'll have
more information in the next days, but an initially initial
report will come out from the NTSP in the next
thirty days. But this should obviously, so I'm saying this
shouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what he was talking about with. Yes,
it was windy, a little bit gusty, and then and
then the tale will come down. No, not yet, not
until you're on the over the runway anyway. So there's
your aviation news for the day. The other news, which
is not the normal part of this podcast. I I
have to tell you I am bummed today. I am
just I'm doing everything I can to kind of pick
myself up. And I don't get bummed very often, but
I was sad, so sad to hear John Sterling, the
voice of the New York Yankees for thirty six years,
died this morning at the age of eighty seven. Now
he retired about not last season, the season before. Nobody
liked John Sterling, and I growing up in Seattle, we
didn't have a major league team. When I played Little
League baseball, I became a Yankees fan and I've been
a Yankees fan ever since. And John Sterling has been
the announcer for the Yankees since the eighties. In any case,
I miss him. I've missed the broadcast that this past
year have just not been the same. Even his longtime
partner Susan Walden, She's great, but she's just not the
same Without there was a chemistry that you get in
broadcasting when you have a partner that programmers look for
and there's no way to figure it out. But boy,
they figured it out between John Sterling and Susan Walden.
Here's a little bit of some of the some of
the calls that John Sterling has made over the years
and some of the nicknames he attached to some of
the players.
Speaker 8: Here goes it is hot, hurt us far, hurt Us,
go she Rino.
Speaker 9: Udrilla, Bye Godzilla.
Speaker 8: It's an ABM from Hey ron Burn Eddy Burn Now
Cutty Tome, Robbie put I don't shut out Georgie you small.
Speaker 9: City from Coorian mix Hurkey Van you Courier.
Speaker 8: The Milkman delivers.
Speaker 1: That's baseball season mark since.
Speaker 3: A test mess. One of the best.
Speaker 8: Games you'll ever see with the game Baseball Immortality, the fantod.
Speaker 9: Number sixty two to send the new American League record
all ride. Here comes the Judge World Series over. Yankees win,
the Yankee win.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because of my love for the Yankees for
so long, but also being a broadcaster, I just I
always just admire John Sterling so much. So the Yankees
are at home tonight at seven o'clock playing the Baltimore Orioles,
game four of a series there. So the Yankees are
going to have a special tribute before the game tonight
over at the stadium. So I miss him already since
he retired, and now, I mean, he just got a
That's what it is. Life goes on. So shall we
get to some of the other items in the news.
We've got the war, and it's interesting because of the
fact that today they're trying to do everything they can
to not break the ceasefire, but everybody is shooting something.
Apparently Iran has fired three or four missiles at the Dubai,
at the United Arab Emirates, and they are apparently able
to They fended off three of the four, but one
of them hit and hit an oil area, oil production area.
So Iran is firing missiles and now they're saying that
they're going to set up another blockade, and we're saying
that we're opening up the blockade. We are sending navy
ships we're going to escort or we're going to guide,
and I'm not quite sure what the differences of. Somehow
some ships of two ships have made their way through
the Strait of war moves American flag ships. Let's talk
to Kareem, said Japoor, who is the guy from Carnegie
who studies nothing but the Middle East. This was from
last night.
Speaker 10: Well, Jessica, I think it's clear that both the United
States and Iran want to conclude this war, but I
think we're still very far apart when it comes to
the specific terms. It's not lost, shouldn't be lost on anyone.
That market's open tomorrow, And I think over the last
weeks we've constantly heard mixed messages from President Trump and
that he wants to signal to the markets that the
war is winding down to bring down the price of oil,
but at the same time signals to Tehran that if
they're not prepared to compromise, the war could return. This
war has been very devastating economically for the Iranian regime,
in particularly the economic block. It's estimated they're losing around
four hundred and fifty million dollars a day, and this
is already a regime, which is battling seventy percent inflation.
I just read some reports today that public sector workers
and Iran haven't been paid for more than a month now,
and so you can see the impetus on both parties
to once to end the war. But I think the
negotiations are still probably going to take many months to
lead us anywhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, mark that down. He's said it'll be many months
before we get to any sort of solution. So for
people looking for a quick fix, it ain't going to happen.
The six week war is fantasy and was Naraz. She
also brings up the fact that military options are clearly
well the market today. The markets are down, we'll get
to the numbers in a minute, and oil prices are
way up because a lot of people think that the
military options are going to actually take place.
Speaker 11: Well, we know President Trump has not taken military options
off the table since the start of these actions. He
never has. I doubt he ever will, because this is
a president who likes to keep his options open. I
found it interesting the legal argument he was making there,
because we should also point out this is not the
first president to argue about the unco constitutionality of the
War Powers Act. I'm old enough to remember Obama and
the signature drone strikes, George W. Bush and enhanced terrorgation techniques.
Nixon tried to vitro the War Powers Resolution.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, she said war Plowers Act the big debate
and Congresses haven't a fit about it. But Obama ignored
the Wars Powers Act. So to George W. Bush, General
Jack Keane, since we're talking about military options, let's see
what he has to say.
Speaker 12: Since the cease fire, we've seen a number of things happen. Obviously,
Ron took control of the Straits, the United States went
into negotiations. We've gone into those things for weeks now.
There's never been a proposal yet to come close to
President Trump being able to accept it. So what have
we done. We've established a blockade that's been incredibly effective
at Actually, all of Iran's export shipping, whether it's oil
or any other commodity, has been halted one hundred percent.
And now another critical decision that was made the end
of last week is this operation that's unfolded that you're
just demonstrating, and that is to clear the mines for
a lane, which has been done, and that lane hugs
the country of Oman, and it's got a couple of
other parts to it. It's a layered defense that goes
scores of miles out from the straits of a moose
with hundreds of aircraft both man and unmanned in an
air defense posture to defeat missiles, anti ship missiles and
drones coming to hit a target in the straits of
a mouse. The second part of that is a dome
defense right at the straits itself. Think of a dome
making certain that nothing from the land there immediate land
based and nothing that penetrates through that layer of defense,
and certainly that's possible. It would be dealt with right
at the straits then in terms of terminal defense. And
then if there's anything coming from the sea, both on
the surface or underneath the surface, it will be defeated.
So there's going to be that kind of dome over
the straits to protect it in terms of terminal defense.
Then the last part of this is for a couple
of weeks now, Sencom has been talking to shipowners, the
ship inshorers and actually the captains of the ship and
there's a number of ships that once we're able to
achieve security and the lane is already clear, and we
feel comfortable about the defense I just described being in place.
There are ship merchants and owners who are willing to
move their ships through the straits. We'll see if that
actually happens. The Iranians, of course, are going to be
doing what they can to stop that from happening, talking
to them, intimidating them, coercing them, and the Iranians, if
once we do start moving ships through, will retaliate. It's
likely they're going to try to penetrate. If they are
unable to penetrate, and we think we're pretty comfortable that
that'll be kept to a minimum, they'll likely go someplace
else to retaliate us. Bass possibly are allies and partners
take some kind of action, because, believe me, this is
a center of gravity for them that they achieve when
they shut down the straits.
Speaker 7: From a moves.
Speaker 12: They always knew it was in their plan, they never
thought it would be as successful as it is. And
let's give them credit. The enemy has a vote here
and they were able to achieve that in and now
we're about to take it away from them.
Speaker 1: But for the well, a couple of things. First of all,
two ships of US flagships did get through. And in
addition to that, Rowdians have tried to attack. I'm not
sure whom, but they tried to attack with six small
boats that are heavily armed, and all we know from
Sentcom is that they have those six small fast boats
have been quote eliminated. I don't know if they the
Navy took them out or the Air Force took him out,
but there's six of the fast boats that tried to
interfere and they have been eliminated. So the other side
of the story, Pat Ryan, Congressman, Democrat from New York
not happy with what's going on.
Speaker 13: The American people are now significantly less safe, and China
in particular is emboldened because of this unwise move. We
burned in a matter of weeks very important air defense
intercepts or munitions that will take us a decade to
rebuild at the current rate. Anyway, we need to speed
at that rate.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this guy's a sitting congressman. What did General
Keane think about his facts?
Speaker 12: They have part of that wrong. Well, first of all,
he sees the negative of it. Yes, have we expended
a considerable amount of munitions. Of course, I mean that's
been wildly publicized. Are we in Are we reproducing that
at the rate we used to? Absolutely not. This is
a full court press. This is why the Deputy Secretary
of War Feinberg, businessman from right here in New York City,
very successful, is changing the business practices of the department dramatically.
We are on an accelerated path to reproduce things at
a rate we have never done before. Now look at
the other flip side of it. So it is China
understand we've expended a lot and what would happen in
the end of Pacific region? Does that give them, in
their minds a decided advantage? I don't think so. Why
you've seen the demonstration of American power here and so
they they can't do the degree that we can oceans
away and deliver that kind of capability as focused as
it is and sustained it as is for days, to
take amart systematically everything of country values. They have never
done it. The last time they ever fought anybody was
the North Vietnamese and they had to turn their tail
and leave. They have wanted to replicate the United States
capability to do joint operations. They've copied our methods. They've
copied our organizations, but they are unproven. Are they a
formidable threat, You bet you do. They exceed any other
threat that the United States is facing in the world today. Absolutely,
So yeah, We've got to make certain we establish an
effective deterrence there. We've got to make certain that we're
wanting to stand up and support our allies and partners
in the region, and they have to understand that in
their head that the United States is fully prepared to
deal with this. We have demonstrated in this administration, I
think returning the United States is I think rightful role
as the world's global leader. We demonstrated that in Venezuela
with that brilliant operation to halt what was happening there.
We demonstrated the Midnight Hammer and supporting the Israelis full out.
Remember the Biden administration was holding back on support for Israel,
curbing their operations. Trump came in and gave them everything
in terms of what we were denying them and weapons capability,
green lighting them to finish a moss, green lighting them
to go after Hezbolah, and then green lighted them after
sixty days of discussions with the Iranians on the sixty
first day the war started in June. Trump did that
with net niow Go and then we supported them. China
watching all of that.
Speaker 1: So the war goes on and they're shooting at each other,
but they're still saying there's a ceasefire. But I think
that will be dropped quickly, all right, White House Correspondence Dinner.
The guy who did the shooting attempted shooting there is
in court today and Janine Pirout, the US attorney for DC,
laid out what they were going to do as far
as accusing him of the crimes.
Speaker 14: We have a lot of evidence that indicates his intent
and the fact that everything that he did thereafter, whether
it was you know, following what the president was doing,
where he was going to the day of the event
at the hotel, tracking on his phone. Is the president
in the ballroom yet as a president sat down? Yet
what time will dinner be served? This is clearly the
president is a target.
Speaker 1: So he shows up in court and the US attorney
has all the goods against him, and the judge wanted
to have the hearing today to find out how he's
being treated in jail. And he's concerned because they had
him on suicide Watch, which was in solitary confinement, and
the judge was worried that he was being mistreated. In fact,
the judge even apologized to this guy who wanted to
kill the president and everybody else in between. The judge
apologized to him about the conditions in that he had
to live in the jail. We're talking, We're talking Washington,
DC judges here. I know, so Jonathan Turley, Georgetown law professor.
Speaker 15: He weighed in, well, you know, the Department of Justice
is in between a rock and a hard place on
an issue like this. You know, if you do have
a suicide, you have a sort of lingering Epstein sort
of conspiracy theories that go on and on and on.
You know, did he really commit suicide? You have someone
here who said I actually expected to die, and so
the response from the DOJ is to make sure he
didn't die in their custody. Now that status appears to
be lifting. It's not entirely clear, but the most important
aspect of this is the denial of access to counsel.
He does have a constant right for that. He also
has right have access to a Bible, But the Department
of Justice and the Bureau of prisons are both given
a great deal of deference in the housing of inmates,
particularly ones where they have concerned for their safety, including
potential suicide. It's not very common you hear a judge apologize,
but this is the type of thing that gets worked
out through the court, and I expect that's what's going
to happen here. He's going to get access to his lawyers,
will get access to a Bible, but the Department of
Justice itself is going to retain a great deal of
discretion on how he is housed.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's curly. Let's check in with James Gagliano,
former FBI supervisor to see what his take was in
all of this today.
Speaker 16: Now, I think it all goes to premeditation and the
amount of time it took to put this plan together
and then to hatchet. We know that the suspect basically
traveled from Torrance, California, through Chicago and then into d C.
Speaker 1: And a long the way.
Speaker 16: He carried a shotgun broken down in his luggage, as
well as a thirty eight pistol and several knives. The
premeditation here is also laid out in the manifesto. He
basically explained in an email that he set in time
to go to his family outlining why and the reasons
why he was going after Membery administration. I think it's
going to be open and shut when it comes to motivations,
can be very simple to prove.
Speaker 1: All right, If it's simple to prove, let's check in
with a defense lawyer, Andrew Tcherkowski.
Speaker 17: Yeah, the evidence is going to be overwhelming on really
whatever charges they decide to bring, and I think that
he is looking almost absolutely at life behind bars. What
we see this morning, though, is the judges having them
come in to discuss the conditions of the confinement. Even
though the defense over the weekend withdrew their past motion
on that, complaining that he had been in solitary confinement
for longer than usual. The judge says that he has
concerns over what's going on. I think it's absolutely appropriate
for a judge to sure that a defendant in any
case is having their constitutional rights respected. It is easier
to remedy when it's litigated early versus letting it go
on for weeks or months. So I think this morning
is just the judge making sure that everything is being
done right and so that the prosecution isn't thrown off track.
Speaker 1: So that that was the big fuss over at the
federal courthouse in Washington today was the shooter is They
checked on her, make sure he is okay. You want
to talk about oil and gas prices. Oh you don't,
I understand. I totally understand oil and gas prices. Sorry,
average average price across the country triple a four dollars
and forty six cents. That is the highest since back
in twenty twenty two we got hup to I think
it was five oh one, but it's four forty six.
That is up thirty four cents from this time a week.
Diesel five dollars sixty four cents. The winner in all
of this, as far as high prices go, California thinks
there's a prize to have the highest prices six dollars
eleven cents the average in California. Diesel in California seven
dollars fifty cents premium. You want to buy the not
the cheap stuff. That's six to eleven the premium in California,
averaging six dollars and fifty three cents. Mike Worth, the
CEO of Chevron, said this.
Speaker 18: The way I would frame it is the energy system
has lost an incredible amount of flexibility. The global economy
consumes about one hundred million barrels of oil every day.
The barrel is forty two gallons. About twenty percent of
that moves through the strain of horr moves, so that's
been significantly disrupted. Normally, the energy system has shock absorbers
in it, so we have inventory in tanks at facilities,
We've got inventory on the water in ships, we've got
inventory in strategic reserves. All of those have been pulled
down over the last couple of months as these events
have unfolded. And what it has done is it's taken
those shock absorbers and made them much less effective in
the system. And so disruptions normally are met by moving
these inventories around, and price response can be muted. As
the shock absorbers are withdrawn, the shocks translated a little
bit more directly. And so I think what he's referring
to is we're in a period where there's been significant
supply taken out of the system and we are facing
this upward pressure on prices and volatility that is manifest
itself thus far and likely to continue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he summed up all that with and it's
likely to continue. Karen Young an economists who studies this.
Let's see what she says.
Speaker 19: Well, they're probably going to keep going up as well. Right,
So the surge is happening probably because we're getting into this,
you know, nine weeks of the crisis, we've drawn down
now of all the supplies that you know, we're headed
to market have arrived. Now we're dipping into inventories, and
so there's a realization that there are you know, there
are shortages, particularly of refined products, and what was first impacted,
particularly in Southeast Asia, is now equally affecting the United States.
So as a proportion of price increase, gasoline has risen
about thirty seven percent in Southeast Asia, about forty two
percent in the United States.
Speaker 7: So we are.
Speaker 19: Feeling this as you know, an impact a crunch equally
or more than the most affected countries that first felt
it in the East.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what she got into was the supply chain, and
remember the supply chain. We all learned about supply chains
during COVID. But she's talking about the fact that we
have used up all the inventories of oil and gas
and liquid petroleum and now we're getting into products that
are expensive to make or can't be made without a
sufficient amount of petroleum, a lot of plastics. So what
she's pretending is that it's going to get worse and
there's going to be supply shortages, and I don't know where,
but she thinks that the supply shortages are the next
thing to happen. Diane Swank longtime economists, she's the head
of the economics department at KPMG.
Speaker 7: Well, what we usually.
Speaker 20: See is when oil prices go up and gas prices
at the pump go up, they go up like a
rocket and they fall like a feather. And I think
that's one of the issues we have to deal with.
And what's so important is this is more than an
oil shock. It is a supply chain chalk. It is
disrupting supply chains the world over, much like we saw
during the pandemic, although without the buffers, and so we're
going to see over the course of the year many
of these effects cascading compound and that'll push inflation up
even higher. The biggest issue for consumers is not just
the mobility and they're not traveling as much with higher
gas prices today, but also it gets into food prices
at the grocery store, and farmers are already complaining because
of course they rely on diesel, but importantly fertilizers and
the chemicals that go into all of our food products
out there, and then the transportation costs on top of it.
This is something that's very hard on consumers, and those
are some of the most important and we call salient
prices for consumers. It's of the basics, food, travel, and shelter.
Those are the things that really matter to the average household.
Speaker 1: I wish I had better news, but I just I
also want to warn you that things that the economists
are saying things are going to go even worse from
where we are right now. Tomorrow in Indiana, Hi, Indiana,
You're having a primary tomorrow. This is Indiana has in
their congressional representation, they have seven Republicans and two Democrats.
They're very red state. But what's happened is that the
President wanted Indiana to redistrict to make it completely one
hundred percent Republican, and a number of the state senators
voted down the idea of redistricting. So President Trump has
targeted seven of them for primaries, and he said he
would go to Indiana to help primary those state senators
who voted against redistricting. He hasn't gone, not even once.
But there's big MAGA money going in to the people
that are primarying the occupants at the current congressional Republicans
from Indiana. And I was surprised. I mean, I get
MAGA money going in. But TPUSA Turning Point USA, Charlie
Kirks organization spending millions. I thought they were there to
help people find Christ, but no, they're spending millions of
dollars on primarying a number of the congressional people that
are running for re election in Indiana. So there's millions
of dollars coming in and a lot of that money
is not from Indiana. So tomorrow night we get the
results on what happens, if anything, in Indiana. Tonight here
again tonight in New York. I told you John Sterling
tribute to him before the Yankees game tonight over at
the Stadium. There's also the met Gala, And in the
fashion world, this is the super Bowl. It's Anna wind
Tower is runs it. And the tickets for this are
one hundred thousand dollars to have a ticket to go
to the met Gala. So all the celebrities show up
and they all wear either beautiful or weird gowns, and
they outfits, and that's tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But there's a lot of the celebrities are boycotting because
Jeff Bezos and his wife are the sponsors of the
event tonight. They paid ten million dollars to be the
lead sponsor of the met Gala tonight. So a bunch
of Hollywood celebrities said, well, if Jeff Bezos is going
to be the lead sponsor of this, I want nothing
to do with it. And around Manhattan you can see
they've got a bunch of posters and small billboards up
basically doing everything they can to call Jeff Bezos the
worst human being in the whole wide world. So we'll
see how this goes. But that's the big stink in
the celebrity No, no, no, I'm not going to the
met Gala. No, I'm one hundred thousand dollars a ticket.
Today's Star Wars Day, May the fourth, May the fourth
be with you. Yeah, no, I think it's cute. It's
funny Wall Street today, not a pretty day. I was
trying to avoid it, but we can't. Let's talk about it. Yeah,
we were underwater all day long. The Dow started off
lower and then went lower as today went on, down
five hundred and fifty seven, the Dow closing at forty
eight ninety one, SMP down twenty nine, Nazdack down forty six,
Gold down one hundred and twenty dollars to four thousand
and five twenty four, and the price of oil again.
People in the oil markets and the stock market are
concerned about the fact that connect I think fighting might
start any minute. So oil went back up three dollars
plus today West Texas Intermediate one hundred and five dollars
for a barrel of oil. So that's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We will be back again
tomorrow and I hope to see you there