Animal Spirits Podcast - Is the Fed Trapped? (EP.239)

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

On today's show we discuss 3 bearish scenarios for the stock market, why the Fed could be in a tight spot, growth stocks getting wrecked, the next step for NFTs, critics vs. the audience on Rotten Tomatoes and much more.   Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Like us on Facebook And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by Masterworks. To learn more, go to masterworks. com.io slash animal. Ben, this book just came in the mail. You read this, didn't you? It's a good one. Great Beanie Baby Bubble. I decided to read this.

I haven't read it yet. I'm not saying that NFT cartoon character profile picture, whatever, NFTs are in a bubble, but it kind of feels like they're in a bubble. I'll say that. And I understand it's different this time and there's utility. and digital scarcity, but I feel like there might be some parallels to this great Beanie Baby bubble. Am I right? I wrote a blog post on this not too long ago and the collectibles boom happened.

And someone said at the time how it shouldn't be shocking that Beanie Baby is so high. They said, after all, people were shocked when Picasso's paintings surpassed a million dollar mark. So they were comparing Beanie Babies to Picasso. Now we're going to talk about NFTs on the show. I've got some thoughts. I'm sure there's been art bubbles in the past. Probably. But maybe not because the transmission mechanism,

to invest in art as quickly as Beanie Babies with eBay and NFTs with OpenC did not exist. But think about the fact that how many painters actually made it after 500 years of worth of art versus how many people can create an NFT today. Well, as an art investor via Masterworks, I'm hoping for a bubble. There I said it. I'm hoping that we get an art bubble. I would love for our paintings to appreciate by triple digits. Let's get it on the fun.

For more information, go to masterworks. and please see important disclosures at masterworks.io slash disclaimer. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

Clients of Ritthold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits and Michael and Ben. Michael, we've been getting some comments lately. Probably because people think I work for the Fed and a lot of people think that we're just bullish shills, that all we do is look on the bright side of things. So today I want to start off by... That's poppycock. How am I a bullish show? You are. You are.

Yeah, you were bears the whole first six months up, right? So I want to look at some possible downside. Hold on. I have to defend my honor. I have to defend my honor. Everyone was bearish in the beginning. And I don't think I stayed bearish that much longer than everybody else. I was probably bearish through the summer. Through the summer, yes. But I'm pretty sure I started to turn bullish, like all kidding aside, in the fall. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So I want to look at some what I call like white swan risks,

those risks that are staring us in the face. It's not like a black swan where you're trying to look for this highly improbable event. What is something that's a white swan risk that everyone is talking about. And of course, there's a lot of them. Inflation. Inflation is the one. So I looked at what happens if inflation is high. I looked at different inflation regime. So like deflation, which only really happened in the 30s, zero to three percent inflation, three to six, then above six. And above six, which is where we are now, the average nominal returns. Wait, hold on, hold on, before you give the numbers, can I ask you, are we talking post-World War II in the 1970s? Do we have a series of two or is there

more? I went back to 1928. Okay, but what periods of? Almost 100 years of data. No, I understand. But I'm asking you, what point in time, do we have this? Be specific. I'm asking, is it the 40s and the 70s, or are there other regimes? Oh, when we actually had high inflation? Yeah, no, you're right. That's pretty much it. All right. So who cares what you're about to say? So you're saying because there's only two periods of inflation, it doesn't matter? Kind of. Here's the thing, though. So average nominal returns are actually pretty good above 6%. So it was like 9.1% nominal average. So like average returns. So stocks do pretty good. But after taking inflation out, it was basically zero because inflation

was so much higher. So there's two ways of looking at this. One is that stinks because all of your returns are eaten up by inflation. The other one is even when inflation is really high, stocks do a pretty good job of keeping up at least. Fair. But that is certainly a risk. And crazy enough, so I looked at what are the best calendar year returns if inflation is high. So take the nominal return for the S&P, take out inflation. What was the best return? Last year was the second highest ever with inflation above 6%. 1975 was the best one. It was like a 37% return to take out the inflation. So last year was a pretty good for a worst case scenario type of thing for inflation, everything went well.

So what are some other white risks or white swans? Well, everyone is talking about the Fed, of course. Like, what happens to the Fed? Remember, we're on this show in the 2018 bear market. And at the time, we were saying this one, no one knows why this is happening. It's sort of just this crazy one-off. And then after the fact, people kind of backfilled their narrative and said, oh, it's because the Fed raised rates.

That's why the Fed was raising rates, even though the Fed began raising rates in 2015. So now everyone thinks the Fed is behind the eight ball. They've painted themselves into a corner. It's harder this time because there's inflation. So if the Fed raises rates, that's really bad for the market and the market is going to fall. Can I just say one thing on the 2018? I feel like that backfill justification. It wasn't like a six month later.

It was pretty much concurrent. And I think that that was a reasonable explanation. But if you go listen to our podcast from back then. We were saying at the time there's no reason for this to be happening right now. There's no economic reason. There's because the Fed had been raising rates for three years. It wasn't like they just started. No, I understand.

But could we agree that there is a tipping point just because they raised rates off zero in 2015? Maybe they went too far. In fact, they obviously, in my opinion, they did go too far. But it is funny now, though, that people think the tipping point is like 75 basis points or 1%. Like, if the Fed raises to 1%, the stock market is done. That's it. Who gives a shit what people are saying for the explanation? All that I care about is what the market is saying. And it doesn't mean that the market is always right. So just because we don't like somebody's explanation, if the market is doing something, I'm a market's guy. I trust the market. So good lead in there. That's why I think the market is the only good reason for it to fall. So this is a weird time period. And I chose it because it was from April to the end of last. year. So it's a 21-month period. April is basically when this bull market started. I mean,

you could go to the very bottom if you wanted, but I just started in April because I had monthly returns. So I did 21-month rolling returns going back to 1950, because if you go back to the Great Depression, there were some really weird returns where you get 100% up in like a month or like a couple of months. So this was the second best 21-month return since 1950. 90% we're up. Isn't like the best reason for stocks to fall from here just so that they went up too much? And no matter what the reasoning people are giving, the narrative they draw, whether it's the Fed or interest rates or inflation, sometimes when stocks go up a lot in a short amount of time, people are much quicker to go to the exits and say, all right, I'm out of here. That's it. I'm selling. I'm locking in profits. 100% correct. So prices start going down. But then there are all of these sorting tipping points that like really crushed stocks. So last, what was it, Thursday, Wednesday, when the Fed Minutes came out. And they said that they're going to be accelerating the, not even the tapering. My goodness. The pace at which they're buying bonds is going to. slow down. And so that really, really, really crushed stocks. So yeah, you're right. People start

to sell. But I guess I do think selling is happening for good reason. I do think that higher interest rates, higher inflation is spooking the market. The 10 years, the highest that it's been in over two years. But the funny thing is people say like, well, the Fed with their notes the other day that really changed things. Like higher inflation in the potential for higher rates and the Fed to taper, haven't we known about this for months and months now? Isn't the market supposed to be smarter than that where It's not like all of a sudden the market one day, like a light bulb goes off and goes, oh, yeah, remember this stuff that everyone knows about? Now I'm going to care about it.

I think what if it's just people copying other people? I think that explains everything. I've been thinking a lot about memetic behavior because Jim O'Shaughnessy puts it on my radar. What's my meic behavior? Explain it to me? Copying people, memic behavior. Okay. My two-year-old, whatever the four-year-old is doing, my two-year-old says, me-to, me-too.

And me-to, me-too. We're going to talk later in the show about NFTs. I was buying some NFTs over the weekend. Why? Because other people were doing it. That's what we do. We copy people on the way up. Yes, we're status seeking. Yeah, it's true. It's pattern behavior. We copy people on the way down. That explains everything. By the way, so maybe. Sorry, you talk about the market getting killed for good reason. Here's the market getting killed, which. Don't do it. Don't do it. No. No, listen. This is not about the S&P. This is not about the S&P. By the way, I tweeted something today about the big stocks finally falling and

I'll get that in a minute, but someone said, are we sure the S&P is calculated correctly? Like, they didn't think it was possible. Don't do with the S&P stats. It's not relevant to you. I got the S&P and the NASDAQ. Your data is not welcome here. Okay, first of all, small cap Russell 2000 is down 12. The NASDAQ 100 is down 8 and the S&P is down 4.

So I looked at this and I said, we talked in the past, like what happens when all these big stocks finally start taking part of this? And they actually are. Facebook's down 17%. Amazon looks like trash. Amazon's down 17%. Apple's down 8. but even Google and Microsoft are down like 12%.

So these things are falling. So what is it that's propping up the market now? It's financials and industrial. And energy. Which is crazy. So we've had this rotation that went from growth to value and it actually kind of worked. We had like the handoff. For people like you and me who are primarily index investors, it's been great.

Don't ask about the growth stocks in our portfolio. But yeah, for index investors, it's been very pleasant. The range of results this year, or not this year, over the last nine months, call it, is enormous between I'm an index investor and I own the total stock market fund and I barely notice anything to I own all tech stocks, all crypto, all everything and I'm down 60% in my portfolio or whatever and holy crap, this is the end of the world. It's brutal. It's brutal. So where are we going next? Oh, I wanted to talk about you wrote this piece about growth stocks getting crushed and you had some pretty good stats in here. This one was interesting to me. So you said Robin Hood is

back under $14 billion in valuation. That isn't much higher than the Series G, which, L.O.L. Series G, they got that far down, the alphabet. Back in September 2020, they raised at $11.2 billion. So you were saying that it's back to like where they were raising in private markets. Now, granted, that was right before the IPO and they needed some money to shore things up. But can we say like the real bubble in valuations, really, is more in the private markets than public markets these days? Because it seems like whenever this. stuff goes public. Public investors are like, screw this. We're not going to go to whatever you say it is. We're going to mark you down 60% in the first three months. We don't care. I think private markets

are practice, no offense, and public markets are the arena. That's where you play the game. And private markets are much more forgiving for potential growth rates, obviously. Everyone in private markets is essentially making up the valuations as they go. So you and I have a handful of like startup things we've been dabbling in lately. And some of the things we put money in last year are probably up on paper four, five, six times. But like, it's monopoly money. It doesn't mean anything. That's just what people, like everyone has agreed. Like, you think it's worth this. I think it's worth this. There's like 10 of us. And we think it's worth this. There's a great table floating around showing the probability of zero, of complete failure. And even at like series D, you still

have a good chance of getting zero. So yeah, the private markets can be savage and the fact that you can get marked up 50x and still go to zero. But once these stocks are liquid, it's a whole different ballgame. Yes. Look at all the SPACs, all the IPOs. I'm sure if Stripe was public, it would not be immune to this. I'm sure it would be down 30%. This is why you like being in private equity or venture capital because on these days when the market is getting crushed, you say, I'm fine.

I'm not even going to think about what mine is worth. You also shared this chart about Zoom to Exxon and you shared this with Josh and Slack. And it wasn't it for like a day Zoom was worth more than Exxon? It was a minute, yeah. Honestly, though, this looks like, oh, that was the peak of the bubble or whatever in February or whenever it happened. This kind of made sense at the moment. Honestly, Zoom is a huge brand. I know there's other places you can do in Google Hangouts, but I don't know, eight out of every 10 video conference calls I use or with Zoom. And this is probably when oil went

negative around then. Yeah. But I'm saying like Zoom as a brand went on to do fine and it's like an integral part of my work day every single day now, but it still didn't matter as far as the stock price goes or far as their results. Zoom is down 70% from its highs. Sotomitrader had a killer chart showing the number of stocks in the NASDAQ that are cut in half. And considering that the market cap weight in NASDAQ is only down, what did you say, 6%. The fact that we have so many stocks that are already cut in half, it looks like 40%. Yeah, he said four in every 10 are down 50% or more from their all-time highs, or 52-wick highs. I'm not one for market predictions.

I guess the question that I would ask is, or I should say, I'm not one for, like, serious market predictions. I threw out a list of 10 predictions. They're fun. I'm not actually trading on them. I don't actually believe them. The question that I would ask is, is by the dip broken, which is a question that we've been asking probably every time stocks fall for the last decade.

And I'm just going to say that you got to give it the benefit of the doubt. This is well-earned innocent until proven guilty. And I would not be shocked if this is an overreaction. We get CPI data later this week and stocks ended up positive, that we front ran the selling. I know everyone wants to think. This is going to touch off that. This is the peak in 99, early 2000. Everyone's so thirsty for that. Yes. Everyone really wants that. And even if they wanted a smaller version of 2018, where we had a 20% correction. And I think small caps are around 40% then. Arks about down 50% by the way. It's down 40%.

48. Wow. I mean, I don't know. Call me an optimist. 2018 was a glorious buying opportunity. And we were saying so at the time, like if you have money to deploy, put it in the market now. If we're going to have a correction, I say bring it. So I looked, again, I told you that 21 month period, going back to this. In 1950, this is like one of the greatest booms ever. Nineteen 50s is the best decade ever for the U.S. stock market. It was up 19 and a half percent per year. But they had this 21 month period where it was up 100 percent. And then over the next two years, there was three corrections. So like an 11 percent correction, a 15 percent correction, then a 21 percent correction. It was the only 20 percent correction of the entire decade. And it still ended

up being the best decade ever for U.S. stocks. If we're going to have a correction, let's just bring it. Give us a double-digit correction. Let's just have a wish lower and do it. You know, I'm ready. I mean, I'm ready to rip the bandit. Like, if this is it, let's just do it. I'm buying stocks in five days. I'm buying stocks 15 days after that and 15 days after that and 15 days after that. Please, give me some lower prices.

And any individual stock I jump in and buy will definitely go lower than where I buy it. That's how these things work. So I guess that's where you've got to be careful. It's like I wrote a post about rules for buying growth stocks. Well, Palaton, I'm making this up. Robin Hood, Zoom, Shopify, Square. Will these names be higher in three years? Maybe, maybe not.

I'm sure there are some fat pitches in here. There's no doubt about it. But you have to buy with the understanding that it could take a while and you could still lose 40% from here. I'm not forecasting it. My only point is you have to be careful. You have to be careful. Just wait until they stop crashing. If your theory here, and I've thrown this out a few times, like what's a better buying opportunity like Robin Hood or Peloton? It makes sense that like all these huge corporations have a ton of cash and they probably should put some of it to work. But don't you think it's almost impossible to do an acquisition when prices are already down 60 or 70%? Like, The CEOs, unless they think they're, like, going to lose their job, how could they ever talk their board into selling at such a depressed level?

That's the weird thing. I remember private equity in, like, 2008, you thought, like, oh, this is the time to deploy capital. All these businesses are blowing up everywhere. And no one wanted to do a deal in private equity because things were, I mean, obviously a lot of that had to do the credit markets and stuff, too. But sometimes when prices are at depressed levels, you'd think that's the time to, like, strike where they aren't as hot and buy something low. but a lot of times it doesn't happen because of ego or someone just doesn't want to get out at that level. Remember when Draft Kings was on fire? How bad is that? Down 65%. By the way, you can gamble in New York now. Is that right? Let me tell you this. Just in time for the NFL playoffs. That's when I got it last year. So I saw that there was a $1,000 bonus. Oh, dude, all of them. I did every single one I could find. MGM, Fanduel. For Fanduel. So I bet a thousand dollars. I did a

parlay. I took, did you watch the game last night? The chargers? Do you take the chargers? I took the over, which was 50, and the money line chargers. Oh, man. It hurt quite a bit. I bet $1,000 to win $2,000, I think in a little. Did it give you the risk-free bet? Is that the thing? Yeah, up to $1,000. I've never bet $1,000 on the game before, but I figure, hey, it's... Here's where they get you, though.

Well, so now I'm going to lose the other 1,000. No, but it's site credit, so you can't just take your 1,000 back out. This is how they get people. Then you have to re-bet that other 1,000. thousand again. That's how they get you. They just keep getting you to bet and bet more. I'm already your mark the $1,000 is gone. Believe me. I know, I'm soccer. I know it's gone. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways.

We're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything long up. On August day. This is where the story really starts. Weapons. Oh, I saw somebody sent me a ticket slip. This one, I can't imagine the pain that was inflicted on this one. Somebody did a bet for a draw for last night's game. $350 to win $10,000.

Oh, if it would have been a tie? Did you see what happened at the end? Yeah, yeah, I did. That was brutal. $350 to win $10,000. All right, anyway, this is a great tweet by Howard Linson. Just really perfect. Coinbase Square, Robin and Sofi, Marquetta, all at new lows, Goldman Schwab, MasterCard,

Amex at highs. Thank God we spent the last 20 years disrupting FinTech, investing is easy. Perfect, right? That's pretty good. It's really chef's kiss. All right, Jim Bianco had a tweet thread that I thought was really good and thoughtful about the Fed being trapped. This is towards the end of the thread.

He said 40% of the public rents and has less than $1,000 in savings. So this cohort feels a brunt of inflation. The Fed is in a tough spot. Respond to inflation and hike and risk the economy. stock market. Do not respond to inflation and risk the ire of the majority party in D.C. The Fed can no longer print money whenever the economy markets falter. Now they must decide to prop up stocks or tame inflation. Successfully doing both seems unlikely. And then he says, the consensus stock market started to figure this out about three hours ago and they fear they are going to lose. This was on the day

that the market really fell apart. So back in 2014, Josh and I are at a conference in Arizona. Mohamed El-Aerian is up on stage and this guy is just has the crowd in the palm of his hand. And he's giving this speech about how the Fed has reached a T in the road. He kept doing a T like this, saying there's nothing more they can do. They reached a T in the road. Either the fundamentals has to carry the day or the Fed's going to back out and the market is screwed. And I feel like a lot of people have these binaries about the Fed. And maybe Jim is right and maybe the Fed is stuck.

And this is probably their most precarious situation they've had. But to my point, is raising rates to 1% really going to crash the stock market? I mean, put it, it could. Again, if people use it as an excuse, but really 1% rates, if the stock market or the economy can't hang on with 1% rates, now, when? I agree with you. I think that's this point. The Fed is that the Fed is always been behind the eight ball since 2009.

People have been saying that since then, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove, like, oh, they've lost control. When has it paid to bet against the Fed over the last 13 years? When? When has that been a good thing to do? 2006. Never. 2007.

seven when Bernacki said subprime is contained. Sure. I'm saying the whole Fed is out of ammo. Like, what if? Let's say we have higher inflation for the first six months of the year. I think that what you're saying is the Fed has never got it wrong, even though it's clearly not true. So they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Who's been more wrong? The Fed or Fed haters? Fed haters, 99 out of 100. But we can say that and we can also acknowledge that this time there really is a greater degree of risk than there has been in the past. Can we say those two things are True. Yes. Like, will the market give them enough slack to allow, because obviously the pandemic going on has only made the supply chain inflation stuff be more prolonged. I don't think that's

controversial to say that. This stuff has been prolonged. And so, like, we're probably going to have higher inflation for the next, I don't know, first six months of the year at least. And like, will the market allow the Fed to see if that comes in in the latter half of the year? Is it really a second half story, is what I'm saying? So Alison Schrager wrote this morning, these are crazy times. The unemployment rate is 3.9%. Inflation is at 6% and real interest rates are well below zero, all while the Fed is still doing QA. Yes, they're facing it out and there are plans about increasing rates to something slightly less below zero over the next two years. But even after all the rate hikes, this is still a very accommodative monetary policy. These are just very weird

times for monetary policy for every policy. Yes. And I feel it's been kind of weird since 2008. I feel like that sort of broke economics as we know it. In 2008, like nothing has been textbook, this is what happens when you do this, this is what happens. Like, everything has been weird since then. The pandemic made it even weirder. This is what Fed bears have been complaining about, is that they have distorted markets forever. They will never, in our lifetimes, not be the biggest player on the field.

I feel like that's reasonable. Yeah, and stop crying about it and just invest that way then. That's always been my point is like, I got over like the Fed being involved in the markets it's years and years ago. And it's like, okay, this is how it's going to be. Let's fine. This is, okay, they took away hand checking in the NBA. Okay, new rules. Right, new rules. That's the whole thing. That's my thing is like, just stop complaining about it all the time. And like, this is it. And again, we just have to remind people that GDP and earnings and profit margins are all at all time highs. It's not like the Fed is completely holding up a house of cards.

So if you're going to go of that angle, just take it and shove it. Look at this next. chart. This is my bull case. And this bull case isn't so much for the markets as it is the economy. So this is from JP Morgan. I think we got a few charts from them in here. They updated their guide to the markets. They must have bought someone in to change the charts a little bit. It looks nice. It's tremendous. I got to say it's one of the better, how many is it, 100 slides? I don't know. It's on a monthly basis now. And some of the best charts and visuals of anywhere. So they have consumer finances. They have a consumer balance sheet. And they're showing assets to liabilities. Look at how these assets dwarf liabilities. They're showing household debt to service

ratio, which is your debt payments has a percentage of disposable income, basically at all-time lows since 1980. Really, really low. Coming out of the last crisis, it was at 13%. Now it's at like 9%. Household net worth has just soared. This only goes up. True, but I mean, it's more than double where it was in 2007. I'm just saying, as far as the economy goes, let's say the Fed really was behind the eight ball and had to raise rates enough to the point where it's like slowing things down, which again, I think is a dumb strategy to try to do in the short term, but let's say they did that. Consumers are in a better place now than they've ever been for something like that for like a minor pullback in demand or whatever. I think as far as the economy goes, we've never

been in a better position to have something like that happen. Agreed, but people are in a better position to be able to handoff. Is it possible that we normalize interest rates, which I think we should, the stock market trends. What do you consider normal for interest rates? There's no normal. 75 basis point. No, we're off zero. Zero is not normal. Yeah, you're right. In a booming bull market, can you at least give me that? This is not normal. Yes. By the way, I looked at it for my asset quilt the other day. The average return for cash, which is like short-term T-bills for the last 10 years is 0.4%. And that's nominal. Yeah, that's nominal. This is not normal. What if this is the new, new normal? Stop. No, where short-term rates are below 2% for,

the next 20 years. Oh, that's my base case. Fine. But dude, we're zero. Let's get off zero. Yes. I agree. So my question to you is, is it possible that that nukes the market, which, I mean, give me a break, but it could, obviously. And the economy doesn't buckle. Like, is it possible for the, like the stock market? If that happened, great buying opportunity. If the economy continues to chug along and the Fed says, screw the stock market, we've helped you enough. Eat your 15 or 20% losses and the economy is still chugging along and eventually inflation does slowly go back to two or three percent. That to me, I buy hand over fist. That sounds awesome. Well, me too, but we're the fortunate ones. What about 2530? What do you mean? The market falls 2530.

Like, is it possible for that not to affect the economy? I feel like it has to. Like, the feedback loop is not just like a self- How about this other way, though? Let's say housing prices are fine. Nothing happens to housing prices. That's impossible. I don't think you could have the market and the economy contract and real estate hold up? No, you were saying the market gets hit, but then the economy is fine. I'm saying if housing continues to go up and we still have demand, can't that keep the economy going fine in the housing market, whatever? You're looking at like in 1987 again where, remember, the stocks crashed 34% and the economy,

nothing happened to it. Anyway, I'm sounding very bottomy. Potentially. If you're listening to the stocks already bottomed. By the, can we mention what you're wearing right now for those who weren't watching the YouTube feed? Oh, sure. You mentioned this on the show a couple weeks ago.

It's a new balance cutoff hoodie. And you do look like you could be a coach for the New England Patriots right now. It's a short sleeve hoodie with, I don't even know what you... What was the coach of the Lions that came from New England? Matt Patricia. Ah, yes. I looked like Matt Patricia with the shaved beard. By the way, Matt Patricia looks like Rip now that I'm thinking about it from Yellowstone.

Okay. Put the pencil in there and, yeah. Oh, he's not the Lions coach anymore. Dan Campbell. Yeah, former tie-down for the Giants. Anyway, where are we going? Oh, this is a pretty chart, not. We're looking at, this is JPMorgan.

It's showing the, going back to 1994, income earned on $100,000 in a savings account. So it's showing you the income needed to beat inflation. This is just woof. This is not good. Ben, is this normal? This is not normal, but neither are the 90s. The 90s when you could earn that much income for taking zero risk,

that was not normal either. Can I tell you something? I read the five minutes this weekend. Did you really? I did. If you just read the minutes and do you know the context, no way in a million years would you have guessed on the market did what it did. They didn't say anything. Oh, well, how great stocks are doing, basically? No, I'm just saying the language, it was very innocuous. There wasn't anything about accelerating, like, I'm not a Fed whisper. I don't read these every time. So maybe it's different

than it has in the past. You think they have like a crazy PR person that looks at this for them, like being like, we cannot say this? 100%. They have to, right? I mean, it should be just the minutes, right? So it should just be a reflection of what was said. But I'm sure there's like, hey, edit that out. You know how, what was the movie with Amy Adams where she's talking to the aliens? Arrival. Isn't that where we're heading with like fed minutes where like it has to be some sort of, it has to be some sort of other weird language so that you can't look at anything they say and like make the markets move one way or another? You have to be very careful. I don't know. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Speaking of messaging, there was this survey done about like what is the

best way to message on inflation to sort of keep people in line. So Biden had this thing the other day, and Joe Wisenthel wrote about this morning on his newsletter. And Biden basically said, like, so will people prefer that we try to build more cars and up our manufacturing capacity? Or we raise rates and slow down demand so hurts people's bottom on. Like, which would you prefer? And obviously, he's saying, I would rather do the first one. Let's keep demand strong and try to increased supply to bring it up. They looked at like the best and worst messaging for inflation. He says the best one that scored the best. I don't know how they scored these. That Biden should say that we need to bring back manufacturing jobs the United States to drive down prices.

Our supply chains needs to be housed at home rather than outsourced abroad. It's kind of crazy that I mean, obviously that bring jobs back here. That makes sense of people. But the people think that would actually make costs lower than outsourcing and getting lower costs. How? Well, I'm saying that's how far gone we are with the supply chain stuff that it's so messed up that having it be more globalized. In the past, you outsource too. Anyway, I just don't know that there's much that they can say. As long as inflation is high and people see these high numbers, I don't think what they say is going to really matter at this point until it comes down. I think you're right. This surprised me. And when I say this, we're about to talk about

crypto for a second. So OpenC raised $300 million at a $13 billion valuation. That did not surprised me. What surprised me was maybe NFTs are the gateway drug into crypto. So this is very anecdotal, but my feed was rocking. There was a bull market in NFTs over the weekend, even with the crypto meltdown. A friend of mine split a doodle. Doodles when he started talking to me about it, and it's a cartoon doodle, as the name implies, it's just a cartoon doodle of characters. When he started talking to me about it on Thursday. The price was seven. The floor was seven. He finally pulled the trigger at nine. I think the floor got as high as 11. See, I look at it out the other way. I see NFTs as like the masterclass of this stuff because the people who are trading in it are the people

who are already really wealthy in crypto and have already made it. But it's bringing people in. Like my friend is not a crypto person. He doesn't own Ethereum or anything. So I'm surprised. And again, it's very anecdotal. But talking about memetic behavior, which we did in the intro, why am I buying crypto and goons and what else am I buying chubber versus friends I don't know because I see other people doing it and I'm getting FOMO that's really all there is to it now we think that like crypto is volatile the floor prices on these things can literally go up 100% in 30 minutes it's hilarious it is actual comedy how volatile these things are so I understand that these things are digital scarcity. It's much easier to buy and sell than in the past. I get all that. I get all

why it's different this time, but I really can't help, even though I haven't read this book yet. It feels really dumb. I'm holding up this Beanie Baby bubble book. It feels really dumb. And I'm not trying to be a Debbie Dan. I'm open-minded. But like, I feel like these NFTs, even though the number of users on OpenC is, so this is why it's like, my brain is like breaking and can't process all this. Do I think it's a bubble? Yes. Do I think it's going to get much bigger? Yes. Because it's tiny. The number of uses on OpenC, I don't know what it is, but it's tiny. And yet, the prices are so, so, so high. So Bloomberg had went on this. And they talked about how all these celebrity NFTs, or a lot of them from John Sina did an NFT and Paris Hilton and some rappers. They said a lot of them, like Grimes did one. And it's down like 85%. Like all these NFTs that they were just cash grabs by celebrities are all getting wrecked. Like in the people who buy them, there's little liquidity. If there is, they're getting.

just absolutely destroyed. And the whole thing is, like, beyond if you think it's the next Picasso or whatever, and some art, whatever, however you want to have it, like, there has to be something attached to the NFT and some sort of utility for it, for it to make sense. Like, that has to be the next stage. It can't just be a celebrity. Yeah, there has to be some sort of. I'm using air quotes, like discord. I feel like the board apes is its own thing. But even that, it's pretty, I don't know if it's small or not. You know what the market cap of board apes are? Three billion. Does that seem outrageously high or low, considering that's like the biggest one? For a bunch of pictures, of apes, yes, it seems outrageously high to me, but it would probably go outrageously higher.

This is the part over the weekend that really surprised a hell out of me. So again, we are in a crypto meltdown. Bitcoin is how far off the highs? So we were at high of a percent. It was under 40,000 today. Okay, so Bitcoin was over 40 percent off the highs. I'm sure same goes for Ethereum. Some of the alt coins are getting wrecked harder. And yet, for whatever reason, over the weekend, NFTs are exploding. So trading on OpenC in January has already exceeded 1.36 billion in just 10 days. Wait, so you obviously filed this stuff more than I do, because I'm not a degenerate gambler. Like I am.

Only in sports. So you have a floor of ETH. So ETH falls 25% over the weekend or something. Do those prices and NFTs change too? Well, they're priced in ETH. Do you account for it? Not necessarily. That's the thing that's shocking is that I guess you would think that people dump their

NFTs to get liquidity for ETH. I don't know. Maybe I'm stretching. But there was a boom, an absolute boom. prices were going vertical in a lot of these projects in NFTs over the weekend while ETH was crashing. If you have your floor price and it's five ETH, ETH drops 25% in price, shouldn't that then go up to eight instead of five?

Oh, it doesn't work like that. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Is there like a yo-yo effect of these things tracking each other? Does it not work at all like that? No, not at all. Okay. But what I'm saying is like this utility stage for the next stage for it to actually

mean something. If you're a celebrity or you're a influencer or whatever, you have to actually do something for the value of the NFT to say, hey, I'm going to get. give a Zoom call to all my followers and they're going to be able to ask me questions or I'm going to send out my newsletter just for Kevin Rose did. Yes. Like you have to actually for these to make sense for the people who are just doing the straight money grab for their fans to not revolt on them and say screw you. So there's different categories of entities like the profile pictures like the doodles. That's completely different than. Yeah, I'm saying for these other ones.

Celebrity's doing cash drab. Yeah, they got to deliver. You got to do something. But I'm saying for the ones that aren't thinking they're the next Picasso or Beepler or whatever, like they need to actually have some utility to them so it makes it like the membership actually means something. So we've had a lot of people that are like, where do I begin with crypto? Where to begin? If you're still interested after 40% correction, I think if you were interested then, you should be interested now. Somebody put together like a 20 or 30 page. No, now is the time you dance on Crypto's grade. You get excited when it goes back up 100%. Well, I've been buying the way down, so. I'm kidding. All right. Anyway, this person put together report will link to the show notes.

He said global banking revenues today, and this is a gentleman, Tom Dunleavy. He said global banking revenues today are in the neighborhood of $3 trillion. Against that, Ethereum mining revenues were roughly $20 billion in 2021 representing only less than 1% of the global banking pie. Given the way DeFi cuts out the cost of many different middlemen and operates at a faster speed than legacy transactions, it's hard not to see that growing without the impediment of regulators. So for people who say it's a Ponzi scheme, it makes no sense. Consider this. Uniswap, pancake swap, and sushi swap are now generating well over $300 million a month in revenue at almost zero operating cost. So if you want to say Bitcoins and Ponzi,

which I get it. It's a faith-based asset. I disagree, but I get it. Fine. But a lot of these defy stuff, these are not Ponzi schemes. They are generating gobs and gobs and gobs of money. Scrabbing like that, still sounds like a Ponzi scheme, but yes. No, it doesn't. I'm kidding. Okay. Lastly, as far as I just said that I'm buying, again, who knows where the floor is on this thing? Actually, one of my predictions might come true. I said Bitcoin was going to go to 30,000 and 100,000 to see. Well, I mean, this is the third 30% crash in Bitcoin in the last 12 months, I think. It's been pretty volatile, obviously. to say the least. But that's a feature, not a bug. I feel like if you are a new-ish crypto investor,

this is what it is. Yes. Yeah, you're going to lose 20% over the weekend. Get used to it. Yeah. This seems like nothing to me. You read this web three take down by this moxie guy I've never heard of it before. Not only did I read this, I read several other commentaries on this and I understood five to 10% of what I was reading. So I have no idea what this person is, but obviously all the crypto people seem to think like, oh, this is actually coming from a pretty good source. It's not just a person who is hating. But his, thing, this is why I think the whole like binary all or nothing, like Web 3 is going to eat everything and all these other Web 2 are screwed. I don't see why it can't just be both of them

be successful. So he talked about the funding issue and I'll become difficult to change. And my whole thing is like some people just like having a free ad supported internet and they don't have to do anything. I do. I love it. Whereas other people are going to say, I want to have my ear to the ground and I want to be the first to this and I want to get paid for taking it for doing this and finding this stuff. So I don't see why there can't just be both. And I think that's kind of what he was saying. Like, listen, some of this other stuff, like, the reason that it works is because it's so easy for people. Like, some people don't want to have the first mover advantage and be incentivized to make sure a platform gets off the ground. Whereas other people are like, no, I'm deep

into this stuff. I'm going to find these based on all my Discord channels and stuff, and I'm going to be paid handsomely for it. And it's like, I don't see why we can't have a world where both of these things exist. This is me straddling the line again, obviously, but I thought it was worth to read. All right. We're coming up on earnings season again, and this is what it's going to be. I'm guessing Lulu came out today. They warned. What are they warned about? Omicron stuff. Stock's not doing too well from it. I am curious to see how the market digests Q4 earnings. But this again is a perfect excuse if you had bad earnings, whether it was because of Omicron or not. Well, guess what? The market's either going to give you the benefit of the doubt or they're going to say, we're punishing you

anyway, and we don't believe you. So we're going to go to our friends at Quarter and ask them, in all the transcripts, how many times is Omicron mentioned? And I'm guessing it's going to be a ton. You're going to get a lot of it, which would make sense. I guess that's fair. All right, let's get back to some good news here. Eddie Alfenbine tweeted, this is F, the employment report last, the unemployment rate is

lower today than it was during every month of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I looked at this too, and since 1979, the unemployment rate, where it is today at 3.9% is in the lowest 5% of all reading. So 95% of the time, the unemployment rate has been lower than it is today. It took 21 months to go from 15% unemployment to back under four. And I know why it happened because all the people were shelved, but the fact that this happened so fast and it took so much longer following the last crisis, I feel like we're almost not celebrating this enough. So I tweeted something about this the other day. Everyone came back to me with labor force participation rate. There's a lot of that. So I just

I did a little digging on this. It is lower. It was at like 64% pre-pandemic. It's now like 62%. So there are fewer people. But look at this labor force participation rate chart that I put on here. This thing peaked in 2000. And it's been going steadily down since. It obviously had a really big drop off during the pandemic and it hasn't got back to pre-trend levels. But we've talked about the baby boomers, 10,000 of them retiring every day. This isn't a figure that's going to go back up anytime soon. This is going to be going down probably for the rest of this decade as people retire. And the stat that we- When do young people like replenish that coffer? I don't think that's going to happen because there's so many boomers. The millennials are already in the workforce, and there's not a bigger generation than us coming up. So there was a stat that we've mentioned before. I think it said like 3 million more people retired through the pandemic than would have otherwise had not been for the trend. And the labor force has gone from like 164, 164 million to 162 million. The fact that people retired early, a lot of those people aren't coming back, probably unless their finances aren't going to allow for it. So I don't see what stops this trend from continuing to go lower every time. And so a lot of people said,

oh, the government is fudging these numbers and manipulating them. But this trend has been going lower for over 20 years, and it's probably not going to stop. So I still say good news with the unemployment rate back under 4%. And I guess maybe this is another reason it's okay for the Fed to raise rates again. What were economists predicting unemployment going to? 25%. 20? Possible. Wasn't that the IMF? Well, they also said, even after all the stimulus dollars have been thrown at this, the amount of time they said it would take for us to get back to these levels of unemployment were like 24 more months or something. The fact that we got here this fast is, I think, insanely, people are trying to say like, oh, this was a terrible jobs report. Look at these numbers.

It's amazing how fast it went down. On balance, this has been a miraculous 20-something months for the economy and the stock market. Life has sucked. Too many lives were lost. All things considered. Yeah, exactly. Given where we came. from, I don't think we could have asked for anything better for the economy in the stock market, certainly not the stock market. Run this simulation a thousand times and a handful of times are better than what we had for these two elements. One more on the unemployment stuff. So this surprised me. I didn't realize Nebraska has the lowest unemployment rate of anyone in the country. This is from Bloomberg. They say it's 1.8%. They talked about how all the hospitals are now having a hard time

getting people. I can't imagine how burned out you have to be. I talked to a friend the other day who said his wife has basically been on the front lines of COVID since the start in the ER, and he's like, it's just like soul crushing to her every time she has to go to work. I can't even imagine. But they said that they're now, they're talking about certain jobs at the hospital that they used to be able to pay $8 for, now 15 because they're competing with places like Walmart. I mean, as all these boomers retire in the years ahead, isn't the competition for people just going to get jacked up way, way higher for almost everything if we don't figure out how to automate a lot of stuff, like the competition for people for a lot of different things that we need in society

is, especially as these tech platforms come on and try to steal some of them for the stuff they want to do, I feel like this is something that has been sped up in the wrong direction from this pandemic, and it's probably not going to get better anytime soon. Do we need more automation? I think that's honestly the only answer. Oh, I forgot to read this or watch this clip, but things are never going back to the way they were pre-pandemic. Last night on 60 minutes.

I saw this, too. The LinkedIn one. On the great resignation. And what was the stat that she said? So it was like one out of every 67 jobs pre-pandemic were remote that were listed on LinkedIn. Now it's one out of every seven. That's wild. That has a remote in the thing.

The implications of that are massive. We've been hiring lately and you and I have done some interviews. And a couple of the interviews that I did, two of these young people who graduated in the last three or four years said, oh, I've only ever worked remote than the only thing I've had, basically. I know we say, like, young people are screwed because of this, but if they grow up in this environment where remote only and they've got all the tools technologically to do this,

maybe they're at more of an advantage than we think. Like, obviously, politically, it won't be as easy to move up and stuff, but if this is the only world that they grow up in, you're starting in the working world now, I think it just changes so many things, not about the working world in general, but about people's lives and the stuff that they can do that makes their lives better.

think about just you in New York that you used to 10 hours a week of commuting basically that you've gotten back from your life that you never knew like oh wait a minute we actually can do this without me doing this yeah it's been great like the work of life stuff has just totally changed yes and i don't see how young people if they get a taste of that are going to want to go back all right quickly from zillo they talked about the hottest housing marks in 2022 look at this map basically every single one of them in the southeast save for phoenix which i guess is Phoenix, just always the hottest housing market between them in Las Vegas. But they said the hottest one is Tampa and then Jacksonville and then there's some North Carolina ones, Nashville. We've talked to Ben Miller of Fundrise about this. Have people just finally realized, oh, wait, I don't have to just pay for a ton of real estate dollars in California to get good weather. I can actually just go to the southeast and get good weather. And it's much cheaper to be there too. Is that what people have finally figured out? The southeast is like this. So those housing prices in there. If you're in one of those places are going to be buying there, good luck, finding it lower there in the next 10 or 15 years, right?

Yeah, yeah. By the way, it's like five degrees out in Michigan today, and these are the times when it really, really sucks to be in the Midwest and stuff, but I do think there's something to having the seasons. So this weekend... I'm a big seasonal guy. I love it. Especially for my kids.

I love being miserable in the winter. It gives you something to look forward to it. I think there's a couple good things about having, especially winter. Christmas is way better when it's snow in the Midwest or in the Northeast or whatever when it's snowing. And then we went sledding this weekend. with my kids, which is one of my all-time favorite activities. My wife says that I'm basically like the fourth kid in the family because I probably enjoy it just as much as them. But we went out

like 9.30 in the morning. We were the first ones there. The sun was out. We got like 12 inches of snow in the last week. We went sledding and had an amazing time. This is when I actually like, okay, I can actually appreciate the season for like one day out of the year. And then I want to be in the 80-degree other. One more here. Len Kiefer from Freddie Mac said there were over 8 million home refinances in 2020, 6 million in 2021. Each refinance save the borrower an average of about $2,800 a year in lower payments. That's 40 billion in cash wealth cleared up for U.S. homeowners in the past two years. That's crazy. This is a serious question. How is something like this ever computed in the inflation rates? Because these are fixed payments that these people now have

lower over time. Don't these offsets $2,800 a year and lower payments? Doesn't that almost take away some of the inflation people have gotten in other years of their life. How could it not? And then if you're a first-time home buyer and you're not getting that, it's, obviously it balances out. I don't know. I would like to hear from somebody who knows about that. Yes.

All right. One more real estate thing. We've talked about Zillow a lot and their eye buying and getting out and it wrecked them and their stock price is still down like 72% from the highs. Open Door was seen as, okay. Did you ever sell Zillow? No, I still hold it, actually. I'm a glutton for punishment.

You and Josh talk about like, oh, I got stopped out or I don't just stop. I don't do. I'm a genius or I'm an idiot. Probably an idiot in this one especially. But Open Door was seen as like, okay, Zillow's stepping out. Open Door has this all to themselves and they have a much better mouse trap and they have a better technology. Zillow's down 72%. Open door is down 69%. Soccercoach Giff. Yes. So maybe some people say, well, Zillow getting out of this had to be the best thing for them because that meant they have it all to themselves and it's wide open. Maybe the worst thing because maybe Zill approved this is a much harder thing to do than it sounds like. All right. Last thing. Stupid survey of the week. More than one in ten first time homebuyers

sold crypto to fund down payments. My knee-jerk reaction was this is ridiculous. I bet you it's not off by that much. It might be off by a factor of two. Would you be shocked if one in 20? I think one in 20 is fair. 13, 1 and 40 maybe. That's a lot. One in 10 is ludicrous. But if it is, if you like sold some crypto and got it to do a Cryptos falling. Yeah, but if you did that and got it into the real world, like, what a better way to use your gains, though, that actually makes sense to me. All right.

One listener question, it'll cue up our recommendations. Question for the next pod. When Rotten Tomato critic ratings disagree with audience ratings, who do you trust more? 95% of the time of the audience. I'd say it was closer to 99. If there's a critically acclaimed film, nine and a ten times, I'm saying, I trust the audience more. I'd never like a critic recommendation.

Here's 10 out of 10 times to go with the audience. on comedies. I'm going to pull up the other guys, for example. I know there's a big spread there. The other guys was a, what a film. Just kidding. What a great movie. The audience gave it a, oh, never mind.

Wow, this is interesting. Okay, bad example. The critics gave it a 79 and the audience gave it a 60. Is that Will Ferrell's last funny movie? Like, really funny movie? Oh, Grandma's Boy. That's the poster child. Grandma's Boy, which is just an objectively hilarious movie, did 16% from the critics,

one six, the audience gave it an 85. Okay. I bet that's like that with a lot of Sandler movies, too. Oh, look at this. Okay, Billy Madison, 42% from the critics, 79 for the audience. You're right. Critics do not understand comedy. Especially slapstick stuff.

Let me just check one more. Happy Gemmore was about it, by the way. Happy Gilmore got a 61. Naked Gun. I feel like they must like naked gun. If they don't like naked gun, what do they like? The naked gun, okay, the naked got an 88% from the critics and an 84% That sounds about right.

The first time I saw Naked Gun, I remember that because I was like five. The scene where he goes to the bathroom, but he leaves his microphone on in the court. Isn't it crazy to think that OJ was a big star on those two? I feel like that movie taught me how to belly laugh or showed me what it was like to belly laugh. All right. You watch an 1883? I only saw the first episode for some reason. I can't get the others.

We've watched the first four, I believe. I really like it. And I think this is the reason that Yellowstone was so bad this year because he put all the attention on this. It's a very good Western that feels like a movie. Maybe you haven't gotten to it yet, but there's some two really big name cameos, which I will not give away. Oh, Tom Hanks. Okay. You just gave it away, I guess, but... That blew my mind. There's another one coming later. I was like, wait, what's he doing here? Yes, and it was like a 60-second scene. I think it's very good. I'm really into it. We're like four episodes in. It's worth

binging. I rewatched Limitless this weekend because it was on rewatchables. I rewatched that a couple once ago. What a great movie. So, Bradley Cooper, he becomes a day trader initially and he makes it he like doubles his money every day or something, quadruples it every day. He talked about like pattern recognition and human nature. Do you think he figured out the Renaissance technology Algo in his head? Is that what he did there? Is that how he became such a good stock trader? Yeah. Like he did Renaissance technologies and levered it up? Great movie. I love that movie. Oh, another one. We watched the tender bar this weekend, which is, I'm going to say probably a no for you. You probably won't like it. George Clooney has done some duds. Well, Clooney directed it. Affleck is the one who's in it.

Clooney's not in it. The reason I liked it is because I heard it's a true story. And the guy who is the author is the same author who wrote the Andre Agassiz biography, who I guess is kind of well known as like one of the better sports biographies. So I listened to this guy in an interview and then I started reading the book. And the book is very good. It's about a kid who grew up and was basically raised by a bunch of drunks down at a bar. But his uncle ran the bar. It's kind of a feel good coming of age story. It's like a 6-5, probably a 6-5. But Affleck was great in it. Damon has better movies, but I think he has a more diverse set of roles that he's played. He was kind of like an Uncle Buck, like a Boston or New York Uncle Buck in this. He was very good, even though the movie

was just okay. Did you see The Way Down or the Way Way Down, whatever was called? Oh yeah, the way way back or whatever, the way back. Oh yeah, yeah. Very good. Good in that too. I got one more. We finished the new Dexter season last night. It was very good. I highly recommend. And the ending was very surprising to me. What if you've never seen it? If you've never seen the other Dexter, then no. I feel like they needed a much better ending than the first one because the last few seasons just kind of went off the rails. And this was the whole season. If you were a Dexter fan originally, definitely watched the new season. It was very good. I liked it a lot. All right. What do I got? Oh, I saw the Born Ultimatum. Let's dial up Rodden Tomatoes one more

time. Because my first thought after watching the Born Ultimatum. I can never remember the names. Me either. Well, the Born Identity. I don't know what the second one is. The Born supremacy. All right. So the born identity, that was very good. That was an 83, 93 split. Because I'm going to say, I think the ultimatum was the best one. That was the third one. Okay. Yeah, you're right. The born supremacy was 8290, so same ballpark. Yeah, you're right. Ultimatum was good. The born ultimatum, 92.91. So the audience and the critics agrees with me. I think that was the best of the bunch. I think you're right. I have a soft spot in heart for the original just because it was the first one, but I think the third one probably is the best

action movie for sure. It was really, really good. Okay. The Alpinist or the Alpine, I think it was the Alpinist. If you liked Free Solo, this was like, the free solo was like treasury bonds and this was like NFTs. This was so insane. And I don't want to say anything. You think this was made to try to top Free Solo? Yeah. And matter fact, the guy from Free Solo was in this one and he was like, that dude's crazy. That's definitely worth watching. Ozark is coming back. And I got to be honest, I don't want to to binge it. Yeah, it would be cool if this was an episodic one as well, I think. Like, I'm going to bidge it, but I would much prefer this to be like succession once a week, let it marinate a little bit, build some suspense. Do you see the commercial for it? No. Okay, Jason Bateman posted a

clip of it the other day, like a two-minute clip of this season. It looks awesome. I can't wait. All right, lethal weapon two. First of all, did you know the bad guy, the bad South African guy? Because I was like, that guy looks familiar. By the way, I've never seen lethal weapon two before. That's Hans from Mighty Ducks. It's been a long time since I saw it. Okay. I feel bad saying this given what a scumbag Miguel Gibson is, but let's just leave that to the side.

Then this might be a bit much, but I'm going to put it out there. This might have been like the best leading performance ever. Riggs is a great character. If he did not turn out to be the person he turned out to be, this franchise would be celebrated in like the upper, upper, upper echelon of great action comedies. Isn't it funny how you have to give the disclaimer with him now? too. Well, you have to because he's such a despicable piece of shit. Yeah. But oh my God,

charismatic, smart, funny. I guess, I don't know, the perfect, like action movie. It's one of the better action movies I've ever seen. And he doesn't seem like he's unobtainable. He seems kind of a regular guy still. And then it also begs the question, because him and Danny Glover, I mean, what a duo. Why didn't Danny Glover's career really pan out? Like, why wasn't he bigger? Must have been Predator, too. Did I kill him? I don't know. That just wasn't very good after the first one.

Anyway, the lethal weapon, if you could hold Mel Gibson's antics and character to the side, lethal weapon and lethal weapon, too, are both on HBO Max. They are fine, fine movies. Yeah. Well, Joe Pesci, too, is awesome in those movies. How did I forgot to mention? Joe Pessy stole the show. And so, yeah, pairing that with the rewatchables is just a great time,

especially when you're stuck at home for COVID, which I was. Okay. It's not as special when you got it. When I had it, I had it all to myself. Yeah, you were ahead of the curve. I was like the fat, I'm behind the curve. Everyone's got it now. All right.

Sorry if we were overly bearish on this episode, but listen. We're balancing things out. What are we going to call this one? Michael and Ben are bearish? Oh, you're bearish too? No, I was trying to see the other side of these things. I'm actually turning bullish. Believe it or not.

All right, Animal Spiritspod at gmail.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next time. Thank you.