Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Friday. Today is the first day of May.
Happy May Day to you. We'll get into that as
we progress today. But May first year of our Lord,
twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan. So we
have we have another very busy Friday, very busy day.
We'll talk about oil and gas, we'll talk about the war.
We've got again a lot of May Day celebrations going on,
which I want to get into. We also have a
little business to start off with here. Spirit Airlines is
prepared to shut down today or tomorrow, probably tomorrow, and
it should not come as a surprise, but a lot
of people don't pay attention to news about the airlines
or business news, but they have well, they've been they've
they've been in bankruptcy before and they came out and
they were back in bankruptcy bankruptcy now and they're just
not making money. And then on top of that, you
throw the they're the ultra low cost airline in the country,
and you throw on the higher fuel prices for them,
and it's broken their back. So they are ready to
shut down. But the President today, I've got a number
of clips one. He's went to the villages in Florida
today to give a speech to them. But before he
left the White House, he did the usual thing in
the driveway talking to reporters and they had a lot
of questions for him, and one was about Spirit Airlines.
Speaker 2: Did you decide to get failing out Spirit Airline?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess we're looking at it and we could
do it. We'll do it, but only if it's a
good deal. I think that they're preparing to shut down
this weekend because they haven't gotten it. You're looking at it,
but if we can't make a good deal, no institution's
been able to do it. I said, I'd like to
save the jobs, but we'll have an announcement sometime today.
Speaker 1: We gave them, we gave them a final footbook. Christ
all right, you heard them that they may have a
deal for them today. They'll make an announcement today. Now
they're saying today or tomorrow. But I'll tell you what.
The stockholders are going to lose everything. The bondholders are
madder than hornets, and they are trying trying to negotiate something.
They may go to court, but they're trying to negotiate
to try to get some money that they lent to
the company in bonds. And as far as the other
airlines are concerned, I think they're all basically glad to
see them go because less capacity means that the other
airlines get more business and can raise their fares. But
the problem with this is from an economic standpoint. First
of all, the government should not be involved in bailing
out the private sector. There's plenty of airline seats out
there you don't need. It's not like we don't have
enough airlines. And secondly, there's a concept in economists called
moral hazard, and the moral hazard is if you can
get bailed out, then why bother to live by the rules?
Why bother to be watching your expenses and staying within
your income. And for the other airlines that are out there,
and there's a lot of them that are sitting there
paying a lot of fuel bills right now, but there's
some that are they're not doing that great well, then
why should they pay attention to their finances if the
government's just going to bail you out. So I'm voting
for let Spirit Airlines go. They have given it their
best shot. They went into bankruptcy, they came out, they
reorganized and they still could not make money. And this
was all before the war in Iran. The war just
complicates things even more so the jet fuel situation. We
have enough jet fuel in this country, but there's a
lot of countries, especially in Asia, that are running out,
and so this is going to affect international airlines from
the cost and not only the cost, but also the
supply of the jet fuel. But speaking of oil and gas,
David Goldman, whose Financial reporter was talking about that earlier today, Yeah,
let's be clear, they.
Speaker 4: Are high right now. Filling up a tank is about
as fun as for you and me as watching the
Celtics last night, I thought, not fun at all. So
I think that, you know, it's important to just acknowledge
that it is painful for many, many Americans to fill
their tanks right now, as you've said, But it was
so much higher in twenty twenty two when Russia went
to war with Ukraine and took three million barrels of
oil off the market. Now the Strait of Hormuz has
taken fourteen million barrels a day off the market. And
the other thing to keep in mind is that when
Russia took those barrels off they actually didn't, right, They
had their shadow fleets, and so there wasn't much of
a change at all. So why is it that gas
prices and oil prices aren't nearly as high as they were?
They were five dollars in twenty twenty two. They oil
hit one twenty two in twenty twenty two. We haven't
really a p coach that yet. Okay, So there's three
things that are going on here. The first thing is
that there were eight billion barrels of oil sitting around
the world before we went to war with a run.
That's a lot of oil. Now not all of that
is accessible, but jap Morgan says that almost six hundred
million of them are, and so it's created a little
bit of a buffer for us, so that even though
a lot of oil is locked in the Strait of
hor Moves, there is accessible oil. That's the first thing.
The other thing is that there are some parts of
the world that have literally run out of oil, right Cambodia,
Me and Mars, some parts of Asia can't get parts
for plastics right, and so they can't demand something that
they literally don't have access to. That's kept a price
cap as well, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So the President today was talking about the price
of oil and price of gas. And I've said it before.
He many times talks about things that I think are
dreams in his head, not reality, but where he would
like things to be. And this is this is one
of them.
Speaker 5: The average price of the gallon of gas is now
four dollars in this country.
Speaker 6: And you know what, and we're not going to have
a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran, but the
gas will go down as soon as the war's over.
Speaker 7: It'll drop like a rock.
Speaker 6: There's so much other it's all over the place, sitting
all over the oceans of.
Speaker 2: The world, and it'll be it'll go down.
Speaker 6: But what won't happen is if Iran had a nuclear
weapon and use it, then the whole world is a
different place.
Speaker 1: Well, very very good point that he makes. Oil. The
only argument I have is that I don't know if
it'll drop like a rock that he said, but it
will go down. I don't know. There's an infrastructure damage
in the oil fields and other countries and things like that.
It will take a while, I think, to get back
to where it was prior to the war. But it
will go down, which will make people happy that any
price going down would be better than what it is today.
And prices today, let me look at the Yeah, the
average across the country today for regular the cheap stuff
four dollars and thirty nine cents. That's up nine cents
from yesterday. Diesel five dollars fifty seven cents. That's up
seven cents in one day. Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Hawaii
are all over five dollars. California is now over six dollars. Yeah,
they're the only one. Six six is the average in California.
The highest price in California is again if you go
to Yosemite, beautiful place to visit, but just load up
your wallet six dollars and ninety eight cents in the
county where Yosemite is located, six ninety eight. Call it
seven bucks. And if you're flying into San Francisco, it's
six dollars and twenty six cents. The average around the
San Francisco airport. Actually LA is cheaper, but the most
expensive is actually in northern California. Patrick Dahan is the
guy from Gas Buddy of the Triple A group to
keep track of gas prices. He knows gas prices inside
and out. This is what he had to say about it.
Speaker 5: Okay, not so much. I do think that the increase
of will continue, thankfully, not at the pace in the
last week. You mentioned your home state of Indiana. Some
exceptional refining issues added to the extension of the blockade
of the Strait of Hormuz, which set oil prices out
significantly earlier this week. That's why the majority of Americans
are paying more. Great Lake States got a bit of
an enhancement from refinery snags that developed over the weekend.
That is why all of those states in the Great
Lakes from Michigan to Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin experiencing a
bit of sticker shock with prices that literally jumped a
dollar a gallon in a six hour time period. So
that is more focused on refining issues, which can happen
this time of year. But for the majority of us,
we're all feeling the gut punch from the extension. The
President talking about extending the blockade of the strain offore moves.
We've already lost a billion barrels of oil due to
the shutdown, and now US exports of oil and products
are also hitting new records as countries start buying our oil, gasoline, diesel,
and jet fuel. The EIA reporting in the last week
that nearly one hundred million barrels of oil products left
US shores in the last week. That is going to
put more upward pressure on our prices in the weeks ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you heard that right. He says there's going to
be more pressure on oil prices and gas prices going
up in the weeks ahead. Here's what else he said.
Speaker 5: Well, can't be understated, especially as farmers are getting out
to plant their crops ahead of the season in the
next couple of weeks. And as you mentioned, diesel now
on the cusp of hitting six dollars, and many of
those very significant agriculture states from Iowa to Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Illinois,
all of the worst potential time. Not that there's any
good time for such a surgeon prices, but the wholesale
costs of diesel on Wednesday alone soared seventy three cents
a gallon for those states, indicative of major refining issues
in the Great Lakes region. Now, I'm hopeful that those
refinery issues will be worked out here over the next week.
The national average may eventually see a little bit of
relief at least from that angle. But my worry is,
as long as the Strait of Ramouse continues to be closed,
oil prices are likely to face continued upward pressure. If
we don't see reopening soon, it's possible that by Memorial
Day or maybe July four, gasoline prices nationally could be
getting close to the five dollars mark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we keep talking about oil and gas prices
going up from here, and especially for those of you
in the Great Lakes ere, it's refinery issues. You've got
some major refinery problems that supply the Great Lakes States
and they are seen. These are that seventy three cent
increase in diesel in one day. So keep your fingers
crossed that we can get this thing solved as soon
as possible. So how is that war going?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Is it a war? Because today is also the sixtieth
day and the War Powers Act says that the president
can do basically whatever he wants to do with the military,
but no longer than sixty days. He's got to go
to Congress within sixty days and say, hey, I need
you to bless this thing. And of course there's a
split in Congress. A lot of the Democrats are saying,
no way, but it's sixty days, and the President is saying,
wait a minute, the cease fire part did not count
towards the sixty days. And by the way, there are
no military activities going on right now, so the sixty
days doesn't apply today. So they're going to go through
the semantics on that. General Jack Keene, this is his view.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I mean, where are we right now?
You know, so the American people on the stand, We've
been three plus weeks into an attempt to negotiate after
the Iranians shut down the straits. Your administration believe that
there would be an opportunity here for negotiations. I think
the Iranians put some feelers out there. They convinced our
negotiators that they clearly was some realistic possibilities here, and
none of that turned out to be the case, because
the hard liners in charge are not about to present
the President Trump a deal that he's willing to accept.
That's number one. Number two, he's not going to make
a bad deal himself. So we have a stalemate here.
They own the straits of a mouse and we have
shut down all their exports with the blockade, so we
could continue that, and because the blockade is definitely effective
and we can make a huge list of everything that's
happening to the Iranians in terms of the economic peril
and the suffering is about to take place. But they
have to again recognize who are we really dealing with here.
The guys running the regime, all they care about is
staying in power. They don't care about their people. They've
demonstrated that time and time again in terms of their
economic peril that they put them in themselves and also
killing them to make certain they stay in power, so they,
in their minds, can outlast us in a sense that
political pressure getting closer to the midterms, economic pressure with
gas prices on the administration. They believe, even though we
have the economic blockade, at some point we will end
the war, stop everything, or make a deal with them
that meets some of their objectives. The other alternative was
to recognize that they are steadfast than that, and they
will certainly don't care about their people suffering. The people
that think this is going to cause a collapse and
they're going to make a deal, I think they're underestimating
who these guys really are, so the reality is, then
what else are our options? Well, I think option one
is return and finish what we started. We spend three
weeks here trying to work something out with these guys.
We have assigned objectives to sen come soda is Israel.
We are two weeks short of accomplishing that. Let's go
finish that once and for all. Complete that mission that
we've given to them. And we can go through a
list of targets. But there's leadership targets out there, there's
politic missiles out there, there's the remnants of the nuclear
program that's out there, there's drone stories that's out there,
and energy infrastructure, etc. There's plenty of targets that we
have assigned that we want to finish there. We have
twice the amount of combat power to do that from
when we started, and the Israeli is a flush foot munitions. Also,
we do about the straits of Moves. We can't leave
them in Iranian's hands. They believe now they own it.
We have to militarily force that to be cleared and
secured and open, and we have the military capability to
do that. Another option, what do we do about car gallon?
Car gallon is blocked right now by our blockade. An
option when we finish military operations, or maybe even start
with military operations. It's an option the President has certainly
and likely was discussed. We could destroy it, and that
would force an eventual economic collapse in the regime. There's
no doubt about that. They don't have much alternatives because
literally eighty percent of their revenue comes from that distribution
of oil itself, right out of that one place. So
those military options went through discussions last week, and the
President has those decisions to make. I do think we'll
probably move on and do something here other than the blockade,
because the blockade in of itself I don't believe is
going to any concessions out of these people, given who
they really.
Speaker 1: Are, all right, So we're going to move on and
do something. The Senate had a classified briefing behind closed
doors yesterday last night. Senator Richard Blumenthal. I'm not a fan,
but he came out it basically spilled some of the
beans from the classified hearing. But you can gather that
they're well, I'll let him talk.
Speaker 9: I do have the impression from some of the briefings
that I have received, as well as other sources that
an imminent military strike is very much on the table.
I can't be more specific because I received at least
one of these briefings, several of them in classified settings.
But I'm not saying with any certainty as to when
it would happen, but very much on the table as
a potential plant.
Speaker 1: He spilled some of the beans saying they're planning to
do some sort of military strike back to the President.
As he was in the driveway leaving for Florida today,
he commented on a couple different comments about this.
Speaker 3: Oh, they're very, very confused by what's happened because essentially
most of their military has been wiped out. But we
just had a conversation with a rant. Let's see what happens.
But I would say that I am not happy.
Speaker 1: And that's the key point is that Iran apparently put
some new deal on the table, and you heard what
the President's reaction was is he's not happy with it.
So he was also asked about are you going to
do a military attack yesterday?
Speaker 5: But's he breeching you on a dim print approach?
Speaker 2: Options? What kind of options?
Speaker 5: How would it look web options?
Speaker 3: I mean, do we want to go and just blast
the hell out of him and finish him forever. Or
do we want to try and make a deal and
me those are the optics.
Speaker 5: Do you want to go blast the hell out of them?
Speaker 3: I burn Iver on a human basis.
Speaker 2: I prefer that for TESSI up.
Speaker 3: Do we want to go in there heavy and just
plast them away, or do we want to do something?
They're very disjointed Wnership, as you can understand, Peter're very disjointed.
I mean they h They're not getting along with each other,
and it puts us in a bad position. One group
wants to make a certain deal. The other group wants
to make a certain deal, including the hard liners. The
hardliners want to make a deal too. Why wouldn't they
They have no navy, they have no air forces, they
have no anti aircraft, they have they have no nothing And.
Speaker 1: All right, so he's got the opera from Iran that
he's not happy with. He had the briefing by the
military h yesterday and that's on the table and that
he's not going to say back. The reporter asked him, said,
well what do you what are you going to attack them?
And these is why would I tell you? So he's
not going to spill the beans on that. Joe Bisino,
who used to be a big Pentagon official, this is
what his thoughts are.
Speaker 10: Well, I think we resume the military destruction here. I
think what you've got is you're laying two measures of
pressure on top of each other. You got the military pressure,
and then on top of that you got the economic
destruction really here imposed by the blockade. You know, the
military component of this has in many ways already been one.
But we can continue the strikes on infrastructure, on bridges,
on oil facilities, on commanded control nodes, you know, continue
those strikes, and then really just behind that, continue the
economic stranglehold we've got on top of iron and all
those pressures. The idea is that we'll bring them back
to a negotiation that we can live with.
Speaker 1: I don't know about bringing them back to negotiations. I
still say you've got to get rid of this group there.
They're hardliners and they are stuck in their theological beliefs.
They're not going to negotiate. So what do you do.
You do what we've done in every war is you
go in and you take over. You arrest the former
leaders of the country and let the people choose somebody new.
Gordon Solon was a former ambassador from the United States
to the European Union, and this is his view.
Speaker 11: This is all rope a dope lo who's the dope,
who's the dopware, who's the dope? The Iranians think we're
the dope, and we're not the dope. What's been going
on in the last few weeks is giving our men
and women a good rest and rearmament. And I think
what you're going to see is another series of strikes
and perhaps another round of leadership decapitations, which is badly
needed in order to bring the Iranians finally to their knees. Look,
we're not trying to tell the Iranians how to run
their society, and that's very well proven in Venezuela. We're
putting up with the kind of society that we loathe
in Venezuela. But they're not trying to impose their will externally,
which is what the Iranians are trying to do. If
the Iranians would leave the Israelis alone, if they would
quit sponsoring Hamas the houthis Hesbola, if they want to
run a fundamentalist, clerical society. That's fine as long as
it doesn't leave their borders. And as soon as it
starts to leave their borders, that's when the US, Israel,
and frankly the rest of the world have an interest
in how things go in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: That's sure we are.
Speaker 1: It sounds like more than probably three quarters of the
people I just played for you were thinking that it's
time to use the military again and shut off. I mean,
we did seventy some percent of the military checklist, and
they still have more to go. General Keen is itching
to go ahead and finish that list off, and it
includes targeting lots of important things that run the government
of Iran, including targeting their leaders. So some of these
leaders that are negotiating may not be with us much longer,
all right. So that's the war. That's oil and gas prices.
May day is today and may day is I remember
when I was a young man that it was a
thing that they did in Moscow in front of the Kremlin.
They had a parade, and they had the leaders of
the former Soviet Union would get out there and they
would look down on the parade and they had they
would drive by their tanks and their missiles and all
that sort of stuff. Well, it started off as yeah,
kind of a celebration of communism, and it transformed into
the International Workers Day to commemorate a labor violent crackdown
in Chicago back in the eighteen hundreds. And today it's
supposed to be a labor solidarity day, but it's not.
It's turned into a protest day, and there are groups
that are behind the protests that are going on around
the country today. It's come here to the US and
in Chicago in particular, it's in really bad shape. There
is a group that has organized and they call themselves
Mobilized for May Day. They have six hundred far left
extremist groups that have been that are organized. They're on
the email list to go out and do things. Today.
There is about three one thousand different events scheduled by
this group Mobilized for May Day. They have a budget
of over two billion dollars, So when you see them
carrying their banners and their signs and all of that,
it's all paid for. It's all taken care of. And
it's basically people who want to see our country and
our form of government completely demolished. They want to put
it back together again very much under communism or socialism
and so democrat socialist. They're all excited about today because
it gives them something to rally around. But in Chicago
it's particularly bad. They have the schools in Chicago basically
are being let out so that the kids they're not
let out to go protests. They're told where to go
and where to protest and are given signs to take
with them. The students are basically being not only indoctrinator,
but also being followed. Now Brandon Johnson, who is the
mayor of Chicago, he was a former teacher and the
teachers' unions are really big on promoting May Day. So
here's a little bit from the Mayor of Chicago today.
Speaker 7: There's across the country on a May Day, not just
with wearers, but with action.
Speaker 5: Taking a page.
Speaker 7: Out of our four Bearer's book, I'm houted to sign
on to the Haymarket Declaration, a symbol of solidarity and
a shared commitment to pursue local actions across a blaw
set of priorities, from protecting our First Amendment rights to
building safer and welcoming communities. And I look forward to
commemorating May Day with the people of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm a big supporter of you want to go
protest that you're right, we have the First Amendment here.
But here's a little more from the mayor with a
better microphone.
Speaker 12: We have an opportunity in this moment to pushed the
narrative not just at the federal level, but for Chicago
and the state of Illinois to show up on behalf
of working people and workers raising their voices to demand
that millionaires and billionaires and large corporations put more skin
in the game.
Speaker 1: That was from a zoom meeting, if you will. It
was the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and the new
socialist Democrat mayor of Seattle, along with the socialist mayor
of Portland, Oregon. And they're all on the same page
and they're very much for this anti wealth, anti billionaires.
I don't know if they even mentioned millionaires anymore. They're
anti billionaires and it's all about the union movement, but
in a much more far left way than they ever
had before. I don't know about you, but when I
grew up, we didn't we didn't have we didn't have
our schools letting us out to go to pro tests.
And things like that. But that's where we are today.
A lot of money behind two billion dollars, behind these
three thousand events that are going on around the country today.
The man who ran against Brandon Johnson but lost was
also a school teacher. His name is Paul Vallas and
this is his reaction.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 13: Look what's happened, not only in Chicago, but I think
across the country in particularly large cities, is the unions
aligned themselves with far left organizations in part to protect
their monopoly over public schools. You know, the emergence of
the charter school movement et such as a school choice movement.
So they recoiled by finding alliances and they certainly did
in Chicago. And this is all advancing this far left
political agenda. The school performance in Chicago are absolutely abysmal.
They are absolutely abysmal. And this is not the first time.
And let me tell you what they did. The state
actually lowered the the standards in order to boost test course,
they couldn't and they couldn't prove instruction, so they decided
to modify the standards. Look, the bottom line is they're
exploiting these the children for political purposes. They've pulled kids
out of school to protest Israel. They've mobilized kids to
be part of the defund the police movement. There are
no Chicago public schools. There are no Chicago police officers
in any of the high schools now at the entrances
to protect the schools against active shooters. So this is
just a move of the political left. And they've and
the unions are really a political party. They're a left
wing political party in Chicago and other major cities.
Speaker 1: Now the teachers Union has become a political party, There's
no question about it. They really have a lot of
political muscle and they use it. They support democrats, and
the further to the left, the better it is for them.
So this isn't just democrats, this isn't moderate democrats. This
is far left organizing. And the thing about it is
it's having result talk to younger people where you look
at the polls about younger people and they think socialism
is a much better deal than capitalism. So they're chipping
away at capitalism, the system this country has grown on successfully,
and they're chipping away at it and chipping away at it,
and they want to turn us into one of these
countries that have failed under socialism. I mean, they all
have a little more information from Paul Vallace.
Speaker 5: I think they do.
Speaker 13: The school district has lost well since since I was
school chief. They've lost one hundred and twenty six thousand students. Incidentally,
the funding has still increased. They're spending thirty two thousand
dollars per child in the Chicago possibles. Only barely half
the money actually reaches the classroom. Most of it is
diverted before it ever hits the classroom.
Speaker 1: So Chicago may be unique, but I don't think it's
that unique. There's a lot of studies where this is
also going on. By the way, the proficiency the students
in Chicago schools basically are proficient to about twenty five
percent of them are proficient, seventy five percent cannot perform
at grade level seventy five percent, And so they encourage
the kids to skip school today and go out and
hold protest signs. But they're losing students, but they're increasing
the money they're spending on their schools. So yeah, try
and square that into a circle. In any case, people
are pulling their kids out, or they're moving, they're getting
out of Chicago, or they're pulling their school, their kids
out and putting them in private school if they can't
afford it. The ones that are left are the ones
that can't afford it and are stuck. So here's one
of the parents talking about his experience in Chicago.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it's absolutely absurd, and it really speaks to the
distraction that the teachers Union is bringing into classrooms. This
really amounts to a state sponsored protest at the end
of the day.
Speaker 2: At the end of the.
Speaker 14: Day, tax payer funded buses and lunches are going to
be supporting students coming from school to Union Park for
a protest that includes extremist groups like the FRSO who
call for the downfall and overthrow of America and for
the Palestinian Youth Movement who are connected to multiple terrorist organizations. Meanwhile,
the curriculum that you spoke about that NBC five uncovered,
which came from curriculum fairs and webinars, you know, it
called America inherently fascist and authoritarian, end upholding genocide domestically
and internationally. So this is actually what they're trying to
get into schools, the teachers' unions, and in those webinars
they even refer to what's called fugitive pedagogy, which is
to say, this is how teachers you sneak this curriculum
into classrooms past administrators. So this really is a big problem.
And you know they're teaching social justice instead of teaching
them how to read and do math. You know another
stat that I think is astounding. Over fifty schools in
Chicago have zero proficiency, zero percent proficiency in math.
Speaker 1: And I was saying that the overall total is twenty
five percent of proficient, but there's four over fifty schools
are zero. I can't believe that there isn't more done
to try to change it. These, like I said, they're
chipping away at the beliefs that maybe you had and
the school system that you had growing up. So let's
take a broader look at the country. Some statistics out
about the economy. I didn't I don't think I mentioned
this yesterday because we had the GDP numbers yesterday and
they were good. But the first time jobless claims came
out one hundred and eighty nine thousand. I haven't seen
anything below two hundred thousand in a very years, very
long time. So I went back first time jobless claims
one hundred and eighty nine thousand. That's the lowest since
nineteen sixty nine. Yes, we're talking nineteen sixty nine. So
they're they're not firing people. That's they're keeping people. They're
not firing, they're not hiring. Continuing jobless claims a million,
seven eighty five. That's also I haven't seen anything that
low in many, many months. And this is despite large
job cuts that were announced by Meta and Nike. There's
a bunch of them big job cuts.
Speaker 2: So it's.
Speaker 1: The job market looks like it is still strong. And
this is where you take a look at It just
adds to the question about what is the Fed going
to do now? Again, depending upon how this whole fight
regarding Jay Powell and Kevin Warsh and everything else happens
regarding the Fed, the Fed. Well, Jeremy Siegel, who is
a professor of business at the Wharton School, very prestigious school,
very prestigious economics professor, let him talk about what he
sees in the markets.
Speaker 15: You see the earnings increases, I mean despite higher pump in,
and it's going to get higher before it goes down
because we can see those wholesale prices and the retail
prices as you file two or three days later, So
I maybe another thirty cents, but the degree the harm
to consumer spending is offset by AI defense spending is
definitely going to be going up. Also, you know, we've
commented on the increased earnings of the energy sector. Don't
forget we're an energy net exporter, so it's not just
one side that we have to look at the consumer side.
We have to look at the producer side, and because
we're net exporters, we get a lot of benefit there.
So there's a lot of you know, very favorable factors
going into the market. However, take a look at what's
going on with prices. You know, Donald Trump said I
don't care whether Chairman Palce stays or not.
Speaker 2: Well, he should care if he wants.
Speaker 15: If he wants, it is ready to go down because
I don't think he has him any more.
Speaker 2: You know friends there on the FED that are going
to go with him.
Speaker 16: Yeah, so Maren's departure would be the loss of a
major dove. And then Steve mentioned Steve mentioned Logan Hammock
today Koshkary. I mean, the comments out of Koshkari are
really interesting. Jeremy, I think his quote is, but looking
at the potential for RT hikes, potentially a series of
them could be warranted, even at the risk of further
weakness to the labor market.
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, I don't think any I don't he.
Speaker 15: I haven't heard any FED governor or president say something
like that within.
Speaker 2: The last year or so.
Speaker 15: I mean, that definitely shows concern, you know, taking a
look at the price trends right now with the strong employment,
look at that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 15: Jabos claims had a fifty year low yesterday. They're not
laying off workers and unemployment stays low. Earnings are up,
production is up, but prices are up.
Speaker 2: That's not.
Speaker 15: A recipe for the FED being into an easy mode.
Seemed like every week that goes on, we think that
oil is going to stay higher. You look one year
out on oil and in seventy five to eighty, I
mean it was fifty five to sixty before the year,
So one year out we're up twenty twenty five percent.
We talk about fertilizer, food and all that. I mean,
I'm not talking about that necessarily. We know we're going
to have to raise the FED fund rate one hundred
basis points. But it seems really hard to think about
lowering the FED funds of fate at all in these circumstances.
Speaker 1: And Jeremy Siegel is not alone about you know, the
President wants interest rates to be cut, he wants Kevin
Walsh to do it. Kevin Walsh won't commit to it.
He's very politically savvy. But Jeremy Siegel is the normal
economics professor saying no, the Fed, if anything, they won't
lower interest rates in this economy. They in fact, they
may hire hike them. So stand by for that war
if Kevin Walsh gets appointed and President Trump doesn't get
his price cuts. Speaking of the President, by the way,
he went to the villages today in Florida. It's a
retirement community. It's all retired people. And you know how
they have a backdrop on the wall behind when the
president's speaking. Well, what they have is the Village's Florida
their logo, and then scattered all around is no tax
on Social Security. They keep saying that, and it's not true.
No they have. They no tax on tips, no tax
on overtime, but social Security seniors age sixty five and
older can claim an additional deduction of up to six
thousand dollars per person. But this is for people that
it phases out once you're single, seventy five thousand, couples
one hundred and fifty thousand. But this and it's only
a four year deal, so this is not no tax
on Social Security. Just I don't know why they do
that because it's absolutely easy to check, and it's it's
just wrong. But setting the record straight. All right, let's
see what the record said today on Wall Street. Starting
with the Dow it was down one hundred and fifty two,
down to forty nine thousand and fourty nine, but the
S and P was up twenty one, and the NASDAK
was up two hundred and twenty two. The price of
gold was down six dollars to four thousand and six
twenty three, and oil it came down a little bit,
but it's still over one hundred bucks a barrow. It's
one hundred and two dollars and some change for one
barrel of oil. So that's it for today. Thank you
for coming by. I have a wonderful weekend. We'll be
back on Monday. I hope to see you there.