Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-30-25_TUESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

09-30-25_TUESDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here. It is Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. Join the conversation at 7705-633. We're going to be a little guest-heavy, a little guest-heavyer than I thought we were going to be originally,

but we'll still squeeze in some pebbles if you wish to at 7705-633. All right. Some of what we have coming up, let me just, give you kind of a rundown what's going on. Sam Borgie is going to join me. He's a financier guy from Investors Observer. And we're going to talk with him a little bit about AI. He is getting this spidey sense feeling that everyone is piling lots of money into artificial intelligence into the AI situation. And he says it's feeling very much like we're partying like it's 1999 again and it feels very much like a dot-com bubble ready to burst again and let me just take a look

at his his commentary. It's one of the reasons I read it. I thought it was pretty interesting that he says that essentially most of the value that has gone into the stock market that's been going up over this last year or so. It's all been AI and it's mostly been a constant. concentrated in three or four companies, three or four companies. And people are thinking, well, that's okay. I'm diversified. I've got a stock index fund and, you know, all these other things. He says, no, no, you're just indexing the same kind of stuff.

But anyway, he's just thinking that maybe a little more caution is due. I'm nuts. You know, normally under normal circumstances, of course, I don't want to be one of those guys that, because I'm those stock expert, okay? I mean, I play around on my baby 401K, you know, like I have mentioned me, I think the difference with this one might be, and this might be the only thing that will allow the insanity to continue longer, and that is that the federal government is all in on it and has its thumb on the scale.

You know, we must be number one in artificial intelligence, you know, all that kind of stuff. That ends up moving a lot and has moved a lot of institutional money into it. I don't know, but anyway, I'm going to bring Sam on. We're going to talk about it. He's feeling a little more cautious. Of course, I don't have a lot of art. Well, maybe I don't care because I don't have a lot of artificial intelligence stocks in my little baby 401K.

I've been looking more at commodities and other things, looking at those of being more undervalued. But they're getting less undervalued all the time if you keep checking the price of gold. It was like like 3850. I don't know what it is this morning, but 3850, silver like 47 or something. I remember, gosh, it was several years ago that I had to liquid it, and I ended up selling silver right at about 48. I want to say 47, 50, 48, and that was kind of a peak at that time. Now, inflation-adjusted, that would probably be in the neighborhood of 60 now. So I would imagine silver probably still has more room to run, too, because of the industrial needs in the chip making and solar cells, which are still a big deal, all that kind of stuff.

So we'll see, but I'll talk with Sam about that coming up. Herman Berchiger, we're going to be kicking into the Portland News here and taking a look at Oregon politics. That'll be 710 this morning. 7.30. Harmeet Dillon joins the show, and she is Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division for the Trump administration. And we're going to be digging into the election integrity

because this is the one lawsuit that the federal government has filed against the state of Oregon that I am praying has great legs and wanted her to explain what the ask is, all the various other things. If there's time, maybe we'll ask a question or two about, you know, the Antifa folks being declared a terrorist organization, what's happening in Portland if there's some time. We'll just see it's one of those things where, hey, you know, you got a big Fed official, you're going to work around their schedule,

but she's going to call the show around 730. And I'm looking for quite a privilege as far as I'm concerned, earned for that. State Senator Noel Robinson is going to check in and talking about everything that happened yesterday. It was sort of a little, you know, going out with them. Here we go. Oregon Senate ended up passing a $4.3 billion dollar transportation package because,

you know, you might think it's your money, but it's really ODOT's money now. So $4.3 billion over the next 10 years. Capital Chronicle reporting, funding road maintenance and operation, funding the Oregon Department of Transportation, DEI hires, because you know what they were doing was firing, they were firing, they were going to, you know, we're going to fire all your snowplow drivers down at Diamond Lake and all those other things, southern Oregon, you, you, rubes, you know, we'll just go, oh, no, they're going to fire our, or, they're going to fire our snowplow drivers. what are we going to do?

Meanwhile, while they keep the traffic planners who aren't building freeways and instead are building swidewalks out in front of Highway 62, you know, in front of the Rogue Valley Mall, they were the swidewalk, the multimodal. You know, they keep all those kind of planners and fire the people that actually do the, you know, do the work. But, you know, people blinked in the Senate said, okay, they went around, you know, this was mostly a party line.

It was a party line, actually, 18 to 11 vote. and so the Republicans were there doing their job for Measure 113. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. I can't help myself. But as Capitol Chronicle says, the bill settles a growing gap in Oregon's transportation budget and prevents Transportation Department layoffs. But advocates warn it's just a temporary fix overlooks key issues such as climate sustainability. Oh my gosh, the moment you start talking about this, I mean, really.

Okay. In other words, climate sustainability, meaning that ODOT hasn't done enough to destroy your ability to drive. I think that's what that is translated by. Traffic congestion and road safety near schools. Road safety, okay. Wait a minute, road safety near schools? Why is that ODOT's job? You know, don't we have like these schools for the most part that are located in cities?

We have city councils. We also have police departments. or do we not have police departments any longer? Oh, no, if you can't put up a... Oh, maybe what they mean by roadside safety means more license plate readers and more speed cameras. Maybe that's what they mean when they talk about

well, we're worried about road safety by schools. Automated license plate readers. Okay, get flock. Get the flock system on. Sorry, when it comes to ODOT and the Oregon Department of Transportation issues and funding and the state and when they talk about school safety are you trying to tell me that we can't plow the roads up by crater lake and do school safety on the roads

by the schools at the same time what we can't rubber tummy and and pat our head at the same time can't do that state of Oregon oh but your DEI crew is still is still being paid okay all right yeah I get it yeah we'll talk with Noah about this because the plan now is to refer this to the voters because this is something they can be referred to the voters. Noah Roberts has said that they're starting the signature gathering and they want this in the November 2026 election. Now November 2026 means that you'll still be getting screwed for the taxes. Gas tax increase from 40 cents to 46 a gallon. That's effective January 1st. Let's see. Registration fees go from 43 to 85.

for passenger vehicles, 63 to 105 for sport Utes, light trailers, electric vehicles, medium-speed electric vehicles, $44 to $86 to register a moped or a motorcycle. Passenger cars go from $77 to $216. That's not just a minor little increase, is it? I'm surprised that ODOT didn't try to go to that California style, which essentially bases the registration on the value of the car, that sort of thing. I'm surprised they didn't go there.

Maybe that is going to be next once this is never enough money. It's also doubling the payroll tax to support public transit for all the people who don't write it. It goes from 0.1 to 0.2 percent until January 2020. That's the one bone that was thrown to the Republicans. The increase, I guess, goes away after 2028, but then a new legislature will most likely renew it and probably make it a half percent. Also, an increase to registration surcharges for electric and highly fuel-efficient vehicles from 35 to 65 bucks. Ooh, so the electric cars will pay $65 a year. Oh, and if you have a car that has a 40-mile-per-gallon plus rating, which means like your Honda Prius, your registration goes from $115 to $145 extra because of that.

And, oh, and this is the beginning. This is the beginning of the end of any kind of motoring privacy here. Facing into mandatory road use charge. This is like the orego, the ones that we've been warning you about here for a number of years. This is going to be for electric vehicles first. So this way electric vehicles will be paying their share, you know, that kind of thing. And actually, they have been mooching off of the system here for a while. The gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles, even, you know, have been paying the taxes.

And most of the electric vehicles have not been, from what I understand. So let's see, electric vehicle drivers have been able to opt into or we go and pay two cents a mile in exchange for lower registration fees, but anyway, it would make sure that everybody's in OREGO if you have an electric vehicle. If you don't sign up for the tracking chip, you'll have to pay $340 each year to register your vehicle. I don't know, electric vehicle owners, that might be worth it to have some modicum of the state not paying attention to where you're going. It could be. Maybe we talk about that. Senator David

Brock Smith said many of his constituents can't afford the tax and fee hikes. That doesn't matter. Senator, you were there. Senator, for Senator Robinson was there too. We'll talk with him about it, but yeah, they'll get it fixed to the mix supposedly. This was

very unpopular, but even if they do get it on the ballot for November of next year, you think it would matter because most people would probably get used to it by that time. I don't know. It's one thing if you could get it on the ballot within 90 days,

like a special election or something like that, then people would just hand the Democrats' heads to them on, you know, legislatively, you know, on the deal. But, you know, once you've already been painted, I don't know, maybe. Maybe we'll see. We'll talk with Ndomo about that here in just a little bit. All right.

Well, it's Oregon. What can I tell you? It's 23 minutes after six. Hey, I got a letter from Hunter Communications yesterday. Boy, do I feel lucky. It's a pebble in my shoe. I'm so lucky, my letter from Hunter Communications yesterday as they're coming into the neighborhood. I'll tell you about that coming up. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your work truck and van headquarters. Hi, I'm Amber. Rose with Siscue Pump Service, and I'm on KMED. 25 minutes after six.

I am getting a personalized mail from Hunter Communications. Hunter Communications, one of the Internet providers around here. And there have been all sorts of little cones being placed out in our neighborhood. And then I noticed that there were lots of paint lines being drawn in my front yard. There were paint lines being drawn in a, well, it's supposed to be a flower bed, but you know me, I don't grow any flowers. I kill everything, or just weeds. But in the weed bed, you know, out front by one of the Japanese maples, they had the little white square, which I'm told is a designation for where they're going to put some kind of utility box. And yes, it's a utility coming in here.

And so not a lot of park on my street, a lot of streets, you know, Leonard viewpoint in the neighborhood. But, you know, we live off of Delta Waters Speedway, not too far from foothill. Of course, Delta Waters has been pretty bumpy as of late. It's been difficult to do the Speedway thing, but they're probably getting that all fixed up right about now. But anyway, I love these kind of PR-crafted letters that end up coming, and it's very personalized. It says, Dear neighbor, that warms the cockle of my heart. Hunter Communications thinks I'm a neighbor. But anyway, we're excited to share some great news.

Your neighborhood is one of the first to experience our new construction method. Micro-trenching. And I know the first thought that was going through my head was, oh, my goodness, Hunter Communications is going. I'm one of the first neighborhoods, my little neighborhood in East Medford, micro-trenching. Crenching, yes, microtrenching. But anyway, yeah, in all words, they're running the fiber or whatever it is down on our streets and putting little connection boxes apparently. But still, this is the cell.

This is the cell that they're going. I'm sure that in some corporate, in some corporate offices sitting around, okay, we're going to be ripping up their streets a little bit and putting boxes in their flowers. beds and doing all these other things. You know, in fact, why don't you put the box next to the spectrum cable thing, you know, maybe just to irritate them even more. So we have two of them. I mean, that's really what's going on.

This is what's really going on. They're adding another utility. Sure, we all want the Internet. That's great. This is all fine. But I love how they sell this, though. This is the big lead. Micro-trenching.

And you're one of the first to experience it. Well, let me tell you, 100 Communications, I am honored. I am honored to have micro-trenching coming to my neighborhood. I'm looking out the front door and looking at viewpoint drive and thinking all the things going on all those traffic cones. And I'm going, yeah, those traffic cones are irritating the neighborhood right now, but it's all right because they're going to be replaced. It's all being done for the good of microtrenching technology.

Anyway, microtrenching is a faster, low-impact way to install fiber by cutting a narrow trench in the street. And with this upgrade, so cutting the street is an upgrade, okay, with this cutting the street upgrade, you'll soon enjoy affordable pricing with the option to lock in your monthly rate for life, blazing fast speeds and rock solid reliability, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, want to be the first to be connected and then, you know, get in touch with him. But I just love PR people. Now, I'm married to a PR person, the person who did this kind of stuff all the time.

So we just laugh our butts off when we get this kind of stuff. I'm showing this to Linda, and I said, hey, Linda, what do you think about this? We're being blessed. It's like the micro-trenching God coming to bless our neighborhood from Hunter Communications. And she laughs. She goes, oh, yeah, those are PR flax that are hired to sit there and massage the sheep. That's what this is. Massage the sheep.

You might be irritated that they got the trucks in there, putting the cable everywhere, and the little fiber connection boxes, everything. But remember, comfort yourself Southern Oregon with real. realizing that you're one of the first to experience the great god of microtrenching. Now, truth be told, microtrenching does be maybe the way they would do it before when they would dig up a whole bunch of your pavement. So I guess that is a good thing. But yeah, that's what they're selling. They're selling microtrenching.

So congratulate 100 communications when you go by their trucks and say, hey, that's a nice microtrenching truck you got there, bucko. So anyway, 629 at KMED. We're going to talk, you know, back on this, is the AI stock situation? Is that a bubble? Is it looking kind of like 1999.com sort of thing? Like everything that had a dot com on it, like Pets.com, was valued at $14 billion or whatever was, you know, that kind of thing. We'll talk with Sam Borge. Borge is about that coming up.

Summer's not over yet, and there's still time to build. 5.0. Micro. This is News Talk 1063, KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. I've never really had the pleasure of speaking with Sam Borsi until today, but I'm glad he's here. He's a finance analyst, rather, and researcher at Investors Observer. You can find out more about this at Investorsobserver.com, and he brings over 13 years expertise in the markets, economics, monetary policy. I guess you've been you've been kind of everywhere

from what it looks like here Sam welcome to the show great to have you on good morning oh good morning to you and thanks for having me okay so you wrote a piece the other day that seems to indicate that what are you feeling like

a spidey sense of caution about where the stock market has been going it seems like it doesn't matter what the economic news has been it's just powering higher and higher and higher and what is it mostly because it's on the back of artificial intelligence to the stocks around that? Give us your basic take, what you're thinking?

Yeah, that's pretty correct. So we're seeing a bit of a disconnect between the economy and the stock market. Usually markets tend to follow the economy, but you're seeing all these major revisions to job growth. You're seeing other signs of stress in the economy. It stocks continue to hit record highs. But then when you dig into the numbers a little bit, you find that there's a growing concentration risk in the stock.

market, the magnificent seven stocks, for example, your NVIDias, your Microsoft, Apple's, Tesla's, they're accounting for an ever greater share of the S&P 500. And now it's at basically record highs. And a lot of that growth is being driven by AI expenditures, but also AI hype. You know, AI is like the new.com back from the 1999 bubble. Oh, yeah, we all remember that. All you had to do is what was Pets.com valued, like a billion dollars. It was some insane valuation at one point, wasn't it? Something like that. It was insane. It was insane. And a lot of the companies there never lived to tell about it because they went kaput after 2001. So we're starting to see, you know, similar trends. I wouldn't want to

say it's completely apples to apples because a lot of these, a lot of the AI expenditures are being driven by the really big companies like the Amazon's and the alphabets and things. But we're starting to see a bit of concentration risk. And we're starting to see that maybe the AI narrative, this overtaking the actual fundamentals in terms of what it's producing. But we're seeing the mixed signals there as well. Yeah, I'm curious, though, are there, I mean, a lot of people, we're starting to use AI more, and even I've started, you know, dipping into it. Not a whole lot, but, you know, I'm playing around with it, those sort of things.

But what I'm kind of trying to figure out is that for all the billions upon billions, in some cases, trillions of dollars in AI investment right now, Where is the plan to actually make money from it? Is that kind of where you're coming from? I mean, to actually make money where people pay to be part of it, I guess is the question I'm running by you here, Sam. Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So we have AI to actual make money, but also to help productivity gains within organization. So that's kind of what we're seeing where we're seeing it go.

Right now, Chad GPT is charging, for example, monthly subscription fees, and that's generating quite a bit of money. But the problem right now is that we've seen such massive investments in AI infrastructure and data centers and all these sorts of things. But the actual revenue does not justify that yet. So there's a recent study that was done. I believe it was by an AI engineer who referenced it. But given the state of spending, data centers actually would need to generate about $480 billion in revenue to actually justify the current expenditures. Unfortunately, AI infrastructure right now is generating a fraction of that in terms of productivity, growth, and revenue. So we still have a long way to go to grow into that AI-driven economy.

We are starting to see it maybe on the labor market side, starting to see employers use it for some entry-level data entry roles. But overall, right now we are starting to see – we're seeing a bit of a gap in terms of the investment versus what it's actually outputing. And that's kind of where we're at when it comes to that. You know, that old saying, Sam, that the market can remain, I forget who came up with it, but the market can remain crazy longer than you can remain. Solvent. Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Are you concerned that it could be one of those kind of situations where, you know,

this mania will power up higher and higher much longer? And then we'll be looking back and say, gosh, who would have ever thought? Who could have seen this coming? I don't know. How do you see it? Yeah, I mean, I've been, you know, my spidey sense is on the valuation has been, you know, tingling for quite some time now, but we just saw the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. And from the research that we have, when the Fed cuts interest rates in a bull market,

it almost always means that the stock market will be higher one year from now. Okay. So they cut in September. It seems like we do have quite a bit of runway left. The problem right now was obviously valuations, but. You know, I've been calling every top that I thought has happened since 2019, and it just keeps powering higher and higher and higher. So based on what we know, when the Fed cuts rates into a, you know, a bull market where we're not in a recession yet,

it seems like stocks still end up higher. So, you know, we get sidelined. We're going to miss the gains, it seems like, because it seems like there probably is more to go in terms of the rally. You know, we are kind of getting to a point where we could see. see some pullback, but pullbacks have been worthy of being bought all the way up. And we saw what happened with the Liberation Day tariffs back in April. And we literally saw a V-shaped rebound since then. So I wouldn't discount the possibility of continuing higher now that the Fed is angling towards rate cuts. Sam Borgie is with me. And once again, he is with Investors Observer, Investors Observer.com.

And you wrote this piece called When AI Runs Too Hot, One Investors Should Know about the Tech boom now I always want to be careful when I use that term well this time it's different right you know that's something people will say a lot the financial way hey Sam don't worry this time it's different but I'm wondering if the this time it's different which may play out differently than what the fundamentals of the AI investment would say is that government has its thumb on the scale hard would that be a fair assessment in what we're looking at right now I mean, really, really hard pushing their thumb down. Yeah, yeah, that is a fair assessment.

We saw all of the massive announcements for infrastructure spending or capital expenditure plans for data centers here in the U.S. earlier this year because the Trump administration is vowing to make the U.S., the AI center of the world. So it's definitely what we are seeing. There is a lot more than just hype. And I guess where it's different from, let's say, 1999, for example, is that a lot of the AI narratives today are being driven by established companies like the Mag 7, you know, NVIDIA, for example, which is now worth more than the German stock market.

That's how valuable it is. This is what's driving the AI infrastructure boom, whereas Pets.com, you know, that might not have been as representative of the dot-com era back in the late 90s. So, you know, I guess we're always caution to say this time is different, but I guess the makeup of the companies driving the boom are different than other speculative phases. There are some AI speculative plays, but they're a tiny fraction of the overall market cap of AI stocks today. So that's really what the difference is, I would say. Now, one thing that I've kind of wondered, and I don't know if I'm looking at this with me,

because once again, I don't have a financier's brain, all right? But I'm trying to think this through for myself. If artificial intelligence is everywhere and tons of information. infrastructure has been put into it to make it all happen. I guess what's always running through my head is that where is the scarcity? Where is the ability for it to be scarce so that you actually are able to charge a good amount of money in order to use it? Do you see where I'm coming from? And maybe I, maybe my P brain is not looking at this the right way.

But I'm just, you know, generally speaking, it's like, you know, we want this because it's really good and it's hard to get, right? But when it's everywhere, it's kind of like just turning on the tap and it's water. Who's going to pay a lot for it, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Maybe that's where I'm going. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question. So all of this is a build-out is being built when anticipation that this thing is going to be absolutely massive. That's kind of, I think, where it's going.

So the reason why they're building all these data centers is they say, well, AI demand is going to be so massive. It's going to be so ubiquitous. It's going to be driving, you know, so. many facets of the economy, so much productivity, so much demand for cloud infrastructure, that's why we're building it out and demand will eventually fill it. And that's kind of where the bet is. You know, will that happen? Will that not happen? Most seem to think it will happen. But there are some doubters who say, you know what? We're building over capacity right now. And if you take a look at the annual depreciation rate of this infrastructure, you're going

to have to generate a lot of revenue to make up for it. And that's kind of, I think, where the fork is in the road and where we just have to wait and see because all signs point to, you know, greater AI adoption, but right now we're not seeing it on the bottom line of balance sheets because the economic opportunity today, it's not generating the revenue, but they're building it for the future. Yeah. That's where the question is, will it grow into that? But you're building out these data centers and, you know, and what's the life cycle on a typical

AI data farm or data server farm, you know, did they replace them on every two or three year deal? Is it a 10 years sort of thing? It would seem to me that if there is so much advancement in this, there would have to be a lot of churn, and a lot of this stuff ends up going into the landfill. Into e-ways? I don't know. Yeah, there is a lot of churn, and it's actually, the infrastructure is depreciating, it's estimated at about $40 billion annually, which is actually double the current revenue of these data centers. So we're depreciating faster than these companies are generating revenue from it. That's not sustainable. We know that. So either their narrative is correct that

AI demand will grow and will blossom and will drive everything, or we're going to have like those empty stadiums that you see after the Olympics, right, where they overpilled for the Olympics and then that stadium is never used again. That's, I think, where the risk is. Yeah, yeah. I'm kind of wondering, I don't know if it'll necessarily never be used again, but I've just, I'm just kind of curious. I'm glad to know that someone else is paying attention. Like, you know, when everybody is saying, go here, go here, go here. I mean, it's not such a bad idea to be a contrarian. Now, if you've been a contrarian so far on this, though,

you've been getting hammered in the market, haven't you? I mean, if you've been a contrarian on the AI boom? Yeah, on the AI boom, on the tariffs, I mean, what happened in April, where everything was basically one of the worst sell-offs in modern history, and now we're above those levels. We've done a perfect V-shaped recovery, an absolute ridiculous turn of a events that we've saw. But if you were sidelined, thinking that, you know what, I'm not going to, this is too value, it's too overvalued. I'm going to sit this one out. You were sitting on

the sidelines to your detriment because the market has been putting up spectacular gains this year. Now, you're not giving individual advice, but let's say spitballing a little bit. What would your strategy be in something like this when you're thinking, boy, potentially overbuilt, potentially not really going to be profitable, but boy, everyone's going to trillions at it. How would you react to this or how would you plan around then? Any thoughts? Well, yeah, people should have a diversified portfolio. I know that's a very boring thing to say, but diversification ensures that you're not overexposed to one sector. And I think investing in some of these established companies like your alphabets, which owns Google, for example, as like

NVIDIA, like these magnificent seven stocks, if you have like index funds that track them, ETFs that track them, you can get exposure to the AI boom because these companies aren't just aren't just working in AI. They have established business lines that span multiple different product lines. So that's very different than just picking, you know, an AI darling that's still up and growing and that doesn't really have much revenue or earnings to speak of. So I would say if somebody is interested in investing in this narrative, it's, you know, you have a lot of opportunities in these mag seven stocks to actually get exposure to these big tech players. But is there any money available in the boring stuff? Maybe that's

the better question, something which is not necessarily planning on being hosted on a server farm someplace, Sam. Yeah, I mean, maybe some of the chip makers, although those have been pretty exciting. I wouldn't say that. That's been boring. Right now, you know, AI investments are mainly right now around, you know, the chip makers and the infrastructure developers as well as the companies that are using it to solve whatever problem they want to solve. So it always entails a little bit of risk, I wouldn't really say there's a, you know, boring investment in this, unless you're getting an index fund or a ETF that kind of tracks the theme around it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Sam, I'm kind of curious. I don't know if you keep track of the,

of the commodities or the precious metals. Those have just been mind-bendingly hot, especially junior miners and such for a while. What do you think's been driving a lot of that. Any thoughts on it overall? Well, it's been a strange market where you have stocks rising at record highs and you also have gold that's rising at record highs. I think a lot of the issue is right now maybe some loss of confidence in the dollar, all the fiscal issues that we were seeing in Washington. I think a lot of investors now are trying to pivot toward gold in that respect. We're seeing central banks buying it up as well, which I think also explains why it's been on this relentless tear. But I think, you know, every generation or so we see the narrative that gold is

sound money, it's hard money, and investors want to protect themselves with it. And that's what we're seeing because the rising gold has been, like you mentioned, absolutely relentless. And that's actually now impacting the junior miners and the mining, the mining stocks as well. Yeah, I was telling folks, how I have his little baby 401K, and mostly it's like the junior miners have been like, oh my gosh, I can't believe these things. They've been dogs for years, right? And then all of a sudden... Docs for years, and then, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how it's that. Right now, I think that the rising goals is a bit alarming from the broader sense of where we are in the economy and the financial system.

I think we're starting to see a bit of a loss of confidence in the dollar's reserve status and treasury bonds, things of that nature. I don't want to overstate it because, you know, the dollar is still the most ubiquitous currency in the world. But I think that it's the, well, it's the cleanest, well, Sam, it's the cleanest, dirty shirt, right? The cleanest of the dirty shirts up there. The best of the worst, right? And it's ours. Gosh, darn it. And we're going to like that. But, you know, in all seriousness, though, I think the thing is, is that that loss of confidence, I think, is almost, wouldn't you say it's almost the Western welfare state? I'm not talking about the United States. I'm talking about the Western welfare states because, I mean, essentially Europe, the UK, I mean, they're all dead man walking, really financially, aren't they, overall? Oh, yeah. I mean, the state of the economy over there is in dire states. They have an energy issue. They have an economy issue, a labor market issue. I mean, it's a defense spending issue as well where they still rely on the United States for NATO spending. Yeah, I think the economies of Europe are in much worse shape, and that's actually spreading now towards places like Germany and things in that nature. So, yeah, it's not looking good over there. And, you know, know, that's kind of, we're going to wait to see what happens. But, I mean, as bad as we

have it here, I think, when you take a look at some of these southern European countries where unemployment is routinely in the 20%, I mean, that's really all you need to know, right? Uh-huh. Well, the Western welfare estates are, uh, even in the United States, even what we've been having to do with, uh, with various, uh, subsidies and such. Everybody's running out of other people's money, aren't we? That's really, that's what usually happens. That's what usually happens. You know, you ultimately run out of other people's money and then you're kind of left wondering what to do. What are you going to do? Raise more taxes. You know, are you going to print more money? How are you going to make that up, right?

I know over in France, they're already talking about there was some memo that came out there. Prepare for war next year. Ooh, start a nice splendid war. That'll get everybody lined up behind you. Nothing will get the economy back up on his feet in a nice war, right? Yeah, yeah. As far as that pesky death thing, well, you know, look away from that, okay? But anyway, can people find out more with you? Can is your op-ed here that I've been talking with you about this morning? Is that behind a paywall, or can I just link to that?

How can people find out more about you over an Investors Observer? No, no paywall at all. You can visit us at Investors Observer.com. You can read our daily articles or daily observations of the market. We also have a research section where we're developing all these various research reports on affordability, on housing. on 4-1Ks, et cetera. You can visit us, Investorsobserver.com,

and access all of that for free. You know, a final question I would have for you here, Sam, is a lot of the push on AI, since we've been talking about AI, has been to eliminate a lot of those jobs that new hires used to do. And if you were a young man or young woman right now, would you be looking to get that first job in the regular, world right now, or would you be going for the trades at this point, knowing what you know about what they're wanting to do with AI? How do you see that? Yeah, well, that's a fantastic

question. I think young people today, they have to stop, you know, glamorizing the university degree. They have to look at what's usable, what's actually functional, what does the economy need, where is the demand, and then evaluate your skills accordingly. We're seeing right now a lot of these entry-level jobs that are in the office space, for example. Those jobs are now probably most at risk of being automated away through AI. So I think, you know, young people have to have a really serious conversation about what their skills are, what they want to do, and that might not require a university degree that's going to ultimately make you redundant. So the trades, the skill trades are a very good start. We have a shortage in those professions. You know, I think

that we need to kind of step away from a lot of the college propaganda that we've all been faced with our whole lives. Depending on what you want to do in life, college might work, but it might not be your path if you have a different, you know, approach of where you want to go. So I think be very wary. You know, we don't know exactly when these jobs are going to be automated away, but there are signs now that a lot of the data entry, a lot of the entry-level office work that you see are at greater risk of being automated. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of lawyers over time being replaced by AI, wouldn't you think? I mean, not that the AI is going to practice law, but a lot of the, you know, cracking of papers and

filing, things like that, you know, you could see that being automated, couldn't you? Yeah, a lot of this deep synthesis work where you have to kind of go through cases and go through case law and then, you know, develop, you know, memos and things of that nature that are based on, yeah, legislation, law, all these sorts of things. Anything that requires like a synthesis is also potentially going to be disrupted. That's where, I guess, the debate is, you know, where is that line? When does it come? We're still kind of trying to answer that. Sam Borgie once again, finance analyst and researcher at Investorsobserver.com. Investorsobserver.com. Great talk. Thanks for having you on this morning. Sam. I'm hoping to learn more about you over time.

Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. This is the Bill Meyers show and you're on KMED and KBXG. Your smile is the key to your health and com. Sponsored by Grange Co-op. This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Got something on your mind? Give Bill a shout at 541-770-5633-7-70 KMED. It's 3 before 7. This is KMED, and KMED-HT-1.

Eagle Point Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. So you can Grants Pass Josephine County. Yesterday, the Junction Inn in Cave Junction caught on fire. It was yesterday morning about 1230. Illinois Valley Fire ended up popping a release on this one. ended up being a two-alarm fire, what I went, what I figure, and it looks like it's pretty suspicious. Of course, the poor Cave Junction, you know, that junction in,

it's just driving past that just a couple of weeks ago on the way out to the coast, and I'm looking at this. It's just like, oh, man, you wish something would be done with this? And I know a Daily Courier story that was in here. Let me see. Let's see, the originally we're asking for 1.3 million, the owner's former asking price of 1.3 million. Now it has an appraisal of 260,000.

It's probably what maybe the value of the land and the land only at this point because the demolition costs, according to Chris Bristol's story here, demolition costs including asbestos removal. Oh, asbestos. Asbestos is in there, Chris? Oh, boy. But anyway, they're thinking it would cost $600,000 just to tear the son of a gun down. And I don't know, maybe the suspicious fire yesterday was one of those unofficial urban renewal kind of things.

But it's kind of sad. It really is sad. I'm hoping that they find some way of getting it together because I must tell you, Cave Junction, you can tell. I mean, a lot of people in the big cities, know the big city. You know, you talk about Cave Junction, and they're always laughing. Oh, Cave Junction, just a bunch of dopers and this and that again. Now, there's a lot more going on in Cave Junction than you think. In fact, I can't help it notice that the Cave Junction City Fathers, the people around there, the community, the business, as you're driving through $199 on your way, either to the caves or you're heading out to the coast back and forth, they have really done a good job of cleaning that town up.

It's not perfect. But if you compare the way Cave Junction is looking right now to where it was maybe 15 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, it definitely has a more vibrant feel, a fresher, cleaner look to it going on. And I really have to, you know, hand it to them because Cave Junction for the, now I'm not saying that Cave Junction is some sprawling metropolis or something. It's still just a little town. You know, we get this. But there's a different feel of what.

going there. It doesn't have quite that same feel of desperation when you go out to the coast and you know everything has that kind of gray, dull, blue color on the houses. To me, kind of say that everything was better in 1958.

You know, it's sort of that look that you'll see that weathered look on the coast for some of the cities up and down there. And it's kind of indicative of economic trouble. But you can tell that in Cave Junction, they're working it. They're working hard to make it. happen and gosh if somebody if something could be done about the junction in it would be a huge

help because i would i would think that a just a modestly sized inn could have a place in their economic development plan over there in a cave junction for tourists maybe going to the you know to the cave itself or maybe just a stop over on the way out of the coast or or back and forth one never knows i hope they get it figured out and there's a way we could wave a Juan and have that just go away. Last time I walked inside, junctioning in was probably 15, 16, yeah, maybe 17 years ago. It was a while back. Linda and I were still in the early parts of our marriage.

And I remember we were going to stop there and have, it was still open, you're going to stop there and have a little, little meal at the restaurant, and you walked in and the first thing we smelled was cat urine. now whether that was cat urine from cat urine or it was cat or cat urine smell from methamphetamine I wasn't sure but one way or the other we turned around and went to Haiochi cafe rather instead an hour later but I'm hoping they get that together and find some way to fix it because Cave Junction really could use it and that suspicious fire certainly not helping all it's done is damage it more now hazmat system right

minutes after seven, we'll check Fox News coming up here in just a moment. Herman's going to join me too. And then coming up at 730, Harmeet Dillon, Harmeet Dillon, who is the Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division. We're going to end up talking about election integrity, all coming up.