Speaker 1: How do you want a big concast?
Speaker 2: It's two day.
Speaker 1: Today's the twenty sixth day of August, Year of Our Lord,
twenty twenty five. And even though it's the last week
of August, a lot of people are on vacation. The
news barrel is overflowing today, and I mean the earth
shattering news that I think the world actually stopped spinning
was Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey announced that they are
engaged to be married. Okay, we got that done, check
that off. I know, listen, I've told you before. I
know a lot of people go, oh, Tom, you can't
keep man gard and talk about Taylor's. Yes, I can.
The woman went on her tour and made two billions. Well,
brought in two billion dollars. I admire anybody that is.
I mean, my goodness. So anyway, congratulations to them. They're
off on the whole deal. I mean, it'll give the
entertainment industry lots of following them around even more. And
football college football starts next weekend. I'm excited. I hope
you are. Like I said, food the new food bol
The news barrel is overflowing, and we I mean, I'm
right there with everybody else. The financial markets have been
going crazy about the fact that the government owns ten
percent piece of Intel and I still am shaking my
head about do they not understand? Do they not understand
why that is so bad? But that has been put
on the back shelf because now the president, he loves
to push the envelope, he loves to test the rules
and man alive, is he doing it again. And the
financial markets are even more gasping today because he fired
Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook last night. And well,
the rules say he can't do that, and that doesn't
bother him. He went ahead and did it anyway. Since
the FED, I mean, is not only about Lisa Cook.
This is the lady that was appointed by Joe Biden
to the Federal Reserve Board back in twenty twenty two.
And so she we told you the story yesterday. She
has been added to the list. Adam Shit is on
the list. Letitia James, the Attorney General for New York
is on the list, and now Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud.
And the fraud that is being accused is when you
fill out an application for a loan, Somewhere on that
list it asks is this going to be your principal residence,
yes or no. If you say yes, you get a
better rate and it's less risk for the lender because,
as I repeat often, you may if you get into
a tight financial situation, you may skip the Macy's bill
making payments, you may skip the some other bill to MasterCard,
but you're not going to skip the payment on the
roof over your head. So that is why a principal
single family home loans that are going to be your
principal principal residence have a better rate than if it's
going to be a second home, a rental home, whatever
it might be. So Lisa Cook, according to Bill Poulty,
he is the head of the Financial FHFA, which is
the Financial Financial Housing Finance Authority, And how he got
on this is well, they're going to dig into it
and find out just exactly was this a political hit?
Was this a political target?
Speaker 3: But she.
Speaker 1: Poulty is made a criminal referral to the Department of
Justice about Lisa Cook and said that she may have
committed mortgage fraud. So the President fires her last night,
and you'll hear from I've got a bunch of people
from Wall Street jabbering about this today very upset and
they are there. It's not so much about Lisa Cook
and about mortgage for it's about the fact that the
FED is supposed to be independent and the President doesn't
have any say so over the FED. The President nominates
the FED Chairman and that is it, and supposedly cannot
fire the FED chairman or any of the Federal governors.
Let me go back, if you don't mind, to the
beginning here. There's twelve people on the Federal Open Market Committee.
Those are the twelve people that vote every six weeks
on what to do about interest rates, raise them, lower them,
leave them the same. Well, of that twelve, seven of
them are Federal Reserve governors, of which Lisa Cook is
one of them. How do you hit to twelve? Whether
there's those seven and right now it is, I believe
three that have been appointed by Republicans and four that
have been appointed by Democrats. So if you're going to
look at those positions as political, which you probably should not,
because the job isn't political, but it's a political agency
because of the fact that, even though it's independent, the
FED Chairman is appointed by the President and the FED
governors are appointed by presidents. So there's right now, it's
balanced four to three in favor of those that have
been appointed by Democrats. And then you said, well, you
said twelve, Tom, Yeah, well there's the seven plus five
Federal Reserve District Bank presidents are on there, and they
rotate as far as how they get on the Federal
Open Market Committee. So there's a little bit of I
know we're getting into the weeds, but this is important
because if President Trump can appoint another person as the
Federal Reserve Governor, that will tip the scales in favor
of a Republican, more Republicans than Democrats on the Federal
Reserve Open Market Committee. And well, there's another whole theory
here too, is that Lisa Cook says she's not going
to she's not going to step down, she's not going
to go away. She's going to fight this. She has
hired Abby Lowell, who is the same guy that represented
Hunter Biden in court. He represents I believe correct me
on this, but I think it's all only Democrats. He's
a big lawyer in Washington that represents people that are
involved in political scandals. Usually he's going to represent her.
And the problem is that how can you fire somebody.
The only way the president can fire somebody on the
FED is for cause. Well what does that mean?
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: It's going to have to be for a court to
determine what's caused. But the other thing is she hasn't
been accused of anything formally, she hasn't been charged. Yeah,
Bill POULTI sent a criminal referral to the Department of
Justice a couple of weeks ago, and so far nothing.
I expect they'll come out with something, but they're going
to have to investigate to see these mortgage applications and
see what she wrote, and see what box she checked,
and see whether or not she did commit mortgage fraud
or not. So how can you fire somebody for cause
that has only been a criminal referral? There hasn't been
a charge. Now, if she is guilty of mortgage fraud
and she is found guilty or even indicted for it,
I think she should step down. But it looks like
the President is rushing this because he wants to get
those infistrates down and if he can appoint another governor
that's loyal to him. The problem with all this is
the world's financial markets look to the Federal reserve system
in the United States as being trying to be independent.
They don't want it to be a political arm of
whoever is in power in the US. They want it
to be separate from that. And if it looks like
the Federal Reserve is going to be a mouthpiece for
the president, and I often say this, Okay, so maybe
you love Donald Trump, but what about the next president
or the one after that, of a mouthpiece for Joe Biden.
Wouldn't that have been fun? So you do want this
to be independent? And the world financial markets are watching.
They're asking questions like, why did Bill Poulty find her
mortgage applications? Is this a political witch hunt? Is the
Fed under attack? I mean, the Supreme Court has ruled
that the president does have the authority to fire agency heads,
even so called independent but they carved out an exception
for the Federal Reserve Board, saying he doesn't have the
authority to do that. But the president is going to
test the rules, no question about it. So where do
we start today? How about with Roger Ferguson. He is
the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. Here's what
Roger had to say.
Speaker 4: No question, we've been trying to get an answer to
this and been debating it all morning. Do you know
if she is already fired and will now appeal that decision,
or if it's the other way round that the president
needs to go to court to enforce his wishes.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of questions. One is you know
what is it? First? Is she guilty of anything? We
do not know that yet. There are allegations. I don't
think you've never seen any proof yet that's been made public,
and we should all keep that in mind. We're speculating
here with a big if. Secondly, there's a question of
the power, the presence power to fire a federal reserve
governor for cause, And what is the definition of for cause?
Most people have thought for cause is for some misbehavior
in office, not an alleged misbehavior as a private citizen.
And so I think the question that you're asking, you know,
has she been fired, if she fired, et cetera. Ultimately
only the courts will be able to determine that, and
we have to find out is she guilty of anything.
If so, that was if she was a private citizen. Secondly,
what counts for cause to allow the president to remove
a sitting Federal Reserve governor, So still some ambiguity. I think,
you know, I think there is a distinction in the
market's mind between a governor and the chairman of the board.
And also we've seen this president move back and forth
quite a bit on a variety of things, including tariffs.
So I think the market is now, you know, sort
of conditioned itself to wait for the next shoe to
drop and the one after that, and then we'll finally
see where this also goes out. All of this will
go to court, and then we'll find out first is
Lisa Cook guilty of anything. If she is guilty of something,
is that sufficient cause for the president to fire her?
Both big questions. If the president says that she has
fired and the chairman of the board does not enforce that,
is that cause. These are questions that have to be asked.
You were asking the right questions, but no answers yet,
And I would encourage all of us to not speculate
too much.
Speaker 1: The question about Lisa Coogan, whether she signed a document
that said she had two primary residents at the same time,
Like Roger Ferguson says, that'll all go to court. But
the other questions being asked by the financial markets. Is
the independence of the Federal Reserve Board? Has it been pierced?
Speaker 2: So I think you're right to take us to that
bigger question, because that is, in fact the question that matters.
There's a risk. I think this unprecedented move, and there
have been other moves that the President has taken visa
visa FED, all of them I think pile up on
the side of you know, is the Fed's independence now
being questioned? And is the FED therefore able to make
decisions consistent with its legislative mandate which will pass long
past anyone administration. And I think that is a very
legitimate question. I think our friend Christian Guha puts it
the rite issue on the table for all of us
to consider. And we should not be complacent about this
matter whatsoever. An independent FED, as I said to you,
I think last week is central to welling, well performing
bond market, well performing economy, and we need to respect
and protect that independence as best we can.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go to the New York SoC Exchange and
the CNBC anchors were all a buzz about this. Here's
Jim Kramer and David Faber primarily, and their discussion.
Speaker 5: It's a tax on the FED. Today, the President says
he has fire FED Governor Lisa Cook affect him immediately,
and a letter to Cook posted last night on Truth
Social President states there is sufficient cause to remove her
because she is, in his words, may have made false
statements on one or more mortgage agreements. Cook responded with
a statement saying, quote, President Trump purported to fire me
for cause when no cause exists under the law and
he has no authority to do so.
Speaker 3: I will not resign.
Speaker 5: I will continue to carry out my duties to help
the america An economy, as I've been doing since twenty
twenty two. A lot of reaction Jim on the street
about whether she could get an injunction from the DC
District Cord, whether that eventually moves to the Supreme Cords.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the hard problem here is she has
been charged.
Speaker 6: So until she's charged, I don't know why the President
would go now unless he's really confident she will be charged.
Speaker 3: I don't think he knows that.
Speaker 6: You know, David, I think one of the problems here
is is that without her being charged, it's really difficult
to fire her, because you're just basically saying I said
she may have called I'm firing her had she committed fraud.
I think that the expectation would be even if she
committed ford before.
Speaker 3: Being appointed, it's very hard to serve the Federal Reserve
if you're under and died. It just is right. But
in this case, the president, I guess, is judge and jury. Well, yeah,
I mean, let's let's let's take her out of the equation.
If you haven't been charged, then how would you ever
considered someone who shouldn't.
Speaker 7: We have no idea if if in fact she's guilty
of this charge there's.
Speaker 3: Been there's no due process. No, there's nothing. No, there's
no process.
Speaker 7: I mean, the charge is being made by the President
and by my others.
Speaker 3: There's been a referral, a criminal referral.
Speaker 7: But we have no idea if it's been undertaken as yet, correct, Carl,
in terms of the Justice Department deciding to prosecute, which
then she would obviously have the opportunity, I would believe,
to defend herself, and then we might a court might determine,
and a judge might determine whether she is in fact guilty. Now, typically,
by the way mortgage fraud is litigated, when it's large,
you know, when you're talking millions and millions of dollars
at stake or who knows billion, those kinds of when.
Speaker 5: You're inflating the value of your assets.
Speaker 7: Sometimes that or okay not typically when you are on
a form saying that you have two.
Speaker 3: Primary residences, which is what is charged, not to just
a department. No, that's my buddy.
Speaker 6: I do think that we have to go back to
what common sensus, which is, if you've been indicted from
Morgans freud, you shouldn't serve.
Speaker 3: But she hasn't been indicted from Mortgus fraud.
Speaker 6: So why should should she step down on the possibility
that she's being investigated.
Speaker 3: No, no, she shouldn't step down.
Speaker 6: And by the way, this you know, the decision made
twenty second twenty twenty five by the Supreme Court, Yes,
says that there's a carve out right where they he
can't just say listen, you gotta resign that there is
a sense that the Federal Reserve is independent. Now, all
that said, when you come back to the notion of
Federal Reserve independence, if you can go after someone who
hasn't been charge and just say listen, you're fired.
Speaker 3: Wing it like that. Well, why couldn't he do that
to anybody? You can? You can, Well, what do you feel?
Do you feel?
Speaker 8: Well, no, I'm not way I feel about it. Listening,
By the way, this is do you mean? This is
going to set up an interesting potential path through courts
because the Supreme Court has given the President certain powers
in terms of firing so called independent employees that are
not necessarily under the purview that said, they kind of
carved out the Federal Reserve in the same in the same.
Speaker 6: Uh, well, I think suppose that's the only part of
the government that is considered to be independent.
Speaker 1: So the discussion goes on and on and on, and
we will wait to see what happens next. But so far,
Lisa Cook is not stepping down, and she's going to
fight this firing. It's interesting because just three weeks ago,
another member, another Federal Reserve governor, woman by the name
of Adrianna Kugler, resigned from the Board of Governors. And
the only reason she gave was she wanted to return
to Georgetown University as a professor. So that opened an
earlier than expected slot for President Trump to nominate a
new member to the Fed's governing board. And now if
he could get this person out, that would again give
him the four to three advantage. If I just have
never thought of the FED governors on what party or
what president appointed them, but I guess some people do.
Lisa Cook also came from an economics professor job. She
was a professor of economics at the University of Michigan.
I remember, right, So that fight's going to go on.
And then to the point we were making about Intel
the last couple of days and the government owning a
piece of that. That's apparently not the end of what
the government is. Least, the Trump administration is thinking about
having ownership in some other companies that they do business with.
Here's Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, being questioned about this
by Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Speaker 9: Why shouldn't the US government say, you know what, we
use Palenteer services, we would like a piece of Palenteer.
We use Boeing services, we would like a piece of Boeing.
There are a lot of businesses that do business with
the US government that benefit by doing business with the
US government.
Speaker 3: I guess where's the line.
Speaker 10: Oh, there's a monstrous discussion about defense. I mean Lockheed
Martin makes ninety seven percent of their revenue from the
US government. They are basically an arm of the US government.
They make exquisite munitions, I mean, amazing things that can
knock a missile out of the air when it's coming
towards you.
Speaker 3: But what's the economics of that.
Speaker 10: I'm going to leave that to my Secretary of Defense
and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. These guys are on
it and they're thinking about it. But I tell you what,
there's a lot of talking that needs to be had
about how do we finance our munitions acquisitions. I think
a lot of that is talking, And now you have
the right people in the jobs and Donald Trump at
the head thinking about what is the right way to
do it. I tell you the way it has been
done has been a giveaway.
Speaker 1: So Howard Luttennek admitted that, yeah, they're looking at taking
ownership a piece of ownership of various defense contractors. I
don't know about you, but the reason, yes, Lockheed Martin
is a defense contractor, So yes, they make ninety seven
percent of the revenue comes from the US government. Who
else buys bullets and things like that and missiles? So
do you want the government to just take over private companies.
Private companies have a long cherished history of doing things better,
more creative, faster, less expensive than a government aid.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 1: So can you imagine why don't they just buy Lockheed
Martin and turn it into the government agency for bullets
and missiles. I don't think. So that's the private sector
outperforms all the government larg that is out there. And
lut Nick, I can't believe Howard is saying this, but
he's talking about Yeah, they're thinking about taking pieces of
companies that the government does business with. This is crazy. So,
speaking of crazy, the one executive order of the president
has signed now of these eos of late is that
he's saying that you can't burn the US flag. I
don't know what he's going to do, but he's going
to he wants to ban burning the US flag. I
don't know when you learned about the fact that burning
the US flag was I guess okay, I don't remember
exactly what year was, but I think I was a young,
very young man, probably in school, when somebody said you
can burn the US flag and they can't do anything
about it. I thought, what that seems so wrong? That
anybody can burn our flag, but the Supreme Court has
ruled on multiple occasions that burning the US flag is
protected under the First Amendment. That is your speech to
be able to push back against our government and tell
them that you don't like them. Well, Donald Trump, like
I said, he's trying to test the rules, and he's
pushing envelopes. That's what he does. And what he wants
to do is revisit this whole business about burning the
US flag. John yu who is a longtime federal prosecutor,
was I believe, an assistant Attorney General years ago. He's
a professor of law out at Berkeley in California, and
this this is his take on the executive order.
Speaker 11: President Trump has an uphill battle to fight. I completely
sympathize with him. I don't think anybody really approves of
burning the American flag. Let me quote the great Justice
Scalia here, who said, if he were king, he would
throw every scruffy, bearded, sandal wearing weirdo who wants to
burn the American flag in jail. But then Jessice Scalia said,
I'm no king. The Supreme Court held in these two
decisions from nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety that burning
the flag is protected by free speech. But you notice
President Trump rested his decision on incitement. There is an
exception for speech that's something along the lines of yelling
fire in a crowded theater, speech that really is designed
not to express thought, but is designed just to get
people to fight. There, the government might have more discretion
to try to limit the burning of the flag, But
I think the answer is, rather then try to change
you'll creating pride flags or any other kinds of symbols.
That's all equally protected speech. And so if there are
states and cities who are punishing people for that, those
laws should be struck down by the Supreme Court too.
There is no clause in the Constitution right now. You
would have to amend the Constitution, or, as President Trump's doing,
try to get back to the Supreme Court and see
those decisions from thirty five years ago. They were five
to four, and they were interesting mixtures. It wasn't all
conservatism on one side and all liberals on another. So
President Trump might try to see if this new Supreme Court,
I don't think any of the justices on this court
were there back thirty five years go see if this
new court would change its mind, and you could make
the argument that the flag is unique. It's the one
thing because it expresses the nation's existence, that men and
women have died on battlefields to protect it, that it
has a unique symbolism that the government's allowed to take
off the platter of all the other things we allow
people to burn and destroy in the name of free speech.
Speaker 1: All right, since we're on this role, the president's on
a roll and he hasn't said he's going to do it,
but he's implied pretty heavily that he's going to be
sending National Guard troops into Chicago. He wants the National
Guard to create special units that can go in two
cities to basically do or supplement law enforcement there. So Chicago,
of course, the mayor there is having kittens about it,
so is the governor of Illinois. But here's a lady
who her name is pianre Pirae Easley. She is a
mother in Chicago who was asked about why would the
governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago be against
troops coming in to help them fight crime.
Speaker 12: Here's her answer, because obviously they're benefiting from the chaos.
Speaker 13: Think about it. Our governor has been in charge for
a while.
Speaker 12: Our mayor has a platform that puts the migrants before
the American people. He's doing exactly what he said he
was going to do on his campaign website. And because
they're failing the American people, we deserve help. We don't
have to live like this. And if President Trump wants
to come with troops and prosecutors, because we want just
as many indictments as there are arrests, then we don't.
That's what we want. Don't listen to JB. Pritzker. Don't
listen to Brandon Johnson. We asked Brandon Johnson to give
us the ability to vote on whether or not we
were going to remain a sanctuary city, and they did
it that in the city council.
Speaker 13: Because this is their plan.
Speaker 12: It seems like they want to bankrupt the American taxpayers
in order to force us to pay for our replacements.
Speaker 13: And we say absolutely not. Every number is a bad number.
Speaker 12: Right now, the City of Chicago is touting the lower
crime by saying that we're at the same rates we
were at INTWOY fourteen in twenty fourteen. My first cousin,
Abraham Cooper, was murdered in the city of Chicago, and
Operation Legend that President Trump sent to the city during
the last administration saw that crime. Each person that dies
is a grieving family. No grieving families are acceptable. So
for them to say, well, we don't need help because
violence is down, because murders are down, people are still
being hurt, people are still being murdered, Drugs are still
being sole, humans are still being trafficked. So what is
the baseline And their baseline is confusion and we want safety.
Speaker 13: So thank you, President Trump. We can't wait to see you.
Speaker 12: Please don't listen to them, but we're also asking you
for protection because yesterday our governor did a press conference
and he said that they are taking the names and
making a list of people who support the president. So
I'm asking the President and everybody in America to pray
for our safety and security as we fight to get
justice in our city.
Speaker 1: Wow, very well spoken, lady. We always hear from the
governor and from the mayor, but you don't hear from
the citizens. And there's a bunch more like this lady
that live in Chicago that want to get the crime
behind them. I still don't know. You've got to do
more than just send troops. It's a much much deeper, deeper,
deeper problem. But they want anything to help them with
the crime problems in their city. So there's a lady
from Chicago giving her view. Some other news headlines floating
around today. As far as the economy goes, the Consumer
Conference Board came out with their consumer confidence number for
the month of August. I know the month isn't over,
but they came out with it today, ninety seven point four.
That's very high. It's better than expected, but it's lower
than last month. So consumer confidence down notch from the
previous month, but still very very high. Consumer confidence is
baffling economists out there who thought that they would be
pulling back, but so far they are not.
Speaker 3: Cracker Barrel.
Speaker 1: Story won't die. Cracker Barrel came out with a statement
today and said, well, we won't always get everything right
the first time. So it sounds like they're starting to
feel the pushback about wanting to modernize the cracker barrel,
which is an American staple of an old country restaurant.
It's great. It's a great restaurant, best fried chicken and
mashed potatoes. You ever wanted to have Anyway, they said, no,
they're not walking back, they're rebranding. Why do people rebrand?
Remember Coca Cola, the genius is a Coca Cola. That's
a huge company. They've made a lot, I mean, wildly successful,
and so you would think there's a lot of smart
people there. But they came out. Remember they came out
with new coke. They had to completely undo that whole thing.
It was a huge disaster. Anyway, Cracker Barrels so far
has spent seven hundred million dollars on this rebranding of
lightening up the restaurants inside with new menus and some
junior vice president. I hope he or she gets fired,
very much like the bud light and mistake that that
end hazard Bush made with who was that guy that
looked like a lady that was part of the bud
light fiasco. I mean, you're selling your product, just leave it,
leave the brand alone, just keep advertising it. And then,
of course, if you're just tuning in the big news
of the day, the internet is melting down because Taylor
Swift and Travis Kelsey you have announced their engagement. No,
we don't have a date on Wall Street. Let's see
what they were thinking about today besides Taylor Swift, Well,
it was better than yesterday. The Dow Jones industrials today
up one hundred and thirty five, back up to forty
five thousand and four eighteen. That's I believe, this close
to a record. SMP up twenty six, the Nasdaq up
ninety four, Gold nice day, up twenty five dollars to
thirty four forty three. And oil, after going up a
buck yesterday, went down a buck and a half today
it's at sixty three dollars for one barrel of oil.
Thank you for coming by. Appreciate you patronizing the podcast.
We're going to try this again tomorrow. We hope to
see you then