Speaker 1: It's either Black Monday part due, or it's not, or
Speaker 1: it's part of the plan, or it's people taking profits.
Speaker 1: Except I was just looking at a chart from last week.
Speaker 1: The only billionaire in the US who made money was
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett. Among the top I think thirty was what
Speaker 1: the list had. So, look, there's a lot of craziness,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about it today. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: it not in the way that it's being discussed right
Speaker 1: now by a bunch of billionaires like Bill Ackman and
Speaker 1: Ackerman excuse me, and others. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: it in the way that the media elite and others
Speaker 1: are failing to recognize. And I think makes us Ross
Speaker 1: and I much better arbiters and analysts of what's going
Speaker 1: on because we're just do I know, you think that
Speaker 1: we all make millions of dollars here, I think you'd
Speaker 1: be very surprised. R We are firmly middle class people.
Speaker 1: And when you understand where a middle class is coming from,
Speaker 1: not everybody, but you take an honest review of what's
Speaker 1: going on out there and where people's heads are at,
Speaker 1: which thankfully we get to do every day. Every day
Speaker 1: we talk about, you know, twenty different things, and then
Speaker 1: we get emails and people call in, and then we
Speaker 1: talk to people when we're out and about, And I
Speaker 1: think I can lay this out for you this morning
Speaker 1: as to what's going on right now where people's heads
Speaker 1: are at. And I didn't see any student analysis among
Speaker 1: like major broadcasters or some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: stock market class. So maybe we'll just start there and
Speaker 1: then we'll get into some other stuff and it'll just
Speaker 1: kind of be a running undercurrent on the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so here we go. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: Americans look at the stock market and don't think it's real.
Speaker 1: What do they estimate? I've heard fifty percent of people
Speaker 1: are in the stock market, sixty two percent. I mean
Speaker 1: your four oh one is in the market. I but
Speaker 1: you know, honestly in the market. It's not the majority
Speaker 1: of Americans. And that's okay because when you're younger, right,
Speaker 1: you're not doing things necessarily to achieve that you're just
Speaker 1: trying to survive, and you're recognizing and you're looking at
Speaker 1: an economy where the stock market, even though everything feels normal,
Speaker 1: can have these wild fluctuations because everybody panics up there.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile you're sitting there and you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how a starter home with poor construction. Have you seen
Speaker 1: some of the videos of some of these mass builders
Speaker 1: the level equality of construction that's getting turned out, and
Speaker 1: they're looking at a starter home that if that if
Speaker 1: you adjusted for inflation, and I understand interest rates were different,
Speaker 1: all of these things. I get all of that, but again,
Speaker 1: you're working on perception and a lot of reality. And
Speaker 1: the reality is that I saw at these mass protests
Speaker 1: all around the country over the weekend. I saw a
Speaker 1: bunch of people, and I understand that there are people
Speaker 1: listening to the show that are very much in this
Speaker 1: age bracket. And I'm not picking on you, but they
Speaker 1: were able to pull more strongly out of that age group. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was clearly going on, even if you think they're lunatics,
Speaker 1: which most of us do. And the reason they were
Speaker 1: able to do that is because you have people that
Speaker 1: are on the cusp of retirement. They have done well
Speaker 1: for the most part, and good for them. I don't
Speaker 1: begrudge them, even if I think they're little looney tunes
Speaker 1: or a lot with some of the folks I saw.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: They're in this position right now, and they're going, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna have time to recover this,
Speaker 1: even though if for a lot of people's four oh ones,
Speaker 1: it literally mirrors what it was under the last part
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration, But we don't talk about that,
Speaker 1: and what and the rest of the folks are sitting
Speaker 1: there and they look at buying their first home, especially
Speaker 1: in markets like Raleigh.
Speaker 3: How insane.
Speaker 1: How many of you have just got your tax adjustment
Speaker 1: and now this home, your home is worth so much more,
Speaker 1: and now you're going to pay taxes on that differential,
Speaker 1: even though you've never realized any gains from it. And
Speaker 1: what's that going to do to your budget? And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, when you actually went and bought the home,
Speaker 1: if you went and bought a home here recently, and
Speaker 1: even if it was a starter home compared to what
Speaker 1: it was in the nineteen seventies and eighties, but let's
Speaker 1: talk more eighties, because that's kind of math that's going
Speaker 1: to math out here. Even if you adjusted for inflation
Speaker 1: and everything else, the cost of a new home far
Speaker 1: exceeds what it was back in the day. It's not
Speaker 1: even close and the cost of goods. Don't even get
Speaker 1: me started. And you ask yourself, how did we get here? Well,
Speaker 1: we got here with the current, with the system that
Speaker 1: had been in place when Trump came into office. And
Speaker 1: here's what I here's who I really want to hear
Speaker 1: from today. And I don't care what agr any of that.
Speaker 1: I want to hear from people who grew up and
Speaker 1: have lived their lives here in the South, in states
Speaker 1: like North Carolina, South Carolina, parts of Virginia, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: And I want to hear what small town life was
Speaker 1: like then versus what it is now, because I think
Speaker 1: this is a huge driving force when you get out
Speaker 1: into the red parts of the country. I want to
Speaker 1: hear what happened that time that Bill Clinton decided NAFTA
Speaker 1: was a good idea. What changed in your town? What
Speaker 1: did that do to your community? And I know people
Speaker 1: would say, well, you know, it's not like people want
Speaker 1: to work in garment factor People work in garment factories
Speaker 1: here that still exists. People want to build furniture, yes,
Speaker 1: people want to People wanted to do energy production. And
Speaker 1: you had this global mindset, these agreements with other countries
Speaker 1: where we were going to fall in line, or we
Speaker 1: were going to open trade to these uh you know,
Speaker 1: unmitigated trade, these areas that were able to undercut us
Speaker 1: because they do they they pay slave wages. And while
Speaker 1: you can sit there and you can make an argument
Speaker 1: that well it wasn't sustainable, that was your decision, and
Speaker 1: you stuck a knife in it. So now trying to
Speaker 1: convince a bunch of people, how many small towns within
Speaker 1: the sound of my voice right now are a shell
Speaker 1: of their former selves. So you don't have to think
Speaker 1: those people are right, but you read you need to
Speaker 1: recognize that basically from gen X down, people are willing
Speaker 1: to watch it burn because it was never real. I
Speaker 1: know that sounds horrible, but I'm giving you the truth.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving you my apinion. I'm giving you the truth.
Speaker 1: I spend far too many, far too many days and
Speaker 1: grew grew up small town myself and I and I
Speaker 1: love them. And that's that's where that's why I like
Speaker 1: to go vacation, That's where I like to that's why
Speaker 1: that's where I have friends. That's where we have interactions
Speaker 1: from people listening who are sitting there in towns like Eden,
Speaker 1: sitting in in in parts of Harnett County, sitting in
Speaker 1: parts of all over North Carolina where if you go
Speaker 1: to their main street it's dead. The industry has moved on.
Speaker 1: The epidemic of people utilizing drugs, whether it's opiates or
Speaker 1: you know, meth or things like that, has skyrocketed because
Speaker 1: because Hope left again. You can you can disagree on
Speaker 1: the methodology, but you need to understand the mindset and
Speaker 1: the motivation. So running around all weekend screaming this is
Speaker 1: going to crash the stock market. Most most of those
Speaker 1: people don't care because the stock market never represented what
Speaker 1: was going on financially in their lives. While people sat
Speaker 1: there and watched the brewery close up in Eden during
Speaker 1: a period of huge upswing in the stock market. Do
Speaker 1: you care what Indev's stock was doing, or do you
Speaker 1: care that you and your buddies just all lost your jobs.
Speaker 4: I know it's not just the South either, Like what
Speaker 4: you just described is my hometown of Schenectady up in
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 1: No, and to be fair, I'm sorry, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to leave that out. I just figured that was use
Speaker 1: your pool to draw from. But yes, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: The rust belt and upstate.
Speaker 4: New York absolutely like the home of ge and Main Street.
Speaker 4: We lived off Main Street. Completely different from even when
Speaker 4: I grew up, you know, in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 4: completely different, And you know, yeah, I watch all this
Speaker 4: and I'm apart. I'm just not a I'm not I'm
Speaker 4: just not worried. After the past five years and everything
Speaker 4: we've been through, I'm just not worried. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 4: can't panic. It's not in me. Have I lost money? Listen,
Speaker 4: I do have a retirement I have a four one game. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you and I both have four oh ones. Our company
Speaker 4: offers that. So just to be clear, we do have
Speaker 4: skin in the game. It is currently where it was
Speaker 4: last August, right, because it's twenty five percent growth year
Speaker 4: to year? Is it normal? That isn't natural. But even
Speaker 4: though I had it a retirement, I have a retirement
Speaker 4: fund or plan or whatever I did. There's no part
Speaker 4: of me that thinks that I'm ever going to be
Speaker 4: able to retire. It's not possible. My plan, and I've
Speaker 4: said this before jokingly, but it's sort of true, is
Speaker 4: I will die over the whole die working. That's my
Speaker 4: retirement plan. There's no part of me that has any
Speaker 4: sort of like belief that I'm going to be able
Speaker 4: to retire and live alone and not have to work.
Speaker 4: That's never gonna happen for me. It never is going
Speaker 4: to happen. So I'm watching all this happen and have
Speaker 4: I lost money, Yes? But do it I feel like
Speaker 4: the joker looking at the big pile of money marching
Speaker 4: it burn correct because, like you said, my house payment
Speaker 4: has gone up because everything's building up around it, and
Speaker 4: they're increasing taxes and it's ridiculous. Last year went up
Speaker 4: for me. It's a lot. It's a lot of money.
Speaker 4: Every month they went up like three hundred dollars a
Speaker 4: month for me. There's a lot of money because I
Speaker 4: don't make a lot of money. So is it concerning?
Speaker 4: At is concerning? But I really there's no part of me.
Speaker 4: I can't force the panic. I'm not panicking. I believe
Speaker 4: that it's Listen, I would not be surprised that by
Speaker 4: the midterms the Dow is up over fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: Well, I saw that. Lutnick.
Speaker 1: I think was predicting that. I think that that is
Speaker 1: that's aspirational, But I don't believe that it's less than
Speaker 1: it is or was two weeks ago, right before we
Speaker 1: had the two consecutive and the end of the week,
Speaker 1: and then whatever happens today. I refuse to believe that.
Speaker 1: But also I that's not the numbers that you and
Speaker 1: I and others really are are dry the concern.
Speaker 3: What's going on. It's the cost of things.
Speaker 1: And inflation and the willingness of the previous administration as
Speaker 1: well as basically all the administrations going back to do
Speaker 1: you know who the last Democrat was to lower taxes LBJ.
Speaker 1: So if you want to make that our starting point,
Speaker 1: we can. Ever since we have seen this and then
Speaker 1: it kicked into high gear under NAFTA and Clinton and
Speaker 1: everything that was going on there, it just yeah, here
Speaker 1: we go. Bought one hundred and forty k house for
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two and just sold it for two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty in rural Johnston County.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, and then you're going to sell it and
Speaker 4: then you get into a house that's like, you know,
Speaker 4: so much more expensive with a higher interest rate, and
Speaker 4: you're gonna be paying that way into retirement.
Speaker 3: Right, you have to live somewhere, So what have you
Speaker 3: really gained?
Speaker 4: One thing I keep thinking about is how I keep
Speaker 4: thinking about ross Pro in the nineties, watching him. Yeah,
Speaker 4: ross Pro in the nineties, watching him, Yeah, with all
Speaker 4: the charts, and I'm like, man, that dude was right,
Speaker 4: Yeah he was. Remember him going on and on about
Speaker 4: NAFTA and how it would completely hollow out the American
Speaker 4: workforce and the manufacturer action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's what I want to hear. I want
Speaker 1: to hear your stories. How many of you grew up
Speaker 1: in one of these towns? Could be schenected? He could
Speaker 1: be could be somewhere right, you know, right here in
Speaker 1: the listening areas of North Carolina, western North Carolina. How
Speaker 1: hollowed out is that? Go to the town of Sparta,
Speaker 1: you know, I like to go up there. Talked about
Speaker 1: it here on the show. Go to the town of Sparta.
Speaker 1: I'm not picking on.
Speaker 3: Sparta, but Sparta is a shell of its former self.
Speaker 4: We can't agree that the middle class, the way things
Speaker 4: are going at this point, it's not sustainable.
Speaker 3: No, not, not the costs that you were seeing, Not
Speaker 3: for middle America.
Speaker 4: It's not doable.
Speaker 1: So so watching the billionaire class and the stock market
Speaker 1: class get into these screaming matches and the and this
Speaker 1: chicken little stuff, I don't tell it carry and I,
Speaker 1: By the way, do you know what Bill Bill Ackerman
Speaker 1: was most famous for.
Speaker 3: This guy is like, I'm I'm investing in America.
Speaker 1: This is the line that like, if I invest in stocks,
Speaker 1: I'm investing in America.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that.
Speaker 1: How many of you have worked in a company that
Speaker 1: was a publicly traded company where it was nothing but
Speaker 1: maximize profit for the shareholders and it decimated parts of
Speaker 1: your company or your business, and God help you. A
Speaker 1: venture capitalist came in and Bill Ackerman's famous because he
Speaker 1: attempted to short one of one of the companies where
Speaker 1: they go around and sell door to door. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a pyramid scheme, but Amway. It was
Speaker 1: an Amway. It was one of them. He attempted to
Speaker 1: short him, unsuccessfully. There's a whole documentary on this. He
Speaker 1: was betting against the futures of everybody who worked there
Speaker 1: or made money there. Doesn't mean he was wrong, But
Speaker 1: don't give me this holier than now. I only invest
Speaker 1: in America. Investing in America is not necessarily the stock market.
Speaker 1: It's investing in an economic system that provides the ability
Speaker 1: of people to not have to lose their damn minds
Speaker 1: and stress every day because they can't figure out how
Speaker 1: they're going to make ends meet even though they have
Speaker 1: two you have two people working. I mean, that's insane
Speaker 1: to me. The transition from a single payer household that
Speaker 1: was comfortable could make ends meet. Yes, we didn't have
Speaker 1: quite the level of luxuries to you know, to expend
Speaker 1: money on.
Speaker 3: But you could feasibly get by, you know, and you did.
Speaker 3: And then two people entered the workforce.
Speaker 1: Full time, and you're struggling far more than the generation
Speaker 1: before you.
Speaker 3: And that's not in dispute.
Speaker 1: This generation and then the one cropping up are are
Speaker 1: worse off than the generations before them.
Speaker 4: These changes had to be made, in my opinion. But
Speaker 4: do you think the issue is that band aid was
Speaker 4: ripped off too fast?
Speaker 1: That is, that's the only fair argument here, but also
Speaker 1: one of the things, and you're seeing it right now. Well,
Speaker 1: and I believe this and this is just me. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen what's happened in Japan and
Speaker 1: China overnight they got absolutely hammered. China stock market lost
Speaker 1: ten percent, Japan not much better. Japan had a breaker,
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, like a fuse bust and they suspended
Speaker 1: training trading. Nobody believes that. It's a crazy story.
Speaker 4: They had like a water pipe burst, No, a.
Speaker 3: Breaker of some sort. I'm not making this up.
Speaker 1: Japan suspended trading while they were getting hammered because I
Speaker 1: don't know, a breaker went out.
Speaker 4: Right, But it's like counting the votes and being like,
Speaker 4: we have to stop because the water pipe broke.
Speaker 1: They sent Bob downstairs with a sledge hammer, like hits
Speaker 1: something electrical. I don't know, probably not Bob, it's Japan.
Speaker 1: But they sat Yashimoto downstairs with a hammer and they're like,
Speaker 1: hit that thing, Bro, and he did because he's a ninja.
Speaker 1: But whatever. And what what Trump is betting on is
Speaker 1: those leaders panic, panic, and agree to what he wants.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of working because the US can take
Speaker 1: a lot more kick in the teeth than these smaller countries.
Speaker 1: That's what you have. So you have people that are
Speaker 1: sitting there that are not invested to the extent that
Speaker 1: these billionaires are, and they're willing to be the joker
Speaker 1: staring at the pile of money. And if they don't
Speaker 1: understand this, then they're not good an analysts.
Speaker 3: We'll be back.
Speaker 1: How many of you support construction trade either you do
Speaker 1: you work directly in it. Your truck drivers, you drive
Speaker 1: materials back and forth, you work in industry that produces
Speaker 1: the parts that are necessary for construction.
Speaker 3: How many?
Speaker 1: And development too, So you have people that deal with
Speaker 1: water right, the you know, the pipelines, the direct the
Speaker 1: people guys, the guys who go out and do directional boring,
Speaker 1: which I've done, which is which when you're one of
Speaker 1: the shovel guys at the very beginning, sucks till you
Speaker 1: can run a piece of machinery. But it's.
Speaker 3: How many of you.
Speaker 1: Have a financial interest in that? What do you think
Speaker 1: seven trillion? If I don't know, if you heard the
Speaker 1: bottom of the hour newscasts there, the Trump administration says,
Speaker 1: thus far they've received commitments for seven trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: in investment, so basically establishing businesses inside of the US
Speaker 1: which are going to require buildings, they're going to require
Speaker 1: you know, manufacturing lines. Automation in many instances, because I
Speaker 1: know people are like, well, they're just going to automate stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: If if you think China is not really automated, then
Speaker 1: you don't you've never seen inside a Chinese plant, and
Speaker 1: you should watch some video. Yeah, they have a lot
Speaker 1: of people, but the majority of it is automated, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to the production of big things like iPhones. Right,
Speaker 1: what do you think? And and countries are going to
Speaker 1: be scrambling to make those investments because only once they've
Speaker 1: started production and that stuff is being produced in the
Speaker 1: US so they can sell to US consumers will they
Speaker 1: get the full amount of terror relief unless the countries
Speaker 1: want to drop tariffs completely. What do you think a
Speaker 1: rapid rush to build six trillion in investment in infrastructure
Speaker 1: does for the wages and the profits If you're a
Speaker 1: small business owner or even a medium to large business
Speaker 1: owner in that slice of the economy, construction is going
Speaker 1: to get expensive. Now does that have impacts on people
Speaker 1: want to build new homes? Maybe not, because the residential
Speaker 1: guys are necessarily going to turn into commercial guys. But
Speaker 1: the people who work for them may be more incentivized
Speaker 1: to go work from these companies who are begging for
Speaker 1: workers and having to pay higher wages so they can
Speaker 1: construct these plants. And if you're a company who wants
Speaker 1: to produce a manufacturing plant of any sort, are you
Speaker 1: going to stick it in downtown Raleigh or Charlotte or Greensboro.
Speaker 1: Where are you going to put it? To go somewhere
Speaker 1: where you have interstate or close by access for the
Speaker 1: purpose of shipping, where the wages at this point are
Speaker 1: not so excruciating that it takes a further cut of
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And I can give you one hundred
Speaker 1: towns in North Carolina that could facilitate that. And you're
Speaker 1: gonna put it there, and people there are gonna have
Speaker 1: an opportunity to work there. And for those saying, well,
Speaker 1: they're not going to work there, you don't know small towns.
Speaker 1: You don't You don't know small towns. There's a town
Speaker 1: in Minnesota that I used to go down to Coldwood, Nona, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and it's a It's the one of the things that
Speaker 1: helps that town hang on, not only because it has
Speaker 1: quick access to I ninety. It's right on the river,
Speaker 1: right across the river from Wisconsin down by Lacrosse and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And they have Fastenal has one of their main facilities there,
Speaker 1: and I, I don't know, I couldn't tell you the
Speaker 1: number of people I know who work there.
Speaker 3: Are they getting rich?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Are they working in a job that they're able to
Speaker 1: support their families because fast and All continues to have
Speaker 1: this large operation there, and many of you in the
Speaker 1: construction trade, you know fasten All. Yeah, all over the
Speaker 1: country they got places and that's where you order your
Speaker 1: construction supplies and stuff from. And it literally keeps that town.
Speaker 1: Trucking man sounds like that they're going to be banging
Speaker 1: away and Fasten All. From a corporate standpoint, we probably
Speaker 1: do pretty well. So these are the conversations that people
Speaker 1: aren't having. And something's or the chance of something's better
Speaker 1: than nothing in the minds of so many people. That's
Speaker 1: the reality. That's why there is this disconnect with the
Speaker 1: conversation that is going on. And this is why I'm
Speaker 1: wanting to hear from you, because you guys are the
Speaker 1: ones who can tell those stories. I didn't grow up
Speaker 1: in rural North Carol. I grow rural Wyoming. And beef's
Speaker 1: a pretty sustainable industry. But nobody's getting rich, not really,
Speaker 1: but for a lot of towns, they don't have that backbone.
Speaker 1: And now you don't live there anymore because you had
Speaker 1: to move away because you need a job opportunities and
Speaker 1: you wish nothing more, maybe to be able to live
Speaker 1: in that town that you grew up in. Why shouldn't
Speaker 1: they have a chance And they didn't have a chance
Speaker 1: as to where we were going. So the only thing
Speaker 1: here's my theory on the band aid thing, and then
Speaker 1: we'll get into calls because ross po's the question. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a legitimate argument. But I think
Speaker 1: people fail to understand Trump's motivation.
Speaker 3: One. You want the.
Speaker 1: When people are panicking, they're making decisions that might be
Speaker 1: more agreeable to you, and that's business stuff, and Trump
Speaker 1: loves business stuff. But people people who are tweeting things
Speaker 1: like Trump's destroying his own livelihood, see he lost money.
Speaker 1: You think that money is the most important thing to Trump?
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that do altruistic. I want you
Speaker 1: to hear me out. You think money is the most
Speaker 1: important thing to Trump. Money has been to this point
Speaker 1: because of what it represents. It's not the money, it's
Speaker 1: the power, and more specifically, it's the name recognition. And
Speaker 1: I think that Donald Trump would would happily lose half
Speaker 1: of his fortune if he is forever seen as the
Speaker 1: man who saved the American economy. Does that make sense
Speaker 1: to me to you, because he's got an ego and
Speaker 1: you can't buy that. You can't buy that you're the
Speaker 1: person who saved a country, as I know, as weird
Speaker 1: as that sounds, I feel like that is far more
Speaker 1: valuable to him, far more valuable. Or else why run
Speaker 1: for president at all and continue to slog through this
Speaker 1: considering the financial hit you're taking, because this is more
Speaker 1: important to him. So understand his motivations. You don't have
Speaker 1: to think he's correct, but you have to understand where
Speaker 1: people are coming from so that you can have discussions.
Speaker 1: And you need to understand where the majority of people,
Speaker 1: younger people are kind of coming from. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that there wasn't a bunch of twenty somethings out
Speaker 1: at those protests. I don't think they've ideologically changed, and
Speaker 1: I understand as will. They're not being paid to be there. Look,
Speaker 1: everyone's not being paid to be there, but some people
Speaker 1: are or or and clearly are with you. When you
Speaker 1: see these groups and you see these these text messages,
Speaker 1: you get it's like become a can or become an
Speaker 1: influencer for two hundred dollars for the Democrat Party. I
Speaker 1: got one of those. Those are real and it's a
Speaker 1: it's a way of not saying you're paying people for
Speaker 1: a vote, kind of doing it. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: at play here, George, what's up, Good morning morning.
Speaker 2: You were asking about housing process in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: I'm eighty two years old. In nineteen sixty four, I
Speaker 2: bought a three bedroom half with a fool basement twelve
Speaker 2: hundred square feet and are a three quarter of an
Speaker 2: acred lock thirteen thousand thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: At that time I went to About two years later,
Speaker 2: I went to work as a plumber's helper, and I
Speaker 2: own a plumbing company now in North Carolina. I want
Speaker 2: to work for a plumbing company A dollar twenty five
Speaker 2: cents an hour, I'll make over fifty an hour. Nine yeah,
Speaker 2: five way, my number one man more than I'm made well.
Speaker 1: And that's that's this good business right there. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question, if they if they were rushing
Speaker 1: to put seven trillion in infrastructure development into the US
Speaker 1: and it started shooting off into North Carolina and many
Speaker 1: of these towns. I don't know which community you're, sir,
Speaker 1: but in your mind and your business mind, having done
Speaker 1: this half a century or more, you have to assume
Speaker 1: that that would be a net benefit for people that
Speaker 1: are in the trade, such as yourself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that people are failing to see
Speaker 1: this well, George. I appreciate the call this morning. These
Speaker 1: this is the stuff that I'm talking about. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you it's right or wrong, but you have to
Speaker 1: understand the motivations of folks.
Speaker 4: Right, and you're talking about the younger people like the
Speaker 4: Zoomers and stuff, who are just sitting out in the world.
Speaker 4: And you've got a rent for over two thousand dollars
Speaker 4: craziness a month, and I can't even comprehend that. I
Speaker 4: think back in like ninety nine, my first rent I
Speaker 4: think was like four hundred, five hundred dollars a month,
Speaker 4: and that was that was you know, I'm just starting out.
Speaker 4: That was fine. I could do that.
Speaker 1: I called it to ten. I lived on glen Wood
Speaker 1: for eight hundred. Yeah, and it wasn't as I had
Speaker 1: a nicer apartment. I don't like studios, I'm sorry, but yeah.
Speaker 4: And even getting like an old beater car. I saw
Speaker 4: people talking about this, a thread about this on an
Speaker 4: X this weekend, and you know, it's hard to find
Speaker 4: one of these run down five hundred dollars beater cars
Speaker 4: because you get cash for clunkers. Exactly. Yes, they won't
Speaker 4: pass emissions because.
Speaker 1: They wanted to get green and they didn't care who
Speaker 1: it hurt. This is the death by a thousand cuts
Speaker 1: that people remember. They remember that time you decimated the
Speaker 1: entire use car market, and now it's trying to get
Speaker 1: an entry level cars cost prohibitive in many instances, and
Speaker 1: they wanted it that way so they could get mass
Speaker 1: transits transit. And they got those ideas because they in
Speaker 1: a globalist mindset, went over to Davos, or they went
Speaker 1: to Kyoto, the Kyoto Accords, and they sat down as
Speaker 1: a bunch of world leaders and said, this is what
Speaker 1: we're going to do, and everyone can just deal with
Speaker 1: it because they'll have mass transit, even though mass transit
Speaker 1: in Japan is far easier than mass transit in a
Speaker 1: country the size of the United States, and our leaders
Speaker 1: didn't care. And people remembered that.
Speaker 4: And you have the argument like, oh, well, if you
Speaker 4: bring back these jobs, these you know the younger generation
Speaker 4: won't want to do them. Well, a lot of them
Speaker 4: are forced right now. Do you think they'd rather take
Speaker 4: a job at McDonald's nothing against that, but or a
Speaker 4: job at a factory doing something.
Speaker 1: I mean there's oh, it's like the factories. I just
Speaker 1: told you. Maybe it's a job at a factory. But
Speaker 1: maybe because you went you got a CAD degree of
Speaker 1: some sort, you're the one designing the fact.
Speaker 4: Or working in the machines at the factory.
Speaker 1: Correct, correct, Yes, And if you've ever worked at a
Speaker 1: factory and there's like the dude who can come in
Speaker 1: and actually do the mechanical and all your stuff. That
Speaker 1: guy's not making minimum wage to check the truck. Guys
Speaker 1: like that show up in So there are there are opportunities.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's going to look like, but
Speaker 1: I understand why people are willing to sit there and go,
Speaker 1: this needs to be done, or I'm willing to watch
Speaker 1: what happens because they're going, how could it be worse?
Speaker 3: I can't even afford to do anything.
Speaker 4: But also mean, our economy could be completely decimated, or
Speaker 4: the supply chain, right if China says we don't want
Speaker 4: to give you this or that anymore, or the semiconductors
Speaker 4: in Taiwan, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: The way that you I don't know, if you know
Speaker 1: this that happened.
Speaker 4: Before, right, I was saying during COVID, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so a lot of people back then went go,
Speaker 1: this is not a good position to be in. And
Speaker 1: not just during COVID. We've had conflicts all over the world. Remember,
Speaker 1: we didn't have relations with China until the late set,
Speaker 1: I mean really not until the eighties. We only had
Speaker 1: a president go in there in the seventies and it
Speaker 1: was such a big damn deal. So how were things
Speaker 1: fine before the you know, mid eighties and really late eighties,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden they weren't because of
Speaker 1: a globalist mindset. I don't I'm not using the conspiratorial way.
Speaker 1: I'm just that that is an accurate description of it.
Speaker 1: And for too long people have watched others go along
Speaker 1: with it, and then they bore the brunt of it
Speaker 1: every damn time.
Speaker 7: Say good morning, case it, thanks for taking my call. So,
Speaker 7: first thing, I don't think the band aid has been
Speaker 7: ripped off too fast. The uh there was a lot
Speaker 7: of blood underneath the band aids, so it had to
Speaker 7: be taken off. The other side of that is is
Speaker 7: the all this stock market crash just shows me how
Speaker 7: much money wasn't invested in America, and like all our
Speaker 7: four oh one K money is in these foreign governments.
Speaker 7: So I mean, I don't understand uh uh. And the
Speaker 7: fdi C could ensure our four to one case.
Speaker 1: To where it's not in the foreign governments, but it's
Speaker 1: clearly dependent upon them being friendly with us.
Speaker 3: So I think it's yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And I do, Yeah, I do the construction trade, and
Speaker 7: you know, and and it's it seems to be booming now,
Speaker 7: especially this year. There seems to be a lot more
Speaker 7: building going starting. And if you look at the Toyota
Speaker 7: plant and the Wolf's Wolf Speed plant in uh, I
Speaker 7: think it's Chatham and Randolph Counties, right. People are clamoring
Speaker 7: to work there. I mean those Toyota is paying so well,
Speaker 7: thirty seven dollars an hour to start, the offer training
Speaker 7: and everything.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I have capacity. They have the what's
Speaker 1: the in Chattanooga. I think they have thirty percent capacity
Speaker 1: being unused. So like some of this stuff is quick.
Speaker 1: But to your point, if and it's not just guys
Speaker 1: that are literally right in the construction trade, I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine seven trillion in investment dollars clamoring for
Speaker 1: people to build facilities that that.
Speaker 7: I can't even seven trillion dollars. I'm starting to rupew.
Speaker 7: I can't even fathom eleven trillion dollars. It's such a
Speaker 7: huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, kidding, Yeah, absolutely. And let me say
Speaker 1: this because somebody sent me an email and it just
Speaker 1: it just basically was like okay, but like, uh, you
Speaker 1: don't you don't benefit from construction trade. Sure, I do,
Speaker 1: absolutely one. I yes, you know, utilize them. But from
Speaker 1: a from a business standpoint, if there are if there
Speaker 1: is a huge uptick in people that are necessary to
Speaker 1: do these projects or staff these facilities, how do those
Speaker 1: companies recruit.
Speaker 3: One of the ways that they recruit.
Speaker 1: You hear the ads that have run on this radio
Speaker 1: station for years, whether they need people for medical studies
Speaker 1: or they need people for jobs when they expand we
Speaker 1: run ads like that all the time. So now you're
Speaker 1: buying advertising on my show because we probably had the
Speaker 1: biggest swath of people that are in the construction trades
Speaker 1: within the market, and so we're the right radio station
Speaker 1: to advertise for those people. And so if you need
Speaker 1: a bunch of builders for something, or you need a
Speaker 1: bunch of workers for something. This is a pretty good
Speaker 1: place to advertise, and so now I have received some
Speaker 1: sort of renuneration in an ancillary way for this very thing. Here. Again,
Speaker 1: I may not be right. I'm doing the analysis as
Speaker 1: best I can, but I feel like all of my
Speaker 1: years and my childhood where I grew up in Ross's
Speaker 1: childhood with what he saw happened to his town. And
Speaker 1: I'm arguing against people who do things like post tweets
Speaker 1: that when they went to a Walmart outside of DC
Speaker 1: they could smell the humanity. What insight do those people
Speaker 1: have to what's going on in rural North Carolina? And
Speaker 1: the answer is nothing because they detest them and people
Speaker 1: picked up on that with the decisions that they made.
Speaker 1: All Right, I only got about a minute here, so
Speaker 1: ra we'll get into more of it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: start the hour with it. I want to play you
Speaker 1: a piece of audio here real quick, which although yeah,
Speaker 1: actually let me do this because I won't have enough
Speaker 1: time to then add what I need to. We don't
Speaker 1: know whether we know how billionaire and stock market dudes
Speaker 1: feel about it.
Speaker 3: They're not pleased.
Speaker 1: But I'm just trying to provide the perspective or provide
Speaker 1: the opportunity so that people can talk about how they
Speaker 1: feel about it.
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The conversations that I've had with folks, whether it's on
Speaker 1: social media or just friends of mine in general, is
Speaker 1: many of them have watched their whole life in some instances,
Speaker 1: decisions that were made that clearly were not in their
Speaker 1: best interest by people claiming that they were. And they
Speaker 1: watched the expansion of this global thing that folks wanted
Speaker 1: to partake in, where instead of saying okay, but understand
Speaker 1: that we're the swing and you know what in the
Speaker 1: room because we were, we koutout and we did things
Speaker 1: where we decided we would take on the majority of
Speaker 1: defense spending for partner organizations that primarily benefit Europe, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense. They saw all this doze stuff
Speaker 1: that still nobody's offered any apologies or explanation for, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they can't well up a single
Speaker 1: ounce of sympathy for a guy who's got six vacation
Speaker 1: homes in a yacht. They don't care, even though it's
Speaker 1: not as cut and dry in that, and they do
Speaker 1: have skin in the game if they have four to
Speaker 1: ones but they've decided the situation is so broken they're
Speaker 1: willing to take this drastic thing. And and if Trump's
Speaker 1: wanted to do it all at once, arguably it's a
Speaker 1: it's a negotiating position because we can withstand the storm
Speaker 1: better than any other country. And so in a negotiating standpoint,
Speaker 1: if you can get the person, you're negotiating against a
Speaker 1: panic that does nothing but benefit you. So you know,
Speaker 1: that'll be part of the conversation. And I did ask,
Speaker 1: especially if you're out there and you remember what has
Speaker 1: happened to all of these communities, so many of these
Speaker 1: communities and continues to happen. Look, if you live in
Speaker 1: rural North Carolina, are are you happy that the state
Speaker 1: has become very business friendly? And you have seen you
Speaker 1: have seen a lot of growth. The problem is, it's
Speaker 1: not growth that has benefited you unless you're willing to
Speaker 1: uproot your life and move to RTP or to Charlotte,
Speaker 1: or to a handful of other places in the state.
Speaker 1: And you're asking yourself, when are you gonna make decisions
Speaker 1: that might benefit me? This is what that looks like
Speaker 1: to you. And I hope you're right. I hope you're
Speaker 1: right because the decimation of small town North Carolina, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: Virginia Schenectady, which is not a small town, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, communities that aren't the you know, the big
Speaker 1: ones within their states have been left to the side
Speaker 1: because that's how this globalist thing works. That's how it works.
Speaker 1: Those are the folks that are feeding at the trough
Speaker 1: and people are going enough, I can't afford to pay
Speaker 1: these prices that these huge conglomerates which are all in
Speaker 1: on this globalism stuff so that they can essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: do worldwide business, which I don't begrudge them. If you're
Speaker 1: Pepsi Cola and you are Pepsi or Coke and you
Speaker 1: know some of the really big players internationally, I understand that.
Speaker 1: But it hasn't trickled down radio. The what they pay
Speaker 1: radio people is not even close to what they paid
Speaker 1: them forty years ago, and that's due to a lot
Speaker 1: of things, probably less globalism. But it just shows that
Speaker 1: you have these evolving markets and then people are going
Speaker 1: to start wondering, well, why is that happening. Within the
Speaker 1: media industry, it can be fracturing too much consumer choice.
Speaker 1: Within the manufacturing industry, it's it's squarely at the feet
Speaker 1: of this idea that this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna offshore all of these things.
Speaker 1: How many of you have had a portion of the
Speaker 1: company you work for offshore? Part of it? That was
Speaker 1: because we had a scenario where it was it was
Speaker 1: financially it was a good fiduciary decision to do that, right,
Speaker 1: they made a judgment call, and whenever those pro when
Speaker 1: it was time to take profits, it was those who
Speaker 1: were the stockholders who were the one that primarily benefited.
Speaker 3: And people saw that when this is insane.
Speaker 1: I'm busting my ass sixty hours a week for this
Speaker 1: company with the overtime, and yet I just they offered
Speaker 1: me a thirty two cent pay raise over the last
Speaker 1: three years.
Speaker 3: Per hour, and yet our stock split last year.
Speaker 4: How does that work?
Speaker 1: That's who's that's who's steering this right now, and you
Speaker 1: all better recognize because you're arguing with the wrong people. However,
Speaker 1: it does not mean we do not have news that
Speaker 1: we do not have news that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that, and just gave me a big grin over
Speaker 1: the weekend, even though I know nothing about it. What
Speaker 1: the hell is the Minecraft movie? What am I missing?
Speaker 1: And how did that thing make three hundred million dollars?
Speaker 1: And how is Rachel Zegler not on suicide?
Speaker 4: I will tell you this much. And we've been planning
Speaker 4: on this because it's the weekend after Lincoln's birthday. We're
Speaker 4: going to go see it today. We've had this, we
Speaker 4: have our tickets, We're ready to go. Road Link is
Speaker 4: super excited.
Speaker 1: Because everyone's like, the movie's really bad, but the kids
Speaker 1: really love it, which is fine, Like that's not new.
Speaker 4: Right, it doesn't need to be the Godfather or something.
Speaker 4: It's a kid, kid's movie about my kids, and I
Speaker 4: fully expect to sit down and not understand any of it,
Speaker 4: even though I've watched my kid play Minecraft for like
Speaker 4: ten years.
Speaker 1: I saw some video of like a Frankenstein looking thing
Speaker 1: on a chicken, and then if they had like kids
Speaker 1: were losing their crap. They had to throw a bunch
Speaker 1: out of a theater because they were, and like people
Speaker 1: are just chanting along to the whole movie.
Speaker 4: Which is fine. Yeah, they're saying there's it's like an
Speaker 4: experience that they're saying for the kids going to see it,
Speaker 4: and it's you see these videos of they called a
Speaker 4: chicken jockey? Is that what it's in the game that
Speaker 4: I guess you can riote or something, And that might
Speaker 4: be totally off on that, But when they show that,
Speaker 4: I've seen so many videos like this. It's the reveal
Speaker 4: and it's Jack blackowing it's the chicken jockey or whatever
Speaker 4: he says, and the crowd goes crazy.
Speaker 1: There means some wrestler actually in there, who's I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I'm with you, man, is that the game?
Speaker 1: I thought the game was digging holes and stea, I
Speaker 1: know that in a ring.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, Lincoln is super excited about it, super excited,
Speaker 4: can't wait.
Speaker 1: So this movie, this movie is gonna be three hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars on a pittance of a budget, and everyone
Speaker 1: universally agrees for the most part, it's not good. And
Speaker 1: it did three times the opening weekend that snow White.
Speaker 3: No, it did more than that. They did more than
Speaker 3: three times, yeah, four times.
Speaker 4: Now, the studio was expecting it to be a hit
Speaker 4: because of what it is, right, it's the most but
Speaker 4: not this.
Speaker 1: I saw I saw the piece that because it's Warner Brothers, right,
Speaker 1: and they were thinking, what one hundred and ten million,
Speaker 1: was there, hopeful?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then we had three three hundred million, and
Speaker 4: that is to be what they were expecting or projecting.
Speaker 4: Is fine because it is the most popular, most downloaded
Speaker 4: video game of all time Minecraft. Oh wow, is it okay?
Speaker 1: I tried to play it once because I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta see what this is. I got so bored within Like.
Speaker 4: There might be older people in the audience that still
Speaker 4: don't And I'm sure you do know what it is
Speaker 4: because of your grandchildren, but still might not understand. Just
Speaker 4: imagine a digital version of Legos where you can build
Speaker 4: whatever you want and you can make moving parts, and
Speaker 4: you can recreate your favorite things on the TV. Like Lincoln,
Speaker 4: I know, has built the Museum of Natural Sciences downtown
Speaker 4: and Raleigh. He's built that a million times. He's built
Speaker 4: mansion all right.
Speaker 1: So and I don't mean any offense here, but I
Speaker 1: have the thing I thought about that game because you
Speaker 1: told me Lincoln like it is. I said, I bet
Speaker 1: that game. I bet kids on the spectrum.
Speaker 3: Love this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, so that's a fair assumption. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's an adventure mode of creative mode. There's different things
Speaker 1: you can do, but you're talking about a generation of
Speaker 1: kids brought up on this game, and now it's in
Speaker 1: the big screen, so of course they're going to want
Speaker 1: to go see it. And let's face it, remember when
Speaker 1: they made movies that were targeted our generation. Remember when
Speaker 1: The Wizard came out.
Speaker 4: I remember the first time I sat down I saw
Speaker 4: a super mar Brother. So that was the first time
Speaker 4: in the theater that I ever felt disappointment. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: was like, what is this because it was nothing like
Speaker 4: the game?
Speaker 1: Nothing like the game, but like the little little kids stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's face it. You know, my mom had been that's
Speaker 1: a horrible movie. Why do you want to watch that
Speaker 1: for the twentieth time. Oh, I'm super like because he's
Speaker 1: going to Reno and he's gonna win the tournament. Mom,
Speaker 1: he's gonna win the turn.
Speaker 4: No, my parents took me to these movies like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I sat down and saw I remember going to The
Speaker 4: Rocketeer with teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the first live action movie.
Speaker 4: That was an incredible experience and that movie still holds up.
Speaker 4: That was a great movie. My parents took me to that.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I saw of parents who were
Speaker 1: giving reviews is they said there was no politics in it,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't you know, they didn't try to shoehorn
Speaker 1: any although that's not totally accurate. Isn't Jack Black in it?
Speaker 1: And he had that whole thing with his partner down
Speaker 1: in Australia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had a thing where his partner, like you know, was.
Speaker 3: Joked about hoping Trump they don't miss Trump next time.
Speaker 4: Right, And then Jack Black sort of had a falling
Speaker 4: out with him and they canceled that tour because I'm
Speaker 4: sure they immediately had people calling them going, what the
Speaker 4: hell are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Jack Black properly recovered because with him,
Speaker 1: he didn't push back right away, but I think he
Speaker 1: just it was caught him so off guard, even though
Speaker 1: that's clearly who that Kyle Gas guy is, and maybe
Speaker 1: Jack Black is so I but no, I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. There wasn't a controversy that was going to
Speaker 1: be chock full of like weird politics where they were
Speaker 1: trying to indoctrinate kids and people.
Speaker 3: They clearly made money from that.
Speaker 4: That's why the Mario Brothers made movie too, because it
Speaker 4: stayed clear of politics. That's how it was. It's it's
Speaker 4: just the source material. And I don't know what they've
Speaker 4: built upon this move, because you know, what is the
Speaker 4: source material of Minecraft. If you're playing it in the
Speaker 4: venture mode or whatever, you do have the different villains
Speaker 4: and things. You have to survive, and you have to
Speaker 4: survive through the night. There's a day and night cycle
Speaker 4: and during the day it's peaceful and at night the
Speaker 4: monsters come out and you got to survive and see
Speaker 4: how long you can last. And there is the final
Speaker 4: boss called the under Dragon. But this is all common
Speaker 4: knowledge that I'm sure you know absolutely.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Minecraft's huge, get with the times. I play
Speaker 1: it with my kid. It's been around for years, and
Speaker 1: it's not political. That's fine. I don't have Look, I
Speaker 1: want to understand Ross playing. I just wanted to see
Speaker 1: what the hype was about, and I probably aged out
Speaker 1: of it, so I don't know.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 1: Did they get any political indoctrination to tweets you this weekend?
Speaker 1: So for those who don't know, Ross took the fam
Speaker 1: up to tweetsy a little cabin up there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we were like frontiersman, Really.
Speaker 3: Did you settle something?
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna lie. So we're sitting there and I'm
Speaker 4: really feeling like We rented the cabin, which was like
Speaker 4: five minutes from tweet see, like super close and blowing Rock,
Speaker 4: and I felt like Davy Crockett.
Speaker 1: I felt like, wait, did you kill a bar with
Speaker 1: your bare hand? I felt like Lewis and Clark, you know,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. And then I hear like this beeping, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, the sauna is going off. The sauna had
Speaker 1: a Oh no, the cabin was nice. Huh oh, it's
Speaker 1: super nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Did you go to the basement and pick a
Speaker 3: toy or no?
Speaker 4: No basement?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, no, was it a cabin, no
Speaker 1: basement in the woods? Right, it was a cabin that
Speaker 1: was in the woods. You didn't go to the basement
Speaker 1: pick a toy. That's what you do, all right. So
Speaker 1: no basement on that one. So you had a sauna
Speaker 1: you were roughing at like Lewis. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was sitting there and I felt like my forefathers,
Speaker 4: you know, and I really felt this sort of you know,
Speaker 4: just this grit.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then the doorbell rang and it was the door
Speaker 4: dash and the food. The food. We got food from
Speaker 4: a local Blowing.
Speaker 1: Rock, a Native American guide.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we got out back and the Outback was so
Speaker 4: good of the Outback Steakhouse of Blowing Rocks, so.
Speaker 1: Well, they don't have one.
Speaker 3: They have one in Blowing.
Speaker 4: Rock they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to do right, it's got to be on the freeway.
Speaker 4: But tweets he was so nice. We're probably gonna go again.
Speaker 4: Lincoln had an amazing time. He was smiling the entire time.
Speaker 4: The people, there's a lot of the employees there were
Speaker 4: so amazing and understanding. I couldn't we couldn't have asked
Speaker 4: for a better time. You're talking about one of the
Speaker 4: happiest kids on the planet during that span of time
Speaker 4: while we were there. It was such a great time
Speaker 4: and we went on everything, absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: Well, how much is Jack because I know nothing.
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 1: There's the train because you can see it from the road.
Speaker 4: The one part everybody's like always gonna he's gonna love
Speaker 4: the train, you know, Sony memories. The one part that
Speaker 4: we were sort of like, eh, the train. The ride
Speaker 4: was great, but in the middle of it, there's like
Speaker 4: an interactive thing where it stops and there's like you know,
Speaker 4: rob yeah, and there's like a train robbery. It went
Speaker 4: on a bit too long for us, where Lincoln was
Speaker 4: like can we just get to the top so I
Speaker 4: can ride some rides. And that's probably the only the
Speaker 4: only critique he would have. It was so fun, and
Speaker 4: I went on things that never normally would go on,
Speaker 4: like the thing that takes you way up in the air,
Speaker 4: looks like a piston and then drops you repeatedly. Right,
Speaker 4: I don't want to go on that thing, you know.
Speaker 4: I don't like like roller coasters, and I don't like
Speaker 4: the rides that go up high.
Speaker 3: But you're a people mover guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, completely, Yeah, So I enjoyed the train. I was like,
Speaker 4: this is not long enough, but.
Speaker 3: Good time there, so fun.
Speaker 4: It was great.
Speaker 3: So you got you're already talking about going back there, were.
Speaker 4: Thinking about getting a season pass because it's only like
Speaker 4: three hours away.
Speaker 1: No, it's and it's and it's you know, it's highway.
Speaker 1: I mean you just you just take boom boom boom
Speaker 1: and then uh you got that highway through uh up
Speaker 1: to boom there. So it's it's pretty quick. I'll show
Speaker 1: you cut around road too, so you can avoid boone
Speaker 1: next time, save you fifteen minutes. All right, all right,
Speaker 1: let me grab a Jamal's call real quick here. All right,
Speaker 1: Jamal just got a two three minutes.
Speaker 9: What's up, Hey, Ksey. I just want to say this
Speaker 9: real quick, Casey. I grew up in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 9: and I've always tried to get people understand that Donald
Speaker 9: Trump is a nineteen eighties man. I grew up in
Speaker 9: Rocky Mount, North Carolina. We had textile plants like Textifi,
Speaker 9: Rocky Mountain Mills, we had Stony Creek, Wilson used to
Speaker 9: have Lee Stratus genes and Levi. All those textile plants
Speaker 9: are gone. Why because they opened up the markets, They
Speaker 9: went to cheaper labor and went to countries where they
Speaker 9: didn't have to follow the exact strain Iss safety requirements
Speaker 9: they do here in America. When Donald Trump didn't set
Speaker 9: it back in nineteen eighty eight about how countries was
Speaker 9: ripping us off. Then if you really look at the
Speaker 9: Oprah interview with him, this is literally the Donald Trump
Speaker 9: that we have. That's why I for them. I knew
Speaker 9: in these tests what he is trying to do is
Speaker 9: he know we still have these plants here in North Carolina,
Speaker 9: here in New York, and they're in New York and
Speaker 9: wiscons and all these places, and he's trying to force
Speaker 9: these companies to come back, because truth be told, if
Speaker 9: they really wanted to stop this, not President Trump, If
Speaker 9: they wanted to stop this, all they had to say
Speaker 9: is the United States would not import products made by
Speaker 9: slave labor. We will. And if you are a company
Speaker 9: in the United States and you are in a country,
Speaker 9: if you if you're an American company and you are
Speaker 9: having your products made in a country that pays people
Speaker 9: less than four dollars and twenty five an hour, which
Speaker 9: was minimum wage back when in nineteen ninety four, means
Speaker 9: use because.
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying, But that gets a little dicey.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what in a lot of countries
Speaker 1: three let's say it's three dollars an hour, is in
Speaker 1: no way slave labor would be higher than the prevailing
Speaker 1: wage that exists.
Speaker 3: So you'd have to have a lighting.
Speaker 1: Scale as to figure out what constitutes slave labor.
Speaker 3: And it could be.
Speaker 1: And but you could do it as simply as looking
Speaker 1: at the cost of living in those countries to make
Speaker 1: that determination.
Speaker 3: But some people would say that's a little heavy handed.
Speaker 1: But picking a fixed number doesn't translate to a lot
Speaker 1: of countries, is all that I'm saying.
Speaker 9: But see, but But here's my pushback in AINKC. The
Speaker 9: reason why they did that, where they went to these
Speaker 9: countries where they had two thousand, regardless of what their
Speaker 9: costs of living wage is, regardless of what their couset
Speaker 9: of living is. If you would have held them the
Speaker 9: four twenty five, that would have made those countries and
Speaker 9: those people a lot better to where they could be
Speaker 9: able to.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I mean to cut you out. I totally
Speaker 1: think that is the net impact and thank you for
Speaker 1: the call. That is the net impact of tariffs. That's
Speaker 1: where we are. So anyway, we'll get more calls and
Speaker 1: much more to come here in just a few minutes
Speaker 1: here on the CaCO Day radio program, the Cacoday Rate program,
Speaker 1: and you know, here's the thing, and then we'll grab
Speaker 1: a couple of calls. The disingenuous nature of and I look,
Speaker 1: I understand this is gonna happen. Like all of these
Speaker 1: quote unquote analysts pretending why they didn't understand this may
Speaker 1: be so mad on Friday, they're like, oh, look at
Speaker 1: these islands that are included on the list. These guys
Speaker 1: are idiots. Only penguins live on those islands. Do you
Speaker 1: know why they include I immediately knew why immediately. And
Speaker 1: I'm not some financial analyst. I'm just a dude who
Speaker 1: pays attention a little bit but also understands the manipulation
Speaker 1: that happens.
Speaker 3: All right, So the reason that.
Speaker 1: You include islands that may be classified as protectorates or
Speaker 1: you know whatever, maybe their own standalone country is you
Speaker 1: have to you have to everybody has to be on
Speaker 1: notice all at once, because if not, if you only,
Speaker 1: if you only decide to tear off half the countries,
Speaker 1: then the decision is not whether to restore things to
Speaker 1: the United States. Does market want to be in but
Speaker 1: is there a workaround that is advantageous. And for all
Speaker 1: the jokes about the what was the Johnston and whatever?
Speaker 1: These atolls that are essentially out there that are technically
Speaker 1: Australian protectorates but not really this is like New Caledonia
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, is they have different tariff levels.
Speaker 1: And yes, I know what you're saying. You're saying, well
Speaker 1: that that doesn't explain an island with penguins on it. Well,
Speaker 1: what if I told you that that island with penguins
Speaker 1: on it had listed trade in twenty twenty three of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Do you think it's because the penguins
Speaker 1: opened a plant. No, they're too busy running around stealing
Speaker 1: eggs or whatever.
Speaker 3: Which remember we.
Speaker 1: Learned that with the two gay penguins in the zoo,
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh, they just kept stealing eggs. They
Speaker 1: want to be parents, and I'm like, they're penguins, bro,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's as deep as that, So
Speaker 1: how would that happen would happen? Because you know it's
Speaker 1: like drop shipping. Okay, in fact, let me let me
Speaker 1: let him explain it to you.
Speaker 4: Uh the uh yeah, here we go.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So Margaret Brennan, of course she's doing the interview. She
Speaker 1: thinks she's got Lutnick, right, she got him in a box.
Speaker 1: Oh you guys use AI. That's what they literally accused
Speaker 1: him of using AI. And the guy just laughs at her,
Speaker 1: as he should. And I'm sorry, Margaret Brennan or somebody
Speaker 1: around her knows this, and they're being dishonest by pretending
Speaker 1: they don't.
Speaker 10: Like, why are the Hurd and MacDonald Islands, which don't
Speaker 10: export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited
Speaker 10: by penguins, why do they face a ten percent tariffs.
Speaker 10: Did you use AI to generate this?
Speaker 1: No, she's being intentionally dishonest. She's being she knows and
Speaker 1: she's being intentionally dishonest. And that's what's gonna make this
Speaker 1: even harder because all these people are going to continue
Speaker 1: to lie to you.
Speaker 8: No, the idea, Look, the idea.
Speaker 11: Is why are they on the list?
Speaker 12: Off?
Speaker 8: Because the idea what happens is it if you leave
Speaker 8: anything off the list, the countries that try to basically
Speaker 8: arbitrage America go through those countries to US, any country,
Speaker 8: like we had tariffs.
Speaker 1: The President put tariffs.
Speaker 8: On China right in twenty eighteen, and then what China
Speaker 8: started doing is they started going through other countries to America.
Speaker 8: They just built through other countries through America.
Speaker 1: And so the.
Speaker 13: President knows that he's tired of it.
Speaker 1: And he's going to fix that.
Speaker 8: So basically he said, look, I can't let any part
Speaker 8: of the world be a place where China or other
Speaker 8: countries can ship through them. So he ended those loopholes,
Speaker 8: these ridiculous loopholes. And now what he's trying to say
Speaker 8: is I'm going to fix the trade deficit of the
Speaker 8: United States of America. It's a national security issue. We
Speaker 8: need to make medicine. We need to make seven conductors,
Speaker 8: we need to make ships, we need to have steel
Speaker 8: in aluminum. Come on, we need the greatness of America
Speaker 8: to actually be built in America. And he's tired of
Speaker 8: getting ripped off by the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just had to explained to her, and like it's
Speaker 1: this is so simple. This is so because China. Remember,
Speaker 1: China is willing to do whatever they're willing to do.
Speaker 1: They've been manipulating the steel market for years, manipulating their
Speaker 1: own currency. Because here's what happens when China suffers financially,
Speaker 1: and I have no sympathy for him.
Speaker 3: They have so over extended themselves.
Speaker 1: The brunt of the financial kick in Sri Lanka was
Speaker 1: a result of China took the majority of that. From
Speaker 1: an outside investor standpoint, they took her right on the chin.
Speaker 1: And when China's economy flails and they're entering very dark times,
Speaker 1: do you know what happens to world currency investments? US
Speaker 1: T bills? Look it up every time you have had
Speaker 1: China or any of the major economies downward trend. You know,
Speaker 1: when Soros was able to come in and others like him.
Speaker 1: He was not the only one to do it and
Speaker 1: short the British pound. It was a mass influx out
Speaker 1: of investments that had been in parts of Europe that
Speaker 1: came through to the US.
Speaker 3: Because people, when things.
Speaker 1: Are crazy, people crave security, and there has been no
Speaker 1: instrument as secure as a US Treasury bond in modern history.
Speaker 1: There may be better deals at times, but not when
Speaker 1: China's on the ropes, because China really is the number
Speaker 1: two player with that stuff. So I mean, this is
Speaker 1: it's it's almost an act of war what he's doing
Speaker 1: to China because he's putting China in a box. Man,
Speaker 1: they're in a box. I don't know how they're going
Speaker 1: to react, who knows. But if you're gonna, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna just pretend that you're not even attempt to understand it,
Speaker 1: then I don't want to hear you voice concerns about
Speaker 1: it because you may know it. You're just sitting there
Speaker 1: doing penguin memes, which were funny. I even retweeted one,
Speaker 1: but they're not reality. The reality is if let's say
Speaker 1: that rossis Stan is some country and they're dangerous because
Speaker 1: they're always trying to dominate the worlds, you're all going to.
Speaker 3: Pay all right.
Speaker 1: See that's literally their country slogan. Right do you want
Speaker 1: to do you want to do business with them?
Speaker 3: Do you want to know? You don't want a better
Speaker 3: important comany?
Speaker 4: You bet well?
Speaker 1: Okay, but let's say that America is like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna so that Rosa Stan comes over to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Caseyville, which is it doesn't have a stand
Speaker 1: in it, so it's a lot better than like, hey man,
Speaker 1: we can't get our goods in there. How about if
Speaker 1: we grease the skids and then you export it from
Speaker 1: your country because you have very low low tariffs, and
Speaker 1: now you're a drop shipper. It's drop shipping, that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: It's essentially drop shipping, right and and Chinese fentanyls suppliers
Speaker 1: do this where because they realize if stuff comes in
Speaker 1: from China, they really scrutinize it through the ports of entry.
Speaker 1: But if you want to mail a box and it's
Speaker 1: actually coming from Italy, because China was able to have
Speaker 1: these close connections with Wuhan and northern Italy, which is
Speaker 1: why COVID went to Italy first. After China, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's less scrutiny there. That's what you
Speaker 1: saw on a global scale.
Speaker 3: All right, Lee, what's up?
Speaker 14: Thanks?
Speaker 6: Hey, guys that were all doing this morning?
Speaker 1: Pretty good, sir, just analyzing the entirety of the world
Speaker 1: economics system and making fun of Rachel's for you.
Speaker 6: I hear you, man, I Hey, I First, I want
Speaker 6: to say I appreciate what you guys do. Listen to
Speaker 6: you every day, and us North Carolinians really appreciate what
Speaker 6: you guys do and everybody around the country. But I
Speaker 6: got something a little lighthearted to talk to you about
Speaker 6: this morning.
Speaker 5: Ross.
Speaker 6: I heard you took get your family to three three
Speaker 6: railroads this morning obvious weekend.
Speaker 1: Yep, did y'all have a good don dude?
Speaker 4: It was so nice and yeah, like I said, the
Speaker 4: people that worked there were so understanding and welcoming, because
Speaker 4: sometimes when you go to a place like that and
Speaker 4: your child is autism, you don't know what to expect.
Speaker 4: You could go one way or the other. And it
Speaker 4: was fantastic.
Speaker 9: Man.
Speaker 6: Just that hit me real hard and my heart. My
Speaker 6: wife is the special education director at Northfield Strict In
Speaker 6: School in Saulisbury, North Carolina, and just doing God's work
Speaker 6: working with kids with special needs. And you know, we
Speaker 6: love these kids. I mean, they're they are they're just
Speaker 6: like every other kid, and they need a safe place
Speaker 6: to go. Man, And we see Railroad also holds a
Speaker 6: place in my heart. I've been going my entire life.
Speaker 5: My mom and my aunt were both in the Magic
Speaker 5: Show and tang Can Girls, and the employees there have
Speaker 5: been great since since I can remember. And my boys,
Speaker 5: Oliver and Maverick, they love it, man.
Speaker 6: They dress up like cowboys, they get the red bandits
Speaker 6: every time.
Speaker 14: Man.
Speaker 6: It's and it's just a great place for kids to
Speaker 6: go and have fun and be kids and and live
Speaker 6: that American dream of you know, conquering the West or
Speaker 6: conquering the frontier, and it just it's truly a great place.
Speaker 6: And I'm very happy that you guys had a good
Speaker 6: time and your son had a blast and and a man,
Speaker 6: it just say here it makes me feel great, feel
Speaker 6: good about this state and something that's part of this
Speaker 6: state doing well and people are still enjoying going to it.
Speaker 6: That just makes me really happy. As in North Carolinia.
Speaker 1: Sure, you're making it hard for me to continue to
Speaker 1: have my beef with it, you understand, that right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, you know, Texas claims to be the big
Speaker 6: cowboys state, but let me tell you, North Carolina were
Speaker 6: cowboys first and and we uh and if it weren't
Speaker 6: for us, we wouldn't have Texas. So you got to
Speaker 6: remember that cowboys were in North Carolina way before they
Speaker 6: were in in Texas.
Speaker 1: So would you know, you want a fun fact, sir,
Speaker 1: just as from somebody who's kind of up on the
Speaker 1: cowboy lord? Do you know the first group that was
Speaker 1: that was essentially called cowboys where they were and they
Speaker 1: were cattle.
Speaker 3: Punched a telling, get me wrong?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Florida, I remember, correct, Florida?
Speaker 2: Was it Florida? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I hate that.
Speaker 7: Well I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't have any beef with Florida to be honest,
Speaker 6: but yeah, that is a little upsetting that Florida first.
Speaker 1: Cowboys because that was really the land used that you
Speaker 1: know that they can thanks for the call therely, I
Speaker 1: got to go to weather, but that was the you know,
Speaker 1: that's what they were using that because it wasn't really
Speaker 1: you know, until we were from a modern perspective to
Speaker 1: really dive into Florida and create the Florida that we
Speaker 1: understand it was.
Speaker 3: It was really good for livestock.
Speaker 1: So yeah, anyway, raced agic, he's a cowboy. You standing
Speaker 1: by maybe hey at that just checking their phone. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, are we on the phone?
Speaker 4: You never know where?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So uh okay, all right, happy Monday. How you doing this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: This fine day? You know, doing well? I'm happy.
Speaker 15: I want to I'm doing better and yes, yes, and
Speaker 15: I put that on the players. Unfortunately, that was sloppy
Speaker 15: at the end the game.
Speaker 3: Saw that that call on Cooper flag was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was too bad.
Speaker 3: But you got to make free throws.
Speaker 15: Too, So you do you doing that, especially when you
Speaker 15: need them. I know that from experience. I missed too
Speaker 15: with a we were down by I forget it.
Speaker 3: I miss it was yeah, my whole bracket, but I'm
Speaker 3: sure it did.
Speaker 15: I don't know if anybody has.
Speaker 4: Houston Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I have Florida. My other bracket is well.
Speaker 15: You're okay, okay, Now I didn't realize it. I didn't
Speaker 15: realize Houston was h that's strong of a of a
Speaker 15: basketball program, but I guess so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know there are I don't know, I
Speaker 1: look this up. There are a SEC teams that can
Speaker 1: beat them in the final four.
Speaker 3: You know that.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, okay, it's weird.
Speaker 3: Couldn't get it done?
Speaker 1: No, no, yeah, what's up? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 15: Damp and if anything, we get wetter before we get
Speaker 15: drier in the short term, meaning today, rains now started
Speaker 15: to come in through the Triangle and Try has already
Speaker 15: getting it. Even some areas of yellow showing up around
Speaker 15: Brown's Summit and Stokesdale. Some heavier rain, so we'll be
Speaker 15: in and out of it today. Rain and showers, even
Speaker 15: the occasional thunderstorm could be some locally heavy rain. Might
Speaker 15: get to the little bit seventies. That might be a
Speaker 15: little bit of a stretch, so we'll see. We may
Speaker 15: stay in the up sixties in some areas, depends on
Speaker 15: how much train you get. But we could see an
Speaker 15: inch maybe more in spots, showers, maybe even a thunderstorm
Speaker 15: until early tonight. But it gets better as we get
Speaker 15: into tomorrow. We will clear. We'll be in sunshine. But
Speaker 15: I got a cool northwest breeze mid upper fifties tomorrow
Speaker 15: and then Wednesday morning we're back to maybe some heavier
Speaker 15: jackets that you probably packed the way for the wintertime,
Speaker 15: especially on the kids. I'm kind of catering to the
Speaker 15: little ones. Low to mid thirties, so little chili Wednesday morning,
Speaker 15: maybe some patchy frost and closer to sixty in the afternoon,
Speaker 15: and then seventy or close to it on Thursday, and
Speaker 15: then another frontal come in late week, some more showers.
Speaker 15: But the weekend right now, if we want to go
Speaker 15: that far ahead, looks beautiful. Sixty to sixty five with
Speaker 15: lows in the forties, kind of that deep blue sky
Speaker 15: you know you love to see. We're gonna have that
Speaker 15: tomorrow too, and Wednesday, but instead of this kind of
Speaker 15: early season humidity and rain that we've had, we'll get Tuesday,
Speaker 15: Wednesday looking real good. Thursdays not bad after the rain today.
Speaker 15: End of the week doesn't look great. If the upcoming weekend,
Speaker 15: if it holds away, looks right now, Casey, it's really nice.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, appreciate it talking an hour, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. All right, coming up on the show, Oh
Speaker 1: I saw dude, did you see the video of what
Speaker 1: happened to the Hooti rebels over the weekend? Did you
Speaker 1: see this latest strike? I have some thoughts and if
Speaker 1: you have it, I'll describe it to you. Coming up
Speaker 1: Kcoday radio program and just really our lives have evolved,
Speaker 1: whether it's the hometown you grew up and being decimated
Speaker 1: by NAFTA, changes that you've made, industries that you've entered
Speaker 1: and gotten out of, and what all the you know,
Speaker 1: the financial stuff really means for people and how they're
Speaker 1: approaching how they feel about it. And I think that
Speaker 1: there was a grave miscalculation among the quote unquote ruling
Speaker 1: class of how people feel, even people regardless of politics,
Speaker 1: where they just feel that they have been they have
Speaker 1: not been for decades, the ones who were in any
Speaker 1: position to benefit unless they were able to. Really it
Speaker 1: turns into classes at some point, but at some point
Speaker 1: also the majority is the lower classes, and so this
Speaker 1: is them kind of seizing that ring right now. One
Speaker 1: of the other evolutions that I remember growing up as
Speaker 1: a kid who was became news aware during the First
Speaker 1: Gulf War is being able to watch them stick missiles
Speaker 1: down chimneys or up camel's butts, right, and then you
Speaker 1: could just watch that on the news every night, which
Speaker 1: was kind of crazy, man. Right, It's just like, yeah, do.
Speaker 3: You remember those videos?
Speaker 1: Do they were just bunker busting bag Dad?
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, exactly. Remember that like the black and white
Speaker 4: we see, like the missiles going up, it looks like
Speaker 4: fireworks and coming to.
Speaker 1: It was crazy, absolutely crazy. So that continues to be
Speaker 1: a thing. I think I have seen the dumbest one
Speaker 1: of those, now not on the part of the US
Speaker 1: military doing the missilin, but rather the people they missiled.
Speaker 1: How many of you saw the video? You probably heard
Speaker 1: the story, but how many of you saw the video
Speaker 1: of US air strike over the weekend? I saw numbers
Speaker 1: as high as one hundred. This report says seventy. So
Speaker 1: we'll call it somewhere in between of boothy rebels along
Speaker 1: with Iranian Revolutionary Guard consultants or whatever. They needed to
Speaker 1: have a meeting, right because they've been they've been kind
Speaker 1: of getting their butts handed to them the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, and for some reason I will never understand,
Speaker 1: they decide to hold the meeting outside nothing covering over them,
Speaker 1: in a giant circle, like they're at some corporate synergy retreat. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: what do you think happens as they're standing around in
Speaker 1: their diversity circle or whatever the hell that thing is
Speaker 1: getting the plans for which ships are going to shoot
Speaker 1: out and how many drones are going to take out
Speaker 1: they meet, they all get turned to mist.
Speaker 4: I mean it could have been worse. They could have
Speaker 4: been in like an ex formation instead of a circle.
Speaker 1: You're just asking for it that point.
Speaker 4: Maybe they were inflatables.
Speaker 1: Really you think they were doing the Calai thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's if you longer VI shows them arriving in trucks
Speaker 1: and getting in that formation. But is how who makes
Speaker 1: that calla We're gonna get into more of this year
Speaker 1: just because I'm running up against time, Like like who decided, Hey.
Speaker 3: You know what we should do this?
Speaker 1: Like they're down in the bunker and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's very stuffy in here, and Abdul has gas and wow,
Speaker 1: this is gross. Let's go outside. Well hey he had
Speaker 1: some bad goat or whatever, I don't know, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we should hold this outside.
Speaker 3: It's so nice.
Speaker 1: You know they do that at the Highwoods Building for
Speaker 1: the one company where they have like the bean bag tournament.
Speaker 3: They're all working outside.
Speaker 4: Ye have a corn hole and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's one of the other
Speaker 1: companies the building that does that every year. So but
Speaker 1: the problem is you're not the people who are do
Speaker 1: property management or whatever that company is.
Speaker 3: You're the hoothy rebels.
Speaker 1: So if you stand outside, we can see you, like
Speaker 1: even the vehicle. Even the North Vietnamese realized that they
Speaker 1: really had to do their business down in tunnels, as
Speaker 1: as did Hamas. For God's sakes, right, Look, we don't
Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen here in about an hour when
Speaker 1: we get rolling on the stock market. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have a lot of predictions. I don't expect from
Speaker 1: a stock market perspective, it's going to be good. But
Speaker 1: as the running theme has been on this show, people
Speaker 1: who are deciding that the only way to evaluate the
Speaker 1: economy is based on the stock market are the reason
Speaker 1: largely that we're here and these things are happening right
Speaker 1: now because long ago the majority of Americans, even those
Speaker 1: who might have some skin in the game, you know,
Speaker 1: like four O ones or whatever, have divorced themselves of
Speaker 1: the notion that the stock market is financial reality. Why
Speaker 1: because theirs has been so upturned versus what they may
Speaker 1: remember growing up. If you grew up in a small
Speaker 1: town in North Carolina that had some sort of industry
Speaker 1: pre NAFTA, probably doesn't now, and it's a shell of
Speaker 1: its former self, and it's not just little ones, you know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I really I'm really happy
Speaker 1: that we did when we were relocating our headquarters for
Speaker 1: our Triad Radio group was to move it into Downtown
Speaker 1: high Point. I know that sounds crazy, and it kind
Speaker 1: of did to me when our market manager at the
Speaker 1: time said this is where they were looking. And then
Speaker 1: I had a chance to go down there. And for
Speaker 1: those of you who have never been to downtown high Point,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, it's one of the weirdest places where it
Speaker 1: was and it's getting but it's getting remarkably better. But
Speaker 1: it was. I remember going the first time I went
Speaker 1: to our Triad stations when they first decided to carry
Speaker 1: the show in both markets. And I'm there and one
Speaker 1: of the things I do is I familiarize myself with
Speaker 1: the areas best I can.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't just go over and do visits. I want
Speaker 1: to figure out. I want to make friends over there,
Speaker 1: business acquaintances, play a little golf because I like to
Speaker 1: play golf and I like losing golf balls. Thank you
Speaker 1: to several of the courses around the Triad for accommodating
Speaker 1: my needs and just really get to know the area
Speaker 1: because a lot of times people broadcast in multiple cities.
Speaker 1: It's the way that radio is, and and but they
Speaker 1: don't know anything about where they're broadcasting, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I would never want that. So I see triad triangle
Speaker 1: in this broadcast area as I have an obligation to
Speaker 1: understand it. And I remember the first time I went
Speaker 1: to downtown high Point in the middle of a business
Speaker 1: day and I thought, you know, that's the Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: episode where everyone just disappears except to do with glasses, right,
Speaker 1: and he just wants to read books. And it was
Speaker 1: that weird fe It was like the Rapture. It happened,
Speaker 1: and it was because high Point was a city that
Speaker 1: was built on pre dafta, the current that you know,
Speaker 1: the current version of it. It's why when you go
Speaker 1: down there, they had all of these really nice storefronts
Speaker 1: that were only doing anything what twice a year when
Speaker 1: he had furniture markets and a few other things.
Speaker 3: You have high Point Theater down there and some others.
Speaker 1: But really, if you want to talk about a pretty
Speaker 1: decent side city that was decimated by the offshoring of
Speaker 1: furniture manufacturing, that's it. Go look at high Point, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and they have struggled and they have done things to
Speaker 1: try to rebuild. And the building that they put up
Speaker 1: next to the baseball stadium there, which is where our
Speaker 1: headquarters are now for the Triad, has a full food
Speaker 1: haul in it. It's got the key key realties in there.
Speaker 1: Cold Well Insurance, big insurance thing, and other things are
Speaker 1: coming back. There's some nice restaurants that have opened down there.
Speaker 1: They're building a new hotel literally right next to that
Speaker 1: baseball stadium here as we speak, and they're figuring out
Speaker 1: ways to have to reinvent themselves. But that was a
Speaker 1: town that felt the brunt of what was going on,
Speaker 1: and the communities around it where people may have commuted
Speaker 1: in there. Those people give zero flips about whether your
Speaker 1: stock portfolio as a billionaire is doing okay today because
Speaker 1: they feel like you sold them out, and to some extent,
Speaker 1: you did, whether you knew it or not. So that
Speaker 1: is why, and this is what the media fails to comprehend.
Speaker 1: And these people ruh, scream and bloody murder like Bill
Speaker 1: Ackerman and these guys fail to comprehend is they don't
Speaker 1: have any sympathy for you. And many, many folks from
Speaker 1: that are in their fifties all the way down to
Speaker 1: the current crop coming out are telling themselves, I can't
Speaker 1: afford this the path to success. And we get in
Speaker 1: these arguments like you need to pull up your bootstraps,
Speaker 1: but the numbers don't reflect that. Even when you just
Speaker 1: for inflationment, the path to having what you need has
Speaker 1: been continually chipped away, and even when financial times are good,
Speaker 1: Ultimately the largest of the profits within a company are bored,
Speaker 1: are won by the investors rather than the workers. And
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you to go full COMMI here, but
Speaker 1: the expectation is you may not make the investment, but
Speaker 1: if the company's doing well and they're making more money,
Speaker 1: then maybe you should pay people more, or maybe things
Speaker 1: shouldn't outpace the growth of pay because the very same
Speaker 1: companies are then charging more and people see that and
Speaker 1: they don't have sympathy. And the fact that, as I
Speaker 1: think Kylon News said it, a bunch of protests that
Speaker 1: looked like AARP conferences were banging around the US over
Speaker 1: the weekend. I understand why those people are upset. They're
Speaker 1: on the cusp of retirement or they're in retirement. They're
Speaker 1: also the ones that went and speculated and bought three
Speaker 1: air and B properties and have turned Florida into likely
Speaker 1: a property value collapse here in the near future. And
Speaker 1: these big companies, these big, big companies that went in
Speaker 1: and started buying up all the residential speculating on that
Speaker 1: and have decimated while they driven up home prices. And
Speaker 1: if you own a home, that doesn't do you any good.
Speaker 1: Either you don't realize the profit from it and you
Speaker 1: pay higher property tax which have gone up significantly for
Speaker 1: so many of our listeners, or you do sell it
Speaker 1: and then you got to buy another home and it
Speaker 1: chews up any equity because the other.
Speaker 3: Home you're buying's more expensive.
Speaker 1: The only people benefit from that, or maybe people who
Speaker 1: lived in the I have a guy from down the
Speaker 1: street from me and moved from San Francisco Bay Area
Speaker 1: and was able to buy just with the little bit
Speaker 1: of equity he had because the home price differential was
Speaker 1: so different. So those folks are the majority of people,
Speaker 1: and they've said enough is enough. The grocery prices are
Speaker 1: out of control. I can't afford to do the extra
Speaker 1: little things that my parents were able to provide for us,
Speaker 1: even though maybe only my dad work. But now we
Speaker 1: have two incomes in our household and they're willing to
Speaker 1: watch this happen. What's happening here, You don't have to
Speaker 1: agree with it, but you need to understand it. And
Speaker 1: I feel like it should be simple to understand. This
Speaker 1: is largely the fault of the people who are screaming
Speaker 1: the loudest right now, and many folks are not going
Speaker 1: to care.
Speaker 3: You know why.
Speaker 1: It is the very same portfolio they're looking at, a
Speaker 1: four to one right now, was what it was a
Speaker 1: year ago, and you all didn't there was none of
Speaker 1: this chicken little sky is falling because Biden was in
Speaker 1: charge all of the expert class.
Speaker 3: Nobody cares anymore. They don't believe you because.
Speaker 1: You've lied to them, or you've just been fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1: In the same way that whatever consultant they hired for
Speaker 1: the Hoothy Rebels and was like, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: they brought in some outside consulting and said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go outside. We're gonna have a team building exercise.
Speaker 1: Everybody get in a circle just so some dude can
Speaker 1: get the most amazing video at the Drone Center. Right
Speaker 1: because seventy of these idiots decided to stand in a
Speaker 1: circle within satellite view, Like how dumb is that? Holy
Speaker 1: hell man, and just just turn him to mist and
Speaker 1: now we get to see it times they are a changing.
Speaker 1: Ross was asking if the guy was wearing headphones? What
Speaker 1: were you?
Speaker 3: Was asking me some weird questions during the break.
Speaker 4: Now you're saying, what could have made it better than
Speaker 4: the you know, the X pattern on the ground of
Speaker 4: the circle pattern, and probably if they were listening to
Speaker 4: a walkman while they were bombing?
Speaker 3: Right, you have that in the system.
Speaker 1: This isle, I am the flight leader of an America's
Speaker 1: SOULT course sent to.
Speaker 11: Recover Colonel Ted Masters, whom you are lawfully holding prisoner.
Speaker 3: Why do you have that in the system.
Speaker 4: It's amazing to me how much I do have in
Speaker 4: the system. That just comes in handy. I've known.
Speaker 1: First, I thought you were referencing that Russell Clod Crow
Speaker 1: Drone movie. It just came out, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if anyone in the military would watch that did like
Speaker 1: the whole I wasn't even in the military, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's no way that it runs like that. Like Crow
Speaker 1: just ignores his CEOs, listens to walkman's while he's bombing people, ignores,
Speaker 1: refuses to do anything, and just does whatever he wants.
Speaker 4: I think I think he'd be surprised that the people
Speaker 4: in the military would call and I would say probably
Speaker 4: ninety percent of them would say that what helps them
Speaker 4: when they fly is their walkman and eighties rock.
Speaker 1: And then I thought you were making the Guardians of
Speaker 1: the Galaxy reference, which that kind of sounded like too.
Speaker 1: So okay, I don't know, man, but that video's absolutely bonkers.
Speaker 1: You should check it out. All right, let me grab
Speaker 1: a call here on the furniture thing, Jim, what's up? Hello, Jim?
Speaker 12: Hey, how you doing today?
Speaker 3: What can I do for you?
Speaker 12: For people who've moved here in the last twenty twenty
Speaker 12: five years, Back when Kuwait was invaded and you know,
Speaker 12: there was a lot of destruction and buildings were destroyed,
Speaker 12: people were harassed that went into their apartments and homes
Speaker 12: and just trashed the interior of the homes. Well, after
Speaker 12: they were freed by US, they had to rebuild and
Speaker 12: one of the things they needed to do is buy
Speaker 12: a lot of furniture. What did they do? Kuwait put
Speaker 12: a twenty five percent tariff on the furniture coming in
Speaker 12: from the United States, and it did not help. It
Speaker 12: did not help high Point at all. And before the
Speaker 12: NAFTA got signed, high Point was doing well enough. They
Speaker 12: had a Rolls Royce dealership on Main Street.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it's still I think they still
Speaker 3: have one.
Speaker 1: Actually, I know seen some high end something or other
Speaker 1: dealership there. I can't remember which what it was. I
Speaker 1: was a little surprised to see it.
Speaker 12: The next time I go down there, I'll have to
Speaker 12: take a look.
Speaker 1: Yeah again up Main Street past instead of turning right
Speaker 1: on Eastchester, just keep going north. It's I don't know,
Speaker 1: not too much further up there by that breakfast joining
Speaker 1: up there. So how you look it up? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: to your point, yes, but but you get you brought
Speaker 1: up another good example. It's also the American consumer sees
Speaker 1: stuff like that. They see us go waste blood and
Speaker 1: treasure in the in the in the deserts of Kuwait
Speaker 1: in Iraq, and then the immediate thing after it's done
Speaker 1: is Kuwait to essentially restrict the ability to buy, make
Speaker 1: it financially restrictive to buy anything from the country that
Speaker 1: just saved them.
Speaker 3: And then people look at that and.
Speaker 1: They see it a thousand times over with the way
Speaker 1: that all of these different countries treat us, and they
Speaker 1: get mad about it, and they should, they absolutely should.
Speaker 1: So all right, thank you for the history there, Jim.
Speaker 1: This is this is why we do what we do.
Speaker 1: Man Russell, what's up, hey.
Speaker 14: Good morning.
Speaker 16: Uh, you're absolutely correct about the City high Point. I
Speaker 16: worked at City hop Point fire for thirty years and
Speaker 16: I can remember absolutely you can remember going in, going
Speaker 16: in and duty and seeing just lines and lines of
Speaker 16: cars going to the industrial area of high Point and
Speaker 16: after Napaok Place, all these furniture factories just they just disappeared.
Speaker 16: It was like, you know, we've got areas and iPoint
Speaker 16: now that are basically a ghost town. There's hundreds of
Speaker 16: buildings that are empty that were textile and furniture and
Speaker 16: you know family members that was in the furniture industry
Speaker 16: that you know that made really good money because there
Speaker 16: were highly skilled jobs and uh, NAFTA, NAFTA just absolutely
Speaker 16: destroyed those industries.
Speaker 1: And you know, here's the other canard. Were you as
Speaker 1: somebody so you worked as a fireman there. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you made, but uh, you know, middle class
Speaker 1: salary there were you unable to afford American furniture at
Speaker 1: that time, it was.
Speaker 16: It was expensive, but you were getting the quality that
Speaker 16: you got with the furniture was was unprecedented.
Speaker 4: Now there your.
Speaker 1: Union is that you could never manufacture and people be
Speaker 1: able to purchase it there. And I would reject will
Speaker 1: because it kinds of more to where you manufactured, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you could pay wages that'd be very livable
Speaker 1: wages in cities like Sparta, Tarborough, many of these communities
Speaker 1: that absolutely got slammed where people would be happy to
Speaker 1: have those jobs. They would outpace the medium salary there
Speaker 1: and the furniture would still be affordable. So I reject
Speaker 1: this idea that if it's a factured here, it's unaffordable.
Speaker 16: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 16: If fire Barters worked a Functure market twice a year
Speaker 16: and one of the biggest complaints that we heard through
Speaker 16: you know, through personalel there was you know now they're
Speaker 16: shipping his farms are in now you know they opened
Speaker 16: the crates and it's busted all the pieces, you know,
Speaker 16: or it's it needs repair or the quality. So you're
Speaker 16: absolutely right, it is. It has devastated hick Ory, High Point, Lexington, Thomasville.
Speaker 16: Those brands are no longer no longer there.
Speaker 1: So I knew the Thomasville brand growing up in Wyom
Speaker 1: like that that was such a huge brand. And so
Speaker 1: it was really interesting, what I mean to North Carolina, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the thomas still they're talking about were they used to.
Speaker 16: There were you know, there were skilled jobs. I mean
Speaker 16: my fam all my family working furniture, and there were
Speaker 16: skilled jobs. And today you know those those uh you
Speaker 16: know those that that skill labor is not available now.
Speaker 1: And those folks, it is those folks who are sitting
Speaker 1: there and they're watching what Trump's doing and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: it couldn't get any worse, could it? And maybe that
Speaker 1: we love it, you get the nail on the head.
Speaker 16: I mean it's me, you know, America first, and you know,
Speaker 16: you're you know, you're you know, stock portfolio is great,
Speaker 16: but you know when you're you know, you know, when
Speaker 16: you're struggling to uh, you know, put the food on
Speaker 16: the table because you know, because of your jobs and
Speaker 16: taken away and and so we're seas. I mean, I
Speaker 16: don't care about the stock portfolio. It's somebody else. I want,
Speaker 16: you know, I want to take care of my family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what what is one of the first things that
Speaker 1: people will cut if they get into financial arrears.
Speaker 16: Retirement, retirement, retirement. You don't buy. You don't buy. D
Speaker 16: was often you don't.
Speaker 9: You don't buy.
Speaker 16: You know, you don't buy the luxuries that you know
Speaker 16: what you think of them as luxuries, but you don't
Speaker 16: you don't have to, you know, have the money to
Speaker 16: buy those. So but thank you for thank you for
Speaker 16: bringing them up.
Speaker 1: All right, Russell, thanks for the call there. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And and remember and a lot of these
Speaker 1: beefs are just they want to level playing field. So
Speaker 1: you know, when you go to Europe and you see
Speaker 1: very few Chevies and Fords, yet you drive around any
Speaker 1: state in this in the in the States, and there's
Speaker 1: BMW's and Mercedes everywhere, and you realize that their their
Speaker 1: or their tariffs so differentially, Like they won't even give
Speaker 1: American products a fair shake, let them compete abouts the
Speaker 1: quality of German products in Germany, but they won't do it.
Speaker 1: And it is because of their own protectionism. So some
Speaker 1: of this is less just about an equal playing field financially,
Speaker 1: but just from an opportunity stick standpoint. Anyway, all right,
Speaker 1: we can get some more calls on this, I get
Speaker 1: some more audio to play you, and we finally have
Speaker 1: an explanation I think makes sense on how that reporter
Speaker 1: got added speaking of the hoothy rebels to that signal discussion,
Speaker 1: and it really clicks if you have an iPhone. So
Speaker 1: hang on, we'll get to it. This is why I
Speaker 1: want to have these discussions. So somebody sent me a
Speaker 1: pretty lengthy message, or sent the show account pretty lengthy
Speaker 1: message pushing back on they feel that I am mischaracterizing
Speaker 1: what happened in High Point, and I would only say this,
Speaker 1: some of it is my perception, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it is based on what I think people's perception is,
Speaker 1: which is what the larger discussion was about. I'm simply
Speaker 1: trying to explain the psychology of why people are sitting
Speaker 1: there and ignoring anything that Wall Street folks have to
Speaker 1: say versus versus what is actually happening, Meaning they're willing
Speaker 1: to go all right, well, you know what was happening
Speaker 1: wasn't working for us. Us our buying power was being decimated,
Speaker 1: and the perceptions High Point may not be the best
Speaker 1: example due to its size, but it is undeniable that
Speaker 1: their communities all across North Carolina and all across this
Speaker 1: country that absolutely have been decimated because the very lifehood
Speaker 1: of that city were moved overseas. Okay, but this is
Speaker 1: why I want to have conversations with people locally, because
Speaker 1: that's more that's more interesting to me. So Tom wrote,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to read.
Speaker 3: The whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's very, very very long, and he says, I've lived
Speaker 1: in a high Point my whole life. I'm going to
Speaker 1: paraphrase a little of this. The downtown retail started leaving
Speaker 1: in the sixties, just like most cities with the advent
Speaker 1: of shopping malls, and that's not altogether unfair. But the
Speaker 1: downtown of high Point is also pretty unique in that
Speaker 1: they have these boutiques for all these furniture manufacturers that
Speaker 1: largely don't operate all year, so that that is undeniable.
Speaker 3: Let's see the twy I don't know what you meant
Speaker 3: to say here, sir.
Speaker 1: The twice of the furniture or the twice a year
Speaker 1: furniture market was not affected by NAFTA because it is
Speaker 1: not about retail sales. It's it may be less the market,
Speaker 1: but it's undeniable that furniture manufacturing in North Carolina and
Speaker 1: many of it largely around the triad Hickory, Thomasville areas
Speaker 1: like that is absolutely lower than it was, while the
Speaker 1: sheer volume of deals that may be struck may be higher,
Speaker 1: which is what Tom contends here and I don't he
Speaker 1: may be right. How does that then impact all of
Speaker 1: the other ancillary businesses.
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: And when it comes to furniture manufacturing, there's still less
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: However, the industry in and of.
Speaker 1: Itself, if it's the sales of it, involves a lot
Speaker 1: less people to accomplish it. And yes, I recognize that
Speaker 1: the city of high Point actually has grown the number
Speaker 1: of businesses it has, and that's because you know, the
Speaker 1: outlying parts of the city have grown. H Point University
Speaker 1: has grown, other things have grown there. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you get need more cafes, more breakfast places, more places
Speaker 1: to shop. But it has creeped out of the interior
Speaker 1: part of the city as you go out. And yes,
Speaker 1: the iHeart facility is now right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the south part of it, whereas most of the commerce
Speaker 1: is conducted on the far north side of high Point.
Speaker 1: And in fact, even we were about ten feet outside
Speaker 1: of high Point with our old offices up on the
Speaker 1: highway towards the airport there and you know, you get
Speaker 1: down to chop House, that's high Point right there if
Speaker 1: you need a visual for people just vaguely familiar with
Speaker 1: the area. And yeah, there is a lot of growth.
Speaker 1: But the hell that mall went out of business. That's
Speaker 1: on the north side there, what was that a few
Speaker 1: years ago? The mall that's over of course, the main
Speaker 1: mall or the high Point mall over by where the
Speaker 1: Marriotte is where I stay when I come over and visit.
Speaker 1: The target in the back is still going and I
Speaker 1: think one or two anchor stores, but that's gone. So yes,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of evolution. However, the one thing
Speaker 1: that you add in here, sir, that I don't agree
Speaker 1: with is none of this had anything to do with NAFTA.
Speaker 1: I've sat with city leaders, you know, with city leaders
Speaker 1: in high Point and folks that are in charge of
Speaker 1: like the high Point Theater there, people who have been
Speaker 1: lifelong residents, who who We've had a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: about this, and at the very least it did evolve stuff.
Speaker 1: But I really appreciate your perspective there. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's again that's why we're having this conversation. But the
Speaker 1: larger part of what I'm breaking down is not necessarily
Speaker 1: even one hundred percent how I feel about it. But
Speaker 1: I am recognizing how I feel, the majority of people
Speaker 1: that I talk to and deal with, the North Carolina feel.
Speaker 1: And I think it's undeniable that there are generations of
Speaker 1: people think and they got a raw deal, and they
Speaker 1: kind of did because through all this evolution, it was
Speaker 1: their oxes getting gord And so I'm trying to explain
Speaker 1: human behavior, but appreciate you sending the message there.
Speaker 3: All right, Jamie, what's up?
Speaker 5: Hey?
Speaker 14: I grew up in Soviet, which is just down the
Speaker 14: road from High Boyd, and the whole my whole family
Speaker 14: worked in the furniture industry. Oh my neighbors working in
Speaker 14: the furniture industry at High Boyd. And it wasn't just
Speaker 14: the furnature plants and sales. There was little flame shops.
Speaker 14: There were people that sold material falls, there were people
Speaker 14: that sold leather, people to sold nails, recliner mechanisms. All
Speaker 14: of those are feeder industries too, the furniture industries, and
Speaker 14: they all went out of business also.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when you get into like the metallic parts
Speaker 1: and whatnot. That was one of the first things that
Speaker 1: they started manufacturing outside of the US.
Speaker 14: And that stuff you need to have a state back down.
Speaker 1: Well, it's probably look like everything else. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of complexity to it. But again, this is about public perception.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You don't have to know the exact numbers in differential
Speaker 1: of furniture manufacturing from nineteen seventy to twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 1: but you know because you lived it. It's lived experience
Speaker 1: with you. It's your friends, family and what you saw,
Speaker 1: and that's that is what is influencing people. I'm just
Speaker 1: warning these I'm just warning these people that are further
Speaker 1: squandering their credibility out there, who are who are very
Speaker 1: self serving and probably make a crap ton of money
Speaker 1: when the stock markets up. That while that's good for you,
Speaker 1: and most people are willing to cut a wide berth
Speaker 1: because the American dream is a mindset that we have.
Speaker 1: The more you train people that the American dream is
Speaker 1: less achievable and you guys are really the only ones achieving,
Speaker 1: the more animosity builds, and that's why you get things
Speaker 1: like this. So I put part of it on them
Speaker 1: not recognizing that maybe, just maybe, and thanks for the
Speaker 1: call there, sir. Some of the decisions, some of the
Speaker 1: decisions that were made clearly were not in the best
Speaker 1: interest of the majority of people, and they recognized that.
Speaker 1: And then we got into the other stuff with like
Speaker 1: cash for clunkers. Were people one of their green new
Speaker 1: deal stuff, and they were willing to decimate the ability
Speaker 1: for people to purchase starter cars. How many of you
Speaker 1: bought a car for like five six hundred bucks the
Speaker 1: damn thing maybe ran a couple of years, you bought
Speaker 1: another one. It was just the reality of really starting
Speaker 1: out as a kid or as a young adult man,
Speaker 1: and those opportunities have gone away. So if we're not
Speaker 1: willing to talk about the evolution and whether it's been
Speaker 1: for the for the better or for the worse for
Speaker 1: the majority of people, then the majority of people are like,
Speaker 1: all right, you don't want to talk, then we're gonna
Speaker 1: go do this thing and you're not gonna like it.
Speaker 1: But maybe you should have listened, Maira, go right ahead.
Speaker 11: Hey, Casey, First of all, I congratulate and thank you
Speaker 11: for drawing attention to this in the Triad area. I
Speaker 11: have worked in high Point for thirty eight years, and
Speaker 11: we are suppliers to the furniture industry, so we supplied
Speaker 11: a specialty material that a lot of these contractors that
Speaker 11: then in turn sold Lexington, Thomasville, Baker, et cetera parts
Speaker 11: for predominantly upholstered things. And so I lived the destruction
Speaker 11: or the removal of all these businesses. Now my company
Speaker 11: was able to look for other outlets to sell material
Speaker 11: and we have survived. But the devastation to the furniture
Speaker 11: industry and all the people and impacted it was horrible
Speaker 11: to watch. If it personally, I think High Point University
Speaker 11: saved high Point. There are a lot more places to eat,
Speaker 11: like you were saying earlier than there were when we
Speaker 11: were in our heyday with the furniture industry. But it's
Speaker 11: it's just been devastating. And a lot of people have
Speaker 11: been asking me how I feel about these tariffs, and
Speaker 11: I've been hey, even the playing field, it's ridiculous. So
Speaker 11: thank you for doing this today.
Speaker 1: Well, it's and it's good because I have equal number
Speaker 1: of people that are happy and equal that are irritated,
Speaker 1: and that's probably a good conversation and one that clearly
Speaker 1: wasn't happening before. So it is a little weird though.
Speaker 1: It is a little weird because I drive it around
Speaker 1: high Points just like, all of a sudden, I see
Speaker 1: the high Point University signs on, Like, am I back
Speaker 1: on the campus? What the heck happened? Just because they've
Speaker 1: they've bought like they bought the ball right or part
Speaker 1: of the mall like high Point University.
Speaker 11: I think I think they are part of the mall.
Speaker 11: I'm not really sure. My son went to West Westland,
Speaker 11: which is right across the street.
Speaker 2: From the mall.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I know that that, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 11: know right, so I mean high Point just I mean
Speaker 11: you can tell the purple placards and colors are everywhere.
Speaker 11: But it's brought businesses to town. The baseball soccer is there now, right,
Speaker 11: We've got a yeah, I guess you'd call it like
Speaker 11: an MLA.
Speaker 9: I mean, what do you call it?
Speaker 11: A farm soccer team? Now that just came to town
Speaker 11: and a lot of people are excited about that. Look,
Speaker 11: manufacturing is is how rural Americans can get really good
Speaker 11: jobs with really good benefits. And that's who was hurt
Speaker 11: by the pull up of the furniture industry. I'm in sales.
Speaker 11: I'm a chemist. I was really I mean I saw
Speaker 11: these people every day. They were my clients, they were
Speaker 11: my friends, right, and they lost their careers. It's just
Speaker 11: so sad. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Speaker 11: I saw last week on Twitter there was a company
Speaker 11: that was pulling up the roots. I think it was
Speaker 11: from Canada and bringing furniture back to North Carolina.
Speaker 12: And I celebright and.
Speaker 11: Then and then the same time, right, and then I
Speaker 11: saw a woman or another post on Twitter sorry that
Speaker 11: said I'm devastated. I'm in the furniture industry and this
Speaker 11: is going to destroy us. And I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 11: either you aren't alive in the late eighties to know
Speaker 11: what happened, or you have blinders on because this has
Speaker 11: already happened once.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that was a company. Just sorry, my ride.
Speaker 1: I'm really tight on time, but I really appreciate your
Speaker 1: phone called. The company in question was based out of
Speaker 1: British Columbia. They did have small amount of manufacturing in
Speaker 1: North Carolina and they basically moved a bunch of it
Speaker 1: down because of what's going on. So we'll see if
Speaker 1: there's more of that. I appreciate the call. Race stagic
Speaker 1: from the weather Channel with a quick look at a
Speaker 1: I guess that we're positive week coming. No, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm credibly hopeful. Okaytimistic, mister negative.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, that's me always right.
Speaker 1: Well, it gets worse before it gets better.
Speaker 15: Already start to see some of the heavier rain come
Speaker 15: across I seventy seven as we speak, and heading east
Speaker 15: into the Try had already seen some heavier rain showers
Speaker 15: through Forsyth. So be prepared to get titty to spread
Speaker 15: in here this morning, slaw your roll to do not
Speaker 15: cross water covered roadways and all that turn around, don't drown,
Speaker 15: don't want a hydroplane, and all that low seventies today
Speaker 15: For most of us tonight, the showers and thunderstorms will
Speaker 15: come to an end, so we don't think severe storms,
Speaker 15: but a stronger storm or two may produce some not
Speaker 15: only heavier rainfall, but maybe some gusty winds. So what
Speaker 15: this rain coming in is certainly gonna get worse before
Speaker 15: we get better. And then finally this front's going to
Speaker 15: go through, there'll be some changes, big changes in temperatures.
Speaker 15: Beautiful day Tuesday Wednesday, probably mid upper fifties to near
Speaker 15: sixty each day. Low's though by Wednesday morning in the
Speaker 15: low to mid thirties. Thursday drive before we get more
Speaker 15: showers Friday, and already looking forward to the weekend.
Speaker 4: Case he looks sunny and pleasant.
Speaker 1: Love it, Thank you. We'll talk tomorrow and we'll come
Speaker 1: back with Jeff Bellinger, who may be on suicide watch. Next,
Speaker 1: go to Jeff Bellinger up on Wall Street where I'm sure.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a slow what's up, Jeff.
Speaker 13: Yes, lo Ande, that's right, Good morning, Casey. The futures
Speaker 13: indicate last week's market misery will continue, though there's been
Speaker 13: some improvement in the futures as we get closer to
Speaker 13: the opening bell Believe it or not, The adow is
Speaker 13: down seven hundred and twenty two points, and that is
Speaker 13: an improvement from earlier on. Now jpmore can Chase. CEO
Speaker 13: Jamie Diamond has joined the Coorus, urging President Trump to
Speaker 13: work toward an early resolution to the teriff issue. Some
Speaker 13: Wall Street analysts see signs that stocks are nearing a
Speaker 13: floor that could be good news, and the bets are
Speaker 13: increasing that the Fed will step in with interest rate
Speaker 13: cuts to try to keep the economy.
Speaker 3: Out of recession.
Speaker 13: So far, though President Trump and his administration officials are
Speaker 13: digging in saying tariffs on American trading partners will remain
Speaker 13: in place and will lead to an economic boom. Eventually,
Speaker 13: Apple reportedly moved quickly to avoid tariffs on products that
Speaker 13: were assembled overseas. The Times of India sas it was
Speaker 13: told by senior in officials that Apple shipped five planeloads
Speaker 13: of iPhones and other technology products from India to the
Speaker 13: US at the end of last month. There is late
Speaker 13: word Republic Airlines has agreed to take over troubled Mesa Air.
Speaker 13: It's an all stock transaction. The combined carrier will have
Speaker 13: a fleet of more than three hundred regional jets. Republic
Speaker 13: CEO Brian Bedford has been nominated by President Trump to
Speaker 13: take over as head of the Federal Aviation Administration and
Speaker 13: KSE movie theater operators finally have something to celebrate. A
Speaker 13: Minecraft movie debuted in first place over the weekend. The
Speaker 13: Warner Brothers Discovery film took in one hundred and fifty
Speaker 13: seven million dollars. It was the biggest opening weekend for
Speaker 13: any movie so far this year.
Speaker 1: Casey, how mad do you think Disney is? After the
Speaker 1: tank snow White and a Minecraft movie just quadrupled them up.
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
Speaker 3: All right, thanks Jeff appreciation. Okay, have a good day.
Speaker 1: All right, there you go, Jeff Bellinger. Real quick, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that we may know how that all of that
Speaker 1: signal thing happened with the name you guys. I know
Speaker 1: it works on iPhone. I'm not sure Android. I don't
Speaker 1: have an Android, but on iPhone there's suggested contacts. So
Speaker 1: if somebody sends me an email and it's got a
Speaker 1: signature in it and a phone number, so it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody I work with so and so the
Speaker 1: next time that I may go interact with that person
Speaker 1: in the contacts. If you allow it to scour your
Speaker 1: email for potential contacts, it may suggest creating a contact
Speaker 1: and be able to extract the phone numbers and email
Speaker 1: addresses into a contact. I'm sure some of you may
Speaker 1: have used that feature. That's how signal works. And so
Speaker 1: they suspect or they they've traced it back to an
Speaker 1: email where somebody who was supposed to be on that
Speaker 1: meeting emailed Waltz saying, hey, this reporter reached out to you.
Speaker 1: Here's their email address that was in the body of
Speaker 1: the email. So when Waltz's staff member created the contact
Speaker 1: for the other staff member, it incorrect assigned that phone
Speaker 1: number because I had the guy's phone number and email
Speaker 1: address to a contact within signal, which was then inadvertently added.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? So it actually makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: to me. But still you gotta you need to do
Speaker 1: better than that, clearly. But the technology is explained and
Speaker 1: real quickly. This U a Rhode Island man is crediting
Speaker 1: Chick fil A for saving his life, claiming that he
Speaker 1: lost one hundred and thirty two pounds eating nothing but
Speaker 1: Chick fil A every day for over a year. And
Speaker 1: so they're given a bunch of pub We're not going
Speaker 1: to do this again, are we We're not gonna I mean,
Speaker 1: good for this dude. And I got like, we're not.
Speaker 1: If you're Chick fil A, there's no way you're making
Speaker 1: this guy the face of your marketing. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: that one time.
Speaker 4: Like a background check first, right, check all the.
Speaker 1: Hard drives ever ever ever, because and it's too bad
Speaker 1: because if that you know that it is one of
Speaker 1: those stories that's a great marketing opera oor tunity. It's
Speaker 1: just you know that one guy, that one time, who
Speaker 1: was buying children to rape with his subway dollars kind
Speaker 1: of probably ruined that for everybody, so