Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast, The Big Podcast. It's a
Thursday today. It's the twenty sixth day of June, Year
of Our Lord, twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan.
We you know, it's this whole thing about the war
and the whole thing about the war, and now the
debate about well, did anything happen, did anything happen down there?
Did we blow up anything? Or is everything just fine? Well,
it depends upon who you listen to, and where do
you think the term propaganda came from. It came from
wars where everybody on either side. The iatola showed back
up today he finally talked to the public and said
that they gave a hard slap to the US and Israel.
He's claiming everything's fine and they were the ones who
were the victors of all of this. And I'll tell
you And then we got into the debate about see
today's Thursday. So the bombing was Saturday night. I forget
it was Monday or Tuesday. And we started getting reports,
primarily from CNN and the New York Times that guess what,
nothing happened. Everything's still fine. All the sentrifusions are there,
the enriched uranium. Nothing happened, and that came. There's a
young woman who is a reporter for CNN. Her name
is Natasha Bertrand and this lady, I wonder how she
ever got her job at CNN because she was one
of the well, she's the one who picked up this
preliminary what do they call it? Preliminary and not well received. Basically,
it wasn't that credible with the first reports after the
bombing about what was left, and that's where she said,
it looks like nothing happened. Her name is Natasha Bertrun.
She's also the one who was the one who broke
the story about the Steel dossier and how Donald Trump
and Russia, Russia, Russia, and that turned out to be
completely false. And then on top of that, she also
was the one who had the fifty one intelligence officers
who swore up and down that the Hunter Biden light
laptop was definitely work of the Russians. Absolutely. And so
this young lady has just been abed not a little
bit wrong. She's been one hundred and eighty degrees wrong
on the on the Steele dossier, the Hunter laptop, and
now she comes out with the preliminary I forget the
term they're using, but some term about it wasn't really
relied upon it. It was the first blink at what happened.
And so I'm listen. I was right there, not with her,
but I was right there with this too early, it's
too early to tell what happened. I mean, we were
trying to blow up things a couple hundred feet below
a mountain, not just there, but other places too, And
it's fascinating to me. I don't want to be a
raw raw you know, guy that waves the flag no
matter what. I love my country, I'm patriotic, but I
also don't believe a lot of what I hear from anybody,
especially the government. So I'm willing to wait. And that's
where the Chairman of the Joint Chief's Staff he came
out and basically said, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
And so I'm thinking, we don't know yet, we don't
know what the damage was. The only way to really
have the knowledge of the damage is to have somebody
go to the sites and stand there and look drill
down to see what's going on. And we will probably
find out more information, probably from the Mossad Disraeli undercover
guys that are have infiltrated into the Iranian government. They'll
find out what all this was about. So today there
was a news conference this morning and it was the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs along with the Secretary of
Defense Pete Hegseth and Haig Seth Gosh. I know Pete,
he's very will he's a politician, he's a political appointee,
and so he he will probably do what you would
expect him to do. He did basically marched the line
about how this was wildly successful. The guy that I
liked to hear was the Chairman of the Joint chief
the four star general. I think he's got a lot
of credibility, and he came out and basically laid out
a lot of what would otherwise be classified information about
exactly what it was that happened. And the results looked
very promising. That they're not set back a couple of
weeks or a couple of months, they're set back many years.
And I'm sure that the Iranian leadership is probably they're
they're ideologues. They're probably working over time on Okay, we've
really been hit hard. What are we going to do
to rebuild ourselves. They're going to try. So this as
far as that process goes of the theocracy that's leading
the Iranian government, I think that still has to be
that bridge. It still needs to be crossed, not right away,
but certainly sometime in the future. So we've got that
to go over. We've got the economy, number numbers, a
number of numbers, yes about the economy coming out today
is Thursday, So we got jobs, and we've got GDP,
and we've got a bunch of different things to share
with you. Supreme Court made a decision today out of
South Carolina that affects planned parenthood. Tomorrow is the last
day of the session for the Supreme Court, so we're
expecting a number of cases tomorrow. The buzz about the
socialist Democrat who is won the New York City Mayor's
Democrat primary is front and center, so Zoran Man Danny
and so the people are still fussing about all of that.
We got a lot to cover. The let's start. We've
started with him a lot because I find him very credible,
and that is General Jack Keen and his reaction to
basically what he thought of the news conference at the
Pentagon This morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly. But that's one of the most remarkable DoD
briefings I've ever observed in the many years of observing them.
To be quite frank about it, the Secretary of Defense
obviously very frustrated and passionate about the misrepresentation of the
results of that operation and certainly felt compelled to adjudicate
that and put the facts in front of the American people.
I haven't seen anything quite like that since Don Rumsfeld
was Secretary of Defense, and at times he would take
an issue with the media. We were at war then
and the issues were high, and stakes were high, certainly,
and then any misrepresentation would certainly of cause use frustrat
like it like it did here. But the Chairman's brief
and I've never seen quite like that, uh a briefer
into it. I've given briefings myself, and UH, I've watched
the succeeding chairman UH do briefings through the years. And
he did something that's really quite unusual and I and
I really commend him for it. I mean, he brought
this UH operation alive in terms of the people. He
gave it life and UH and and that that personal knowledge,
he went out and gathered and brought that home to
the American people was something I think we'll all remember
and and and then a couple of the facts in
here are just astounding. It reminded me of the CIA
operatives who were on the target for more than a
decade to try to get usam bin laden. And he
identifies an Intel organization that we all know is a
very uh top secret organization that does this kind of
work day in and day out in the shadows, away
from anybody spotlight, even in the Pentagon, much less the
American people. And here we had a few people assembled there,
one in charge who's been on this target for fifteen years,
and as a result of their conclusions, we had to
develop a special bomb to deal with this target. That
is remarkable. We haven't done anything quite like that, as
we all know, since the atomic bombs would drop on
Japan in World War Two. That is remarkable what took
place here. And we went out and tested that technology
and didn't put it in the hands of our combat
fighters and bombers until we actually had proven it. And
I think then the details provided in terms of what
actually took place at the site, how can you not
watch that and understand what the Chairman was saying and
not come to the conclusion that everyone is now coming
to that this program is set back many years and
it'll take a long time for them to recover and rebuild.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: Hats off to what we just witnessed here in terms
of this operation and details supporting it. It's sort of
a backup number six that was there as well in
case it was any failure. So I mean they built
success into this operation. You know, whenever a military's plan
and operation, one of the things that we do very
well is we go through what if, what if, what if,
and we try to cover the bases on all the
things that could happen that could result in in mission failure.
And that certainly has been built into this operation, you know,
with twelve mops on one site and two on the
other site. And we also have to credit the Israelis
in terms of a comprehensive air campaign that they they
were running to the ten eleven days prior to this
mission being run that hit all twelve Nucleo sites. They
took down the remaining seventy air defense batteries in the
first twenty four hours, an astounding accomplishment and that's kind
of out of the playbook of the United States. We
always take their defense down first. We don't bring anything
into the country until we have done that job as
long as it takes. And they did a remarkable job
in doing that. And the Israelis and the United States
have set this program back, and I think we got
to remind ourselves this regime and who they are has
not changed. They are absolutely committed to having a nuclear program.
Despite what the success we've had here. I expect them
to be thinking about how are they going to recover
and how are they going to rebuild? And we have
to maintain our vigilance here, our intel services, the Israelis, ourselves,
and if they start to recover it, then Israeli, supported
by the United States if necessary, should reattack and take
it down. We don't let them get to a point
where they really have a significant capability and they just
weeks away from having a weapon no more. We cannot
let that happen. There's two sides to this, you know. One,
our adversaries are all watching this, and I think this operation,
the President's decisions, the boldness of it, and the commitment
and determination to end this program once and for all
that was reflected in that decision. After all, he had
time and time again had never equivocated no nuclear weapons period.
No president said it as much, and no president said
it with as much determination, and then he delivers. I
think part of the briefing also is for our adversaries
to see it and give them some sense of our capabilities.
We have achieved the level of deterrence now as a
result of this with Russia and China and North Korea,
and look at Russia and China could have helped Iran
in their most desperate moment here. Once the Israeli's first attack,
nothing came to a system, not even their proxies came
to a system. And they funded Hesbala in particular for
principal reason to defend defend Iran against Israel. They are
isolated in a way that they have never been and
we have a huge opportunity here to create change. And
I hope when we go in through these negotiations we
put on the table things that are really tough. At
independent inspectors in the country looking at all sites and
what's not dismantled or destroyed, then dismantle it and then
put on the table we're going to talk about your
change of behavior. We're not giving you free trade, we're
not giving you sanctioned relief until you commit you're not
going to support your proxies anymore, exactly going to support
terrorism anymore. You're going to recognize the state of Israel.
And if you commit to these, then we'll relieve the
sanctions and will open up trade with you so that
you can become a legitimate country in this region. But
if you're not going to commit to that, then we're
going to continue on this path that we have and
you're going to continue to be isolated. You continue your
economy is going to continue to be in the tank,
and we're going to continue to contain your ambitions against
what the region needs, which is peace and stability. We
have a huge opportunity for a paradigm shift.
Speaker 1: So General Keen is very impressed. In fact, he was
very very impressed about the news conference that was held
at the Pentagon this morning. One of the other people
that works in all of national security issues, he's done
it for years. He's worked for Democrats and for Republicans,
Bretton McGirk, and he too seems like he now is
convinced that the dam how many said was done to
Iran's nuclear program was severe. Here's Brett McGirk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kate, I think if we can step back from
the kind of Washington and the partisan framing of it,
which is always something about these things unfortunately. But I
thought Dan's briefing, A General Kaine's briefing was really important
and just worth studying because he went through a lot
of information that until now would have been classified, and
that this operation, this strike plan into Iran was developed,
it was really conceived and resource and developed. In the
Obama administration, it was refined and the Trump administration, it
was refined quite a bit in the Biden administration. For
what we handed over to President Trump, and what we
now know from that briefing first time you know it
is that as it was designed, as these massive ordinance
penetrators with significant computer software engineering went directly down those
three minilated shafts specifically as designed, and until you actually
do it, you never know if it's going to work.
It worked, it seems have worked flawlessly. That is very
important information. He also point out some things we take
for granted. You know, a Patriot interceptor is traveling at
three thousand miles an hour about MAK four to hit
a ballistic missile, wabbling out about six thousand miles an
hour Mac eight. This is really difficult. We take for
granted how this stuff all works. I thought that was
very important way out.
Speaker 4: So as I as I come out of this briefing,
I now know BDA level two. As I mentioned level one,
first twenty four hours looking at imagery level two, did
the ordinance work? Did everything go as we had wanted?
The answer now is yes. And we're now in the
phase of level three, collecting all sources of information and
then putting that together with nuclear experts to determine if
they have these pieces and parts here, could they reconstitute them,
with some political analysts to say would the Iranians do that?
What would be the restraints To then have a comprehensive
assessment of where we are with the objective theme, Aaron
can never have a nuclear weapon, and its enrichment program
has to be completely destroyed. I think from what I've
seen the twenty thousand centrifuges you had about seventeen thousand,
and the tons about three thousand and four too, they.
Speaker 3: Are all completely destroyed. I am very confident those centrifuges
are gone. The Israelis destroyed the centrifuge manufacturing production facilities
that we know of Isfahan, which is the conversion facility,
key part of the fuel site, will also appears have
been destroyed. So if you add it up from what
we're seeing, massive cadystrophic setback for Ron's program, the term
of art obliterated, destroyed. I kind of step out of that.
This is an analytical process. It's important for the professionals
now in the intelligence community be able to do their
work without political sure and come out with their assessments
and we'll know soon enough. There's a lot of work
going on here from US intelligence agencies, from Masade and
the Israelis, from other partners. But I thought that briefing
was important. We now know that operation that was developed
over multiple administrations worked exactly as was designed. So I
didn't know that. I couldn't have confirmed that twenty four
hours ago. I now it was three ventilators. They went
down there and it worked. That's new, and that means
probably Foidah is rendered inoperable for the foreseeable future, probably forever.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. You have a general retired general,
and you have national security analyst who is very well
schooled on all of us, has been for years under
both kinds of administrations, and he says it's done. Fordah
is done in as far as the nuclear program for
Iran for the foreseeable future, if not forever, so the idea.
Both McGirk and General Keenan were fascinated by the fact
that they had these air vents that went all the
way down to the bottom and we were able to
put multiple bombs down the air vents to go all
the way down to where the floor of the operation
FIDO and the rest of them. Israeli took out a
lot of other facilities, So overall, I think it's pretty
clear that this was a major success, despite the early
misinformation and the leaking of the fact that the defense
in the DIA Defence Intelligence Agency said it was preliminary
and could not be relied upon. But the media forgot
to tell you that, and they shouldn't have been, well
they it shouldn't have been leaked in the first place,
that's a defense document. So in bottom line is it
looks like it was a successful, very successful mission. One
more person to listen to about this Jennifer Griffin. I
know Jennifer. She has worked at the Pentagon as a
reporter for decades. She knows her stuff. She's worked overseas,
she's worked behind the scenes, and this was her impression
of what happened at the news conference today.
Speaker 5: Well, that was certainly the reason for the Defense Secretary
to come out quite so emotionally against the press and
the leak of that Defense intelligence report. But what was
really fascinating was listening to General Kin, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, describe a few things that we did
not have the details of to hear him describe how
forty four young soldiers between the age of twenty one
and twenty eight, with two Patriot missile batteries defended the
largest US military base in the Middle East in cutter
At Alu did They had two minutes, less than two
minutes to make a decision, and they shot down all
fourteen of the incoming ballistic missiles and basically protected that base.
When he described how one of those soldiers was simply
twenty one years old and had only been in the
military for two years, it really does make your heart stop.
In terms of the amount of weaponry that was.
Speaker 4: Fired by Iran.
Speaker 5: Even though they had an indication it was coming, it
still was down to those soldiers. The other thing that
was described, which we described on Saturday night, and we
had very good information about what the target set was
at four Doh. There were two air shafts that they
had been watching since they were the first one appeared
on satellite imagery in two thousand and eight and the
first in the days before the US strikes. They could
see from the air that Iran had tried to cover
those air shafts with concrete, so they needed that first
bunker buster bomb to break through that concrete blow it off,
if you will. And then the number two, three, four,
and five bunker busters went down each of those shafts.
That's where it wasn't the entrances to four Doah that
they bombed, it was down the shafts. And they had
timed the fuses so that they could go deeper and
deeper and make sure that they blew up everything underground
and destroyed the centrifuges that are very delicate, and so
the blast, the blast underground, that shaking would have thrown
those centrifuses off. When he described how the follow on fighters,
the ones who escorted the F twenty twos that escorted
those B twos, how those pilots described was perfectly dark
and then it was completely almost like daylight. The blast
was that big.
Speaker 1: It just goes to show you that the early reports
about the fact that nothing really happened, There wasn't any damage.
The Iranians still have their centrifuges and their enriched uranium,
and this report today with specifics about how they went
about it and the results, shows that the early reports
were just flat wrong. Especially Yeah, CNN and the New
York Times got it very wrong again. And with that
that doesn't mean that all the reporting is in. This
is still very early, so we will learn more as
time goes on, but I think a lot of it
is going to be very classified. And as far as
the message that was sent to the world, not only
to Iran, but China and Russia were watching this, and
all of our adversaries around the world were watching this.
And I know that there's a lot of maga people
that are mad at Donald Trump because he said no
more wars, No more wars. This is a way to
stop war. This was absolutely a way to stop it.
But it also shows that we are not afraid to
use strength to bring about peace, and that's the message
I get out of this. If I was an adversarial country,
I would say, I don't mess with don't mess with
Donald Trump, don't mess with the United States. There are
still those though, on the other side of the aisle.
Chris Murphy always seemed like an okay kind of senator.
He's from Connecticut, seemed like the guy next door. But
he's obviously itching to want to run for president, and
so he's looking rather silly. I think he was interviewed
earlier today and he was adamant that we don't know
anything yet, but insisted that it did not work and
it wasn't worth it to spend the money to go
and do this Iranian project that the military took on
with Israel. So he's insisting it did not work, and
then this news conference comes out today. He looks like
he's got a little bit of mud on his face
and that it wasn't worth it. I suppose some of
you think it wasn't, but I definitely think this was
monumental as far as for forty years, the number one
sponsor of terrorists in the world, looks like they are,
if not totally, they're pretty much out of business. Certainly
have lost their muscle. But for Chris Murphy, adamant that
it did not work. He swears it did not work,
but he says that we don't know yet, So how
can you insist it did not work if you don't know. Anyway,
I don't think he has a future in his efforts
to try to become president. So General Cain and Pete
haig Seth joint news conference this morning, everything seemed to
work his planned and the fact that they've found these
ventilation shifts, and as Jennifer was saying that they spotted
these ventilation shafts in two thousand and eight, they've been
watching them ever since. Congratulations to the military all these years.
There's a number of people that worked on this project
that have retired many years ago. And then of course
Chris Murphy actually sounds like he's a friend of the
Ayahtola because the Iyatola came out today and said they
absolutely crushed Israel. Now, obviously he's saying that to the
people of Iran. I'm not sure if they believe it.
They're smart people. Time will tell you want to talk
about the New York City mayor's race. I know it's
very local, and I don't like to do New York
centric news, but this is an earthquake in its own
way where this guy Xandora, Ma'm Donnie, the avowed socialist,
he's they're now accusing him of being anti Semitic. So
Mayor Eric Adams unveiled his official campaign starting today. The
election is in November, and it's Eric Adams, the current mayor,
who is not well liked, has been indicted on all
kinds of corruption charges, and then those indictments went away
because he supported the Trump administration bringing in getting rid
of the illegals that are in New York City. And
so the accusation against Mandami is a Mandanni I'm not
even pronouncing his name right yet, that he's an anti Semi,
which in New York the Jewish population is significant. So that's,
you know, watched for more of that. Carl Rove was
asked all about the impact of this, not only in
New York but just in politics across the country in general. Yeah,
well they weren't buying the stick, but yes, see what
he got was a coalition of people who are finding
it hard to live in an expensive town like New
York City, and he's offering him lots of free things.
He's going to freeze rent. Well, we know what happens.
Then landlords can't keep up. They can't put money in
to refurbishing and keeping up their units because they're limited
and how much they can charge they can't recover the
inflation cost, so housing declines. He's got city run grocery stores.
I loved him.
Speaker 6: He went on air and said, look at him, they're
going to be cheaper because they're not going.
Speaker 1: To pay rent.
Speaker 6: Well, who's going to pay the rent? Taxpayers are? He's
gonna have free buses, he's gonna have free universal childcare.
He's going to get some savings. He's going to cancel
police overtime and canceled the protest response units of the
police department. But you know, and put he put out
seventy billion dollars for what he calls affordable housing. Well,
who's going to pay for that affordable housing? He says,
I'm going to tax millionaires. Well, you guess what, they're
three hundred and fifty thousand millionaires in New York City.
You know they're going to pay seventy billion dollars for housing.
They're going to pick up the tab for the free
the free bus rides. That's eight billion dollars in fares
to the Metropolitan Transit Authority each year. You know, they
get to move, they get a vote, they can decide
I'm staying in the city or on my leaving. And
low income voter said, you know what, we're not dumb
enough to think that this is all going to be
cost free. There aren't enough rich people to pay all
of the thing promises that he's making. And I think
there was a lot of common sense in that. The
head of the Manhattan Institute, Aliam says Selim said said
he is a TikTok Jacobin, which I thought was a
great phrase. Look, he ran a great campaign, no if
sands or butts about it, and he was authentic, he
was fresh, he was new, and his principal opponent was
a guy that a lot of people didn't like, namely
the guy who was forced out as governor for harassing
what was it like, fifty women. So you know, if
you're going to run a great campaign, it always helps
to have a really not very good opponent, and he
certainly got that in Andrew Cuomo. Well, look when the
guy goes out and says, I believe that we ought
to globalize the Inda Fada. What was the end of fada?
It was an armed uprising in which twelve hundred Israeli
Jews were killed. And this guy doesn't seem to have
any problem with endorsing armed uprising. And he says, well,
the quote the role of the mayor is not to
police language. Yes, it is the responsibility of every leader
to set a tone. And his tone, frankly, is anti Semitic,
anti Jewish, A founder of when he was in college,
not that long ago of Students for Justice and Palace Time,
the most radical of the anti Israeli groups in college campuses.
Speaker 1: So can Eric Adams, the current incumbent mayor. Can he
win in November?
Speaker 6: He can, but it's gonna you know, you're going to
have at least a you know, three person race with
the Republican candidate and therein the votes get split up.
You know, he could win, but again he's a little
bit of a damaged product as well. Hasn't had the
most exemplary record as mayor. But on the other hand,
he ain't a socialist, and I think there's going to
be a lot of concern in the business community and
among small business people that Mom Donnie could be a
real disaster for the city.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court session ends tomorrow, but they came
out with a decision today. It was a case ruling
for South Carolina in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood.
What they concluded was that individual Medicaid patients cannot sue
to enforce their right to pick whatever medical provider they want.
The court ruled six to three along conservative versus liberal lines.
Danil Gorsuch wrote the opinion. But basically this is being
billed as an abortion story, and yes, Planned Parenthood does
a lot of abortions, but this is I think even
more fundamental, which is Medicaid is a program paid for
paid for by it's split a state and federal money.
It's taxpayer money, and if you're on Medicaid, generally it's free.
There are some co pays, but very few, and so
it's free. And Medicaid is the one that gets to
find the doctors that will even see you and then
shippered you to those doctors in the hospitals. But this
case was about a woman who demanded that she wanted
to go to Planned Parenthood and she didn't get her way,
and so she's sued the state of South Carolina. Since
the court's ruled in favor of South Carolina, you can
bet there are a bunch of other states that are
chomping at the bit to do the same thing. Here's
Jonathan Turley with his analysis.
Speaker 7: Well, Planned Parenthood really got his clock clean today because
you're talking about an organization that drives over thirty percent
of its revenue from government sources, and this stat is saying, look,
you're providing abortion services as well as other services, and
that makes you ineligible in our state. And what the
court said is they can do that. And so if
South Carolina could do it, you can bet other states
are going to go forward and they're going to do
it too. I think that that's what most of us
expected from the oral argument. But what the Court was
saying is that there's no footing here, no clear basis
upon which to bring that action, and it's not going
to create one. And this, again is a more fluid
approach to how these laws are interpreted by Justice Jackson
and the majority.
Speaker 1: You just won't do that. Tomorrow's the final session of
the Supreme Court. And again the one people are watching
is the birthrights citizenship. But it's not so much about
the birthrights citizenship, whether they'll dodge that or not. But
the question is coming out of that case is the
story or the question about federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions?
Can they issue an injunction that affects the entire state
or just the area that they are responsible for us
a federal judge. So that's really the big key case
that will be coming out tomorrow. And this morning we
got our Thursday Morning numbers and a few others. It's
every Thursday we get jobs numbers and first time jobs
claims two hundred and thirty six thousand. That was actually
down ten thousand from the previous week. Continuing claims up
thirty seven thousand, but a million nine seventy four So
it's staying both of those numbers staying in the neighborhood
that we have seen now for quite a few months.
Durable good orders blew the socks off today. Durable good
orders last month were up sixteen point four percent. It
was expected to be up seven it was up sixteen
point four. One of the things about durable goods. These
are things that are supposed to last three years or more.
Usually I think about washers and dryers, refrigerators and things
like that, but it also includes airplanes. And if you
take airplanes out of the durable good orders, it was
the durable good orders were up just one half of
one percent, which makes it very clear that the reason
for the big increase in durable good orders was because
of a six because of the airplane orders. That two
things won the Paris Air Show, which is one of
the biggies and annually. And also remember when President Trump
was in the Middle East, he was getting those Middle
Eastern countries to sign up for Boeing aircraft, right, so Katar,
United Erab Emirates, somebody else, maybe the Soudiast. Anyway, so
Boeing got a lot of sales last month, and it's
showing up in that particular number. As far as inflation
goes Austin Goolsby, who we've relied upon for years to
give us his sense of things, he's now the president
of the Chicago FED. This is his sense of where
the economy is.
Speaker 8: Here's the thing about the data on the job market.
It feels to me like we get continuous months that
emphasize we're a pretty steady, stable full employment kind of circumstance.
Middle of last year, when things were getting worse, cooling
at a steady pace. You could make the argument that
most of the time, when the unemployment rate rises, let's
say one full percentage point over a year, that's usually
an indicator of something of the business cycle, and it's
gonna get worse. But what we've seen in the last
year is stable full employment, and nothing has changed with
the UI claims or with the broader measures of the
job market in my mind, that have bumped me.
Speaker 1: Off that view. The big question affection the FED is
the tariffs, and President Trump would like them to drop
interest rates, but they're not going to drop interest rates
because they're worried about the impact of tariffs. So Austin
was asked, what about the tariffs? What do you think
about those that will they ever impact our economy?
Speaker 8: We were doing pretty well, stable full employment, and I
felt inflation coming down in the mid twoes and coming
down toward the two percent target, And in a circumstance
where that's prevailing, I believe that the rates will go
down a fair bit. More from where they are today.
And you can see that in the dot plot. If
you look at what the members of the committee where
they think the settling point is, there's pretty wide agreement.
It's well below where we are today. The tariffs and
other uncertainties in the economy threw a bunch of dust
in the air. So I do think it's important that
we get clarity a that there's not going to be
an increase in inflation, or B if there is going
to be an increase in inflation, that it's not going
to be a lasting increase in inflation, that it is
in fact going to be transitory. Now, like you say, Steve,
the last we've had three but nine months of inflation readings,
and for a month and a half of that we
had the beginnings of tariffs. So if tariffs stay in
their lane, which is to say, important goods are only
eleven percent of GDP, So if people don't freak out
and change their behavior, and if we don't get a
lot of retaliation from other countries, and if we don't
jack up the rates on raising the costs of domestic production,
then my hope would be that we don't see the inflation.
But we got to get a few months of clarity
before I'm ready to say that they didn't have an impact.
Speaker 1: And speaking of GDP, we got the third and final
look at the first quarter. That was before Liberation Day,
so they're kind of meaningless. But GDP actually fell. It
was down one half of one percent. Personal consumption expenditure
in the first quarter. What do you really buy? That
was up three point seven percent. That was more than
the inflation number that FED is looking for. They're looking
for two inflation on the things that you buy. Prices
were up three point seven percent in the first quarter,
and GDP the growth of the economy down to half
a percent in that first quarter. But those numbers are
kind of old us. Next week we're starting the third quarter,
so we're wrapping up the second quarter on Monday. Meantime,
on the markets, today, a good day. Mortgage rates for
those of you in the mortgage market. They dropped to
a seven week low today. And when I say they
dropped to a seven week low, down to six point
seven percent, it's not much. It's an average. By the way.
Freddie Mack takes a survey of mortgage bankers around the
country and then issues out a weekly report on Thursday.
So it's not a rate that you can walk into
and get specifically from a bank or a mortgage banker.
But that's the average rate of mortgages in this past week.
And the dollar went lower, in fact quite a bit
lower today, down tumbling down to a three year low.
Donald Trump is taking aim at Jay Powell ahead of
the Fed and says he wants to name somebody else early.
Palell's term doesn't end until next May. It's almost a
year from now, but Trump apparently is going to talk
about naming a standby FED chairman, which is a terrible
idea because the members of the Federal Reserve Board is
not just Jay Powell. There's a number of other members
that vote on interest rates and they they'll be listening
to Jay Powell. So I know the President is frustrated
with Powell, and a lot of people are thinking that
he's being too cautious and won't drop interest rates. Even
though there's lots of signs that the economy is weakening,
there's also plenty of signs that, as you heard Austin Goilsby,
the labor market still persistently strong. The markets today up
on the Dow up four hundred and four to forty
three thousand and three eighty six, the S and P
up forty eight, the Nasdaq up one hundred ninety four,
the price of gold up ninety cents, barely moved thirty
three forty four for an ounce of gold, and oil
barely moved up thirty cents to sixty five dollars and
thirty cents for one barrel of oil. So that's it
for today, Thank you for coming. By tomorrow's Friday. We've
got the last day of the Supreme Court tomorrow, so
we should get some interesting results from them, and we'll
pass it on to you. Thank you when we hope
to see you again tomorrow