Speaker 1: And here we are glad you can't buy Welcome to
the Big Podcast. It is Thursday. Today's the thirteenth day
of November. Y're of our Lord, twenty twenty five. My
name is Tom Sullivan. So there's a lot to go
over today, and the news keeps on coming today. We've
got the shutdown has shut down. We did forty three days,
new record length. There. We've got the affordability issue is
still being I don't think that's going to stop being
battered around. You've got the health insurance issue now that
the government is back open, and gambling. I want to
talk to you about gambling a little bit today. So
we've got a lot to go over. Let me just
start by finishing off the shutdown. It was James Carvill.
What did what did a SALTI call him serpent head.
James Carville waited on his thoughts regarding the Democrats shutting
things down.
Speaker 2: First of all, I listen to this. Everything that everybody
says is true. There was not a real end game
plan here. It was a simple legislative maneuvering that we
didn't do that well own then well a couple of points,
and also the h senators who decided to reopen the government.
Everything they say is truth, and this is just one
of those things that I'm not mad at anybody on
the Democratic side, and no one's own a Democratic side.
I should be made anybody else on the Democratic side.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he speaks for the Democrats. Speaking for the
Republican side is Kaylee McGhee white. She has a different
view of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was all political theater, and I think the
real motivation was to juice turnout in the off year
election in some of these blue states like Virginia and
New Jersey, where a lot of people were affected directly
by the shutdown. But they didn't have a plan. I mean,
the agreement that these moderate Democrats came to with Republicans
was the exact same one that was on the table
from the very beginning. They had had it in hand
for a month. Nothing changed, They didn't earn anything. They
didn't receive a single concession except for the promise of
a vote on continued Obamacare subsidies. But Republicans certainly are
not going to vote with Democrats on that, So again,
this was really all for nothing. They threatened millions of
Americans with starvation. They prevented federal workers from collecting a paycheck,
and for what they didn't get anything from it.
Speaker 1: No, but I've had a number of already today say
what's going to It's only only going to continue in
your resolution expires January thirtieth. Are they going to shut
it down again January three? I doubt it. I would
think that they basically got their fingers in other parts
of their body burned. So I would be shocked if
they try and shut this thing down again in the
month at the end of January. But this comes back
to the issue about the Obamacare subsidies. The problem with Obamacare.
It's it. I said it then, that was ten years ago.
I still see it. In fact, I see it even worse.
It's a bad product. The government tried to come up
with an insurance product. I know you don't want the
insurance companies coming up with insurance product, but that's what
they do. That is what they do. And it would
seem like you could get a group of people together,
maybe people like doctors and nurses and hospital administrators and
people from the medical profession, but of course they want
to get as much money as they possibly can. In
other words, there's still a lot of work to do
on this, But one of the things that I am
feeling very positive about is the President came up with Normy,
he came up with it, but he said the other
day about give the money directly to the people. Because
what has happened with these subsidies for Obamacare. It doesn't
go into the pockets of Joe and Jane Jones. It
goes to the insurance company. They make more money. Therefore
they can raise their insurance prices. Then everybody has to
pay more for insurance. Now there's a I don't want
to get into the weeds on it, but there's something
called the health savings account. It goes by the initials
health savings account. The way it works is the government says,
you want to start a health savings account. You can.
Nobody's forcing you to. But if you do that, you
can put money into your health savings account and it
will grow tax no tax, tax free. And so when
it comes time to you go to the doctor and
you have to pay the doctor a copay or some
sort of fee you to go to the hospital, you
can dip into your health savings account and pay them
from that. So it's a savings account for health issues,
So why can't they do the same here. What you
get when you have a health savings account is you
get it like a credit card, and that card is
where you put the money into your account. So when
you go to the doctor, you bring your health savings
account card, they swipe it and they take the money
that they are owed, and everybody's happy. So why doesn't
the government just eliminate Obamacare. Instead of sending the money
to the insurance companies, send the money directly to you,
but it goes into your health savings account and you
get a card. When you go to the doctor or
the hospital, you give them the card, they swipe it
and the bill is paid. I mean, it cuts the
insurance companies totally out of this. It's direct the money
to you. It would be easy to do if they
just issue a card and you and they load it
up every year with money from the health for a
health savings account for you. I hope that is what
comes about. I don't know. I'm well, let's talk to
Mark Bertolini. Mark Bertolini is the CEO of a health
insurance company, and he also is looking at this as
a as a viable alternative.
Speaker 4: So we should create a qualified account. And there has
been some concern about fraud, waste, and abuse in the system.
There has been some not as much as people would
put on the table. Two point four million was the
number last year people that are achieving the system was
really four hundred and fifty thousand at OSCAR is twenty
seven thousand people out of two point one million people
that we cover, So it was one point three percent
when we got down to the actual understanding of each
of those people. But let's create a qualified account. That
is the basis of the doorway to employers, government or
individuals putting money into a qualified account that allows them
to spend healthcare their way. So if we were consumers
in charge of buying the product, you're going to have
an impact on price. Every time consumers get control what
they purchase, they have an effect on the underlying costs
and the price of the services they buy.
Speaker 1: That's the other big benefit with just putting the money
on a card for you. You can't use it to
buy anything other than approved medical services, doctor's bills, pharmacy bills,
hospital bills, anything that is qualified. And he kept saying
that qualified the money sits in that account for you.
To be able to use. Now, let's say they put
I don't know some number, ten thousand dollars on a
card for you to use for your medical care. Well,
if that's all you're going to have, there's no more
so when you run out of that ten thousand dollars.
So what you're going to do is you're going to
pay attention to what the prices are of things that
you're buying. If they say the doctor says you need
to go over and have some X rays, well who
does X rays for the best price? You don't ask
that now because you don't care because the insurance companies
pay that. You don't even know what the X ray
tex charge. So I heard from this Mark Bertolini today
and I thought that that is exactly what I would
like to see. He's the CEO of Oscar Health, he was,
he's been CEO of Verizon at he's an executive insurance executive.
So anyway, that's my idea, along with the President, who
wants to do something like that, and it would get
the government out. I don't want Congress trying to create
a solution to Obamacare. I don't want the government creating
anything like that. They don't know how, and it becomes
totally a political football, which is where ACA is today.
As we're talking about the cost of things. Let's go
to the affordability issue. This is now cut some attention
by the White House. I played for you yesterday. Scott
Bessant was out talking about affordability and he's very optimistic
about how the economy is going to be doing next year.
And a lot of that again goes back to the
Biden administration. Was talking about the CPI and the GDP
and this and the unemployment amount and all those nice
statistics look good. The real question comes down to do
you have money in your pocket at the end of
the month, and when you go to the grocery store
and you pay two hundred dollars for a basket of
groceries were last year you paired, two years ago, four
years ago you paid one hundred dollars, That's where the
affordability issue pops up. So Steve Ratner, who was the
former cars Are he's a big executive guy, financial executive guy.
He went through a process about basically showing how productivity
has fallen way off and as a result, even though
you may be getting pay wage increases they're not. Your
dollar is not being able to buy as much as
it used to, and therefore you're unhappy. Here's Steve Rehnn.
Speaker 5: Yeah, people wonder. Okay, so we have AI. I'll take
you to your word that they're going to be jobs.
But how does this help me? So let's look at again.
I have to do history here. I can't do what's
going to happen because who knows? What did Yogibara say?
It's hard to predict history because it's the future or anyway.
Innovation lowers prices. So here's four examples from history of
innovations that have had a dramatic effect. Ford's model t famously,
everybody knows, sold for eight hundred and twenty five dollars
in nineteen oh eight. In today's dollars, that would be
about thirty thousand dollars. The actual price, not adjusted for inflation,
went down to two hundred and sixty dollars by nineteen
twenty five, and that would be four thousand dollars in
today's world. How did that happen? Assembly lines, more control,
supply line again, learning efficiencies, long distance phone calls. Remember
you had to pay for long distance phone calls. The
first one cost twenty dollars in nineteen fifteen, six hundred
and sixty dollars in today's money. Nineteen fifty five, when
we had really good phones by then still cost three
hundred and eighty dollars to call California. That would be
forty five dollars today. And now, of course, with our
unlimited plans, it's essentially free. Personal computers seven hundred and
fifty dollars now at one hundred and fifty dollars, and
it would have been five thousand, six thousand dollars if
the price had stayed the same in today's dollars, and
now it's one hundred and fifty. And then lastly, televisions
m r CA early color television three hundred and eighty
dollars twenty seven hundred dollars in today's prices. Now you
can get yourself an HD flat screen will be tell
Vision for one hundred and thirty dollars. So this is
how the consumer benefit happens. Companies cut their costs through
AI and other technologies, and eventually through competition, they get
passed along the consumers, and then consumers spend that money
and that creates jobs as they buy other things. And
then lastly quickly, look, the most important thing in economy
is productivity. How much more efficient we're getting that can
be technology that can be working differently. You can see
in what we consider now to be a golden age
in economy, we were growing productivity at over two and
a half percent. You can see in the seventies and eighties,
which for the most part we consider a more difficult
economic environment, productivity growth dropped dramatically. You can see in
the nineties and the two thousands, which put aside the
financial crisis, was also actually a pretty strong period. Productivity grew.
But here and this gets right back to where we
started this conversation. Here is where productivity is now. And
so productivity isn't growing, and so real wages after inflation
aren't growing, and so people are unhappy. And that's the
sixty six percent disapproval rating that Donald Trump has first
handling of the economy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the economy. Was what Donald Trump got elected on.
People thought he would be doing a great job, and
people are disappointed. But it really comes down to productivity
has dropped like a rock, and so you're even though
you get a wage increase, it doesn't go as far.
And that's why when you go to the store and
the prices that shot up during the inflation during the
Biden administration, those prices haven't come down. Some have, some haven't,
but inflation keeps pushing all prices back a little bit
at a time. Inflation's running three percent right now. It
was nine percent. Kevin has a National Council of Economic
Advisors Chairman to the President. He also talks about this
affordability issue. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, you know, we've got a lot of great facts
to get out to the American people. The bottom line
is that when Joe Biden and the Democrats are running
the country over the last four years, bicoco American family
lost three four hundred dollars worth of their purchasing power,
And already in President Trump's first few months of this
year then people have gained about twelve hundred of it back.
And so we understand that people still feel the pain
from the deep hole that Biden's policy's dug. But we're
making up progress. We're making up progress fast. And you
had a clip of Secretary Bested my good friend a
little bit later saying that we're, you know, we're going
to close the gap and fill the hole that Biden
doug relatively quickly. We see really high wage growth and
inflation is much more under control. But the fact is
that for the typical family, when they went to the
grocery store when President Trump took office, they would fill
the typical grocery bags filled with about four hundred dollars
worth of stuff, And that same amount of stuff after
Joe Biden's four years costs almost five hundred and twenty
five dollars.
Speaker 1: So the way he measured his measures it you lost
thirty four hundred dollars worth of buying power during the
Biden administration. Three four hundred dollars they have through the
economy growing since Donald Trump's been in office, we are
gaining about twelve hundred dollars in our purchasing power. So
we're still net underwater by twenty two hundred dollars. So
they have essentially have to get that back up to
where it was and even higher by the time the
midterms come around next November. So they see the problem,
and I would expect that you're going to see the
President go out on as kind of like on the
campaign trail, to start sharing facts. But that's that's nice
but you still have to get down to when you
and I pay for our groceries, pay for our gas,
pay for whatever it is that you're buying on a
regular basis. That has to be something that isn't a
shocker like it is right now. So I wish them well.
We'll see how they do. It's a big it's a
big hurdle to try to get twenty two hundred dollars
worth of purchasing power back for everybody in the next
twelve months. So while we're talking about money, you want
to talk about gambling. Gambling has absolutely skyrocketed in this country.
Now we've had the NBA players and coaches. The coach
and the player that have been indicted for gambling for
NBA games. Now you have two pitches for the Cleveland
Guardians that are also in trouble with the law. It's
let's start this look at gambling by talking to Andy McCarthy,
former DOJ lawyer, a Southern District of New York lawyer,
about these baseball players and how much they There was
a hearing yesterday, another one today. How much trouble those
guys are in.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think with modern technology and the fact that
since the Supreme Court decision in twenty eighteen. We now
have legalized betting, so it's exploded as an industry. It's
like one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year and climbing.
And the teams which used to and the sports leagues
which used to keep their distance from gambling, have now
kind of embraced it as a partner. So we're going
to have a lot of these new problems because the
modern technology allows you to bet in real time during
the games, and obviously it opens up a lot of
possibility for fraud. Yes, those charges are all felony charges
under federal law, and you know, look, this is the
kind of thing that defense lawyers say when charges get announced.
For all we know, behind the scenes, there could be
plea negotiations going on. We'll just have to see how
it unfolds. But I think it's very interesting that Baseball,
in conjunction with its betting partners, has announced in the
last few days that they're trying to crack down on
these bets, particularly the pitch bets. They're limiting how much
you can bet and whether you can parlay that with
other kinds of bets. So they're aware that they have
a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so easy to place a bet, and you
can do it instantly before the pitcher throws the ball.
You can bet on whether it's going to be a
strike or a ball. I mean, it's insane how fast
and easy it is to do gambling on that. So
they're in big trouble. They're they got felonies facing them.
Adam Johnson, who's a Wall Street trader, was talking about
this earlier today, about the fact that some of the
stocks like DraftKings and so forth, are getting the attention
of big money.
Speaker 8: But I'm long DraftKings, and I will tell you it's
been under pressure recently. One of the reasons is people
love to bet. And all these states that are running deficits,
Blue states in particular, Illinois has been the leading the charge,
suddenly slapping all kinds of taxes on Draftking and you know,
they're trying to plug a hole, a fiscal hole at
the state level, and unfortunately they're doing it by hitting people.
You know, there's what's just sports betting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's the syntaxes And it's the same way
when states were trying to figure out whether to legalize
marijuana and what tipped them in favor of it. For
many states was the money the taxes that they could collect.
And it's the same thing here with gambling. They're looking
at this as going to change to ching. We're going
to make a lot of money off gambling, so of
course we're for it. Steve Kirk, who is the chief
brokerage officer at Robin Hood, is talking about the fact
that robin has started off, you know, like a typical
brokerage company where you buy and sell stocks and bonds.
They're big now into the prediction slash gambling business.
Speaker 9: Yeah, let me give you the quick history on how
we got into the event contract prediction market. November of
last year, around the election time, they became permissible and
so the first thing we did there was on the election,
and you know, the usage number of accounts we opened
and the number of contracts we traded was just explosive,
like six hundred million contracts in a week around the election.
And from there, customers said, you know, this is an
amazing new offering. We'd love to get into entertainment, you know,
gdp CPI, even sports, which has become a big component
of it. And I know you guys were talking about
it this morning. So we're probably at about thirteen hundred
contracts right now and a cross seven or eight categories,
and there's tremendous excitement about it and interest from our customers.
Speaker 1: And need have I mean crypto too.
Speaker 5: But prediction markets are faster new business than.
Speaker 9: Fastest, fastest growing business we've ever had. Is it Is
it gambling? I don't think it's gambling. I don't, but
I you know, again, the lines I think you guys
talked about this morning, the lines are getting blurred in
some areas because you're seeing some of the osbs come
into the prediction markets. You're seeing that kind of go
back and forth, and I think, you know, I think
where like look from our customer's eyes, they're young, thirty
some year olds. This is a sweet spot for them.
You know, they want to be able to do all this.
They see a differentiation between placing a bet on I
don't know who's going to make the next touchdown and
deciding which stocks they want to own.
Speaker 7: Is there a differentiation in that mentality?
Speaker 9: I don't think there's differentiation in that mentality because they
just want to express their opinion and put finance something,
you know, an investment behind it. It's really interesting because
the question we constantly get asked is who is Who's
who's trading these Yeah, and it's a highly different audience
for economic indicators than it is for cultural than it
is for sports, than it is for election. So it's
kind of like we run the gamut of customers that
have interest in this.
Speaker 1: So that's the chief brokerage officer for robin Hood. But
in the news today, fan Duel is debuting a prediction
market so they can compete against Calshee, which is one
of the big prediction markets out there. A lot of
the brokerage firms are getting involved, and the parent of
UFC struck a deal with poly Market today to integrate
prediction markets into the UFC fights. So the gambling, it
has absolutely exploded, and like the guy from Robinhood said,
it's the biggest thing that they've had by far. So
I don't know what's going to happened to it. But
gambling is one of those things like alcohol and drugs,
and it's one of the sins that if you can
control yourself, it's entertainment. If you can't control yourself, it
can be devastating. So we have some court cases to
talk about we're not We didn't get a decision today,
but the lawyers for James Komy and Letitia James, two
separate cases, but they went to a judge today and
said dismiss our cases because of the fact that the
prosecutor in this case is Lindsey Halligan, she isn't a
legitimate prosecutor. And Elie Honig, former Southern District of New
York prosecutor or former DOJ prosecutor, explains what the argument
is before the judge for both Comy and Letitia James.
Speaker 10: Ordinarily, the way we get US attorneys is the President
nominates and then the Senate confirms. But federal law tells
us that where that process has not happened, the Attorney
General has the authority to choose somebody to serve as
a temporary US attorney for up to one hundred and
twenty days. After that one hundred and twenty days, it
then goes to the federal district court judges of that
district to choose somebody. Now that's what happened here in
the Eastern District of Virginia, and named Eric Siebert was
put in. He did his one hundred and twenty days,
and then the judges chose him Eric Sebert. But the
problem is Siebert then resigned, leaving a vacancy. He resigned
under pressure, and at that point the Attorney General put
in a new person, Lindsay Halligan, who's now the US
Attorney So Comey and James are arguing that was improper.
The law only allows the ag to make one of
those one hundred and twenty day appointments, and not serially,
not one after another after another. That's the argument they're
making right in court right now today. So the first
argument that the Justice Department has made is that the
law does not say there can only be one one
hundred and twenty day appointment. It doesn't actually say anything
about a limit. The second argument is that the Attorney
General also named Lindsay Halligan as a quote special attorney,
and that's good enough. And the final argument that DOJ
is making that is, even if Lindsay Halligan was improperly appointed,
that does not mean these indictments should be thrown out.
The prosecutor's signature is not an actual substantive part of
the indictment. It's just an administrative step. What really matters
is that the Grandeur has heard the evidence and voted
for an indictment.
Speaker 8: So that's the counter argument.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the judge in this this ruling or hearing
today said that there will be a ruling before Thanksgiving,
so two weeks Thanksgivings two weeks from today, so there
will be a ruling on for both James Comy and
Letitia James. And by the way, those are, like I said,
two separate cases. Comy was about charged with line to
Congress and Ladisha James about more gage fraud. So speaking
of mortgage fraud, guess what happened late this afternoon. Bill Poulti,
the head of the Federal Housing Mortgage Group, has filed
a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Eric Swalwell,
the Congressman from California. So this is now, this is yes,
on top of a number of them, We've got Adam Schiff,
Latsia James. There's a series of these that Bill Poulty
has a referred a criminal a criminal referral to the DOJ.
That doesn't mean that that Swalwell has been charged with anything.
It's up to the Department of Justice to take a
look at the facts and see whether or not they
think he committed to crime, and if so, they'll go
to a grand jury. So that's kind of the breaking
stuff here late this afternoon as far as goes, let's
look at the airports. Light Aware has their cancelation page
and there's still a lot of them out there. One
seventeen cancelations today, two thousand, four hundred and seventy eight delays.
The number one airport for delays and cancelations would be
Chicago O'Hare, followed by Atlanta and then Denver, then Newark, Dallas,
Fort Worth, and Seattle are in that group. So the
airline with the most cancelations the regional carrier sky West,
and then Southwest Republic another regional carrier, and then in
Dever and Envoy all of those other than Southwestern regional
regional carriers, which is where everybody suspected they would probably
do most of the cancelations because they don't carry that
many passengers in their planes, but they take up airspaces
as much as it doesn't matter whether they're a little
plane or a big plane, that can have two planes
in the same spot at the same time. So that's
what's going on there. The Epstein story is blowing up.
It seems to me that the emails that have come out, well,
the whole thing smells to high heavens. Bottom line, I'm
in favor of releasing anything and everything in regarding as
Epstein these there are people out there that are walking
the streets that are pedophiles. I'm sorry. I don't think
anybody should have any sympathy for anybody that physically sexually
attacks a child. So I'm all for releasing everything. I
don't understand why the president is fighting this. It makes
him look like he's trying to hide something, and it's
not a good look. So he's mentioned in the emails.
We know, and I don't Donald Trump's funny about this
sort of stuff. He gets very upset about things that
if he would just chill a little bit. Everybody knows
that he and Epstein were friends for probably a decade,
but then sounds like, well, Trump got rid of him,
kicked him out of Marro Logo because he was trying
to recruit some of the young women that worked there
to go over and work for Epstein. Trump didn't like
it and said get out. So their friendship was left
with bad blood. So the emails with Epstein saying bad
things about Trump. I understand that that makes sense to me.
That ties in with exactly what Donald Trump has said
in the past. What the mainstream media on the left
especially is talking about the fact that there's an email
that says that a blank victim was with Donald Trump
for quite a few hours on one particular day. The
problem with that is it makes it look real shady.
And yet the name that when you take that off
redact that it was Virginia Gouffrey, and Virginia Gouffrey she
passed away, but in her book she made it clear
that she never saw Donald Trump do anything that was
wrong or with her or anybody else. So this, by
putting this this blackout on there, makes it look even shadier.
But I think the president should come forward and clear
this whole thing up and release all of the documents.
I suspect he's getting a lot of pressure from some
big money people, probably some donors that are saying protect me,
protect me, protect me. I don't want the public to
find out that I'm a pedophile. I think that's what
they're that's what's going on, So that does Otherwise it
doesn't make any sense to me. So this is next week,
the House is going to vote on whether to release
all of the Epstein files that the Department of Justice has.
And this brings up the fact that Pam Bondi is
not looking good here. She said, oh no, we don't
have anything else, and we now know, oh yes, they
do thousands and thousands of more documents. So the whole
thing smells to high Evans. But I got to tell you,
as much as I I find most of what Donald
Trump does, I'm supportive some things I am not. In
this case, I'm supporting the fact that he does not
appear to have done anything regarding pedophilia or anything with
the young ladies that Jeffrey Epstein recruited. But we'll wait
for the facts, and we'll wait for that House vote
next week. It'll dominate the story when that comes out,
but it's going to take quite a while to go
through all the documents they have. All Right Wall Street
to day, let's take a look. The market was down
big again. This is the markets getting very very follatile,
worse day in over a month. The Dow Jones industrials
down seven hundred and ninety seven points to off the
record high that we set yesterday, down to forty seven,
four to fifty seven. SMP got hammered down one hundred
and thirteen, Nasdaq down substantially down five hundred and thirty six,
Gold down thirty three dollars to forty one point eighty,
and the price of oil up just a few pennies.
It's at fifty just under fifty nine dollars for one
barrel of oil. Thank you for coming by today. We
will be here again tomorrow. Hope to see you then
as well.