Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Friday. Today's the eighth day of May, Year
of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan,
and busy Friday we've got we'll update you on what's
going on with the war and CEA Spires, which I'm
scratching my head a lot on some of these topics.
We've got the jobs you poured out for the month
of April. We'll go through that. Surprise in Virginia, the
Supreme Court of the State of Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia,
their local supreme court said that the redrawing of the
maps that the people voted on a couple of weeks
ago tossed out unconstitutional what they did. So we'll get
through all of that, and tariffs courts ruling again against tariffs.
So let's oh, and billionaires, those nasty billionaires. AOC does
not like them. But we'll get into all of that
as we go along. So we start with the war.
And the folks over at the Hill have a very
interesting article today, and I thought I thought for a
while there recently I've been you know, I'm sure there's
a lot of you that think I'm just an anti
Trump guy because I'm not I'm not understanding him. He
doesn't well, he said, he doesn't like forever wars. He
doesn't seem like he's interested in war. But the headline
of the article in The Hill said, has trued lost
his appetite for war? And this is what I've been asking,
because he keeps extending cease fires and then threatening, Oh man,
he loves to talk tough and all threatening, we're gonna
bumb you to and then doesn't do anything. So the
article on the Hill says President Trump's latest pushed for
a relatively narrow peace deal has supporters and critics asking
if he's really prepared to resume major military operations, and
that it's obvious to me that he doesn't want to.
He does not want to use the military to go
in and finish the job. They said it would take
them four to six weeks, and he stopped their effort
at the beginning of the fourth week, so there's still
military targets for them to go to. I was so
I got some consolation in the fact that the Hill
is even saying this, has he lost his appetite for war?
Did he start something that he wants out of I
think he does. I think he wants out of this
in the worst way. But he's in a pickle because
he can't just walk away. I mean, what would what
would Saudi Arabia and UAE and Bahrain and all the
other neighbors in the Middle East. No, you can't do that.
And the other question is if this regime isn't taken out,
then the next president or the president after that or
the president after that, they're going to rebuild their nuclear
system because they're fanatics, and if we don't stop them.
Now nobody has And that's why I was very proud
of President Trump stepping up and saying, all right, we're
going to finish this. We're going to stop them. Everybody
has said all the way back to Bill Clinton, you
know that we're not going to allow them to have
a nuclear weapon, but nobody's done anything until President drump
and so I go, hey, hooray. I've been very supportive
of when he went to war with Iran, but all
of a sudden, it looks like he's getting weak feet.
I don't know what to make of a guy Benson,
an old friend of mine who works at Fox. He
was even asked about it today.
Speaker 2: And we've never been dealing with a rational actor in
the Iranian regime, and despite the decapitation at the top
of the regime, next man up level has been seemingly
equally intractable and deranged. I mean, it's sort of confusing,
I think for a lot of Americans to see not
just the blockade continuing, but earlier in the United States,
this was yesterday quote responded with self defense strikes against
Iranian targets after they attacked our ships. So technically they're
calling this the ceasefire still underway, but it doesn't really
feel that way. And unless this regime out of nowhere
decides okay, we will agree to all of these crucial
demands from the Unit United States, I would not be
surprised if we see a reignition of Operation Epic Fury,
at least on some level here.
Speaker 1: Me too, I've been thinking that that's what he's going
to do. He's going to go back, because you've got
to finish him off. You've got to finish the job.
You can't walk away. You have to finish the job.
And it looks like he stopped and he doesn't know
what to do. But what Guy was referring to, was
that both the US and Iran were creating fire. In
the last twenty four hours over the Strait of Removes,
Iran fired on three of our destroyers. If it wasn't
for our anti missile defenses and things, so we would
have had some dead sailors. But they did not. They
were not able to damage one of our destroyers. And
so is the cease fire. It doesn't. I'm with Guy,
It doesn't feel like a ceasefire to me. And so
what we did was we disabled two Iranian oil tankers
that were trying to run through the blockade, and then
when they fired on our ships, we fired at some
of their launching sites along the coast of Iran. So,
and the UAE has also seen missiles coming in from Iran.
So this doesn't feel like a ceasefire to me either.
This is what the President said about it, which is
also a HITD scratcher.
Speaker 3: They trifled with us today we blew them away. They trifled.
I call that a trifle. I'll let you know, when
there's no seats, you won't have to know. If there's
no ceasefire, you're not gonna have to know. You're just
gonna have to look at one big glow coming out
of Iran, and they better sign their agreement fast.
Speaker 1: Again, really tough talk. There's going to be a glow
coming out if there's no if the ceasefire ends, and
we trifled with them, we fired missiles into their three
different bases that they have. I this doesn't feel like
a ceasefire in any way, shape or form. I don't
know what you think about it, but I find this
very very confusing. And he also talked about the fact
they better sign their agreement very fast. He keeps talking
about they've agreed to all these things, and I'm thinking
that's something that he again into that world of his
where he wishes that they had signed an agreement. Here's
more from the president. It's the one page offer. Well,
it's more than a one page offer.
Speaker 4: It's an offer that basically said they will not have
no clear weapons. They're going to hand us the new
clear dust and many other things that we want. Yeah,
when they agree, it doesn't mean much because the next
day they forget. They forgot they agree, and you know,
we're dealing with different sets of leaders.
Speaker 5: How often you say that you are to deal right
now with a lot.
Speaker 6: Could happen any day.
Speaker 3: Could and it might not happen, but it could happen
any day.
Speaker 1: I believe they want to deal more than I do. Yeah,
sure about that. I think he wants a deal more
than they do. I think they're hunkered in and they're
just waiting. Going to Americans will not fulfill the rest
of the work that they said they were going to do.
And so he talked about all the things that they've
agreed to, but they haven't said that they've agreed to that.
The President's the only one who says they've agreed to this.
They've agreed to that, and they better sign it real fast.
And I'm going they need to agree to their agreement. Well,
if they've already had an agreement, what see this? It
just goes in circles and doesn't make any sense to me.
All Right, let's get down to some analysts behind all
of this. How about Michael Allen, former national security guy.
Speaker 7: Well, I think they'll get back to us, but I'm
not sure that we should expect that it will reflect
the kind of concessions, the kind of compromises that President
Trump says he needs. I think President Trump's blockade of
Iranian ports is the right thing to do, but it
has a shorter it has a longer fuse. It's a
slow burn, and I think what the President ought to
do is resume what he was doing Monday, which is
helping by way of the US military commercial vessels to
get through the Strait of Hormuz. It will be costly,
it won't be costless anyway, and it is more risky,
but it is the most direct way to negate the
power that Iran has over us right now by way
of being able to threaten and dominate this international passage
way of commerce and oil. So I think we've got
to go back to that what we did earlier this
week and break the straight open.
Speaker 1: He's talking about Project Freedom. It lasted less than forty
eight hours. Why did the President stop Project Freedom? He
announced it on one day and two days later he
said it's over. See. This is the most confusioned in
the history of warfare. This one's a doozy. It's not
like any other conflict. Ever, how about let's check in
with Brian Hook He used the State Department guy, former
State Department guy.
Speaker 8: Well, it seems like Iran is testing the limits of
this ceasefire, and President Trump, I think is showing a
discipline deterrence. He is made very clear that if Iran,
like Secretary Rubio just said, if Iran is going to
be firing on the US, there is going to be
a price to pay. And so I think that's the dynamic.
While we await the Iranian regime's response to the Pakistan diplomacy,
what I think the President is doing is again building
up the economic and military deterrence that's going to be
required to get the kind of a deal that ends
Iran's nuclear program, takes care of the highly enriched uranium
in the country, and gets the Strait of Hormuz open
without the Iranian regime running the Tehran tollbooth that would
net them a hundred twenty five million dollars a day.
So this is going to be very difficult diplomacy. This
was never going to be easy given this regime. What
I would just say is that if this is how
the Iranian regime behaves without a nuclear weapon, it's an
entirely different world if they were to have one.
Speaker 1: No, he is a State Department guy, and he's in
the diplomacy and all that. We're not talking about diplomacy.
I mean, he's talking about diplomacy, but you can't talk
about you can't use the word diplomacy in the same
paragraph with the regime in Tehran. They're not into diplomacy,
not at all. And are they testing President Trump, Yes,
of course, but they're hunkered down and waiting to see.
They don't care what he does. They don't care what
he does. We're going to have to and he well,
at least Brian Hook said they're going to have to
use economic and military I don't know what the word
he use, procedures, so he did talk about using the military.
The military's going to have to go in and take
the regime out. It's nothing. Anything short of that is
a loss, total loss. It has a little bit of
a Vietnam deja vu effect that the politicians in Washington
are calling your shots on the war rather than turning
it over to the military and let them go in
and win. But they did not do that. In Lyndon
Johnson was controlling what the army could do in Vietnam,
and now we've got Donald Trump controlling what we will
or will not do regarding the military. I mean, he's
the commander in chief, I get that, but if you're
going to go to war, use them. And Brian Hook
mentioned Rubio. Marco Rubio is still in Italy and he
was asked about the fact that we were firing on
them and they're firing on us. This is his response.
Speaker 9: Of course, we fired back at them. They were shooting
at us. That's what I would expect to do. Only
stupid countries don't shoot back when you're shot at, and
we're not a stupid country. They threaten Americans, they're going
to get blown up. I mean, that's how much clear
can you be then that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rubillo is very straightforward. They're going to if they
shoot it you, you shoot back at him, no question about it.
Stedrick Lytton, the retired colonel, the big consultant on Middle
East military affairs, this is his view.
Speaker 10: I think it is jocking for diplomatic advantage, and that's
basically what's going on here. The Iranians are, of course
masters of delay, masters of continuing discussions without any result.
So what we may be seeing here is, in spite
of the efforts by the US administration, the Iranians are
in essence drawing things out. They're taking their time examining
the US proposal, and they may or may not be
delivering their response today. As Secretary Rubio mentioned, So one
of the key things here, you know what happens during
this period and if there are any provocations, how does
either side react to those provocations?
Speaker 1: Well, he said, we trifled with them. Again, make that
out of however you want. Nick Robertson, he is in
Islamabad trying to keep one eye on the Pakistani people
that are trying to work some deal out. Again, I
think this whole thing about diplomacy is a waste of time.
The people in Iran are not going to do diplomatic
anything other than just use it to string out the war.
Here's Nick Robertson.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And the reality here seems to be that Iran
does seem to think that it can weigh this out
that sort of TikTok of how quickly things have gone.
They've really slowed down the pace of talks and diplomacy.
At the moment, the Iranians are suggesting that the United
States always does something just when there's diplomacy is on
the table, either under pressure or just a bad move.
But I think the picture at the moment is Iran
is not moving quickly. Part of that may have to
do with what we heard from President Trump. There some
of those things that is saying that need to be
in their response. They're already saying they're not going to
do hand over the the highly enriched uranium, the nuclear does,
stop that nuclear ritiment towards the balm. These are things
that they're refusing to commit to. This may be why
it's going so slowly.
Speaker 1: Right, did you hear what Nick Robertson said. They refuse
to hand over the nuclear enriched uranium, they refuse to
get out of the nuclear business, and they refuse all
those things which the President thinks that they've agreed to.
So either Nick Robertson is wrong or the president is wrong.
Which one do you think President thinks they've agreed to
give out, give up all of their nuclear ambitions and
also turn over the enriched uranium. Robertson says they haven't
agreed to that. In fact, they're fighting it tooth and nail.
So on top of all of this, we find out
this afternoon that Russia is now helping Iran in their
military efforts toward US. Russia is apparently sending drones five
thousand of them, and also some training that goes with
operating the drones. But the drones, they're fiber optic drones
rather than radio controlled dones drones, and the reason for
that is because the radio controlled drones we can intercept.
We use their radio signals to intercept them. The fiber
optic drones there is no radio signal. So there's five
thousand of those. Plus they're sending long range drones an
unknown number of those. So Dan Hoffmann, former station chief
in Moscow for the CIA, reacts, well, there are a
lot of unanswered questions.
Speaker 11: It's a report that the economists obtained, we don't know
from whom or when, and it's purported to be an
intelligence report from Russia's military intelligence. The gru about how
Russia would support Iran by providing them with drone owes
that we would be unable to jam. So Russians are
trying to have been using those in Ukraine to great effect,
and that would create problems for US if they're not
giving out radio signals that we might be able to
jam that and tactical intelligence would enhance Iran's war effort
against US. Now, the report indicated the time the economists
indicated that the report might have been obtained around the
time that the Trump administration was contemplating mounting a ground
incursion of card Island, and so the Russian response may
have been designed to counter that sort.
Speaker 1: Of an attack by the Trump administration.
Speaker 11: But look, in spite of what we don't know about
this report, it's absolutely consistent with the way Vladimir Putin
would behave towards the United States in the Middle East.
We saw it in Afghanistan, where Russia provided material support
to the Taliban to help their effort against US.
Speaker 1: So apparently no surprise from people like Dan Hoffman who
keep an eye on things in the CIA.
Speaker 11: I think we've already been factoring this into our strategy. Look,
the Russians have been unable to deter the United States
from launching the attacks on Iran. Russia was unable to
do anything when their ally, Bashar al Assad was toppled
from power. He's now living in Moscow. I'm quite sure
that the Iranians have been asking the Russians for help,
and I'm sure we're detecting that, collecting on that through
our intelligence sources from CIA and other agencies. So I
don't think This would be much of a surprise to
Director Ratcliffe as well as President Trump. And as far
as how we counteract this, I think we need to
be prepared for it, and perhaps we may seek to
interdict any shipments from Russia and carry on with our
policy means denying Iran any nuclear enrichment, staying with our
strategic objectives. I don't think that these drones are a
game breaker. We have the military capability to deal with them.
Speaker 1: This is one of the problems is that when you
start a war, you don't know what's going to happen.
And now Russia is very much involved. And next week,
by next Friday, the President will be in Beijing. All
eyes will be on the capital of China. President's going
to meet with President She and today the President was
asked about that meeting.
Speaker 12: Mister President, is your trip with China's still going ahead?
Speaker 1: Which companies you are?
Speaker 13: You have a very good relationship with President She. We've
had a great economic time. China has been great for
us economically, but not for other presidents. But we've done
very well with China. We're going to have a meeting
with President She is going to be I think quite amazing.
Speaker 1: So you can find how great the economy has been
with China. However you want. The trade deficit with China
is lower than it used to be. Used to run
into three hundred million a year that they bought more
of We bought more of their stuff than they bought
of ours. It's now running. Last year it was two
hundred and two million, and it's running about the same
this year. So the trade deficit is still heavily in
favor of China. We still buy a lot more goods
from them and versus what they buy from us, but
it's better than it was earlier before Trump two point zero.
And in political news today, the Virginia Supreme Court. Remember
it was just a few weeks ago that the people
of Virginia voted on their new map and they voted
in favor. It was pretty close, but they voted in favor.
They have eleven congressional districts in Virginia. It was six Democrat,
five Republican. With the new map it's ten Democrat, one Republican.
So it's really changed Virginia into mostly a very Democrat state.
Even to the state the voters are mixed, but the
congressional representation according to the new map would be heavily
skewed to Democrat. Well, went to the court, and the
court and some of the Republicans appealed and went to
the court, and then they kicked it up to the
State Supreme Court, and the State Supreme Court today ruled
that the redrawing of the map was unconstitutional. They tossed
it out, so it's back to six Democrats five Republicans.
Shannon Bream, who is a lawyer and lives in Virginia.
Speaker 14: Explain, it sounds like it because this was an issue
of the Virginia Constitution. It was a state law issue,
and critics of this referendum have said from the beginning
that Democrats were on thin ice because they did not
follow procedures as outlined by state law and state constitution.
And what the court ended up saying here is that
violation irreparably undermined the integrity of the entire voting referendum,
so it makes it null and void. And for that reason,
they say the congressional district maps issued by the court
in twenty twenty one, the old maps are the ones
that they've got to use for the upcoming congressional election. Now,
this was a state matter, of Virginia's Supreme Court, the
highest court in that state. It's a commonwealthfill remind you
made this decision. Now, it's not out of the realm
of possibility that challengers to this decision would try to
find some federal hook for it, to try to get
to the Supreme Court to say that there is some
US constitutional violation in the way that this ruling was made.
It's a very tough ask, but I wouldn't be surprised
if they try to do it, because what have you
got to lose at this point.
Speaker 1: It's a far reach. So it looks like the Virginia
map will go back to the one that they've been using.
Six republic six Democrats, five Republicans, and they're going to
have to go back and foddle the procedures that's outlined
in the Virginia Constitution. So this whole redistricting mess is
just keeps getting messeries as we go along. And speaking
of courts, the tariffs, remember the Supreme Court said to
the President back in February that his tariffs he was
he was not allowed to do that. It's up to
the Congress, not to the executive. The president cannot issue
the tariffs the way he did, so they tossed those
out and they're in the middle of trying to figure
out how to do the rebates on especially the big
companies that have paid millions, tens of millions of about hundreds
of millions of dollars in tariffs. So there's They came
up with another idea at the White House where they
would come up with different types of tariffs and the
Trade Court, which handles tariff matters. They threw that out yesterday.
These are the ten percent tariffs that the White House
came up with to kind of replace the Liberation Day
tariffs which were thrown out by the Supreme Court. So
this was they invoked Section one two of the Trade Act,
which allows the President to impose tariffs for up to
one hundred and fifty days to address large and serious
balance of payment deficits. Well, the Trade Court found that
the President wrongly invoked the law, further scaling back his
ability to carry out his trade policies. So this gets
a little awkward because the President has already said to
the European Union that they have a deadline of July
fourth to comply with the trade deal that he imposed
on them. And now the courts have said you can't
do that. So now we wait and see what the
White House is going to come up with next on
their trade policy, or more rightly, their their tariff policy,
because they've tried twice and both times have been thrown out.
So today Moody's chief economist came out and said that
the tariffs had done significant damage to the US economy,
been more than a year's worth of data that they
went over since Liberation Day, and according to the chief
economists that Moody's quoting, since that day, job growth has
come to a standstill, with only the non traded healthcare
industry adding meaningfully. Also, since that day, inflation has accelerated.
Then Bank of America's chief economists came out and said,
supply shocks are inflationary because they shift the supply curve
upward and consumers respond by spending less in real terms
and saving less. So this is getting blasted by the
tariff policy is being blasted by Bank of America and
also by Moody's, the chief economists in both operations. And
while we're talking about the economy, gas prices today triple a. Hey,
go ahead, news, I guess gas prices went down. What
was it? It was it's four dollars and fifty five cents.
Today it was four dollars and fifty six cents, down
a penny on the average price according to the cheap stuff.
According to Triple A, even for you truckers and farmers,
diesel prices went down a penny to five dollars and
sixty six cents. So still exceedingly expensive, but first time
in a long time I've seen it actually drop. And
then there's this. AOC was on a podcast being interviewed,
and the person that was interviewing her went right along
agreed with their billionaires. They're terrible people, they are. I'll
let her explain how terrible billionaires are. You can't earn
a billion dollars.
Speaker 14: That's right, You just can't earn that. That's exactly correct.
Speaker 12: You can, you can get market power, you can break rules,
you can do all sorts of things, you can abuse
labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth.
But you can't earn that, right, and so you have
to create a myth that, since you didn't earn that,
you have to create a myth of earning it.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's really it. Shows where her mind is. And
it's very easy to refute because when you say you
can't earn a billion dollars, well, just yesterday we were
talking about Ted Turner, the late Ted Turner, and Ted
Turner a big liberal guy his whole life devoted very
proud liberal. He wasn't wishy washy about it, but he
worked his tail off and he started with a on
a billboard company and went to bought the Atlanta Braves
and bought the a little television station in Atlanta, and
then figured out how to connect it to satellites and
presto changer. The next thing you know, he created twenty
four to seven news channel, the first one, created something
that never existed before, and then many years later he
sold it for eight billion dollars to Time Warner. So
he was very much a billionaire. And I don't know,
maybe AOC would disagree with you, but I think he
earned that eight billion. He put hard, sweat and blood
into creating CNN, and when he got older, he sold
it and made eight billion dollars, So I think he
did earn it. I'll tell you somebody else who's a
big lefty who earned her money. She has worked her
tail off as well. I'm talking about Oprah Winfrey. Oprah
is smart as a whip. She created was as a
television host in Baltimore, and she built that into the
enterprise that she has and it just it just took off.
And all the products everything else that she does. She's
extremely smart. I think she earned her billions. She's a billionaire.
I mean, I look at I don't know. I mean,
you could say JB. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. He
part of the Pritzker family, which which owns the Hyatt
hotel chain. Maybe he inherited his I'm not sure. George Sorows,
good old George.
Speaker 6: He was a.
Speaker 1: Hedge fund manager and was really good at it. He
specialized in trading currencies, and he was right a lot
more than he was wrong. Had made billions. I think
George Soros earned his billions. Tom Steyer, another hedge fund manager,
the guy, the crazy guy running for governor in California,
hedge fund manager. I think I think Tom Steyer earned
his billions. I mean Bill Bill and Melinda Gates. Bill
had He came from a well to do family. His
dad was a lawyer in Seattle, but he started on
his own. He created Microsoft on his own from scratch.
I mean he bought a little company in Albuquerque that
was doing nothing and wound up building it into Microsoft.
I think he's earned his money. I mean, I could
go on, but these are people that I don't understand
what she's talking about. I don't think Carl Rove does either. Well,
there are a couple of things, sir. First of all, yes,
you can.
Speaker 5: You can come up with a new idea like let's
make a computing power and put it in the power
of the individual, rather than having to go to a big,
gigantic computer company like IBM. We're going to put computing
power in the hands of every ordinary American. That was
called Microsoft started out with a little company with about
a dozen people in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can come
up with a brilliant idea like, oh, let's have a
thing called a iPhone in which you can put the
Internet in your in the pocket of your hand. Steve
Jobs became a very wealthy man because he and the
company that he built, Apple Computer, came up with that
notion in that concept.
Speaker 1: So, yes, you can earn it.
Speaker 5: What do we really want the government to say, We're
in charge of deciding when you earn it and when
you don't earn it, because there's a point of which
you metaphorically can't be credited with having earned that additional dollar.
This is beloney. And her comment What really got me
in her interview was when she talked about rural America
and said, these people are oppressed. There is a sentiment
inside part of the left wing of the Democratic Party
that says, if you're in rural America and you're voting Republican,
you're stupid because you ought to be voting for the
for not only just liberal Democrats, but democratic socialists.
Speaker 1: And that's that. You know that, and that that idea.
Speaker 5: That people on the coast of the United States, like
AOC is looked down on the people who live in
middle America is one of the reasons why the Democratic
Party is less popular than the Republican Party and less
popular than Donald Trump. I encourage her keep saying these
stupid things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people talking about AOC has this big, promising future,
maybe running for president. She comes up with some of
these dooties on an irregular basis that you just go, Okay,
she's not very she's not she's not very smart in
any case. So today jobs report came out. That's let's
see what we got. Oh and speaking of the economy,
consumer Sentiment Index the University of Michigan forty eight point two.
That is a record low as far as consumer sentiment
going back to the early nineteen fifties, record low forty
eight point two. They asked two basic questions, what do
you think about the current economy? That was forty seven
point eight, That was down nine percent. Easily don't see
even a one percent change in this index. Down nine percent?
People are that bummed about the current economic situation. And
what do you think the economy is going to be
six months down the road? That was forty eight point five.
So overall the index record low forty eight point two.
What is being blamed? High energy prices, broader price shocks, inflation.
It has apparently impacted consumer confidence across all income and
age demographics. They expected when they asked people about things,
they said, well, what do you think inflation's going to do?
And the number that was average response was inflation will
grow to four point seven percent this year. So this
consumer sentiment index, like I said, record low, it's been
coming down. It was down in March, it was down
in April, it was now down in May. So it's
a trend that's going that direction. As far as the
jobs report today, I've been somewhat shaking my head, going wait, wait,
did I just hear them say, oh, this is a
great job report today. They're talking about how it's how
it's so strong, and I'm going to the jobs report
for years has been producing somewhere around two hundred thousand
plus dead a little over two to three hundred thousand
payrolls per month, and instead they came out with the
jobs report. It was one hundred and fifteen thousand, substantially
lower than what we have been expecting usually. But in
the month of April, economists did think that it was
going to be worse than one fifteen. They were looking
at something worse. As far as a revision, they revised
March up to one hundred and eighty five thousand. Manufacturing jobs,
which the President keeps talking about manufacturing jobs are doing,
are going to be strong. Oh they're going to be
doing because of the tariffs all but people are going
to be manufacturing here. Manufacturing is continuing to drop, losing jobs,
and so far in April, another drop of two thousand.
The bright side behind this, though, as construction jobs were up,
and the construction jobs may have a lot to do
with building factories, so that the manufacturing jobs will grow
after they get these factories built. That's one theory. Average
hourly earnings lighter than expected three point six percent, so
we're back to that problem of average hourly earnings lower
than the inflation rate, so your paycheck is not keeping up.
The unemployment rate kind of stuck in this area. Four
point three percent, participation rate sixty one point eight. That
was down the lowest that we've seen in the participation rate.
How many people are actually working, that's the lowest we've
seen since twenty twenty one. And a real strange little
factoid in all of this is the number of men.
Can Men usually dominate the working sector, but young and
old men are leaving the labor force at record rates.
According to the Labor Department, the share of men working
or searching for a job hit the lowest level since
nineteen forty eight. So this is from the Labor Department today,
So one in three American men are not working or
looking for a job. So there's some quirky stuff about this.
I wouldn't call this a great report at all, but
it's it's not terrible, but it wasn't anything that I
was doing handstands about. So let's look at the stock market,
which I also have been meaning to tell you that
all these stock market records that we're getting. One of
the cautions about this is that it's about five percent
of the S and P five hundred are setting new records,
about five percent ninety five percent are not, So it
really is the Magnificent seven the tech sector things like
that that are just knocking it out of the park.
Corporate earnings are our way up. We're in a cycle
of strong corporate earnings. But as far as setting all
these new records, it's mostly related to roughly five percent
of the stock market. So before we get to the
closing numbers for today, let me get some of the
emails that have come in. And a fan sends me
a note and he said, interesting listening to your show
concerning Ted Turner, and he goes on talking about the
background there. I was talking about the fact that I've
always tried to figure out where was it when we
became such a divided country, And you can go back
and like he said. He says, you can go back
to all kinds of things. He says, yeah, Ted Turner,
But he also said that Rush used to be on
Bill Clinton's case and I was a dem then, so
that would make me mad. Then Obama, then the Tea Party.
So things were divided before Trump. But I believe Trump
put the cherry on top of it all. But anyway,
great podcast, Thank you and a fan. Yeah, but I
think we're really really began was prior to cable news.
There wasn't any news on cable We relied upon Chet
Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, and I don't
remember them being biased. Maybe they were, but whatever it was,
it was one message. We all got it. And all
of a sudden, Ted Turner, who just so happened to
be a big liberal guy, started CNN, and that created
liberal news, and it was it was until Fox started
in nineteen ninety six that there was a conservative voice
on cable news. And I think ever since Ted Turner
started CNN, we've had divided messaging and a more divided country.
And if also writes he said, playing it out, I've
been trying to think when and how this singing Roan
will finally come to an end. I keep seeing people
on TV, mainly from the Trump administration, looking at this
with incredibly rose colored glasses. I've been hearing the next
two to three weeks for about two months. So what's
going to happen because of ego or just basic survival instinct?
Neither Trump orr I Ron is going to end this.
Then they will. He went on to talk about the
Dems will take over in November. They will control the
levels of government. I don't really think looking at the
construction of the party now that they will mind cutting
the losses and running so to speak. Well, I'm not
sure that's gonna wait for the Democrats. I wouldn't be
surprised to see the current administration doing that same thing.
Paul Skag sends me email, says Iran nuclear material won't
be surprised if Iran is willing to give Pakistan their
nuclear materials since they are soony Muslims. Okay, and he
goes on he says, seems like a Vietnam type escape.
Seems like you could have said the same thing about
the tremendous success in Vietnam. True, I really think there's
some some comparisons that are worthy, and then truck and
the Mudgeon gives us an update on the trucking business
out theories as many owner operators don't know their numbers,
and they're still pushing loads for about two miles true
dollars per mile or less. I refuse to compete with
the bottom feeders in a race to the basement. This
is a recurring cycle, and the bottom feeders typically go
out of business as soon as they have their first
big repair job. So yeap, trucking is trucking. Curmudgeon's been
in a long time. He knows he's seen these cycles before.
All right, Wall Street today, let's see what the closing
numbers are. The Dow wiggled into a little bit of
a gain. It started off positive, then went negative, then
went positive, then went negative, in fact very negative up
until about a half an hour before the market closed,
turned around and finished with a twelve point game. We'll
take it up twelve. The Dow at forty nine thousand
and six oh nine. The S and P five hundred,
up sixty one the NASDAC. Those textocs again started off
positive and kept on climbing up four hundred and forty.
The price of gold went up twenty three dollars to
four thousand and seven thirty three. And oil it was
again kind of bouncing around between do you think this
thing's going to come to a peace agreement or not.
Oil ended up less than a penny higher at ninety
five dollars for a barrel of oil. So that's that's
it for today. Thank you for coming by, Enjoy your Friday,
enjoy your weekend. A happy Mother's Day to all you moms,
and we'll see you back here on Monday.