Speaker 1: Edward Jones, a veteran, a marine, expertise in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: expertise in international situations, puts it into English that Walter
Speaker 1: Sterling can actually understand. Edward Jones, Welcome to the other
Speaker 1: side of midnight. Which side do you think you're on
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: I'm on the other side right now, on the other side.
Speaker 1: You're a dimensional being. You're a multi dimensional being.
Speaker 2: That's right, I am, I said you last week, or so,
Speaker 2: I said I looking at the Middle East, I think
Speaker 2: I'm watching a fief of soccer match, but twelve nations
Speaker 2: teams on the field at the same time. This week
Speaker 2: has been that way.
Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed that when there are Muslims promoting
Speaker 1: Sharia law explaining that Sharia law is just fine, it
Speaker 1: is never a woman who says that.
Speaker 2: I've noticed that, Walter, and I noticed that men say
Speaker 2: a lot of things in the Middle East. And law
Speaker 2: is part of a religion which is actually a political system,
Speaker 2: and it has its own law and customs, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very different than than what we have in the West.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. The leadership of the United Emirates has
Speaker 1: no interest in, it doesn't believe in, it doesn't support
Speaker 1: it and warns us against it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're absolutely right. They have come around in a
Speaker 2: big way on that and they're going their own way actually,
Speaker 2: and they did something last week which is really remarkable.
Speaker 2: They cut off all trade with Iran. They had to
Speaker 2: cut off you know, oil, but now they've just stopped
Speaker 2: all trading with Iran completely, and in a way, they
Speaker 2: stood up. There were the first ones to stand up
Speaker 2: to Trump's new economic pressure.
Speaker 1: You know, they owe us, the United Emirates and Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabi they kind of owe us, you favors. Edward Jones
Speaker 1: has been I got to turn on my headphones. Edward
Speaker 1: Jones has been following the situation in the Middle East
Speaker 1: with an educated eye and a sharp ear. And I'd
Speaker 1: like you to give us an update on what you
Speaker 1: think the situation is now relative to Iran, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: what is the situation in Iran relative to the price
Speaker 1: of gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, welld right, we'd like to put the
Speaker 2: pocketbook issues up up front. They're putting the pocketbook issues.
Speaker 2: You know, gas prices right now, you know, they're holding
Speaker 2: roughly where they were last week, but regular right now
Speaker 2: yesterday with four to ten four dollars ten midside mid range,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, four point fifty nine. The premium as hitting
Speaker 2: almost five dollars four ninety eight. These are national averages now,
Speaker 2: so they very pretty much differently in different most of
Speaker 2: the country. Diesel is at five sixty one, and our
Speaker 2: heating oil, which I've put into the mix now is
Speaker 2: a five twenty six. So there we go. But I
Speaker 2: can tell you I can spell a little bit that
Speaker 2: regular is up forty one percent since February. Mid range
Speaker 2: is up thirty seven percent, premium is up twenty nine percent,
Speaker 2: diesel is up fifty one percent, and heating oil is
Speaker 2: up forty one percent. I'm keeping my eye on diesel
Speaker 2: particularly because there's an anomaly right now. It just to
Speaker 2: explain a little bit, the six month contract price futures
Speaker 2: on diesel has actually gone down. It's down a dollar
Speaker 2: eighty eight a gallon, and that's rarely seen. I mean
Speaker 2: it's seen in the options markets, but the futures markets.
Speaker 2: But it's very prominent because right now diesel is under
Speaker 2: a lot of pressure. Five dollars and twenty six cents
Speaker 2: under a lot of pressure because diesel refining capacity in
Speaker 2: the world has really been cut down. Uh, and uh,
Speaker 2: the price all these prices reflects international market prices. So
Speaker 2: the the the Ukrainian has taken out Russian diesel refining
Speaker 2: has put pressure output pressure on these prices. Now the market,
Speaker 2: the traders are saying, uh, the the industry is going
Speaker 2: to react to this positively in a big way quickly.
Speaker 2: And the industry, the traders are looking at the industry
Speaker 2: bringing a lot of diesel refining capacity online. So the
Speaker 2: good news for everyone out there, uh, you know, pushing
Speaker 2: eighteen wheelers around the country and we're looking at the
Speaker 2: market saying the diesel is going to be going down
Speaker 2: over the next six months. So so that's that's good
Speaker 2: news there in the diesel. But you know what this is,
Speaker 2: what we're seeing here right now is I don't want
Speaker 2: to call it a war tax. That's probably a little
Speaker 2: bit too brutal, but but the cost of this war
Speaker 2: to the to the average consumer in the kitchen at
Speaker 2: the kitchen table, a home that's using obviously gas for
Speaker 2: the cars and heat for the home in the Northeast
Speaker 2: is going to be paying about five hundred to one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year this year, more than they paid
Speaker 2: last year. And you know that's you know, that's a
Speaker 2: premium for what's going on in the Middle East right now.
Speaker 1: Edward Jones. When diesel cars were first manufactured and sold
Speaker 1: to Americans in the early nineteen seventies, it was because
Speaker 1: diesel gas was so much cheaper. It was at the
Speaker 1: point of the price wars for gasoline. The price of
Speaker 1: gasoline became prohibitive to many people and diesel was much cheaper,
Speaker 1: and they started to manufacture diesel motor cars. How did
Speaker 1: it become more expensive than gas?
Speaker 2: Again, it's demand versus supply is what it is. And
Speaker 2: in those days you had the oil shocks which were
Speaker 2: putting heavy pressure on on on gasoline prices. So people
Speaker 2: thought they could they could shift. There's always a shift
Speaker 2: a substitute. But I think that's what happened then. But
Speaker 2: you know there's a bad thing too. People things become
Speaker 2: popular and they want to do this, they want to
Speaker 2: try something different, and that's what happened. But but diesel
Speaker 2: right now, not a lot of cars using diesel, but
Speaker 2: I keep a really close eye on it because of
Speaker 2: the uh the diesel fuel prices are transportation for consumer goods,
Speaker 2: everything in the in the supermarkets, you know, Long Island
Speaker 2: for example, is served by trucks. There's no railroad out
Speaker 2: there carrying freight, but but trucks, so so consumer prices
Speaker 2: are going to be reflected. That the higher consumer price
Speaker 2: reflected in in higher diesel. It's going to go right
Speaker 2: right to higher right to inflation.
Speaker 1: Now, Edward Jones, what do you predict as the end
Speaker 1: to the conflict with Iran? How do you think this
Speaker 1: is going to end?
Speaker 2: Right now? Walter, I have to say, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I'm just following it, seeing how it unfolds. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff going on. I did want to talk
Speaker 2: quickly about the Abraham Lincoln which has been in the news.
Speaker 2: You know, they've been what is that? What is the
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier?
Speaker 1: Aircraft carrier?
Speaker 2: There were they had a lot of trouble with you know,
Speaker 2: the talks about morale there and the ship was it
Speaker 2: I'd see for nine months and just we started to
Speaker 2: return to the US. The reason why it was out there,
Speaker 2: and Walter, I don't know, admitted this might be a
Speaker 2: scoop for you, but the im media really hasn't hasn't
Speaker 2: touched on this, and what happened was early in the war.
Speaker 2: I'm talking March right now. March second is when it started.
Speaker 2: The Iranians started bombing the heck with drone swarms and missiles.
Speaker 2: Our major base. This was the command and control base
Speaker 2: and the port for the aircraft carriers and for about
Speaker 2: the twenty ships ported there in Bahrain. They they destroyed it.
Speaker 2: Really the official Washington speak was it was degraded. Well,
Speaker 2: it wasn't degraded. It doesn't work anymore. They took it
Speaker 2: off the battle space, to use the term the military.
Speaker 2: They took it off the battlespace. Four hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: of damage to this place, the Manama Port at Bahrain
Speaker 2: where our carrier docked, and they docked there for refitting,
Speaker 2: for repairs, for importantly for R and R for the
Speaker 2: crew because Manama and Bahrain is a major major rn RS.
Speaker 2: But I mean the nightclubs there waltered. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But what they did to the ship they didn't well.
Speaker 2: They didn't do anything in the shipping. They just it
Speaker 2: had no place to go. So it stayed in the
Speaker 2: water for nine months is basically what happened. And the
Speaker 2: nearest base that could accommodate it was twenty two hundred
Speaker 2: miles which is a ten day round trip, so I
Speaker 2: couldn't really go.
Speaker 1: There, right, So we weren't abusing our navy men. They
Speaker 1: were stuck in the strait.
Speaker 2: That's right. They were stuck. And I would say that,
Speaker 2: you know, my military looking at it, I'm saying, how
Speaker 2: did this happen? Didn't they harden it, didn't they protect it,
Speaker 2: didn't they they evacuated everybody out of it. There's no
Speaker 2: one there. There's one hundred people skeletons staff there because
Speaker 2: they wanted to show that they weren't giving up the base.
Speaker 2: But the base is effectively out of commission, and this
Speaker 2: is affecting all the other ships, the twenty to thirty
Speaker 2: ships that we have there as well. So you know,
Speaker 2: I would say the Senate Home Services Committee, the House,
Speaker 2: there should be some hearings on this. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: pull hegseth in pull up can pull exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there should be hearings as long as Senator John
Speaker 1: Kennedy is in charge of those hearings, because then it'll
Speaker 1: be very entertaining. All right, there's Edward Jones, our expert
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, giving us an update price of
Speaker 1: gas when he thinks the thing is gonna be over.
Speaker 1: It's it's a mess in Iran Edward Jones, thank you
Speaker 1: for being on the other side of midnight.