Speaker 1: And Hi, how are you Welcome to the Big Podcast.
It is Thursday. Today's the eighteenth day of December. Y're
of our Lord, twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan.
We have Oh man, we've got a lot on the economy,
but there's a lot of people starting to have a
lot of economists are scratching their heads about some of
the economic news that came out today. The Cardinal of
New York City St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan, is retiring,
so there's going to be a new cardinal attached, and
he's been such a big personality. We've got marijuana has
been reclassified now, which is a story that I have
have been bothered by for many, many years. An update
on what's going on with the Brown University shooting investigation,
and also a little more insight into the arrest of
Nick Reiner. So a lot of things to talk about today.
I guess we let's start with marijuana. Whatever I've done.
Whenever I've done marijuana in the past, when I did
the radio show, we could count on it. Somebody would
call and go, Amen, like how you doing, And there
was some guy higher than a higher than a kite
every time, So we don't have we don't have that
with a podcast. But the President came out to say,
and this is the guy. The President is absolutely a teetotaler.
He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke. He is anti drugs.
So he has decided that they are going to reclassify
marijuana from a Schedule one drug, which is the same
as heroin and cocaine, to a Schedule three drug. Here's
the president today.
Speaker 2: I'm police who announced that I will be signing an
executive order to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule one to
a Schedule three control substance with legitimate medical uses. We
have people begging for me to do this, people that
are in great pain. For decades, his action has been
requested by American patients suffering from extreme pain, incurable diseases,
aggressive cancers, seizure disorders, neurological problems, and more, including numerous
veterans with service related injuries and older Americans who live
with chronic medical problems and severely degrade their quality of life.
And it's so really, I mean, just I can't tell you.
I think I probably have received more phone calls on
this on doing what we're doing. I don't think I've
received any calls on the other side of it. But
hopefully this reclassification, which by the way, Paul's that eighty
two percent, will help many of those patients live a
far better life.
Speaker 1: So to me, the idea of changing the classification has
made sense for a long long time. I'll join in
with President Trump. I'm I think there's more danger to
distant people. Let on, I think it's just like alcohol,
not that big of a deal. But there is a
lot of a lot of studies about chemical changes to
the brain when you when you take pot. But schedule
three as opposed to schedule one. Schedule three drugs like
tylenol with codine, ketamine, anabolic steroids, some formulations of hydro
codone like vicodin. That's where this will now go. But
the important part to me, and I've never understood this
ever since I was a kid, is that they would
never allow anybody to study this, any research labs to
study marijuana to find out what it does good and
or bad. And so now they're able to actually study it.
You think, why put your head in the sand, like
an ostrich, Why would you do that? Find out what
it is about this? Because there are plenty of people
who talk about the medical benefits of relieving pain and
so forth, chemo patients, the list goes on. But anyway, finally,
after many, many, many, many many administrations, President Trump, so
he's got a lot of calls on this and this
is more on this than anything, and finally he's going
to allow this to be studied. So doctor Sanjay Gupta,
who is a neurosurgeon, weighed in on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, this is something that people have been talking
about for a long time. The basic way to think
about it is that there are controlled substances and they
are scheduled. So there's a scheduling of these substances, and
cannabis marijuana has fallen into the most restrictive, least permissive
schedule for a long time. So it's called a Schedule one.
And I want to put this up on the screen
because I want you to see the language here, specifically
especially that top line no currently accepted medical use, and
I think that's what a lot of people have been
focused on for some time, but also calling it a
substance that has high potential for abuse, similar to heroin, LSD,
in ecstasy. That Schedule one, there are five schedules. By
the way, what we think may happen here, we'll see
what happens later on this afternoon, but it could go
to a Schedule three substance. And if you look at
the language there, it's different. It's more permissive, less restrictive,
moderate to low potential for dependents. They still say examples kenymine,
anabolic steroids and testosterone, but also some potentially accepted medical use,
so those are the big things. It's still a controlled substance,
so this isn't something you can suddenly go by over
the counter or gas stations or things like that. But
it's going to be much more permissive in terms of research.
Obviously people's access to it for medical purposes, but also
this idea that I think for the first time in
a long time, this acknowledgement that cannabis can be a medicine.
We've seen it in these seven documentaries that you talked about,
but actually, you know, having it changed at a federal
level would make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: That will make a huge difference, and hopefully they'll be
able to do medical research to find out again it
helps and what it hurts, so we know more about it.
President last night gave an address to the nation, and
it was about his first eleven months back in the
White House, and of course he was going to talk
about all the good things that he has done. It's
just his style. He was in a hurry, though. They
asked the networks for fifteen minutes, and so he was
basically given a time clock and said you got to
say all this stuff in fifteen minutes. So Whoeber wrote
that wrote too much and he was trying to hurry,
which in the world of delivering speeches, that ruins speeches.
In my humble opinion, he was at some points formatically
kind of shouting instead of having a chance like a
fireside chat to sit down and say, look at this
is what we have. And the basic message that I
got out of the speech last night was that what
we inherited he did, Oh yeah, I blamed Joe Biden
for a lot. What we inherited was a mess, and
we are fixing it. Well, he said, I am fixing it.
The point of it is how long is the shelf
life for blaming the previous administration? In this case, I
think it's very legitimate because inflation went up over nine
percent back in twenty twenty two, and those prices went
up and most of them never came back down again.
Some things did. But here's Ari Fleischer, who I think,
as the former Press secretary, knows exactly how to explain
things that's coming out of the White House.
Speaker 4: Yeah, last night was a good start for the president,
but it's just start. And when you're the president and
you give a speech like that, there is no better
feeling than the next morning to have the economic data
come out and back up the things that you're saying.
What the President needs to continue to do is keep
us foot on the economic gas and focus on the economy,
and then every day when the data comes out, either
about wages going up or inflation coming down, the White
House needs to have an event that data to hypen
height heighten, hypen heighten attention to that fact. That is
the proof in the pudding. What the President has said
last night about a boom is coming true. And the
fact is it does come down to the data. Either
the numbers are there to back up what the President
is saying, or they're not. And if they're not, the
President and Republicans are in big trouble. If they are there.
At twenty twenty six is going to be a great year.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. It's already going to come down
to the numbers, and everybody has an opinion about whether
it will or will not. So the data it did
come out this morning, the can consumer price index inflation,
if you will, and it was much tamer than had
been expected. It was reported it was expected to be
three point one inflation reported as two point seven. But
there's a big ruckus going on about are these numbers
legit or not. I'll get into that in a minute,
But back to Ari Fleischer explaining the whole business about
got to get purchasing power back up.
Speaker 4: Well, there is a risk and exaggeration when you're the president.
If you hit a triple don't tell people you hit
a home run. People know the difference, and the president
does like to round things up as opposed to more
precisely describe them. But a couple other factors. One, tariffs
has been choppy. Tariffs has always been a gigantic roll
of the dice. I happen to think it's a good
idea and that it's working, but it has been choppy
and people have to recognize that it takes time to
sort out But the real problem that president has and
the economy has, the people have is that when inflation
was as high as it was in the Biden years,
something that cost one hundred dollars went up to one
hundred and nine dollars. Inflation is really coming down now,
but it's still going up now. It went up to
one hundred and twelve dollars, so people remember it used
to be at one hundred and even though it's going
up slower now under President Trump, that jump still took
place when it went to one hundred and nine dollars,
and we're all living through that. Some things are coming
down and making up for that nine dollars gasoline, energy, eggs.
There are things that are coming down and not everything.
And that's why so much of this is going to
come down to the reality of twenty twenty six. Will
it be a boom? Will people's wages grow faster than
their expenses. That's the real answer to the affordability issue.
If you can't get prices down because of the Biden inflation,
you've got to get wages higher, and I think because
of the tax cut there's a real chance that that'll happen.
Speaker 1: Well, he's right on gas prices have come way down.
They're not back to where they were at the end
of Trump one point zero, not even close. They had
an average price that had a one in front of it.
Now the average, according to Triple A for the cheap
stuff two dollars and eighty nine cents, so it's way
down from where it was. It was all in some
areas over five dollars. The average was just up to
under five dollars. So gas prices have come down, but
that's that's automobile gas. But when you look at grocery
prices up almost two percent, electricity up seven percent, natural
gas propaying gas for heating your homes up nine percent. Instance,
this instant coffee, which I think should be illegal, up
twenty four percent. So see there's a good reason to
give up your instant coffee. But the real average hourly earnings,
according to the report this morning, up eight tenths of
one percent. That is what is going to take. It's
going to take good wage increases in order for people
to feel better about the economy. Kevin Hassett, the head
of the National Economic Council, of course, is happy with
what's happened.
Speaker 5: It was just an absolute blockbuster report. Don't forget that's
where we were last time, and because of Trump's first term,
we were growing in the three percent range and we
had inflation in the one percent range. And it looks
like that's where we are again. So I think that
I'm not saying we're going to declare victory at on
the price problem. That this is just an astonishingly good
CPI report.
Speaker 1: I've told you before. I like Kevin Hassett. I think
he's genuinely honest, but he really misspoke. He said, yeah,
this is where we were during Trump one point oh
three percent growth and one percent inflation. No, we probably
we have more than three percent growth today, but we
don't have one percent inflation. It came in at two
point seven and there are a number of economists and
the stock market loved it. Stock market took off on
this news and went way up. We'll get to that
in a minute. But the bond market did not. It
sold off, and a lot of economists are looking at
dis and scratching their head and saying, this two point
seven percent inflation report doesn't tie in with any of
the other economic stats that we're tracking. Here's Steve Leisman
from CNBC.
Speaker 6: So here's the thing. There's a specific thing that might
have happened that has been written about by a major
investment bank that was in my report up until half
a minute ago, and I took it out because I
haven't been able to check it with the BLS. Okay,
if that's true, then it will be empirically true that
this number is not to be trusted. If what is true,
if this story about what's happening with how is true.
But I don't want to get it wrong and come back
on here and say, Kelly, let me back on off
the correct a mistake.
Speaker 5: I will leave you there.
Speaker 3: I will lead you into spec today.
Speaker 6: I will tell you it is objectively true that there
are multiple questions about the housing number, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that housing number had a big impact on
this overall, bringing this number down from three percent down
to two point seven. That's a significant drop. And they're
scratching their heads thinking something's wrong with the way the
housing numbers are reported. A lot of people on the
right side of the economic aisle think this is a
legit number. A lot of people on the left side
of the aisle think it's nonsense. When they Edelberg economist
with Brookings had this to.
Speaker 7: Say, Yeah, it's frustrating because they haven't even posted the
information that I would name to really parcel of this,
given the confusing way they've just laid the information. But
the important number is the year of your two change
in the prices of core goods, and that was one
point four percent. And that may not sound like a lot,
but this is a category that in normal times has
a negative inflation all the time, and this is where
we're seeing tariffs. So I think this is the category
where we know that tariffs are having in some ways
the absolutely expected effect on inflation.
Speaker 1: So she is going, I don't understand how this number
got to to be the way it is. And this
goes back to the whole question that's been building in
the Biden administration and now in the Trump administration. Can
you trust the Bureau of Labor Statistics or are they
a political animal messing with the numbers? Lydia Mashburne Newman.
She is an economist with the American Institute for Economic Research.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so the neutral rate is a bit all over
the place right now. We have estimates that are really low,
some below even one percent, and then you have estimates
more in the two ish to two point two five percent.
But I do think we're also to Wendy's point about
the labor market, that natural rate may be shifting a
little bit. In my opinion, I think there is something
happening in the labor market where we're having some shifts.
I'm not sure it's entirely cyclical, and I'm not entirely
sure that the FED can actually solve some of the
changes that are happening. I think some of it is
also a hiring We've had a low, low fire rate,
but businesses are grappling with higher inflation and still looking
for ways to find cost savings within their businesses, and
you're seeing that I think starting to affect employment, and
that I think is a very serious issue and may
potentially change where the natural rate is. And it's something
also that the FED can't do a whole lot to
fix if they are just going to throw money at
that problem, which at the end of the day, if
we're just being transparent, that's what the FED can do,
it doesn't really fix any of those fundamental changes in
the labor market that businesses are having to go through
right now now, whether due to AI or just trying
to find efficiencies on their balance sheets. But at the
same time as the FED tries to increase employment, while
we still have a very high and relatively high inflation environment,
all it's going to do is continue to push up
equities and it's not going to help small businesses or
households at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: So anyway, a lot of questions about the inflation number
out today. It was two point seven percent. This is
for the October slash November prices. Inflation was three percent
when President Trump took office. It fell down to two
point three percent in April. That was the low point
for inflation, but it went back up again to three
percent by the end of September. Then we had the
government shutdown. So the October November numbers went from three
percent down to two point seven. Inflation looked like it
was getting higher, but a lot of economists today say
these numbers are full of a lot of noise. We're
not going to really know the inflation rate or the
labor market numbers until probably January, maybe even February. The
headline from Dow Jones News Service today was CPI report
inflation cools in November, but red flags emerge. So we're
not sure whether there's two point seven is legit or not.
So let's move on to crime Brown University. Still, they're
getting a lot of grief, a lot of people are
questioning their ability to do an investigation. They're calling them
Keystone cops all of that. And now there are reports
out that the police may actually be linking This is
from NBC police look into whether the MIT professor's killing
could it be linked to the shooter from Brown University.
So remember yesterday the police at Brown University said, oh no,
there's no way, I looked it up. You can google it.
From Providence, Rhode Island to MIT is forty nine miles.
Speaker 5: It's not that far.
Speaker 1: So for them to kiss it off yesterday I was
a little surprised. But they have made progress. Here's the
chief of police for the City of Providence, Rhode Island.
Speaker 9: We have found a lot of evidence that we need
to and we use in urilition to hopefully guide us
in the right direction in order to identify the individual
that that we're looking for. This actual physical evidence, there
is DNA evidence, There's a lot of evidence that we're
collecting to ensure that we can find the answer.
Speaker 1: Hear that they have some DNA evidence. It sounds like
he kind of blew by it. I think that's huge.
Paul Morrow, former NYPD who's in Brown or in Providence
Word Island, has this to say, Well.
Speaker 10: It's starting to feel like things are moving. So there's
a lot of buzz up here. There's a lot of
rumors flying around. Everybody is working sources. But I can't
tell you this is the first day where it does
feel like they are really making progress. There'll be a
four o'clock press conference, so we're gonna learn more there.
But I can tell you that the thing I learned
late last night is that they found live rounds at
the scene. That is to say, bullets that were ejected
from the gun that were not fired, probably due to
a misfire of some sort of thumpering at the scene
with the gun. That matters because live rounds that have
DNA on them won't have been exploded, they won't have detonated,
so to speak. So they're going to be in very
good shape, very good chase to get DNA off of that,
they continue to look for video, They continueing the canvas
in the neighborhood. Some witnesses might have come forward. We
all know about that second person that they were looking for,
who seemed like might have been known to the perpetrator.
Because the perpetrator ran away, maybe they got that second person.
Speaker 5: It looks like.
Speaker 10: Things are moving and we're just going to have to
see what comes forward. They may have information they can
give us, but that does not mean that the person's
in custody.
Speaker 1: So then there are the suspicions about Brown University and
the fact that they have video of the classroom, but
they will not release it to the police. The police
have asked for the video, They've asked for a lot
of information about the roster of the kids that were
taking this economics class for which they had this study hall.
All of that has been asked, and the university has
not cooperated. The Attorney General of Rhode Island answered it
this way.
Speaker 11: Well, because here's why, because it doesn't tell us anything
about who committed this crime. Yet, if we get a
better image of who committed this crime, you'll have it.
There is no effort to preclude the public, online, investigators,
investigators in the press from getting to the result faster
than weekend. If you can identify this person faster than
we can have at it, but we are giving you
the best evidence we can to identify this person.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that's frustrating a lot of the
investigators is that they would They haven't even gone to
the kids that were in that room. Now, this wasn't
a scheduled class. This was a well, it was scheduled
on a Saturday. It was a pretest go over kind
of a study hall to go over what the final
exam will be and give them some chances to improve
their score. So why don't they go to the roster
of the students. They may not know whoever who showed
or who did not show up for this test prep
on that Saturday morning, but they know who was in
the economics class. Why don't they go talk to them instead?
They said they sent an email to them and asked
them to respond, which is a big no. No, you
go to them. You don't give them a choice. Yes,
they may be scattered, so you have local police in
whatever town they live in, go and do an interview
with them. But they haven't even sat down and interviewed
all the kids that were in that room when the
shooting took place. Who knows what they can say? What
they saw what they heard, they haven't done it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I got to lay that on Brown. You know,
the police in the AG that spoke there, they're the
ones who caught this case. And when they went to
the video considered the Charlie Kirk case. When the team
looked at the video, they were able to trace the
movements of the accused, Tyler Robinson, right down through campus
and off off campus and then even into ring camera
land in the residential areas. None of that was possible
here today because Brown seems to have made some kind
of a decision that this building behind me, which is
their most forward leaning, this sort of perimeter of the
Brown campus here doesn't have cameras, or if it does,
they don't seem to be pointed in the right direction.
So what the AG is saying, and I was in
the room for some of the press conference, he essentially says,
all we have from inside is video of kids from
the classroom fleeing in terror. That is to say, nothing
that's going to be useful relative to the person that
they have identified. As I said this morning, they have
identified that person in black as the person they're interested in.
That comes from the fact that there was a delivery
driver there who saw that people were fleeing away from
that guy, and that was then corroborated by interviews that
they did relative to who burst into the room. So
the person in black that they've put out, they're quite
confident that that's him, but because the video evidence is
so sparse, they could only track him into this residential
neighborhood that I'm beside here, and at that point they
are at the mercy of the ring cameras that these
neighbors have.
Speaker 1: So that video may not show the shooter. But Bobby
chacone former FBI guy, said there's a lot you can
learn from looking at the video that the university will
not turn over.
Speaker 12: As an investigator, you know, early on the Robert the
police said this was looked like in a targeted attack.
Now last night the Attorney General said there is no
evidence to that effect yet. It could be, but there's
no evidence yet. As an investigator, I want to know
who the first person targeted was in the classroom, because
if it was in fact a targeted murder, like someone
went in there with the intention of killing a specific person,
that's the first and they would go after first, they'd
know the person was in that room, they'd go in there,
they'd look for them, and that's who they would attack first, presumably,
And so that's who I'd want to know. I'd want
to know from the witnesses what the person did when
they first walked in the room. Now, you don't usually
get a look at the second, third, fourth shots because
everyone's running and ducking and you know, pandemonium break out.
But that first shot, usually witnesses see that because somebody
walks in that it's not supposed to be there, they
don't recognize, they kind of clock the person, they watch them.
Then they pull out a gun and they start shooting,
and everybody duck. So you do get some pretty good
intel on that first shot, and that's where I'd want
to know. You know, you'll be able to tell whether
this was a random attack or a targeted attack. And
that's key because if it is a targeted attack, now
you can focus in on that first victim and see
who in their life wanted them dead and in fact,
who hated them so much that they wanted.
Speaker 6: To kill them.
Speaker 12: Is this a financial thing, a romantic thing? You know,
you go down all the lists of apostle motives. Once
you have that intended victim, if in fact they exist.
Speaker 1: So there's more. There's also off of that video maybe
they would be able to decipher. There's been some some
reports that the shooter yelled something before he opened fire,
and the question is what did he yell? Some students
said that he did, some students said they did not.
But again back to Bobby chacun I, did the shooter yell?
Speaker 12: That's probably the important thing I'd want to know if
in fact there was something, And we're hearing reports. We're
not sure. They haven't confirmed any of that, but they
certainly know that investigators know what he did when he
entered the room. Did he say anything where he moved
when he came first came into the room, because witnesses
would have given them out. There's some sixty odd people
in that room. Someone's going to have seen his first
initial movements, which are going to be key. And certainly
if he said anything, first of all, it gives you,
you know, did he have an accent, a regional accent,
you know, whatever, It'll give you information about the person.
And then, of course, depending on what he said, it'll
give his motivations.
Speaker 1: If so, today we're getting word now that authorities investigating
the deadly shooting, the mass shooting of Brown University have
identified a suspect and have obtained a warrant for the
person's arrest. They're actively seeking the person. The eyewitness accounts
of the shooter mastered a description of the person of interest,
so they have a name, they have an arrest warrant.
Now they just need to find the person. And the
other part about this is that there is now When
the Brown Providence police kissed this off two days ago
about the shooting of the MIT professor and in the
hallway of his condo building in Brookline, Massachusetts, forty nine
miles away, they kissed it off and said, oh no, no, no, no,
that going to be related is right up the road.
Now they're saying there is a possible link between Brown
University and MIT shootings, and briefly to the Nick Reiner situation.
Now that he's in custody, and the question becomes, why
did they hire this high price, very successful defense lawyer.
Speaker 5: We don't know who hired him.
Speaker 1: We suspect the family did, and a lot of it
may simply be they don't expect the lawyer to get
Nick off. What they're looking for is to keep him
from going to the death chamber. Here's Joey Jackson, big
defense attorney here in New York.
Speaker 13: I think what they're going to do that is a
defense is they're going to examine his mental state. Remember
what he's charged with. He's charged with murder in the
first degree. Murder in the first degree means that you
had to have premeditated the act. Now, to be clear,
the premeditation doesn't have to be a long winded or
elongated plan of months or weeks or days or even hours.
It could be formed instantaneously. But I think where the
defense goes is they look and evaluate his mental state.
They look at his mental health. They in addition to
looking at his mental health, look at his addiction. Remember
he's undergoing a competency exam right now to determine if
he's well enough to stand trial. Could he assist in
his defense as he understand the charges. And I think
that's where they have to go. People believe that the
defense attorneys have to get people off and obviously that's
the goal you want to you know, indicatese whether there's
not guilty. But there's a variety of other ways that
the defense could prevail here, meaning better outcomes without getting
a full out acquittal of the murder one charge.
Speaker 1: So that sounds logical to me that they're just trying
to make sure that he doesn't go to the death chamber.
Cardinal Dolan in New York made a surprise announcement earlier today.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 14: And so it's canon law church law that when a
bishop reaches seventy five, you must submit your resignation to
the Bishop of Rome, the Holy Father. So I did
what will define it? My resignation has already been accepted,
I've been I continue as archbishop at the Holy Father's wish.
But so what will change status is the appointment of
a success.
Speaker 1: Now, so Cardinal Dolan is seventy five. They have a
point to a bishop from Joliet, Illinois. His name is
Ronald Hicks. He's fifty eight years of age. Going to
be interesting because he's going to take over as the
new archdiocese bishop, which puts him in the position of
the next part of this is the Pope will make
him a cardinal. Every Archbishop of New York has been
a cardinal. He served in Al Salvador for a while.
Bishop of Joliet Illinois, which is just south of Chicago,
and the Pope is from Chicago. It's like any business,
it helps to know people. So he is the archbishop designate.
He talked today about the fact that he's been to
New York City ten times in the past. Was raised
in the again suburbs south of Chicago. So new bishop,
new cardinal, new mayor. And with this new bishop having
served in El Salvador. The whole idea about immigration and
everything else, and man Donnie and his idea is about immigration.
It's going to be an interesting new new year for
New York City. All Right, Wall Street today, Like I
told you, the stock market loved the idea of a
two point seven percent consumer price index inflation rate, but
the bond market did not. But when all was said
and done, after a big rally in the beginning couple
of hours of the market, it turned around and went south,
finishing with positive marks, but not like there were. The
Dow up sixty five points at the close to forty
seven nine fifty one s and p up fifty three.
The NASTAC went on fire today, up three hundred and
thirteen points. Price of gold fell eleven dollars to forty
three sixty two. Oil prices up just a mile, up
to fifty six dollars for a barrel of oil. That's
it for today. Thank you for coming by. Yay tomorrow's Friday,
we'll be here hope to see you as well.