Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-25-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

04-25-25_FRIDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clauser Drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning. And how are things with you today? Join the conversation. It's find your phone Friday. 770-5633-770-KMED. My email is Bill at BillMeyerShow.com.

Read them all. Try to answer as many as I can. Just one guy people say bill just say could you get your staff to go to work on that as if that means me i love it a small town radio but that we have a great time here one way or the other yeah good to hear from you wherever you happen to be listening and we got a lot going on this morning a lot going on this morning todd shades is going

to join me he's the author of a financial newsletter. You know, I always say I like to be in touch with the financial news people because they have to be right. Because if they don't, then people don't give them money, you know. So it's a little bit better than in many cases, let's say a Washington DC governmental bureaucrat that even if they're wrong, you know, they end up, you know, keeping their job for a long, long time anyway. But we'll talk with Todd about the latest, the latest tariff news out of the Trump administration. And Trump appears to be, depending on who you're talking to, he's working the art of

the deal or other people are saying he's backing off on some of the tariff excesses, as they would tend to call it. Other people are saying he's backing off on some of the tariff excesses, as they would tend to call it. I think some of this is probably due to the bond market cracking a little bit and telling him that we're just pulling money out of U.S. assets. I could be wrong about that. But I'm going to talk with Todd about it because he's paid to be right about these kind of things.

And I'm just kind of a little baby economist as we talk to people. But you know, I can add and subtract and do all sorts of things. Oh, man, I got to tell you, it is that winter, the winter in the early spring that we had, all the rain. I spent two hours yesterday on my knees and I don't like being on my knees, let me tell you, especially that left one. That left one is starting to hurt, is starting to bark more as I get a little bit older. I was on my knees and I'm pulling weeds and I'm pulling grass out in the front yard area, you know, off to the left of my driveway

on Viewpoint Drive. And I'm doing that yesterday and this is before we were going to get some rain sprinkles. You can see the storm clouds were gathering. I guess we are going to see a few showers off and on this weekend. But I'm trying to prettify the house a little bit. And I have to tell you, I am the absolute worst lawn maintainer, gardener, slash, person to go out and pull weeds that I think ever lived. And I have such admiration. if you're one of those people

that relaxes and enjoys gardening and the pulling of weeds and the bringing of order back to me. It is like it is the deepest pit of hell. That's just the way. And Linda's the same way. We're both that way. Neither of us are gardeners. We're just into different things. The worst day on an electronics workbench tinkering with radios and transmitters and other things like that, the worst day tinkering with that stuff is better than the best day that I will ever have mowing and maintaining and trying to make things pretty because it's just not in my skill set. But yet there I was on my knees for a couple of hours yesterday

and I and my joints are barking this morning and the knee the left knee was hurting that it's hurting more now but it's all for a good cause. Going to be opening up my home tomorrow Linda and I invite this time is going to be the Josephine County Republican folks that ended up being part of a fundraiser. I did a fundraiser. It's the Strata and Mimosa. We put a little brunch in and people come in. We pour some mimosas. We have some fun and have good conversation. And we did this with the Jackson County folks a couple of weeks ago. And so tomorrow it is going to be for the Josephine County folks.

And so I just want the Josephine County folks to understand, man, I tell you, my knees are barking for you, OK? And it still doesn't look great. It just doesn't look like, you know, like I'm totally derelict in my in my lawn duties. It's just not me. Man, I like I say, you people who love the gardening, who love the yard work, Charlie across the street, down the street from me, he's just amazing. He's one of those guys that

has the piles of the patch filling in every time the dogs are urinating on the lawn as they're walking up and down the street. Charlie's out there with his patch and he's got everything looking. I mean, I'm so envious of people like him who like that, who love that, and who do it well. God bless him. That's just not me. And I can't afford to pay the gardener either.

Oh well. Enough problems about that. Of course, I don't know what, you know, having the Josephine County folks over tomorrow, I don't know what we'll have to talk about. There's been absolutely nothing going on in Josephine County. Oh my gosh. It is, yeah, it's been nothing but the drama. I talked a bit about that yesterday, a lot about that yesterday, and I'm still holding

fast to what I was suggesting yesterday to hold on. Let's wait for a few more facts to come out of this. The claims of the Simon Hare letter are concerning and I'm not going to just say, hey, that there's nothing to this. I think one of my biggest concerns and I dropped a text message to Commissioner Ron Smith who had reached out to me or contacted me. I said one of the claims that a couple of the commissioners gave up power so Andreas Bleck could essentially do the negotiations for some hiring or personnel sort

of issues. I hope there's absolutely no truth to that talk about negotiating a contract in secret for Michael Sellers or anybody else for that matter. And it would be best for the county, best for everybody involved just to you know just to deal with the slings and arrows put about in the open. That's kind of my opinion. I'd let him know that. And now, of course, there are legal issues involved with this one because they're saying that Simon Hare broke the law and let out information that he shouldn't have been doing. That's now the claim. So you're not going to hear much from the county commission on

this one. They're going to have to quiet down as everybody is getting lawyered up and you start getting into to criminal stuff or potential criminal investigations and various other things. So we'll just have to see. But we'll have you know that Michael Sellers, who seems to have been the lightning rod for controversy right now, and like I said, I know Michael. I've been in a few dinner parties with him and I've said this before. I think he's a smart guy and I've always been a big fan of Michael. I was a big fan of Michael when he was Herman Bershiger's Chief of Staff and I continue to like him now. Do I know if there are problems because of him in the county? No, I don't know this, but I'll tell you what he did do.

He said, I'd like to come on and clear the air and we'll talk about what the compensation is, etc., etc., because there is that paper that Simon Hare let out with the $380,000 number on it that has a lot of people in doing the hissy fit. He said, okay Michael, and he come on. So he's gonna come on 8 o'clock hour on Monday's show, all right? And I'm just gonna be patient and we'll have a few questions and maybe take a few calls, those sort of things, and we'll get to the bottom of it as best we can. Okay? All right. So that's where we find ourselves. Meanwhile, Daily Courier reporting that... okay, this is from Chrissy Ewald. The day after he resigned from the role, Josephine County short-lived budget officer Simon Hare,

fired by Josephine County Commissioners Andreas Bleck and Ron Smith. And Smith said during a meeting, he used his access to confidential information to spin an inaccurate and untruthful narrative for unauthorized purpose in violation of Article 3.4 of the contract. So that's part of what they're getting involved in. Okay? Meanwhile, we have a KOBI reporting that a former secretary suing Josephine County as well as two former county commissioners alleging she was terminated in retaliation, Trish House fired in April after being the board secretary for over five years. The way it had been recounted to me by folks who kind of know what was going on, there were some complaints about the way it was done, but we'll see.

All I can say is, let's just wait for the discovery if this suit ends up moving forward. Discovery could be interesting. That's all I'm going to say. When people have to actually say, okay, here's our witnesses. Where are yours? I don't know. So we will see. A fascinating story in the Rogue Valley Times. We have a local contractor out of Jacksonville. Well, he's probably not going to be a local contractor for much longer. I don't know. But Buffy Pawlik.

I like her reporting over at Rogue Valley Times, by the way. I think she does a great job over there. But the FBI indictment of a... I'm just going to read the first couple of sentences of this here. FBI indictment of a local businessman, longtime contractor Joel Matthew Caswell. He's been charged with committing nearly two dozen felony financial crimes. And Buffy writing that it brought quick reaction from other local business owners who reported their their own dealings. Oh, there's been some smoke in the past here.

With Caswell dating back more than a decade, the 30-year-old Caswell arrested last Friday, according to a spokesperson at the FBI field office in Portland, and he made his first appearance. He pled not guilty at the U.S. District Court house in Medford just hours later, and then he was released. Now, according to the indictment, he's facing four felony counts of wire fraud, three counts of tax evasion, one count of aggravated identity theft, 15 counts of failure to collect your truthfully account for and pay over tax. And the case against Caswell centers largely around the alleged defrauding of federal programs

devised to all, it's all that federal COVID relief stuff. Oh, grand jury charging in the indictment alleged that between 2018 and 2022, Caswell applied for and got funds for the Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. Wow. And PPP funds under the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Securities Act. And basically, it looks like he was not really qualified for it. But he applied for funds in several of his registered businesses, Siskiyou Cascade Resources, Siskiyou Cascade Construction,

Siskiyou Cascade Industries. Thekiyou Cascade Construction, Siskiyou Cascade Industries. The indictment alleges he falsified supporting documents to show that all three had active employees when they didn't, so there were no employees. Oh, at least that's what the indictment is saying. Oh boy, oh boy, this could be interesting. Rural Valley Times then went and talked to some other business associates or people who had business dealings with him and they interviewed Alex Poitras, which I thought this is interesting former Medford City Council member Alex Poitras and former close family friend of Joel Caswell said Caswell had amassed a slew of lawsuits related to the filing of fraudulent lawsuits invalid liens against property and

frequent breaches of contracts So I know he is considered innocent, presumed innocent until proven guilty, but boy, there's been a lot of smoke in there. So I wasn't even aware of those other problems there too. Quite, quite interesting stuff. So it doesn't appear that Joel Caswell is having a great day so far. What about your day though? 7705633. I have some other headlines we're going to have on here too. Todd Sheets will join me, author of the newsletter on wealth and progress, and we're going to talk with him about tariffs and a whole bunch more. We've got Mr. Outdoors here. We're also going to be talking with Kevin Gill from Clouser Drilling.

And a gentleman from another driller. Oh yes, nujant from nujant drilling and they're getting together raising the alarm over a senate bill that is going after your well water you're out in the rural lands and you have your own well water big big big deal and this is just as serious as the fire map sort of situation we'll have that conversation in the much more coming up. 7705633. Joel here at Butler Ford and Truck Center. And for the last 20 years that I've worked at Butler, I've always looked for ways for a 25 cents per gallon bonus. Hi, I'm Lisa with Kelly's Automotive Service and I'm on KMED. 25 minutes after 6 7705633. By the way, correction on what we're doing.

For some reason I Transcribed things around or messed up the scheduling of this Michael Sellers is today So we're gonna talk with Michael Sellers today about what is going on with his situation over there in Josephine County Running things and and what's happening? Needless to say the the folks in the County Commission, because of all the legalities of it, they're going to stay quiet on this one. And it will be Michael. So Michael is today.

So today, 8 o'clock. Sorry about that, guys. Didn't mean to get you all excited. All right. So we'll do that today rather than on Monday. Monday, back to normal, okay? Hi, good morning. Who's this?

Welcome. This is Jane. I have a question for you to bring up to Diane Anderson or our talking point. Now Diane Anderson is going to be at Central Point Library this Monday, 530 to 730, talking about the gang greeting, the vision plan, the communism being brought in through our planning system. What are you thinking? Well is the the dictators going to put you and your family members in the same stack and pack or are you going to have to beg permission to visit

them or for them to visit you? I don't think there's any talk yet in the in the vision plan of all of this sustainable development. I don't believe that it's about restricting your ability to visit someone. But of course, Gene, I would have to say that's right now. Depends on how you're coming to visit. Now if you're going to come and visit on RBTD, I would imagine, or if you're walking, if you're walking from your prison city in Josephine County and then you walk to your friend's prison city in Medford ultimately in the way the the Greens would like our society structured, then you know it might be a long time to take

a visit, right? Or you have to take a bus or you know you have to take a bus or maybe we'll have to take a you know a 20-mule train of some sort between Josephine County and and and Medford you know that 20-mule train of some sort between Josephine County and Medford. You know that'd be sustainable transportation. Well I'd rather have a horse but anyway. A horse rather than a mule okay all right. I ride horses not mules. But anyway, you know the question is if you're put in a 15-minute prison by the dictators, are you going to be able to go to another 15-minute prison that happens to be within what they consider walking distance?

Well, as long as you walk, it would probably be just fine. If you were to walk and take public transportation, but what you're not supposed to do is drive. What you're not supposed to do is leave your 15-minute prison. That's what I'm saying. Are they going to be putting the family members in the same 15-minute prison or are they going to put them in another one? And then you have to pay permission from your dignitcrats masters. Yeah, you have to ask for the, you have to ask your docent in the in the neighborhood for permission to leave. I don't know if

that's what the vision is at this point. That may be a little bit farther down the road. I don't know. I can't answer it but I will ask her. Okay. Well, she might bring that point up is just ask the question of the people. Okay. Because when they are dictators, they're going to dictate like the Nazi-loving communists do. But you also have to remember, Jean, and I always remind people this, even dictators require the permission to an extent of the populace. There's way more of them than there are of them. There are way more of us, I should say, than there are of them.

OK? Well, that's only if they happen to belong to the same party. Yeah. All right. Gene, thank you for the call. 770-5633. Good morning. This is Bill. Hi. Who's this? The deplorable Patrick Bill. Good morning. Good Good morning DP. How's life for you? Gene was I didn't mean to call in but she started talking I said I got a dial-in because it's been on my mind How do they plan to deal with the lawsuits of you if they destroy your business take your property?

Take your vehicles take everything you've got because you got to leave it there and just walk away from it How do they plan to deal with that? Well, I think you have to... I think the way they would tend to look at this, the people who are in favor of this kind of a vision of society, is that they already own the courts. That must be it. Well, I'm just... in the state of Oregon, can you disagree with that, honestly, that they own the courts? I'll tell you, I'm just, you know, in the state of Oregon, can you disagree with that? You know, honestly, that they own the courts? I'll tell you, I think we're already in a civil war. It's soft. It's soft right now.

But you never know, it could harden over time. And I'm not advocating that kind of stuff because, you know, civil war type behavior is not fun stuff, as we all know. You look at history. Okay? Yeah, because you can't even draw a boundary line now yeah appreciate the call DP always appreciate hearing from you all right 630 Todd Sheetz will join me here in just a

moment and then we're gonna be digging into the you know tariffs the economy various other things depending on who you talk to everything's going to hell other people are just saying hey just be patient it's part of 4d chess who knows the economy, various other things. Depending on who you talk to, everything's going to hell. Other people are just saying, hey, just be patient. It's part of 4D chess. Who knows? Who knows? We'll talk with Todd about it and get his take on it.

Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable, sleek metal object? Your Department of Adventure off of Vilas Road on Airway Drive. You're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. 636, I always talk about how I really like to stay in touch with good financial people and bloggers and writers and authors and thinkers in the financial world because they're paid to be right. And if they're not right, then people don't pay them.

And so they have to do more than just think from an ideology. They have to look at what's actually working. The nuts and bolts of economies, which of course our economies are nothing but the decisions that are made daily by millions upon millions, billions of people really around the world. And I've been reading more and more of Todd Sheets recently. Todd Sheets is the author of a newsletter. In fact, it's free on Substack. It's called On Wealth and Progress, available free of charge right now on Substack. And he also wrote a really thought-provoking book that I talked with

him about last time. And it's 2008, What Really Happened. That's the name of that book. And we'll put all that information up on KM&E.com. And Todd, it is great to have you back on this program. Good morning, sir. Thank you, Bill. It's a delight to be with you again. Yep. And well, here it is. You're paid to be right because you've been involved in this sort of stuff. And let's talk a bit about what is going on with the tariff world. And some are saying, oh, Trump has had to crack or cave a little bit. And other people are saying, no, this is part of 16 dimensional chess. Something tells me the truth may be a little bit in between the two extremes of what is being talked about there in the news sphere. But from my little baby economist point of view, I had to think it was the bond market because

I think part of the whole tariff deal was about driving interest rates lower and that wasn't happening. Wasn't that the case? Yeah, I think there's definitely an element of truth to that. And I also think one thing that kind of comes out here is I don't know if you've listened to many of the interviews with Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, but he is a very measured and impressive and knowledgeable person in the markets. And I think he's a great complement to Trump's, you know, blustery, harsh kind of style. Yeah, he's, he, well, Besant is a real, is a, is a steady hand and Trump is a bit more mercurial. That's just his personality, okay? No question, yes. So, so what about Besant? What was his take that you think led to some of the changes that we're hearing, this moderating of tone this week?

Well, I think Trump's style is to go hard and big and fast. And I think Besant has a on what the markets are doing, but what they reflect in the real economy, which I think was also a shock as to the size of the tariff proposals or mandates that were set forth initially, even though I think a lot of it was a negotiating tactic on Trump's part. We never know how much, but a lot of it was that. And so the size, the lack of a phase in, and the difficulty that that was going to cause for many people in the business world. So I think, you know, best into somebody, I think from the things I've heard, you know, he has a sense and a way to read all of those things.

I think he's been elevated by Trump to play a much bigger role in this than maybe what was anticipated initially, partially because of some of these things. And I think we're seeing kind of a combination of his feedback and, you know, to his benefit, Trump's willingness to, you know, take the measure of what's happening and say, hey, maybe I'm going a little too fast here. Maybe we do need to back off, you know, which is off, which is a positive element of his approach to these things as well. So I think it's all those factors. Okay, good. So don't look at it as necessarily a caving. It's just like, okay, we came in hard, didn't quite get the reaction we wanted.

Well, we have to recalibrate. It's just kind of, well, you're fighting a war, a financial war of sorts, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, I think it's good that we're going down this path and dealing with these issues right now, especially China, which we have to, but I also think we should be resetting with Europe and the others, you know, who we've kind of got a legacy relationship that's emerged out of, you know, post World War II, where we were trying to let those economies recover. And by as early as 1960, the major European economies and Japan had fully recovered from the effects of World War II.

And some things have modified. They're not as severe as they were initially in terms of our relationships with those two countries, with those two areas, but they're still not balanced. It's not a fair and equal and balanced trading relationship. And I think it's important for us to get those things resettled so that we can move forward in a better way. Can you? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead and complete that thought then I'll ask the question. Sorry, Todd. No, I just think that what we're starting to see in the markets a little bit here, although they can massively overreact to things also. So I'm not a person that believes in hanging too much of a hat on what's happening in the markets minute by minute,

but I do think we're starting to see a sense that you know this is all going to be done in a way that is, you know, positive for us and also takes into consideration the difficulty and the time of doing it in a way that's not too disruptive for the American economy. Todd Sheets with me. He's author of the newsletter on wealth and progress. You can get that on Substack and his book is 2008, What Really Happened? We'll talk more about that here in just a little bit. Isn't one of our challenges though, Todd, that as long as you have the nation or the

world's rather reserve currency, you're not going to have balanced trade. You can't by definition because the world needs more dollars to be able to conduct the trade and essentially we get to export our inflation by printing of dollars. The other nations then buy, take the dollars and then they recycle it back into American assets, a lot of times American stocks, those sort of things. That's buoyed the market quite a bit here for a while. So isn't it somewhat ridiculous to say we're going to be starting making you know underwear again, you know that kind of thing in order to make balance trade with Vietnam, that kind of thing?

Yeah I think that's an accurate assessment but I think in addition to that one of the things that needs to be dealt with is like, let's just go back to what we were talking about a second ago, you know, we worked with both our friends and allies and our enemies after World War II to help them recover. And so let's take Germany as an example. Their economy had fully recovered by 1960. Tariffs came down a little bit, but even today their tariffs on our autos are four times the size of our tariffs on their autos. And they are a fully engaged, large, industrialized economy, right? Absolutely. No point in playing nice with them, right? Yeah, well, we can play nice as long as it's fair both ways, but continuing to work under

the legacy of something that basically ended over 60 years ago, which was their recovery, that kind of thing doesn't make sense. And I think, especially with Besant in charge of running these negotiations, I think those are the kind of things that we're going to focus on cleaning up and that type of thing. Todd, I wanted to talk about Besson's a little bit because one of the most important things that gets very little reporting, and this may be the bigger, and maybe you can explain how this might actually work, but it seems clear that Scott Besson, when he had those tech bros up with Trump a number of weeks ago, early in the administration, the second administration, and they talked about not just the AI, but he also mentioned essentially the starting of a United States

sovereign wealth fund. Do you recall that? You know, when Besson was up there talking about it? And you know, when I hear that, I'm thinking like, wow, this is a much, much, much, much bigger deal than most people I think would consider it to be because really it's about putting debt assets that we have all over this country, even our national forests. As Trump talks about, hey, we're going to start opening up logging again. What would a sovereign wealth fund do for us? And do you know how that actually is structured?

I'm trying to envision this, and I'm not a big enough thinker on this. Maybe you can help. Yeah, so there's a couple of ways that this could go. When I first heard about this, to put it mildly, I was not wild or in favor of it. You know, the idea is it's, it's a, um, a place to hold the assets of a country, um, to benefit all the citizens of the country.

You tend to see them get used in countries, uh, like some of the Scandinavian countries where, um, you know, they have huge oil reserves that generate a great deal of wealth for a relatively small population. So they're held within the sovereign wealth fund and then the income and value off of that is used to kind of equalize things within the society. That works okay in those kinds of situations when you've got very small population, you don't need to grow very much.

It also has huge negatives because it doesn't encourage the country and the entrepreneurs within the country to adapt and utilize the resources and the wealth of the country to grow in new and different ways. And so you tend to see those kinds of countries, you know, they don't experience a lot of growth. Their populations don't grow very much and they can't admit people from other countries into the, to them, you know, because there just isn't the growth and wealth like we've produced over the years and that kind of thing. Oh, so does that mean ultimately this sovereign wealth fund may

not be such a great idea? Or it depends on how they use it. So to me, if the idea is to use it as a place to build wealth for the government of America to then sprinkle the benefits around in a political manner, that is not a good idea. Or to try and direct favored industries and pick which industries we're going to get behind. Those things just haven't worked well. And our history is a good example of how well it works when you don't do that. Now, there's a second possible approach, which I heard them talk about then, you know, after the idea first came out, which was, well, we've got assets, they're scattered all over

the place, and nobody really is thinking about them in a strategic way and what to do about them. And we need to put them into a sovereign wealth fund so that they can be managed effectively for the benefit of the country. That idea might have some merit. I'm still a little skeptical and concerned that what we end up with is a vehicle that starts to get stock in different companies and then starts to play a role in trying to dictate how those companies should be run or favoring those companies that the government owns stock

in to the detriment of other companies that the government doesn't own an interest in. So on balance, I'm still skeptical about the idea. I think we'll have to see how it comes out in the final form. Isn't the way you talked about these wealth funds, isn't that kind of the way Germany has operated from time to time? You know, in that way, the political favor going into certain German companies, or am I thinking of World War II era Germany?

No, you're right. I mean, I think Germany and Japan are two very big shining examples of these shining in terms of size. But one of the things to keep in mind is our economy is so much larger than theirs and has grown so much more than theirs has over time. And to me that just reflects, and we're so much more on the cutting edge of what's happening. You don't hear about those countries being in a position to lead the world in what's

happening with artificial intelligence development. They're not the ones with the apples that are creating iPhones when they were new and innovative and that kind of thing. Not that they still are. But they're just, those kinds of countries just don't tend to have the dynamic model that we have that helps you stay on the cutting edge of economic development. And that's really the thing that allows an economy to grow at high rates over time, which provides upward mobility

for people. And once you get the immigration and the employment situations in a good place, which I think we are basically in both areas, it creates the opportunity for lots of people overseas who are trapped in dysfunctional systems to immigrate to your country to participate in that. So I think it's a win-win-win all the way around when you approach it the way we have historically. Now hasn't the Liberation Day though caused challenges for us right now? And that's what

they're going to have to try to fix because from what I'm reading, capital is actually fleeing the United States right now and that what happened with our markets is essentially spooking people overseas right now and they're not looking at us as a stable place. Is that a fair assessment about how it's looking outside of the United States? I think there's some of that going on, but we also have to be careful because there's never any shortage of people who will use market gyrations as a way to drum up fear and as an attack mechanism. So let's talk for a second about what I think might actually be happening the truth is nobody knows exactly what's happening these markets are so

big. And you know consists of so many millions and millions of trades and transactions taking place that that nobody knows exactly what's driving them but- I think we can read a couple things into what's happening. One is like we

talked about initially. We have this. You know kind of unique move of stock prices falling and bond prices falling at the same time, Treasury bonds with yields. That means yields are going up. And that's not supposed to happen, right? That's not supposed to happen that way. That is very rare.

And I think that probably does reflect some element of what you were just alluding to. And so if we step back and think about this for a second, if we're changing the trading dynamics in a manner that means we're gonna be importing less than we have been historically, which is almost certain to happen as a result of all this, how much less, who knows. But we import less, That means we're buying less from overseas and shipping fewer dollars

overseas. And as you mentioned a little while ago, when we ship those dollars overseas, especially as a reserve currency country, people tend to invest them in primarily treasury securities but also stocks. And so I think there's probably some dynamic in the markets going on. Where they're trying to figure out. How big is this impact going to be which means. If we're sending fewer dollars

overseas and there are fewer international people buying- these treasuries, then where does that purchase activity have to happen? So to the extent we're still running deficits, we need to be, you know, we need people out there buying these Treasury securities. So if it's not happening internationally,

it has to happen domestically. So if it happens domestically, it can come from one of two channels, either the private sector, which means that if people are saving more, they have to be consuming less. So that means you're going to have to have interest rates go up some to encourage people to stop buying things and buy a treasury bond instead. Yeah, exactly. So that could slow the economy down a little bit, which may be some of the pressure we're seeing on the stock market. But the other fear that's out there, which

I think was really triggered up when Trump attacked Powell, which is, well, if we do what we've done way too much of for the past 30 years, we'll have the Federal Reserve monetizing and buying these treasuries, which that's inflationary. And so I think that is probably where we're and paper over this economic adjustment with the Fed buying too much of these treasuries as a replacement for the international buyers, then that could lead to another round of inflation, and that's going to push interest rates up. And so that, I think, is probably what we're seeing in this move where stocks are coming down a little bit in potential anticipation of some economic slowdown, if

not a recession. And interest rates are moving up at the same time, which is rare, but because there's some element of concern out there that this shifting of the purchasing of these treasuries will move into the Federal Reserve, which will be inflationary. Yeah, boy, that's stagflation, essentially what you're describing, right? Stagflation. And some people have thrown that term around. So I think it's too early to be too worried about all of that. but I think that may be some of what is driving these moves we've seen in the marketplace here over the last couple weeks. You think in retrospect, maybe what happened here is that Powell wasn't in on the whole deal

about the tariffs in the first place, and maybe he should have been been so that way, hey, let's all sign off on this and then perhaps the Fed would have been a little more accommodating on interest rates early on in this rather than nope, nope, nope, and then oh, you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you know, kind of stuff, you know, the battle of words. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think there's definitely some of that. And I also think the Fed and Powell made a big mistake in dropping interest rates three different times, I think it was last year, especially towards the end when inflation was still, I think at that time when they made that last rate cut in 2024, inflation was still at like, you know, the CPI inflation was still at like 2.8%. It's come down a little since then,

but it was well above their target of 2%. And I just think that they moved too quickly and they should have held rates a little bit higher. And I think that after doing that, they've gotten themselves into a little bit of a corner here where they don't really have as much room to continue moving rates down in this environment in a preemptive way as maybe, as obviously Trump would like them to do. And they need to sit and watch a little while to see exactly what happens. And I also think there's another element, which is, I mean, I'm going to put a substack piece out on this pretty soon here. The Fed got in the habit in the Greenspan years of engaging in what I'm going to call

preemptive moves, which was instead of like waiting to see, where the economy is actually heading into a recession or unemployment is actually moving up. We're going to anticipate it? They would anticipate it and then make a move? Yeah, and that was the beginning of what, what I call bailout culture. And so we have a debt crisis in Asia, and the Fed drops interest rates

right away. And so they start doing these things. And this has led to a number of huge problems, including the collapse of the blow off of the tech stock bubble and collapse in 2000, and then with the housing bubble. And so I think it's, you know, it's time we have to get away from that. We have to wean our way off of that because it's cost us too much. And so I think the idea of sitting tight a little bit and let's just see what happens because again, you know, the markets are reacting, you know, very quickly and very early. But you know, these negotiations haven't even finished taking place. We've already seen some significant changes in like the 90-day period and now

we're starting to hear some things about phasing in these new rules over maybe four or five years, which would change the dynamics significantly in terms of how these terrorists impact things. So I think sitting tight a little bit here- is the right thing to do especially given that we're at full employment. And inflation although it appears to be coming down. It's still above what the target is.

And so and as we talked about before. You know the last thing we can do right now is scare the markets into thinking that the Fed is going to be the one monetizing these deficits instead of international investors and that we're headed for a sustained run of inflation because that's when things can really get out of control. That's a really good point. And even if you don't have any stocks in the market right now, Todd, the reason I wanted to bring you on to talk about it

is that it does matter for regular folks who don't have investments in the markets here when it comes to economic activity, where prices will be headed, and and the overall feeling of and willingness of people to invest in and and build factories, make jobs and get businesses going. Isn't that really the reason why, even if you don't have stocks, you're thinking, well, I don't care about this. This is why it matters.

Yeah, definitely. And it scares people. And I've got good friends who, lawyers, one's a former judge, others who've retired recently, and even though they're not buying stocks, but they've got investments in their savings accounts or whatever, and index funds. And it affects the psychology, and there are other people who are trying to start businesses or they're running small to medium sized businesses. And they built these businesses up on importing a certain percentage of what they sell from

different countries. And they need to have some opportunity to adjust to these changes in a way that isn't too devastating for them. So yes, this definitely pushes down and this gets way beyond the markets and it gets into the real heart of America. It's important that we have all of those things under consideration as we figure out exactly what to do. Does it concern you here, Todd, before we wrap up this morning, does it concern you

that gold has been on such a tear? When I say concern, not because, hey, I've been investing in gold just for disclosure, just because I had a feeling that things were getting a little hinky out there in the greater financial world there. But isn't it a concern when you're seeing it on the tear? Because isn't that essentially saying that we're not trusting what's going on? Isn't that really what's going on? It's definitely something to watch and an indicator you know that there are

market participants who are concerned that we are headed into a you know a little bit like you said a hinky environment or potentially an inflationary type of environment and so it's definitely to have something that that's worth keeping an eye on. So we've got some very, very big issues to deal with here, trying to balance this resetting of the trade agenda, which for all the problems, as I've said before, and I put it in one of the pieces, the biggest part of it is China. And I don't think we can continue to go on ignoring what's happening in China, just from a geopolitical and a risk

perspective, that has to be addressed. Yeah. What I did think was... It just can't be tabled. Yeah. What I did think was a problem though, it's like, yeah, China is the deal. I didn't quite understand why we would go over there and just kick Vietnam in the butt. You know what I mean?

It kind of struck me as a weird thing. Everybody knows where the real problem is, right? Am I wrong about that? Is this serious? You're right about it. The surprising... There's a couple of other things to keep in mind though. One is that because of the first terrorist that Trump put on China, a lot of what's happening in China

has shifted to Vietnam and Mexico. Oh, so it gets relabeled. Oh. Yes. Okay. All right. Actually, Vietnam has become one of the three or four largest trading deficits that we have in goods right now because of this.

And so that's one factor. And then the other factor is, you know, Vietnam is still a communist country. And I think we've got to keep an eye on and make sure, you know, that we don't enable another, you know, hostile regime to go the directed, or potentially hostile regime to go the direction, or potentially hostile regime, to go the direction that China went. We basically fund the survival and revival of the Communist Party that then over time becomes another hostile and antagonistic force in that part of the world.

Now, they're not anywhere near as a threat to China as I'm not trying to imply that, but we've got to keep those things in mind as we're dealing with them. Todd, I really appreciate that. I appreciate your newsletter. It's on wealth in progress, currently available free of charge on Substack. And get a copy of 2008. Of course, back when we had the really big financial issues going on. It's 2008 what really happened all that information. You know we'll have to talk about that book next time. I kept you longer than I expected you so you won't really have time to talk about your book but we'll maybe we have a return and we'll dig into that and why it's important to understand that history too as we move forward. Okay? Be

well. That sounds great Bill. All right thank you so much Todd. Good hearing from you. Yep thank you.