PBD Podcast - Epstein Bill Passes, Trump's 'Piggy' Slam & MBS Visit, Bitcoin Freefall + Tim Cook Steps Down? | PBD Podcast | Ep. 686

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, and Brandon Aceto are joined by Jeff Snider as they break down Congress passing the Epstein bill, Trump calling reporter Catherine Lucey “Piggy,” MBS’s high-stakes U.S. visit, Bitcoin’s sudden freefall, and rumors that Apple CEO Tim Cook may be stepping down.------📕 REGISTER FOR BPW 2025 - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12TH 2025: https://bit.ly/3IU2YWx📺 SUBSCRIBE TO JEFF SNIDER'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/4i5uz3WⓂ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🍋 ZEST IT FORWARD: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kJ71lc ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/41rtEV4⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US:Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet with the dream. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signs. Right here. You are a 101?

My son's right there. I think I've ever said this before. I don't, I don't mind doing that. I mean, we can have a place set up here. we're having a very deep conversation with homeschooling and Tom and I got into a big fight because Tom is saying six graders don't have enough homework.

I'm telling them why are you giving these kids so much homework? Tom, turn off your phone, please. Turn off your phone, please. It's the ad with her comments. Tom is obsessed with homework for six graders and I don't think it's healthy. Why do you want kids to do homework

until 1 o'clock in the morning? You tell me the positive of a 6th grader don't homework till 1 o'clock in the morning. How are we going to get them? To be fair, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It was 11 o'clock a couple of seconds. It's 1 o'clock.

By the time, no, but... How are we supposed to get... We eventually going to be 2 o'clock. Listen, we need 7th graders in factories, making iPhones, 16-hour shifts. How are we going to do it if we don't give them a proper education? We need trade schools so they can have Ford mechanics. That's exactly. Anyways, guys, please.

Manual dexterity tests. Let us get back to our fights here, but we have... I am surrounded right now by three geniuses. These guys are brilliant. Literally, like, Brandon, you know, he's the only guy I met in my life that. It's got two degrees. He's got a bachelor's and a master's in national security. We got Jeff Snyder here, who does some of the best work when it comes on to the technicalities of the market.

You're going to hear when he starts speaking. You're going to get smarter by the end of this podcast. And then obviously, in my opinion, Tom, some of the sharpest guys I've met in my entire life. And I'm going to do my best to try to moderate today's discussion on what's going on with the markets. Last night, we got home at 1045 from Dallas. We were at the annual Goldman Sachs founders, family founder. meeting, phenomenal meeting to see what's going on. The vice chair of Goldman Sachs was there, Rob Kaplan, talking about what he thinks

is going to happen with the marketplace. Emmett Smith gave a talk. I can't even tell. I couldn't believe. I went to him afterwards. I'm like, brother, you gave an incredible message. Ross Perrault sold Dallas, Ross Proe Jr., sold Dallas, and a role he plays as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, if I'm not mistaken.

Exactly right. He was governor chamber of commerce. The whole enchilada. He was phenomenal, yeah. And then the governor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was there, a bunch of different guys. But it's a very good conversation. We'll share some of the stuff with you guys here today. Let me get into the stories.

And then I'll tell you what has happened on December 12th. And we'll get right into it. Tim Cook, the man who took Apple from the day Steve Jobs died was worth $100 billion to now three, maybe $4 trillion, depending on the month, is deciding to step down, beginning of early next year. Some are happy, some are concerned. We'll definitely talk about that. Trump is considering portable mortgages. Here's how they work.

Yesterday, Rob Kaplan, even openly said, I'd like to know what these portable mortgages are. This is kind of like some of the people that are not selling their homes. They got a home loan that was on 3.5 or something like that, and they're worried about selling it to give up the 3 and a quarter for 5.5 or 6. They're trying to find a way to, you can literally transfer that rate to, new loan. Everyone's trying to know how they're going to do it. Maybe we'll get some of our brains here to break that down for us. Some of the mortgages. We'll bring that up. Bitcoin prices

and free for all. Weeks after hitting all-time low, people are panicking. Some are worried. Tom is saying there's nothing to worry about. We will cover that as well. Trump scraps, tariffs, and beef, coffee, and tropical fruit and push to lower grocery store prices. Trump is considering for the CEO, Jim Farley, says he can't fill 5,000 mechanic jobs, paying $120,000 year. And this is the part, Jeff, I think that you talk about the labor recession and some of the other people talk about labor recession. Brandon, I know you got some thoughts on this as well.

People are having AI children. Are you ready for an AI children? You want to have an AI child, a perfect AI child that does nothing wrong. But people are having AI children with their AI parts. according to futurism. Sounds boring. Sounds like the movie Herb, by the way, which was, in my opinion, one of the worst movies I've seen in my life.

Most Americans think 63 is the perfect age to retire, but they're dead wrong. Wait till you hear, according to money-wise, what the new age should be for retirement. Some of you, I'm telling you earmuffs when we go through it, you're going to want to leave the podcast. You're going to be so upset with us, but it's not us. It's this guy talking about the story. Omaha Steak CEO warns American families will soon face a $10. a pound reality for beef.

Jake and I were talking about, the other day that took the kids to have ice cream. Five kids had a scoop of ice cream. Brooklyn had her gummy bears. I think she had M&Ms. One of them had gummy bears and one of them had marshmallow. Five scoops of ice cream on waffle cone.

Each had one scoop. It was $64. I asked myself, what average family can pay $64 for ice cream? I was blown away, but apparently that's the price today. number of new foreign students in U.S. falls 17% over visa worries. This is probably the H-1B visa conversation that people are afraid of having, but I think we need to be having. Toyota opens massive North Carolina battery plan, confirms $10 billion out of U.S. investment.

Oil and the gas demand could grow until 2050, according to Wall Street Journal. The number of households live in paycheck to paycheck have risen. Why? It's a USA Today's story. building affordable housing became hottest game in L.A. Electric Florida boomtown is now America's foreclosure ground zero, which you find out what city that is. Trump is going to, we talk about that. Record property tax increases. Slam Chicago homeowners as downtown owners see cuts. Wasn't this guy not supposed to raise taxes or do anything? This incredible mayor guy that is

destroying a once great city. And then we got a couple other stores we'll get into with AI boom is fueling a memory chip shortage that could hit cars and phones. Google is looking at $40 billion for Texas, the Data Center, and Tropic to spend $50 billion on USAI infrastructure. And then we got a couple stories that I think Jeff and Tom both want to talk about. The Blue Owl plunges to 2023 low after blocking exit from fund. And there's two stories that will address both of them as well. And then, folks, there was a clip yesterday.

day with what he called it Epstein they voted for i want to say it was 427 to 1 if i'm not mistaken and the one guy that voted against it is is famous now because you probably had never heard of him before and if he wanted to get famous this was one of the ways of doing it clay higgins is officially the only guy that voted against releasing the Epstein files and he actually tweeted about explaining why he didn't and maybe we'll get into that as well and some some guy who who works on this streets name, Pennsylvania, I want to say the street's name. He told somebody to the quiet piggy. He told someone, quiet piggy.

I don't know if you guys seen that clip or not. Have you seen that quiet piggy clip yet? Maybe we'll address the quiet piggy clip as well. Gang, if you got big plans for 2026, I am telling you right now, I can't say how many conversations we're having about business planning. There's a reason why we went less than 22 hours to Dallas and come back because we want to see exactly what's happening with 2026. We're planning for our family, for our businesses, ourselves.

And if 2026 is a big year for you as well, I want you to watch this clip. Rob, can you go to the clip with the Jenga to show them what happens when it comes onto business plan and how all of these things are necessary? Go ahead, Rob. Business is a lot like Jenga. Every piece matters. You need a vision. Just carefully.

You need capital. You definitely need capital. Let's put this year. Ooh, listen. Hanging on one piece here, by the way. You need the right team for sure. It's almost fell off, by the way. You need sales.

As good as this looks, if your foundation isn't built on a good business plan, you know what happens? The whole thing crumbles. If you have big plans for 2026, on December 12th, I'm hosting an event called the business planning work. workshop where all day we go through the 12 building blocks of writing an effective business plan. So this doesn't happen to you. If you have to get registered, click on a link below. Let's spend an entire date together on December 12th. Looking forward to seeing you there. Folks, click on a link below, get registered. You can watch it with your friends, family, and this is going to be people watching this from 100 plus countries, and you can find a way to just

get registered at the lowest level, or you can find a way to be on the screen so everybody can see each other, and at the end, we'll do a Q&A for 90 minutes. But having said that, let's get right into it. Rob, what is the audience saying is the first story that wants us to get into? Let me guess. Okay, I don't even have to guess. All right, so let's go through that story. So they voted for it, and it ended up being what, 427 to 1 on releasing the Epstein files.

And a lot has been released since there. Is this the breakdown, Rob? Yep. Go forward. We begin with Congress approving a bill to force. the release of the government's files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. CBS News report Erica Brown joins us now from Capitol Hill. Erica, can you explain what happened in the Senate?

Yeah, Lindsay, just a short time ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor to get unanimous consent that would deem this bill automatically passed as soon as I thought it's like a little bit different breakdown. It's like two people sending it to each other. So it's Senate and House, Rob, right? That both said they're passing. it. And then as we're going through this, the only guy that didn't rob, if he can pull him up, Clay Higgins, he's the only person that didn't do it, representative, Republican

representative. I want to say he's out of where? Why do I think it was Oklahoma? I don't know if it's Oklahoma. Louisiana. Louisiana. Okay. And if you don't mind going to his Twitter account for us to just let him give his argument why he didn't do it, on Twitter, he explains, this is why I voted no. And I've been a principled no on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. 2050 years of criminal justice procedure in America has written. This bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people, witnesses, people who provided the alibis, family members, et cetera, if enacted in this current form,

this type of broad reveal of criminal investigation files released to a rabid media will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Anyways, that's his reasoning behind it. Go a little bit low rap to see what it says because there's a community notes. Revenants claims misrepresent the HR 4405. The bill includes redactions from victims and. involved individuals, Massey, explained victims can't release names due to lawsuits forcing them to homelessness. Okay, so maybe there's a little bit of contradiction there.

Tom, your thoughts with what was released yesterday? Are we going to learn anything? Are we going to see anything? Or is this just another one of those, you know, they're going to release it just to say they did? Well, always be concerned if your government does something unanimously because it's technically a mathematical and statistical, you know, not impossibility, but it's highly improbable. Like if they're voting on raises for themselves, all the sudden you say, hey, Senate and everybody was like, what is it? You know, you take all the congressmen, all the Senate, boom, done. So what has happened here is they're all voting to release it, but there's two asterisks in it. The Attorney General Pam Bondi can elect to redact it, I think,

for matters of national security, A, or B, if it would interfere with an ongoing investigation. Help me out here, you know, guys. I think those were the two exceptions, which means that Pam Bondi can swing by the CIA and get all those groovy black highlighters out and go through the whole thing and basically have the same situation as they had when they handed those binders to the social media people and they walked out with the binders that said, Epstein files. This isn't that. Yeah.

No, no. Supposedly that was that. This is now, but that had a bunch of stuff that was already released. But that didn't go through House and that didn't go through Senate. That was just more like a marketing stunt that they did. It turned out to be a marketing stunt. Exactly right. But now the government's saying it's going to end up being a marketing stunt again because

Bondi is going to go over there. She's going to redact a bunch of stuff. With all those CIA black highlighters. Exactly. You think it's going to be a publicity stunt. Of course it is. Why did both parties agree to this? That's what you're saying.

That's the logic I'm building right back to that drive away at the white house. She's going to redact a bunch of stuff, which will allow the Democrats to say, you're still not showing us everything that's in the files. And then the Republicans can say, no, we released the files, but we had to protect names. And the political theater goes on and on and on. Got it. So you don't, you know, Brandon, are you in a different position here? No, I'm not.

I'm so, unfortunately, I'm so burnt out by this one because we've been, like, kind of let down and misled and manipulate it so many times. like I'm never going to expect to get a satisfying answer with this thing in terms of like learning new information. And like they said, there's no way that 427 people would vote in favor of it if it's going to do anything damaging to powerful people in the big way. Okay, so I'm curious, Jeff. We've had a lot of different theories why we believe they haven't released it yet.

We have our own theories. Why some of the information is, you know what, it's because there's so many Democrats that are on that. No, it's because so many donors that gave money to Trump around. Oh, my God, Elon Musk, when he tweeted that, it was a big falling out. No, it's because of maybe Trump's relationship would have seen.

Why do you think all the information is not being released? Why isn't it not being released? I think a lot of it has to do. I mean, why is it that this is such a mainstream topic that everybody wants to get into? I mean, like you said, this is the number one news story. The audience is wanted here. Why is that, though?

Because people believe that there is a two-tier structure, at least two tiers in this country. Right. And that the elite people have their own set of, you know, rules and benefits. And if you're in the club, you're in the club, And therefore, you know, the rules don't really apply to you. Right.

And so I think that's why everybody is really taken to the story. And you get into the idea of, you know, the establishment versus regular folks, the uniparty. I think that's exactly what we're seeing. But flip it, though. What I'm trying to ask you is, you're a smart guy. Why do you, what are you speculating is the reason why both parties have held back from releasing it? That's exactly, because people are right. Because people are right.

Because both of them have guys on the list. There's this idea that, you know, American public is a bunch of people. just stupid idiots who don't know anything. But you look at survey after survey for something like consumer confidence on the economy. Americans know better about the economy than every economist that has ever lived. Same thing with politics.

In a big data sort of way, in a big crowd sort of way, American people have... Collectively. Yeah, collectively. That makes sense. They have an idea of what's really going on here. And the reason why this story won't go away

is because people sense and every time something happens... So what's more likely to happen? It going away or the truth coming out? It going away. Oh, you think it'll... You think it's going away eventually? There's too much incentive to just continue to dangle the carrot as much as necessary and then just like this slight of hand magician.

What I do like about it is that we're learning a few new things where, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, you saw that email that reached out to Epstein to want to ask him for money. And then when he did, he says he'd like to set up a meeting with Obama. And then here, I don't know if you have the clip rob would Rocana is being asked about it. and he just got out. He has no clue. And look at his reaction. He doesn't even know what to say. Go ahead, Rob.

Comment on Hakeem Jeffreys' campaign soliciting money from Jeffrey Epstein himself back in 2013. It's the first time hearing about it, obviously. Homer said it on the floor. I don't know if it's true. I mean, you're just saying it. But obviously, anyone who took money from should return the money. Didn't donate the money. Did he step down as the leader?

It's true? I have to look at it. If we look at what you say is the first time hearing about it. He's a little bit. Return the money. But don't you see that as mutually assured destruction? Mm-hmm. What a great way to put it.

You want to take out Trump or is one of the Republicans, we got the dirt on you too. So let's just bury this thing. Let's get together, hold hands and bury this thing and just move on with our lives. Yesterday, a reporter was asking a president about Epstein, and I've never seen him use this phrase before, but he told her quiet piggy. Rob, can you pull this up, Rob?

I don't know if you have it or not. I watched it multiple times because I'm not going to lie to you. I thought it was AI. And I had to verify it because go ahead, Rob. So he dictated a couple of memos to him something we bring. You're going to find out what did he know with respect to Bill Clinton, with respect to the head of Harvard, with respect to all of those people that are including JP mortgages.

Yes, Jennifer. Go ahead. With the finger in his face, but it's always trying to look, no point, I think is a Quiet, quiet, a biggie. I'll go back to a little bit again. With the finger in her face. Yeah, but it's also the smile in his face, right? The way he delivers those lines.

Do it again? He looks her right in the eye. What do you think about this? What do you about this quiet piggy? He's a great politician. He connects him. with people. I think a lot of people, just regular folks, would say, I'd love to be able to do that to some of these reporters. You know what that says? You know, you just said something there.

I'm going to give you a high five. This is like the first 10 minutes. Here, I'll tell you why. We're already doing good. Because you know why so many people let the troller in chief? Because sometimes he's the troller in the chief, and that's exactly what I voted for. You know, I voted for a guy that's going to get in the face of the media. I voted for a guy who's going to be here. But everybody, doesn't everybody sit back? I wish I could say that to my boss. I'm in Dallas. I'm in the hotel room.

It's a hidden thing. I want to do it. I want to do it. And he's doing it for me. I'm in the bathroom. I come to Jen, I said, babe. The president just said this. She watched, her instant reaction is she couldn't stop laughing.

The fact that the president told the report a quiet piggy. Who says that? I mean, you can say F you, you can say you mother. No, no, what's worse? I'd rather be told that than be called a piggy. Be quiet piggy. And they're all searching for how that it's racial or sexually or. They're trying to find a way.

Wait, according to reports, this is the reporter that the president called piggy. Has anybody who asked him why he called her piggy? Not that I'm aware. I'll look. What is the, like, there has to be a back story. It just looks super bad. There has to be a back story. There's got to be some other.

If she have pigs as a pad, like, no, I'm actually curious. Like, is there like a. I was all nursery rhyme, this little piggy, this little piggy did this and this little piggy went crying all the way home. While this is happening, you know what happened yesterday, Larry Summers, to his 30 students, he got up to his, did you see this time? Larry Summers gets in front of his 30 students and one the students recorded it and posted it. Rob, do you have this one or are you going to send it to you? Yeah, in front of his students, he apologizes and says, hey, because of what happened. Right there, Rob, go ahead.

Watch this. Some of you will have seen my statement of regress, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein. And that I've said that I'm going to step back on the public for a time, but I think it's very important. So there you have it. So Larry Summers comes out, apologize this. Some lady is called Little Piggy.

You know, you got a, Another story from New York Post comes out where they're talking about what some of the girls said about Epstein, which we'll cover that on Friday because that's Vinny's favorite story. We won't cover that today. More of an Adam's story. Well, listen, it is what it is. But we'll cover that on Friday. Rob, what are the new things that we learn?

What are the new things that we learn? Because there was a, is this the one with Johnson? Yes, this is where Mike Johnson talks about it being a security issue to release a national. national security issue to release the Epstein files unredacted. Go ahead. All right. Number five, national security concerns, okay? The discharge requires the Attorney General to release within 30 days, quote,

classified information to the maximum extent possible. This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest and always has rested with the agency that originated the intelligence. Why? So that they can protect their critical sources. methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies and intelligence agencies. Okay. So this goes back to kind of what you're talking about, the fact that nothing's going

to be released. Yeah. Do you, if there's one thing that Glumbeck was talking about this, I think it was yesterday, maybe even a few days ago he was talking about this, where there was a specific part that they were leaving out, part where it said they're trying to get Trump that I want you to realize that the dog hasn't barked. The dog that hasn't barked is Trump. This is an email exchange between Epstein, I want to say, and the dog that hasn't barked was Trump. And they hid the name of the individual, which was Virginia. That's the one, Rob. If you want to zoom in a little bit, so this is email correspondence of Jeffrey Epstein. Who is he sending it to GMAX?

I want you to realize that the dog that has embarked is Trump, victim they hid, so you wouldn't know who that person is. This is what the Democrats were using for many years. Spend hours on my house with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, et cetera. I'm 75% there, meaning he hasn't prompted to do anything with her, apparently. Zoom and going a little bit more and then the direct correspondence

victim Marlaago Trump said he asked me to resign never a member ever of course he knew about the girls as he asked Jolaine to stop okay so who is the victim the victim is Virginia Jouffray and when Virginia was asked

about the relationship with the president and the question was asked Donald Trump was also a good friend of Epstein and this question are going back and forth. I don't know if you have that one or not, Rob. And she responded, he didn't partake in any, any of the sex with any of us is what was said in there, right?

But he floated with me. So this is some of the stuff that is coming out. I think it's good that it's being released, even though if it's a little bit, we're still getting more than we had the day before. I don't mind if more and more information is being released and being talked about. but the reality of it is

I'm convinced there's guys on both sides and I think a lot of people are probably in the same place as well they just don't want the world to know who these names are they think it's a much better place to keep it to themselves Tom I'll give you the last word and we'll go to the next story If anybody thinks that this is

first of all Vinny's not here but I will speak up for the horrifying effect that happened to the victims and I'm not equivocating the two things I'm about to say but there's a reason why they all say they're in favor of campaign finance reform and they pass resolutions that do nothing There's a reason they're all in favor of the line item veto and then they don't pass any resolutions

because that is the Uniparty, that is the establishment, and that is what the American voter can see in the clear light of day and is pissed off about and it's getting worse and worse and worse. And now you have something as volatile as pedophilia and the victims and it just has pushed Americans over the top one and answer. Can I add one more thing? Of course. One thing that we've learned from all this, especially the Larry Summer, thing. It's true, right? That there is this other set of... I think there is some progress with information. That's what I'm saying. It's not specific, but it does confirm everybody's

gut feeling that there is... Larry Summers apologizing, Jeff, that's a pretty big deal. But it goes along. People are right. They know that there's something there. So I'm more of the thought of, I'm more optimistic that Amor's going to come out. It's never going to fill the appetite of the audience because they want 100%. But I'm coming from a place of I think there's going to be some progress and more information coming out, not 100% in it, but more of it coming out for us to get smarter with what happened here. Because the more and more stories you see with these girls, that's devastating. That's someone's daughter, that someone's niece, that someone's today their wife, that's someone's sister that experienced something like this. And you can only

imagine, as a younger brother, you know, my sister's a few years older than me, I was always extremely protective to the levels of that even somebody that was a guy, she had a She had an ex-boyfriend one time. This poor guy, I get out of the military. He is 10 years older than me. We're at the church, and he walks by, I'm in my uniform. I'm 18 years old. My dad is begging me to not do anything because we did something to the guy

when he left the gym one time when I was 15 years old, 16. I don't know what it was. It was a long time ago. That level of protection that you have for the people around you. So I'm sure a lot of families want to see justice with this. So we'll see what happened here with the story. Let's go to the next one. Now, more things yesterday.

MBS is in town yesterday, okay? When he's in town, Rinaldo's there. Musk is there. And while MBS comes in, Trump is going to say hello to him. He slaps Elon Musk in the butt. Rob, you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, he slaps Elon Musk in the butt like Vinny was saying early as if, hey, welcome back. You know, as long as you apologize, you're welcome back.

I don't know if you have the clip or not. Is that the one? Okay, right there. Go ahead, Rob. It's a little tap in the belly, checking his six-pack. And then if you want to show Rob the exchange with the media, there's a couple of them. That's one of them, and then we'll go to the other one as well while they're having fun together with the investment that he's making. Is this the whole exchange? Oh, this is the one, Rob.

Is this the whole exchange, two minutes? Yep. Yeah, let's watch us. Go ahead, Rob. Watch us, folks. appropriate, Mr. President, for your family to be doing business in Saudi Arabia while your president, is that a conflict of interest? And your loyal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9-11 families are furious that you are here in the office. Who are you with? Who are you? Who are you with? And the same to you, Mr. President. Now, who are you with? I'm with ABC News, sir. You're with who? ABC News, sir. Fake news.

ABC fake news. One of the worst, one of the worst in the business. But I'll answer you a question. Thank you. I have nothing to do with a family business. I have left, and when I've devoted 100% of my energy. What my family does is fine. They do business all over. They've done very little with Saudi Arabia, actually. I'm sure they could do a lot. As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job.

You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happened, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that. Mr. President, you allow me to answer. You know, I feel painful about, you know, the families of 1911 in America. But, you know, we have to focus in reality.

Reality, based in CIA documents and based on a lot of documents, that Osama bin Laden, he used Saudi people in that event for one main purpose, is to destroy this relation, to destroy the American-Sadi relation. That's the purpose of 19-11. about the generous, it's really painful to hear, you know, anyone that has been losing his life for, you know, no real purpose or not in a legal way, and it's been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We've did all the right steps of investigation, et cetera, in Saudi Arabia, and we've improved the system to be sure that nothing happened like that, and it's painful.

There's another one that happens as well with the investment of. $600 billion or trillion, if you want to find that. Jeff, what do you think about that exchange? Well, what the report asked, and then MBS actually wanting to answer it, not wanting president to defend them, protect them. Yeah, there's a lot going on here. I think the Saudis are in a lot more trouble

than people realize, given oil prices and the oil economy over in Saudi Arabia. And I think there's a huge incentive for, you know, the United States to offer support, but also Saudi Arabia to give them something as well. So I think there's, it's not really about the, you know, these political distractions.

It's more about, hey, we've got some real trouble going on here, and we need to get along really well. Brandon, what do you think? Yeah, I 100% agree. There's been, I think it's like 80% of their GDPs from oil, and they're putting a huge initiative into building things to make it more of a desirable vacation destination. So, I mean, it's a weird place to take that conversation,

like for 9-11 questions and Jamal Khashoggi questions, when there's a lot more interesting things to talk about than that, and there's, like, very little information about that stuff. So, yeah, I think that the main reason that we're doing a lot of work with them is because we need them and they need our investment to make it a more desirable vacation destination. Well, here's, Rob, I don't know if you have the other clip where he says ABC should lose their license. Is this the one, Rob? No, I can grab that.

Because he was so unhappy with the question that he comes back explaining to her on how many different news companies lost lawsuits to him. And then he came back and said this about ABC. Go for it. And people are wise to you hoax. And ABC's, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. And I'll tell you something, I'll tell you something. So why not just sign it out? I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it's so wrong.

97% is going to say here. And we have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that because. I wish you would let it finish because the next thing he says right there is about the fact that there's a reason. because the average audience, if they hear that, they're going to say, you can't just go take a license out. There's a part where he says, when 97% of your news was attacking me,

is that the part, Rob? Did you find it? I'm listening to it right now. Yeah, he gets to it where he says 97%. So, yeah, so he's obviously not happy with what's going on with these guys. I don't know if you can find it, Rob. I mean, we can come back to it. Tom, what are your thoughts here?

I'll tell you what my thoughts are. He campaigned on energy, not independence, not isolationist, but he campaigned on drill, baby, drill. He came right out and he said it, and it's going to be drill, baby, drill. We were there in Washington on the inauguration day where it was a key part of his speech there. He was waving to the crowd, and he said, and drill, baby drill. And guess what? It's having an effect. And Saudis have a Rubik's cube they have to solve.

They need to cooperate with the United States, but with regard to Gaza. But they don't want to be seen as patronizing the United States to the other members of OPEC who are also other Arabic and Muslim countries. They don't want that, but they need it. The price of oil is coming down, which is actually going to help certain things. It's already helping gasoline and then coming up heating while in the United States. Electricity is expensive for other reasons. but then the Saudis have this arms merchant service that they run and they get a lot of support and arms from us.

So they got to kind of, it's like they have to, here's what I think is going on right now with Saudis. The Saudis have to drive a toaster through the car wash and get to the other side without getting electrocuted. And right now there are so many things from economic pressure to political pressure, to the war, they got to take their steps. There is a reason that you take a look at MBS. You've seen him many times. He was not stammering, but he was really searching for words and stuff. He was not the normal MBS.

Hello, I hope the oil and everything is going good. Here's times you can see MBS looking so confident. That guy looked, do you look confident to you? I think he is. The question about the toaster analogy, Tom, is if the toaster's plugged in, you're in trouble. but if it's not plugged, you will make it through the car watch, so you know that. Trying to describe that. Oil prices plugged in the toaster.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But I do think Trump is using the leverage to get what he wants. Exactly. I do think he's using the leverage to get what he wants. Rob, if you want to play that clip here for it. But that's where his comment comes in. He's defending.

I know he is because he's trying to get that $600 billion to a trillion dollars because he knows. But the Saudis don't have it. That's the thing. They're already out there borrowing dollars. Last year for the first time, a long time, the Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian economy had to borrow external funds. They actually borrowed more in dollars outside of Saudi Arabia. How much was that?

How much did they borrow last year? I don't know exactly the number. Wow, Saudi, the government borrowed more money. Yeah, because with oil prices down, with so many of those internal projects sucking up resources in Saudi Arabia, they actually have some of those cash shortage in Saudi Arabia. You're right. Last year, they borrowed $23 billion. Government planned to borrow about $23 billion for $20.

So net asset acquisition in 2024 was actually negative, which means there was. They're borrowing more outside the country than they're bringing in. The total national government that increased to an estimated $319 billion. They're scaling back all those mega projects. The fiscal deficit is off the charts. So you're saying they may not even have the $600 billion to invest here. No, no, no. They need $80 oil.

They need $80. Okay, so then let me ask you this question. So your analogy, the toaster to the car wash, exactly right. So let me ask this question here. So then if that's the case, does the president know that? Don't you think the president knows that? So then if he knows that, is this just marketing? What can I give you to cushion the blow because I don't want $80 oil?

What can I give you to help you in transition so that, you know, Saudi Arabia doesn't fall apart if oil continues to go lower? I thought I said they're buying, they're selling them jets. Yeah. Right? I don't know what the number was. I thought I saw $100 million a pop. And that was something that had been never even on the table before. They said, we're never going to sell you the 35s.

I think Trump's doing a great job. And what you're seeing there is the guy that we elected to use tariffs and other tools to get people to negotiate. He's got Saudis playing ball. And I'll tell you, here's the card that the Saudis have. The Saudis want destabilization of Venezuela. They want to disrupt the supply of Venezuelan oil because right now Venezuela is selling oil to China. If China's buying oil on the backside of the Panama Canal from Venezuela and they are, then who are they not buying it from? Saudis.

And so therefore, a destabilized, a military action that interrupts the flow of oil in Venezuela will cause the price of oil go up and Saudi will sell to other people. The other way to make money is if prices won't go up, how do you make more money? Sell more stuff. Two X the volume. Exactly. So if Venezuela is off the table. Then they could sell it for 70.

And then they can live with $50 oil. Got it. So this is a little Rubik's Q, but I think the guy that's in the chair there, look at that. He was very, look at his body language. Look at how he was, forget the reaction to the question from ABC. That pissed him off and it should have. But look at the confidence he has and look at the... This is the part, Rob.

This is the clip I want you to play. This is the guy we voted for. Yeah, I think it is $100 million per F-35. And if they were to buy, say, roughly 48 of them, which is the number that they're talking about, a Saudi requested for 48 of them, that'd be $4.8 billion dollars for the F-35s. But here's a $600 billion investment.

Go ahead, Rob. Thank you because you've agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States. And because it's my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I'm going to have to work on him. But it's 600, we can count on 600 billion, but I just want to say it's an honor to be your friend, and it's an honor that you're here. And if you'd like to say a few words, but thank you very much. Well, thank you, Mr. President. We believe in the future of America.

We believe in what you're doing, Mr. President, is really creating a lot of good things. things and good foundation to create more economical growth, more business in America, and it will also your work for the world piece. I believe, Mr. President, today and tomorrow we're going to announce that we are going to increase that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment, real investment and real opportunity by details in many areas, and the agreement that we are signing today in many areas in technology, in AI, in Earth materials, magnet, et cetera. that will create a lot of investment opportunities.

So you are doing that now, you're saying to me now that the $600 billion will be one trip. Definitely, because what we are signing it will facilitate that. I like that very much. You can pause that, Rob. So you're picking up the dinner check and dessert. Look, you get in the guy, like you said, Tom. When we were talking about who to have as a president,

you want to vote for somebody that negotiates on your behalf? That's what he's doing. Rob, is this another club you got? This is one more. where President Trump shakes MBS's hand, and then they make fun of Joe Biden. Go ahead. Son of the meet, Mr. Preston.

And Trump doesn't give a fist pump. I grabbed that hand. I don't give it hell where that hand's been. I grabbed that. I don't get that. Where that hand's been? So you little piggy in it now I don't give it down where the hands been.

Brandon, what are you thinking? Yeah, no, I agree with a lot of what these guys are saying. I think that Saudi has been in a tough spot for a long time. They're very much anticipating that the demand for oil is going to be a problem for them one day. So they're trying to just make it a destination that people want to go to. So I think that's why the subsidy here is that U.S. is investing in, I guess, property or like vacation type of real estate. So they're trying to make it like an attractive destination for rich people to go to, to offset some of that blow. Why are you pointing at me when you said that for rich people to go to?

I was waving my hands around. Okay, I got it. We're in the waving hand moment. Yeah, hand moment. So, NVIDIA's set, there's a major call going on today, okay, that everybody is waiting for, okay? The forecast of NVIDIA, what is it going to be, okay? Today or tomorrow, it's either going to be a bloodbath. It could be a very, very interesting day.

Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it with NVIDIA's earnings. How big are NVIDIA's earnings on Wednesday night? It's a Super Bowl, not just for tech earnings, but I think this market, right? I mean, the reality is that there's only one godfather of AI, and that's Jensen. And InVIDIA, look, it's the foundation in terms of what demand looks like in terms of what we're seeing. And, you know, Gene and I talk about it often. I think it's going to be actually a huge positive growth catalyst that we see, not just for NVIDIA, but for tech stocks. but it all comes down to on Wednesday night,

you're going to be able to hear a pin drop on trading fours around the world. I just don't know, Gene, how you even plan for this normally. You know, you've got the analyst estimates. You've got a little bit of a whisper number. If they kind of come in a little bit above it, it's good news. Everybody knows Nvidia's numbers are going to be gigantic. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, it's not only a fair statement.

Back on the 28th, Jensen went at the GTC. He basically gave us the playbook through the end of next year. He said this $500 billion in Blackwell and Ruben revenue. If you take that for his word, that they're going to be able to do that. Now, if they can get supply, that implies a 54% revenue growth rate for next year. The street's at 41%. Now, it's come up from 34 to 41, but that's the gap, as I think about this, Brian, that's the gap between where they've set the bar on the 28.

He gave us 54% revenue growth. I don't know a lot about Wall Street, except I do know this. 54% ain't going to do it when it comes to the stock, is it? it's going to have to be better than 54%, isn't it? I don't think it needs to be better than 54 this week. I think it needs to be better than the 41 where the streets add. And to Gene's point, look, we're getting back from Asia being there three weeks. Demand the supply for Nvidia chips is 12 to 1.

So it comes down to there's one chip. 12 people in order for every one potential chip that exists to order. So there's one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution. And that's why it speaks to our view that anyone that taught, and Gene I talked about it all the time, anyone talks about an AI bubble here, we are in the third inning of where this is all playing out. And I think that's why this is an inflection point. You're going to see ultimately what the demand looks like from Jensen himself. And the view is a bullish. I mean, I was going to say, what do you think about his pink good jacket?

But what do you think about, Jeff, what they're saying here? I think the, you know, it's a lot of words to basically say we have no freaking clue what's going to happen. And what happens in all of these disruptive technological cycles is that, yes, the numbers look good until they don't, right? Yeah. It's a 12 to 1 demand to supply. Well, one of these days, it'll be 11 to 1, and then it'll be 10 to 1. As all these companies reassess the numbers that are being thrown around, the amount of revenue that's just required to even have a prayer of breaking even. And then let's talk about the products themselves.

It doesn't live up to the hype. So where are you going to get the demand from to maintain that type of growth rate? So the danger isn't necessarily that it's, you know, Nvidia's earnings today won't be 61% or 62%. It's whether or not we're actually seeing tangible results that actually match expectations. Tom, your thoughts. There's a lot of forward that's built into Nvidia,

and what Jeff just said is correct. But I'll tell you something else that people are looking at right now. Rob, if you could really quick go find Cisco and go Max. Yeah. Cisco Max. Yep, the chart. You're going to the Cisco and Max, and then pull up NVIDIA Max. No, Cisco's earning chart, Cisco Stock Chart.

Yep, and go to Max. All right, let's see if you can find the dot-com bubble. It's easy to see. It's, you know, it's right there. Now, let's go take a look at NVIDIA and go to NVIDIA stock chart and go Max. There you have it. NVIDIA is on the front end of Cisco. What was Cisco?

Cisco had 70, go back to Cisco, Cisco had 70% market share in 1999 of routers, 7-0. And then they bought, they were given all the IBM patents, and IBM said, screw it, I'm out of the router business, as the story goes. And they were at 84% market share of routers at the beginning of 2000. Oh, March 2000, first quarter, go right there, right there, right there, yep, yep, yep, yep, there you go. First quarter, 2000. That's what 80% market share in a brand-new market. Well, we need routers. Routers have to be everywhere.

It's going to power the internet. They have to interconnect each other. That's correct. That's very, very correct. Now go to NVIDIA. And you have here the one guy with the Blackwell chips that's got massive market share. This is what people are looking at when they say AI bubble. These are not a bunch of bears running around like Elizabeth Warren, hoping the sky will fall on capitalists.

These are people really looking at it and saying, wow, could this be an AI bubble the same way we had an infrastructure bubble for the Internet? for the internet. And if so, that's kind of tough. What I look for after hours today is do we head for an adjustment, not a crash, but do we come to an adjustment where PEs come back into a line with a little bit of reality? And the way you do that is forward forecast. And if forward forecast doesn't say, and we have demand, what's demand? They're going to ask, what is demand? 12 to 1, 13 to 1, 11 to 1. If the demand's coming back, they'll say, well, demand softening. Maybe now we've got all the chips ordered that we need for the data centers, even though you still have to make them, but we priced in all the profit of making those chips into that spike right here.

And what's their PE? 52? That's not horrible. Yeah, it was 52 yesterday. But if you listen to CNBC, they'll tell you it's cheap. Yeah, exactly right. So what I think about Nvidia today, take a breath. It's going to be okay. There could be, and by the way, the option volume is suggesting that there could be a 7% downward swing today in the price.

If that happens, how will the market react? The market react badly, because what was NVIDIA's peak three weeks ago? 208 or 210? 208, 207. I think inner-day there was like a 208. And now we're down at 186. So we're 20 points down, 10% down, another 7%. it would be 17%. That is a very typical correction. Yesterday at Goldman Sachs event,

people talked about. You get 15% correction in a hot frothy market is not unusual. And then they say you grow into your pants, right? Now your pants are kind of baggy because the prices come down. But now through sales, dominance, market share, you grow back into your pants. And so it's a really big thing, just like they said today, it is the Super Bowl. And it's going to determine whether we have like a Merry Christmas or where we have a managed Christmas. And what I mean by that is, does the market begin to make a little bit of adjustment? And then people have to say, okay, maybe I'm a little more cash for the fourth quarter. Maybe this will be normal things that happen.

But there will be a lot of, look, the liberal media wants to see an adjustment so they can say, I told you was a bubble. All these Wall Street bastards, you know, now they're taking it. And these guys just lost $2 billion. They didn't. They lost that on paper on net wars. and stuff. And so one way you're going to have, I think, a flat, slightly up response and the other way you have a down response. But I don't see that we have, invidia saves the world like they did last

summer. Yeah. So I have a whole follow-up question, but I'm going to come to you to see if you have a different take on this. Yeah. And I got a follow up for you guys. Go ahead, Brandon. Yeah, I think the entirety of not only just the stock market, but the entire U.S. economy is looks well on the outside looking in because of the AI, I guess, bubble, because of the like national flywheel that has all these giant seven companies spending money hand over fist on these chips from Nvidia. And probably because they're competing to create the best AI product and like that's what the data centers are for. But like that's like the sole reason that the economy looks good right now. I think that the actual Main Street is do much worse than the stock

market. But I think that if Nvidia takes a dive, the entire market takes a dive because it's probably what, like 8 or 9% of the S&P right now? Yeah. What is 8 or 9% of the same? Nvidia. Oh, so it's Nvidia's 8 or 9%. But the question I was going to ask all three of you guys is this year SMP 500 rate of return is roughly 13 to 14%, give or take, right?

Do you know what percentage of the SMP 500 is a max 7 companies? And it's kind of maxed. 28, 28. 35 to 37. Seven companies represent nearly 40%. That's why they're talking about it being a Super Bowl because it's the only team playing. Well, but this is the scary part, though, right there. If you look at it at 35 to 38%, the seven companies, Apple Amazon Alphabet, Meta Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla.

So the question is, are these stocks representative of the economy, the overall system, or they're representative of just this new segment? So a fellow on Manect is asking me a question yesterday, and I told him, I said, we're going to talk about it on the podcast. So he's getting the preview on this. So SMP's up, 13, 14%, market's doing great. You take seven out. It's a very different story, right? So what is the market doing? How is the market doing?

What's the market looking like when it comes on to wanting to, you know, buy properties, you know, other industries, hotels, you know, you're seeing some data coming out that just doesn't make any sense in certain. other industries. So how bad are things outside of Max 7? Jeff, I'll come to first. Yeah, the market you want to look at is not stocks. Stocks are somewhat their own reality. The market you want to look at for economic fundamentals is bonds, interest rates, shapes of curves and things like that, esoteric indications. But I will say for the stock market, I mean, we want to get into this a little bit later, Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, is sort of a

proxy for general risk-taking. With Bitcoin being crushed over the last couple of weeks, it suggests that there is a growing anxiety about a whole bunch of topics I think we'll get into here that's not just related to NVIDIA and what their demand versus supply numbers are. It's the overall environment. Has the AI bubble gone too far? And what will that do to the overall economy if it does start to falter here? What are the underlying mechanics in the economy itself? And does that actually, does that lead to the marketplace, the financial marketplace,

looking to take more risks in things like buying stocks or investing in real economy projects? because I know we were talking about this a little bit. You're right. The mainstream situation is not like it is in what you see in Nvidia and AI. You just look at the consumer staple stocks, for example. They are huge laggards to the rest of the market. Yes, they're up, but they're not up nearly as much. So the overall, that's why I think Bitcoin in particular is useful as a proxy

for the marginal risk taker in the marketplace. And that one has turned decisively ugly over the last couple weeks. Okay. So when I look at UBS, UBS just comes out and puts, I guess this is the award we're going to be using today. UBS comes out and Rob, if you want to pull this up, puts U.S. recession odds at 93% is what they said. Not 50%, not 40%, 93%. Some may even ask if you were to take the max 7 out, are we in a recession, but nobody knows it? That's market breadth, right?

Right there, UBS currently assigns a 93% probability of U.S. recession based on its analysis on hard data, such as employment, industrial production, income, and consumption. Well, you look at the macroeconomic statistics heading into the summer, I mean, before the government shut down, look at the labor report. I mean, there's a negative payroll number on the board for June. So we're already job shedding,

and that's been confirmed by ADP and a number of other surveys, including the Federal Reserve Zone surveys. We talked about this earlier. Consumer sentiment has been decisively negative, all year because consumers realize there are no jobs. So the situation on mainstream is far more dire than people who are only focused on the stock market are really getting a sense of. Tom. So I'm about to get slaughtered on both sides. On one side, you hear me talk about the market. The market is managing itself to the benefit of the shareholders. That's what the market is doing.

So as you said, Wall Street is its own world. It's a very big world. And by way, Mag 7, they talk about Mag 7. Mag 7 is bigger than all of the European stock markets. All. A-L. So, Mag 7 is bigger than the entire continent of Europe on an investment basis. It's a huge red flag. That's a

bright flag. They should have their own flag, their own blue flag with seven stars on it and be like, we got your, we got your EU right here. 700, wow. Yep. And so, now then. So they are managing to manage profits, which includes layoffs, which includes

active use of AI and a lot of things like that because they're trying to manage profits. That's stock market. I'm going to call it right here. I have felt for the last two months that we should be using the phrase labor recession because I believe we are in a labor recession. And I think that there are numbers that the government under Biden has been, that they haven't fully, you know, fixed the way they were doing. Let me say why, Pat.

if you overstate actual labor because they use average incomes and a percent of income for tax and then a percent of income for spending, you're overstating GDP estimates. Make sense? Oh, you didn't have that many people working. So you can't take 20 percent, I think that's 17 percent, take 17 percent out for taxes, and the rest is what they spend in the economy on this, that, and the other. And they overspend. Here's some facts going on right now.

Credit cards have hit $1.25 trillion. We're back into that territory again. So number one. Number two, car repos are going to be the highest this year since, you ready for this number, Pat? 2009. Car repos this year will be highest since 2009. It's almost there right now, and all has to have us a little bit of trend in November, December, and it beats 2009. The fastest grown delinquency.

By the way, people like Cox Automotive, they cover repos. They like to say, oh, no, no, no, no, you're just talking about subprime. Subprime borrowers got into trouble because interest rates were so high, and they had 9 and 10 and 11% loans. No, no, no, no, no. Would you like to know right now today going into fourth quarter, the fastest growth in delinquencies in car loans is prime borrowers, not super prime, prime. And prime that were age between 30 and 39. so prime working age borrowers. Correct. That's exactly right.

Thank you very much. Huge red flag. We're on that. Also, what you have, that's just that. You now also have people talking about mortgage delinquencies. And, by the way, Rob, you pull this up. The chart I sent you, it's the one on the refi denials. Look what is happening to mortgage refi denials.

It's not that one. It's the other one I sent you. I sent you just the... These are the two that were sent. No, no, no, no, no. Down in my email, there's a couple of them. The mortgage charts, denials are up in red. Yep.

Tom, while he's looking for this, I just looked this up. So here's, and I'm going to bring you back to you, because with Max 7, SMP is up 15 to 16% year to date. Without it, it's still up 12 or 13%. That's correct. They're successfully managing it. How much of it is Mac 7 driving everybody else? So if Mac 7 climbs, everybody else follows.

Yeah, and by the way. Well, it gives you protection. If you have the Mag 7 stocks that are rising, then you can buy everything else and justify it as the market is going higher. Yeah, and it's just the go to refinance, the next one down on the left column, left column right there. Go take a look at that, Pat. This is the denials and refis.

These are all the people that coming out of COVID. Remember when they can. came out of COVID, and some people got seven and a halfs and seven, three quarters, and some eights. Remember that? Yeah. Well, guess what's happened? The rates now have down to six and a quarter, six and an eighth, or pay a point and get five and seven eights, but they're getting denied by the bank. Why? Because you're laid on your car loan, and your credit card is $1.25 trillion. That's what's happening right now. If you look at this year, the blue is application rate, which is the lowest it's been in 10 years, the last 24 months, the higher

one, just first quarter of 2024. That's higher interest rates. Some of that is due to higher interest rates. Okay, which is fine, which is fine because we see the decline coming from a Q2 of 2021 when they started increasing rates and that just kind of came down, right? And in the last 12 and a half, you know,

18 months, it's been flat, but for rejection to be at 45.7... All time high since they've been measuring it. Stop at top. That's the banking sector. All time high since they've been measuring it. Are you kidding me? I am not kidding. That's the banking sector. When did they start measuring it, though?

When did they start measuring it, though? 2010, 2012? That statistic, I think, goes back to 2003. Well, that's a good ample enough of inventory of data. There's enough events that's happened since then. So, okay, so you said something while I interrupted you. I was speaking, both of us were speaking at the same time. I want to make sure the audience here's what you said.

That is the way of bank saying what? The economy sucks. That's bank saying we have all of the fundamental, information when somebody fills out a credit application. We've got their jobs. We've got their income. We've got their credit score. Underwriting.

Well, when they actually do it. Well, then let me get into it. So the banks are saying, I have your information here, and the stuff on here doesn't qualify. Can we add one more thing to put in perspective? Meta two weeks ago had 11% decline. Remember, the stock, Facebook meta, had a big decline. A week later, they sold to the street $25 billion in bonds. How many times oversubscribed was it?

Because you know when they say oversubscribed, more people want it and think can get it? Not many? 5x. There is $125 billion at the door willing to trying to get in. Because they want to put the money to work. And because they're going to get a fixed interest rate from Facebook.

Facebook's got to sell the bond at a rate. So what they're saying is they trust more of the bond right now than they trust the actual stock price. That's why. That number is why. So it drops 11% but Facebook is able to sell. Okay, but let me get to this. I don't want to confuse it, too.

I don't want to confuse it. I want to stay here. I want to stay here. But it's all the same money. I understand it, but we're talking about mortgage, mortgage application specifically. So I want to get to the story here because this was a topic yesterday also when we were at the Goldman Sachs meeting when they asked the vice chair, Rob, Kaplan, on what the thoughts are on 50-year mortgages as well as this mortgage, portable mortgages.

So Trump is considering portable mortgages. This is New York Post. Here's how it works. Federal Housing Agency Director Bill Paltese said the government agency is actively evaluating portable mortgages, which would allow home to transfer their loan from their current home to a new home when they move. With portable mortgages, the homeowner would effectively be able to keep their existing interest rate in terms instead of paying off the loan and getting a new one. It's a strategy designed to inject movement into a stagnant housing market. Many homeowners would be buyers have remained on the sidelines because they are reluctant to transfer.

their sub 3% mortgage rates for today's loans hovering around 6.5% realtor.com senior economist Jimmy Kimmel told Fox Business that these types of mortgages aren't compatible with the architecture of U.S. mortgage finance, nor would they fix the broader affordability problems facing the housing market if they were. So the question is what? I have a million dollar home, but I have a million dollar home I'm paying 3.5%. Now, if I want to go sell this, yes. I bought the house at $700,000. I will get $300,000 of equity out. So if I get the $300,000

equity out and I go by a different house, I'm going to have to go from a three and a half to six and a half. So I'm better off staying in this and not having to remove that three and a half I have. This is a way of saying you can actually keep that interest rate and take that loan into a new house, sell your house and buy another one and you won't lose that interest rate. But how do they do that, Jeff? Yeah, how do you do that? The question is, I mean, What bank is going to prove that? You have to, you have a collateral swap. You have to look at what, is this house going to be a collateral for the new loan?

I mean, the logistics of that are pretty close to nightmarish. The logistics to me would be who's going to entertain that? Who's going to prove that? And if they did, of course, this is. You know how this is going to work. What they're going to say is the government's going to come in and say, we'll guarantee. We'll guarantee something about this to get banks to do it. We'll cover you in case you thought you had this one house that you lent.

against. Now the buyer swaps to another house. If there's any problem with that house, the second house that the mortgage ports to, we'll cover the difference. That's what's going to have to happen. I think that's the exact the way that they're moving. That would be a trillion-dollar solution, though. I mean,

it's not... I don't think it'll work, but I think that's what the government is aiming to do. Okay, I take you back to 1982. And in 1982, the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institution Act. Rob will find it. I'm sure he will. And what happened is they sat there and they said, they came to Congress and they said, hey, it's 1982. What were interest rates starting to do?

This is postcarder. Yep. The interest rates were in trouble. And so at that time, you could have an assumable loan. When you bought my house, Pat, you could assume my loan and it's competitively low interest rate as long as Jeff, my friendly banker, said, oh, let me check out, Pat. Yes? not only, you determine the price yourself, but as long as he has the difference between the loan that you have and the price, you guys do it. But you know what? He's a perfectly fine consumer to me. I will approve him to assume your loan.

And you got my 5% loan or my 3.5% loan. And you were happy and you bought my house in 1982 until the entire financial sector ran to Congress and said, we need the Garnes-St. Germain Depository Institution Act. You have to make it legal for us to call all mortgages to full payment upon sale or transfer. You have to make it legal for us to do that.

Here, here's your act, you can do it. Great! And they all ran back, and guess what? Every mortgage in America had to be paid on sale of the house. It wasn't that way before 1982. And that way, the banks got to put the new prevailing interest rate on your house. And that's how it worked. And now they're looking to go back to that.

No, all the banks are going to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this. We're not doing this. Because the banks would have to manage money differently. If you had locked in, fair and square, for a 6% mortgage, and the rates are at 9, prime rate is up. Well, I want to show you something, though. Watch this. Rob, can you go to the poll you just ran? Just watch what the audience is saying.

He ran a poll. The question is, are you in favor of Trump's administration plan of portable mortgages? Okay. Look what the audience is saying. 56% is saying yes, right? Meaning, most people I talk to, they don't know how it works. They don't even know how you're going to do it. But guess what they're for?

Man, if you're going to do it, I'm for, you know, allow me to keep my rate. Allow me to keep my rate. To me, the sequencing of challenges you face with this is you have to go to the banks and say, guys, just transfer the rate to a new loan. What's the big deal? You already have the risk on there anyways. Just transfer it. No, I gave that rate four years ago.

I don't want to do it to a new loan. The rates are now this. I'm losing money on that. Well, do it anyways. It's okay. Just do it anyways because you're better off having a client paying the mortgage instead of them defaulting on it. And it's going to create more activity. No, no, no.

We don't want that. We're not even approving. This is the lowest, highest rate of us rejecting applications. But you gave it to Grandma for 30 years. Stay with me, Tom. Please, let me just go through this flow real quick and then interrupt me. So, but no, we're lowering, we're directing 47% of people with mortgages today. We don't even want the application.

And they're going to go, yeah, but you have to do it because people are not buying homes because they can't afford it. Yep, but I have to stay in business. I understand you have to stay in business. But we got to find a way to make money. And then it's going to go to Jeff's thing, which the only solution is going to be what? Okay, listen, wink, wink, wink. Just do it.

You know, we'll give you to protect. protection, we'll come and protect for this. You see where this is going. I mean, you're not even talking about the real problem here. Everybody talks about affordability. It's the number one, it's the number one political issue across the spectrum. It's the reason why that poll is like it is. You cannot blame people for saying, I want this because affordability is a problem. What are we really saying when we say affordability? What we're saying is when we went through the pandemic, prices rose much faster than incomes did. Housing prices rose much faster. car prices most much faster, people fell behind because of the pandemic and the lockdowns and the

supply squeeze and prices going higher. That's what people are saying. What they're saying is I don't have enough income. I don't have a job that pays me enough to pay for all these higher prices, whether it be houses, cars, or even food. We're going to talk about beef. So we're not even talking about the major problem here, which is a macroeconomic problem of the Main Street labor recession.

We don't have enough income to pay for the prices. Now you said it. I said it. Now you said it. I like that term. I think it fits really well. I'm not calling the market. I'm calling labor. Me too. Macroeconomic fund. I don't care about the stock market. Can you do me favor of both of you guys? Explain this to the audience that's watching this right now based on numbers data, what you mean by? So what is the difference between a, you know, labor recession? What's the difference between other types of consumer recession? What's the difference between other types of recessions that we have?

I don't think there's any real difference because to me the macro economy has to be a labor economy. it's not if we're seeing labor market that is actually shedding jobs which means it's no longer growing it's no longer adding jobs it's actually subtracting jobs because companies are cutting back and why are they cutting back because they don't have enough profitability there's not enough business coming in generalized downturn if you have an economy that's shedding jobs it's in a recession I don't care what you want to call it I don't care if the NBER which is the group of economists that get together and decide what is a recession what isn't we don't care what they say again like I said this is the reason why people are so pissed off and angry is because

they fell farther behind after the pandemic, and with the labor market going into this recessionary condition, they're falling further and further behind. They're not even making up the ground that they lost several years ago. So people, this is what we, when they talk about affordability crisis, this is what we're talking about, always goes back to the labor market jobs and incomes. There are not enough jobs. There's not enough income that's enough to pay for even just the price changes from several years ago, let alone any additional price changes that come about this year and moving forward. So, I mean, labor recession, that's a pretty, pretty descriptive term. Okay. So, so let me, let me come to you guys. Here's a question. And how do you address the affordability

challenge right now going into 2028? Both parties have to address the affordability issue, right? Midterms is around the corner. With midterms being around the corner, we're 12 months away from the midterms, is where we are. I want to say Calci and Calci is saying, give or take, I want to say it's Kalshi that said this, that's 70% likelihood that the Democrats are going to win the midterms next year. It's going to be a plus minus more Democrats than it is going to be with Republicans. That's what the numbers are right. It could change right now where it's at, but the last time I saw it was at 70%. So if it's going right now, yeah, there you go, 72% Kalshi has Democrats winning versus, and by the way, the closest

that got was when a couple weeks ago, what was the number, 55, 50, okay, but it's pretty much Democrats. All right. So you guys are consultants to both political parties. They want to find out how do you fix the affordability issue? How do you do it, Jeff? Well, one thing you got to stop doing is to make the same mistake that politicians have been making since the pandemic hit. And really going back further than that is to say the economy's booming. This thing, the sucker's great. Just look at the stock market. That just pisses people off more than anything else. You want to know why there's a socialist as mayor of New York City? That's why. Because people don't have jobs. They don't have enough income to pay for things. And here you are telling them how great

everything is. If this is great, sign me up for socialism. That's one thing you've got to stop. We've got to stop saying the economy is booming. And this is, this is, this tracks with political parties all over the planet. You look at countries around the rest of the world. You look at the Germany. Germany just changed governments. It's already incredibly unpopular because they said, well, we're going to do this major fiscal spending push. We'll call it a bazooka. Massive, huge, $500 billion euro fiscal stimulus. I'm not going to do anything. It's all theater. You got to stop with the theater and start attacking the band-aids. Give me two more.

Two more. So it's three ways to do it. You're the consultant, out of the government. Start being honest. Okay, start being honest, which is going to be hard, but what's the next one? The next thing is to get the hell out of the way of the private economy. We have way too much government interference. One of the biggest problems that we've had since 2008 or 2009, what they call nowadays

fiscal dominance, it's simply that every time the economy stumbles, what happens? We need a stimulus package. We need the government to come in and do tax cuts and massive spending. TARP! We'll fix it. That's where it started. That unleashed the debt monster. And that's what we need to stop government creeping into every aspect, not just economic life, but the bigger the government gets, the more gets involved into your social life, too.

So we need the government to get the hell out of the way of the private sector and stop thinking that's going to fix every problem with this law or this bandaid or that bandaid. We actually need the government to do what it was supposed to do when it came into office and say, get the hell out of the way. Well, I mean, it looks like what could be happening here is it could be that they want to take the interest rates back to zero, lowering it, which we talk about it off camera when Tom was talking about every time they lowered the rates to zero. And it stays at that for two quarters, the whole quantitative easing. If you keep it at two quarters, seniors who are relying on the money that they're getting as interest rate cost them $70 billion. So, for instance, if I got $2 million in an account and I'm 72 years old and I'm getting 4% income off of them, just making up a number here. $2,0.4% 80 grand every year.

We're not tapping to our savings. We're just living off the interest. $2,080 grand year. As long as their lifestyle is $6,600 a month, we're going to be okay. We're going to be, oh, that's perfect, babe. And then they do quantitative easing. And then they go to zero. And then that 4% that was giving me 80 grand a year and now goes to zero.

I'm getting zero. So now my $2.9.9.2 becomes 1.9.2 becomes 1.84. Then the next thing you know, he took $70 billion dollars away, $71 billion away, give or take from the seniors. But Tom, going back to you, how do you fix the affordability issue? Okay. I like what he said. He said, number one, messaging with truth. Number two, theater, when you fake it, number three, get out of the way, you know, on regulation. So that is, those are more broad.

Let me go more narrow so that we kind of complement each other here. right now Americans are feeling a pinch for two simple reasons inflation jumped under Biden because he printed all the money number one

and those prices never came back down especially cost of housing what can you do to help right now I believe what I'm seeing in the labor market and things the Fed who's been looking at these figures and right now doing a head fake on people

and by the way I looked it up today on some of the markets, the Kalshi market today, it says it's only 50-50 to even get a 0.25 cut. And by the way, economists, the CME watch group, just go to CME Watch, Fed Watch. Yep, CME Watch tool. Take a look at this. These are everybody listening and watching the Fed. They're at 50-50. They only believe there's a 50% chance of a 0.25 cut by Powell in December.

There needs to be a half a rate cut and then hold, hold. and let that help people. Also, you know who that helps? That helps the Stados Unitos, who has a great big, giant refi of tea bills coming in the first quarter, end of first quarter, I believe. It's a giant stack of tea bills

have to refy in the first quarter. If you move the interest rate down, now Trump's government budget can refy those at a more, more moderated rate. Now, let's go to the consumer. Power and food. What he just did is taking off the tariffs

on fruit products, fresh fruit, and some things last week, very important very important now he's got to go to protein chicken pork and beef you got to figure out how we help those prices come down for the consumer and the next one is power right now data centers I'm going to get pissed off data centers are being built not with profits but with bonds I looked at it last night I was up to 1 a.m. and I realized just how much of this data center build out is being bonds and they said oh we're making so much money on this so much money AI services they are but they're doing it.

And what they're doing is they're creating excess demand for a limited supply of electricity so the price is going up. You take a simple stroke of the pen. All it takes is Trump to do this. Part of your bond has to be a two-year subsidy on the excess electricity that you're using so that the communities that are getting the benefit of jobs, there's a few jobs for construction and people that want to work at the data centers, that their local electricity prices don't go up. But don't do it as a government subsidy.

Don't do it as a tax credit. Say, look, you want to build the data center? Then you either have to do what Google did and what Oracle did where they built the small nukes. You know, they got the permits for the small nukes right next to data center. So that's Google and Oracle saying, well, I'll just build my own power right here because there's not enough power for me to buy and I'm going to build my data center. The other way, I build the data center, powers right over there. Fantastic. Chesapeake will give me the power. I think Chesapeake operates three mile island right now.

how much percent of their Chesapeake's output for the restarted three-mile island has Microsoft bought for the next five years? 100 percent! They're buying 100 percent of the output of the Three Mile Island power plant. Microsoft is doing it. So food, electricity, and interest rates right now, and interest rates will help the credit card balances, but the power would be very simple saying, hey, if you're building these data centers, you either have to build your own power or you need as part of the bond. you need to do a two-year prepay.

I got you. Brandon, how about you? All right, so easy. You got to create a national gold rush around the idea of building homes. Like, I don't want to hear anything about the 50-year mortgage or the portable mortgages or anything like that. Like cut taxes to zero for home builders, subsidize people who want to do it, create incentive programs where you can apply for a low-interest government loan to build a home and then you don't get taxed on once you sell it. But these homes have to be protected from the acquisition of companies like Blackstone and, black crop because that's another thing pushing the price up. So I don't want to go all, you know, communist or whatever and say you can't buy houses. But the new houses, like from this point

on, like maybe for the next five years under this program, can't be bought by a company because there's like a four million home shortage in America for these type of homes. Cut zoning laws, remove regulations around lumber. Like we have like the second most lumber out of every, any country in the world. And we have a lumber shortage somehow for building homes. And then like We only produce 2% of the world cement, so the government couldn't invest and subsidize in companies that want to become a cement company. It costs like $500 million to become a cement company. We used to produce like 80% of the world's cement. Now today it's 2%.

China produces 50%. So that's for housing. And I would say for food, you know, why not invest in stuff like vertical farming and not be so reliant on like the traditional farms? Why not subsidize the ranchers who are getting crushed by the big four beef companies? And investigate these big four beef companies who are kind of. sketchy, by the way. I think two of them aren't even domestic companies. So they like lobe all the hell out of these ranchers, and that's why there's

such a shrinking supply of beef. So here's what I want to do. While you guys are talking about this, with labor shortage, there's two stories I'm going to read to you. And you tell me what direction we should go with this. So one story, Ford comes out, CO4, Jim Farley, says he can't fill 5,000 mechanic jobs

at $125,000 a year salary, $120,000 a year salary. We're in trouble in our country. Rob, if you want to play this clip, go forward. As of this morning, we had 5,000 openings, a bay with a lift and tools, and no one to work in it. Are you kidding me? No. $120,000 a job a year, but it takes your five years to learn it. Take a diesel out of a super duty. It takes a lot of skill. You need to know what you're doing. And God forbid, we ever get in a war, Google's not going to be able to make, you know,

the tanks and the planes. So this is a... a self-defense for a country issue. But how I think about it is if we work together. You can just pause it right there, by the way. Did you just hear what he just said? He said, if we go to war, who are they going to go to to say,

can you build this XYZ for me? They're not going to go to Google. They're not going to go to Apple. They're going to go to these guys. And it takes how many years he said to train to take a diesel? That's it, right? Five years. He's just training.

Master mechanic. And by the way, he said it earlier when you said about education early on in the first three minutes. But go ahead. You were going to say something about that. That is the whole problem right there. What he's saying is that if somebody has to invest five years of their time and likely huge expense to become a master mechanic,

so yes, they're promising a 120,000-year job, but somebody has to invest their time, effort, and money to become qualified. And people do not want to take that risk. Okay. So this is coming to my next question, okay? And I want to know what the solution is. So if we have a labor shortage, if we have companies like Ford that are sitting there saying, hey, man, I need five, thousand people at 120. I'm having a hard time. If we go to war, how the hell am I going to build this stuff for you when the U.S. government comes knocking on the door saying, hey, guys, we need it right now. We need you to build this for us right now. Then a story comes out of financial times.

Number of new foreign students in U.S. falls 17% over visa worries. And Jeff, I want to know what you're going to say about this. You sound like a pretty reasonable guy. So American universities, Rob, I think got a clip on this one here. Is this, she's just given the report. on it? Yeah, she's just giving the news. I'm just going to read this year. It's fine. American universities have suffered one. The sharpest ever declines in foreign enrollments in the face of tough policies from President Trump with the number of new international students falling 17% this year. A survey of 825 U.S. Higher Education institutions showed 57% report falling new enrollments by students while only 29% recorded and increased,

any increase. The result raised concerns over the impact on universities of declining tuition revenue, along with the less tangible effect that having fewer foreign students will have an innovation economic growth, the data provided by the International Institute of Education, sponsored by the State Department compounds a drop of 7% in new international enrollment in 2425, including a fall of 15% among graduates who make up the largest short. This is a significant decline, which shows that government policies have implications, particularly at the graduate level. Where the U.S. benefits the most says Fenta, the chief executive of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators. So when we're looking at this here, okay, and we're looking at labor shortage,

Ford's having a hard time placing, companies are laying off, the debate about allowing others to come from other countries, and President Trump says, we're going to have 600,000 Chinese students coming here to become students. He gets pushed back by Laura Ingram, says, why not 300,000? Well, you know, we want 300,000 more.

It's better to get the brains here. You know, the colleges need students. The colleges need money. So, labor shortage. How do you solve it? There is no such thing as a labor shortage. The problem with Ford is $120,000 salary is not high enough.

You want to fill those bays? Pay the market rate. The rate that will get people off of the couch to invest in their time and effort and become those mechanics. You think that would be the change? Yes. There's no such thing as a labor shortage.

The only labor shortage comes about when companies are refusing to pay the market clearly. Okay, so then who, if he's choosing those numbers, if you go to Salary.com, if you go to the- It's not working. I don't have the mechanics at $120,000. Then you need to pay $250,000. It's that simple.

You think at $250, he gets at $5,000? I don't know what the number is, but it's higher. It's that simple. that's the solution. This is the solution for any time. So that's for. Then go on the other one. With the visas, does anybody here really think the number of students in college correlates with anything that has to do with economic advance? We've had more people in college over the last 40 years,

and it hasn't contributed much to what's supposed to the advancement, the working stock of the United States. You put more people in college, all it does is make money for the colleges. And you said that to yourself when you read the article. So that's more money with the Chinese students coming in. Does that actually advance American interests, whether it be economic or national interest, or is it just more money for the colleges to expand whatever does colleges do these days? Does it change if they're studying productive things, though, versus things that are not productive?

How do we know? I mean, how do we know? I guess what the economy needs? Like, if there's people who are unqualified for needed jobs and then people start going to school for those jobs, is that more productive than people going to school for, like, gender studies? But that's the thing. Do the Chinese students come in? What are they actually studying? They're not studying gender studies.

Is that something? Are we sure? A lot Americans are, though. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. More people in college doesn't necessarily solve the problem here. Yeah, Rob, can you do me favor? I don't know about that. Can we debate that? Can we debate that argument? Take the opposing position. Are you comfortable? Take the opposing position. Go with that. Colleges do make the country more productive. Yeah, no, no, no, two things. Not just colleges. It's, okay. So if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, if we, are not willing to bring the best and the brightest in here. The other day, I'm in Goldman Sachs, okay? They had their orientation class. I don't know if you caught what happened, Tom. They had the orientation class. I walked up to see who's at the orientation class. Obviously, I'm not supposed

to go there. I walk up and I'm just sizing everybody up. You know what I'm sizing up? What do you think I'm looking at? What do you think I'm looking at? That's the new orientation, I can't, it's a new orientation higher but what do you think i'm looking for their eyes like what their eyes look like i want to know ethnicity i want to know age okay and then i want to know attire because i want to know what's the dress code expected when you're going through orientation i want to know ethnicity i want to see patterns i walk up something like that it's it's young male agents well it's it's interesting then i walk with then they put a security right in front the door uh immediately when we came back time i don't know if you notice that part or not. So you know what you notice? You go on a floor, one the biggest

insurance companies in America, 300 engineers, 80% all Indians, okay, who are there? Of the 80% that are Indians, some of them came to us from IIT Institute, which in many cases, IAT Institute crushes MIT when they put them against each other on education. It's very hard. One out of every 40,000 applicant gets accepted to IAT Institute, some weird number like that, Rob, if you can verify so I'm pretty accurate on what percentage of folks make it to IIT Institute, not MIT IIT Institute. So should we not entertain taking the smartest, the brightest of other countries to come here and help us out? Or should we do it the other way around and make the investment here? That's also the debate. And I know we've had this debate and it's something most people

are not comfortable with. But what would you say about that? I think we could do both. I think that we could be very selective of who we take here. And, yeah, of course, we want phenoms and people who are, like, excellent. But, no, we don't want to get into a situation where we're deciding to choose somebody from overseas because it's cheaper and because the employer here. Not cheaper. I'm not worried about cheap. I'm willing to pay market, whatever the market prices, and even a little bit more.

I'm not saying 25 percentile. I'm saying 50-75 percentile. Like, you actually are willing to pay the money to get the best of the best. Yeah. And if it's the best of the best, that's fine. And then, like, that's a net positive. If it's a small number of people you're very selective with it, then that's one thing. But I think it kind of bleeds into the wage thing where they people, their companies feel like they could pay less for people who come from overseas.

No, that's not what I'm thinking. I'm just thinking the competition of if we have certain jobs that maybe we're not doing a good job training in. Should we not put some competition for others to come in and, you know, compete for those jobs? Or should we wait? Now, his solution is There's 5,000 jobs at 120 If he offered it 250, he's just making up a number Like you're just spitball in here

If it's 250, he's going to get those jobs placed, okay? Maybe there's a point to it where you can But is that the solution? Is that the, do I pay 80% above what the market is paying For me to hire whatever the person is? Do I compete and bring some other people That want those jobs? I don't know.

I'm asking, I'm debating to see think about this like 93% of all student loans come from the government so why are we giving loans people who are matriced unproductive things like if we need certain jobs I love that idea yeah if we need certain jobs why not just give loans for the job for the majors that we need then we'd have a bunch of engineers and you know AI people or whatever the things and mechanics whatever we need are we could flood the market with that if we only give loans for that for a couple of years for college students but you know we still have a whole mix of some useless jobs some useless degree some important degree so I think we could steer the future education and whichever direction we want to if we use the power of the student loans. What do you think? One of the problems of that is that, you know, like you said, the government gets involved in the business and then it becomes a price thing because the price of education goes way up, which means that people are spending an order an amount of money on degrees that don't ever pay back.

Yeah. That's what we're saying when they're unproductive. Unproductive is you're not really creating value there, and the value proposition is all screwed up by the government's interference. So you don't have a labor market that is actually elastic enough to meet the match needs. people are confused about, you know, which direction we go. And this, again, gets back to the Ford thing. With Ford not paying the market rate for mechanics, that skews where people go.

We want more people in trade schools to be able to do that, but yet they see the wage rate is $120,000. That's not really enough to, because I'm going to have to make a major expense to educate myself. But if they were paying $250,000, that would have draw more people into trade schools. So there is a, there is screwed up market signals. all throughout the educational system because of the government's interference. And it's not really about deciding which jobs are going to be productive.

It's the fact that we flooded these colleges with just students. I mean, we tell kids from the very beginning, you need to go to college, you need to go to college, and half the people should never go to college. But because they go to college, the price of college goes way up, and it screws up the market signal for the entire labor market.

I agree with... The point I'm making is that maybe we don't need to keep pushing people to college, whether they be U.S. or foreign... But check this out. Here's a question. So what if we go his route? You know, you're at the meeting yesterday, and all these guys are talking about, I'm a G5, I'm a G3, I'm a G2, I'm a G4, you know, fifth generation wealth, first generation wealth, second generation wealth.

And then the one thing, one of the families, they did a family reunion annually, 90 people show up. And it's getting more and more complicated. it. The family had the biggest the cheese company in Wisconsin. Sargento, am I saying correctly? Sargento, yes. Sargento, yes. 1.7, $1.8 billion in revenue. And one of the kids was talking about, you know, where it's at a lot of people, people, oh my goodness, so $1.7 billion.

Every kid must be a billionaire in their family. That's not the case. Because you have to share that with two, 300 people eventually. You know, 100 people eventually got grandkids, all this stuff. But if you don't hit certain numbers, the family doesn't fund your education. If you don't go through certain criteria, I actually love the most basic concept of if you're not getting a degree in XYZ,

why are taxpayers funding it? No. By the way, you're a taxpayer watching this. I'm talking to you. You're watching this podcast. Just to very honest, can you guys just flood the comment section? And if you do a super chat on this topic,

I will read out, I don't care what the dollar amount is. What would you say are jobs that if the government is funding to get a degree, let's just say some of these folks that were paying for, what positions would you be okay with? What type of degrees? What would you say, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with this. What would you for sure be against you funding?

You're the taxpayer. What would you be against you funding? There's no way in the world I want to pay for that. What would it be? Think like a parent, your kid. If they say, Daddy, you have money, I want you to pay for Mike, college, tuition, what wouldn't you pay for? You'd be like, you're out of your flipping mind.

I'm not paying for that, right? What would it be? Can you guys comment below? Rob, can you read off some of the stuff that people are saying? You know, okay, so engineering they pay for. Trade schools. I'm seeing multiple trade school. Trade, trade.

By the way, Amir, trade school. Timbo, trade, trade, trade. Abraham Peters, he just gave a super chat, but not an answer. super-shed, but not an answer. So trade school, social studies, not paying for that. Trade school, engineering. By the way, 50% of the answer to your trade. Engineering, okay, fashion design, not paying for it, plumbers, against all of it, against paying anybody. Can we remove political science from a list too? Of course, political science. I mean, why would you get that, right? Well, you know, Tom, what do you think about what Brandon is saying? Because I kind of agree with them. As a parent,

And you told your daughters, right? You had a certain thing that you're not paying for college degrees. How come we're not doing that? That's a very easy, common sense decision to make. Well, I'm going to add a word to the debate here. Underwriting. We were talking about insurance. I basically taught my daughters what the word underwriting meant.

Underwriting is the process by which a life insurance or an insurance will put a price on your policy based on risk. How old are you, do you smoke? Have you had cancer? What kind of a car do you have? in a garage. Underwriting is all around us, and I exposed to them underwriting. I will cover your education and do things based on the usability and the value of the major. You don't have to go into venture capital or that line like I did or something like that. You don't. But find something that matches your heart, but let's go find something that's applicable. And they completely understood

it. I gave them facts and data. So I think we cause student loans, if they're going to to be independent student loans, co-sign for your kid. Let your kid get whatever you want. But you co-signed for that loan the same way that you coincide for their first checking account when they were 16 years old. I had to do that for Bailey to get her the checking account, Pat. I had to stand good for a $500 visa that's attached for a checking account.

You know where I'm going? Yeah, of course. The government didn't help me. Yeah. But if the government would say, well, look, if you want to co-sign for your kid to have gender studies at, at, at Brown, and you want to co-sign on that, go to your bank and get whatever student loan for your kid and co-sign for it.

But if you want the federal effing government to stand beside that, and then to put one of their, you know, horrifying loan processors, these predatory loan processors on student loans, then wait a minute, wait a minute. The underwriting standard for the United States will be this. Now, the second, let me give you another fact, $44 billion comes into the economy, because foreign students, by and large, don't get loans.

They come with money from those countries. 44 billion comes in because they pay the tuition, they pay for books, they pay for room and board, pay for food, and once they pay for food, they pay for toilet paper. So they're here out in the United States spending $44 billion on that, and so they come back. Now, here's the next part I go to. You force the universities to use their endowments to subsidize everything from, you know, professor salaries to the tuition. The purpose of the endowment would used to be that, hey, I want to give Pat a scholarship.

Hey, Pat, you're trying to, and by way, I talked to friends that did this. They're holding a letter from Stanford and a letter from USC. This is a real case study. And they're looking at who's going to give you the best financial aid because you're an exemplary student from Glendale. And they're looking at it and says, you know what, I'm going to USC. Because I can get an engineering degree both places.

I can get a business degree both places. But guess what? I get a little bit better deal from U.S.C. I'm going. Guess what that came from? Their interest and their profits and their endowments. How much did you say, Tom, $44 billion? $44 billion comes into the U.S. economy and tuition

and other spending from foreign students. So what do you do with that? You're the president. You're an advisor. Do you say no? if you say no that means that that money doesn't come in and so the schools are going to scream which would you rather have the money coming in or the government financing a fine arts degree taxpayers paying for

i step on the air hose at the federal government level which one of the two are you against more because there's an audience that's going to say i don't want neither i would turn down the foreign student visas not to zero some comes in and then i would adjust what the u.s. taxpayer is going to underwrite on those student loans. And I think you're going to, and I think you're going to get there. Okay. Let me read some of these super chats because I rarely ask for this. So limit federal student loans to those technical skills and jobs that need, that this nation needs to grow.

No student loans for gender studies. This is OFD-56. Okay. Next one. Trade skills and STEM careers. This is Blake Castillo. Okay. Next one.

Elevate to the unknown. Management and formation systems. Okay. Next one. from Razor 3. Ionite. Fund technical engineers stem with a contingency of commitment, aka they work for the government for two to four years. This also provides a return on investment

and gives experience for private sector. Interesting. I agree. Abraham, the answer to Ford is hiring from high school shop class as interns and train them up to master mechanics. I don't know if that's, but I like the fact that you're seeing what everybody else is saying. common sense why are we paying for this stuff

doesn't make any sense to me that we're funding this stuff I think you've got a very good point there you're making Brandon Jeff I think you want to say something no you say that's not what government does government doesn't do common sense well that's a good point let's go to the next one next one to me I want to get into is Bitcoin you hear a lot of people

right now saying Bitcoin free fall it's a you know this is it this is horrible Bitcoin price in free fall weeks after hitting all time high let me read this story to you so we got almost was exactly one year after rising to above $90,000 for the first seven minutes history. Bitcoin has fallen back to its level, suffering a severe price crash.

A record-breaking rally took the cryptocurrency to an all-time high above $125,000 last month. With some market analysis, fearing the sudden drop could be a beginning of a more sustained bare market. Bitcoin was trading on $93,000 on Monday morning, marking a 25% decrease over the last six weeks. previous price cycles have seen Bitcoin lose around 75% of its value after hitting record high. Here's what Michael Saylor had to say about it. Go ahead, Rob. Last time our next guest was on CNBC, he was expecting Bitcoin to be $150,000 by the end of the year.

Want to find out if he's changed his tune since late October, given the recent move in the crypto space. You're looking at Bitcoin right now at $94,000, $632. Michael Saylor is here, strategy founder and executive chairman. Good morning to you. What do you think? 150 by the end of the year? What do you think's happening here? You know, I think we all want to go to the moon, but if you want to ride the rocket,

you've got to be prepared to pull the G's. Over five years, Bitcoin's had like six brutal drawdowns. If you rolled the clock back 13 months, we were sitting around 68,000, and then after the Trump election, we had this. this incredible rally from 68 to 106,000 in five weeks. If you go back 14 months, we're about 55,000. And so if you said we're going to go from 55,000 and 94,000, and 14 months, that would have exceeded any reasonable investors' expectations.

Over five years, Bitcoin's up about 50% a year on average for the five years. Gold and S&P are studying the cost of capital to 14%. My company's strategy is up 71% equivalent to NVIDIA. There's no other stock in the S&P that's done any better. So I think the volatility comes with the territory. If you're going to be a Bitcoin investor, you need a four-year time horizon, and you need to be prepared to handle the volatility in this market. Okay, so what do you think?

What do you think is going on right now with Bitcoin, Jeff? Like I said, I think it's a barometer of short-run risk-taking. I think what he just said is absolutely true. If you're going to buy Bitcoin... Four years? At least. I mean, Bitcoin is a long-term thing. It's not a competing currency.

It's a risk asset. It's a store of value. It's not going to be replacing the dollar because we don't even use the dollar. So, Bitcoin is simply just a barometer of people's short-run risk-taking. So the price decline now doesn't mean Bitcoin's going to be wiped out or it's going to go to zero. It just means that right now there's a lack of demand for risky assets in the marketplace, which I think we can use as a gauge for overall short-run risk aversion about some of these other factors that have nothing really to do with Bitcoin.

It's not really about Bitcoin here. It's about the market psychology. Brandon, where are you at? Yeah, that makes sense that Bitcoin would be the first one to go. But I think it's super dramatic that you're saying it's falling off a cliff and this and that. I mean, like he said in the video, like right before Trump got elected, it was in the 60s and just because Trump gets elected and they're expecting all kinds of favor. things for crypto. It shoots up to over

100,000 and that's been kind of baked into the markets since Trump got elected, like the AI hype and the AI buzz and the that, like, the AI narrative is like really the story that's been carrying not just crypto, but the whole market, like, since Trump got elected. So I think it's normal.

I mean, I'm still, call me crazy, I'm still sketched out by Bitcoin because the creator's name means central intelligence when you translate it to English. You'll never convince me that's not weird, and we've never seen him before. But But yeah, in terms of just looking out like a chart, I don't think it's like a concerning crazy thing.

I think like there's people just getting shaken out. Tom, where you at? So where I'm at is I see two major things happen. First of all, all this macro, all the market uncertainty doesn't help. Specifically, if interest rates are going to be higher, then I can get higher rates on cash and I don't have to go to riskier things like Bitcoin to get my return. Higher rates means that those are less appealing. Well, now we're seeing 50-50 for just a 0.25 rate cut, and I'm now waving my flag for a 0.5 rate cut, as many others are, for December.

I don't want to impact retirement fixed income. So the first thing is macro market uncertainty is out there, made everybody nervous. Then what happened this week is I call it the liquidation dominoes. The liquidation dominoes. There was massive profit taking by the crypto proxies. And the crypto proxies are the companies like Michael Saylor, who basically have a product. they're selling and they make profits, but basically they pile all this Bitcoin on their balance sheet. And so they're a crypto proxy. The crypto proxies took profits because where we are right now, I believe we are $10 under where we were on January 1st. Am I correct? On a full, on a year-to-date basis? I think it was right there, right? That were back where we started. Did you enjoy 2025? You're back where you started. Well, then you have what also the leverage positions. You know, investors that have a lot of cash

may not have to do this. But investors with not a lot of cash read all the Reddit things. It says, hey, use 10 grand to buy Bitcoin and get another 5 grand of it because you can borrow against the 10 grand at 50%. You follow that. Yes. They're all over the red. You look at the Reddit logs and the Reddit chats. Oh, do it this way. Do it this way. Well, guess what happens when the price comes down? You get auto traded. What's auto traded? You have a margin account. Hey, for your convenience. We automatically traded out because that asset was going down. Your margin was different than 50%. So we auto traded and they happened. I heard that in the last two trading days, $917 million in Bitcoin was sold on liquidation auto trades. So guess what? There's the other

domino. And then lastly, profit taking by the independent investors where you saw the first part of this two weeks ago, when it started, people jumped out and said, well, I've made enough this year, and those are the part-timers that aren't the long-termers. So the short-term sold out, you know, auto trades took away people that were under margin. Cryptoproxies, you know, took some profit out. And then everybody doesn't like the fact that the interest rates aren't going to go down, which makes a risky currency like Bitcoin more valuable. Yeah. So, okay, again, I think the best thing I took away from everything with this, If you're going to get into Bitcoin, have a minimum of a four-year way of looking at it.

If not, it's not worth it. Almost like buying a house. If you're buying a house for three months, it's a bad investment. If you're buying a house for 10 years, 5-10 years, you should be fine. So if you're buying a Bitcoin, look at it the same exact way as well, not day trading like some of these guys are doing. Let's go to the next story. Next story is the following.

Retirement age. Most Americans think 63 is the perfect age to retire, but they're dead wrong. here's the big number to bet on. You ready, folks? Earmuffs. If you're that age, 63 or higher, and you're thinking retirement, you're probably not going to like this story.

So I want you to brace for impact on what number they're given away here. It doesn't start with the number six. Okay, so let's go through it. According to 2024 Mass Mutual Retirement Happiness Study, most Americans retirees, pre-retires, consider 63 to be the ideal age for retirement with an average retirement age of 62, which coincides with the earliest age for claiming social

security benefits. Today's retirees are coming close to that mark, but future retirees may find it difficult to retire in their early 60s, more than a third of pre-retirees, 35% report that their retirement savings are short of where they would need to be to completely retire an ideal age, according to Mass Mutual study. Meanwhile, 34% of pre-retirees believe that there's a decent chance they would outlive their savings with 22% of retirees sharing the same concern. Put simply, retiring 62 or 63 may be popular,

but this may not be ideal when you consider all the factors that are in place. Your Social Security benefits would roughly be 30% lower for your tire at 62 versus for retirement, 867, depending on where you were born, according to new Social Security Administration. Another factor to consider is longevity. As of 2023, overall life expectancy in the U.S.

is 78 years old, according to centers, CDC. However, typical Americans' life expectancy can stretch into 80s and even 90s depending on their gender, date of birth, and state according to the Yale School of Public Health. In other words, if you retire at 62, you may need to ensure that your nest stake is big enough to keep you afloat for up to three decades when you consider all the data and eligibility. It may seem the ideal window for retirement, maybe around 67 years old. Okay, so what do you think about this, Jeff? You've got to work as long as you can.

I mean, it's a simple truth. I know, like you said, people don't want to hear that, but it's the actual truth. I mean, not only we're living longer, the cost of living longer continues to go up. I mean, health care prices continue to spirals. We haven't fixed those yet. So you've got to factor that in. You've got to work as long as you can. Tom, thoughts.

I'm looking for a statistic here. Rob, maybe you can help me. I read that 30% of your lifetime medical costs will happen in the last 18 months of your life. And so you need to be ready for that so that you're not wiped out prematurely. Number one. Number two is I look at a lot of people that I know they want to work and they want to stay active. Now, do they want the same job they did? If they were a mechanic at Ford with the arthritis, can they continue to be a mechanic at Ford?

No, could they be a tutor or a teacher part-time? Sure they could. I know a lot of people that want to stay active. And you look at them, and I'm serious, I look around the people. I know, they say, I'd like to keep doing something, but I'd like to keep doing something that I enjoy doing, and it's not walking up and down a floor at a beach with a metal detector. I really want to do something I enjoy, but I'm not going to work that much, but I want the social aspect of it, and I want to feel productive. People that talk about, also, I think

there's a average lifespan for people that take permanent retirement and actually do nothing, not even community service or volunteering. It's shocking that how much. how much shorter the lifespan is versus the people that do something in terms of community service or keeping their – 30% of your lifetime medical hot hit in your final 18 months. Yep, there it is. So you better be ready for that so that, number one, you can pay for it. What's a good way to do that? Get some basic benefits from a company that's willing to pay you part-time

and do something you really love doing and stay active. Makes sense. Brandon. Yeah, so remember we talked about that time that if you – for 40 years, you make $60,000 a year, you give 10% of that to the S&P every year. You end up with $2.3 million after 40 years. So that's one thing. We've conditioned people to not save like that

because of the stupid FDR Social Security stuff that got people into the state of not having to save the money. And like we just create this mindset of, okay, Social Security 401K, you're going to be good. Don't worry about. But nobody's good for it. It's like I think at $5 million is probably the number that you need to retire if you retire at 70 to not be stressed out.

But it's offensive to think that people will still want to retire in their 60s, like that was the age in the 1930s. So, you know, I would make fun of anybody who tried to, like, say, make the case for retirement in their 60s. If you can do it and you chose to do it, it is what it is. If you set yourself up, you know, if you say, well, I'm going to retire whatever age I want, you know, listen, if that's what you want to do, what I've noticed is people retire early, they're typically miserable, okay?

And I'm not talking about everybody. The happiest people I know, my dad's one of the happy. people I met in my life. He's 83 years old. He's still working. And I have relatives that stop working in their 40s. They're the most miserable people I've met in my life ever because they stop working. So it's not even about the money and oh my God, life is not all about work and life is no, it's not about that. It's about contributing. It's about constantly being seen as that person is needed. My dad till today is needed. We need him. Do you know what I'm saying? Like we need him. There's a value for the individual to say, this family needs me, dad, we need you to go pick up the kids.

We need you to go drop off the kids. Man, I am still needed to exist and live and serve and give. We need that element of being there. But for some people, like Rob ran a poll right now. If you look at the poll, it's interesting what it looks like. If you can pull this up, you know, what age do you plan on retiring? Look at this. Some people put before 60, 22%.

Early 60s, 25%. Late 60s, 24%, 70 plus, 29%. Our audience, 29% are planning on working to pass 70. The people that want to work past 70, I want to have dinner with you. I want to meet you. I respect you. I luck all of you guys that you're watching this. but the people that are 70 plus

we should have dinner with all the people that are in the 70 plus category and we should do it later on when we're 70 plus and everybody's got a job or a business we sit down and talk to each other. Well, in my experience, one of the reasons why early retirees are, as you said, miserable because a lot of them are,

is because they continuously fret about having enough savings. They're always a slave to the market. Am I going to make enough in the stock market? Like you said, the idea that the government's going to cover you that has been embedded in the national psyche and that needs to go away completely. But even those who realize that the government's not going to be there,

is the market up today? Is it going to be up next week? Oh my God, if the market goes down, what if we go into a recession? What am I going to do? That's why they're miserable. So if you work as long as you can and get to earned income or save, God forbid, what you actually need for retirement, that's where the happiness goes.

Okay, so this next story, though, Jeff, is the number of households live in paycheck to paycheck has risen. Why? This is a USA Today's story. Labor recession. We're going to come back to it here. Why is this happening, folks? So, Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it.

New Bank of America analysis shows one in four U.S. households is living paycheck to paycheck with almost nothing left after the basics. Researchers track spending on groceries, housing, gas, child care, and utilities. They found many families are using 95% of their income just to cover those necessities. The report highlights a case-shaped economy. where higher-income Americans are doing far better than those at the bottom. President Trump has dismissed affordability concerns as a con job pushed by Democrats. Okay, so before we get into those stats, quick feedback to USA Today, editor, turn the music down.

What was, like, can you forward this to the editor of USA Today, please, if you're watching this? Why do you have the level so high? Lower it. And I like your taste for music because it was like they're trying. to find that Blade. Remember Blade, the movie back into this? Like the opening of the movie. I like the taste for music, but just lower the temperature a little bit on that. Wesley Snipes. Tom, your thoughts on this. Well, this is kind of what we've talked about today.

And so I won't be repetitive. But this is the statistics proving what we're saying is true. The Biden recession raised the price on things. And right now, people are $1.25 trillion in credit card debt. that they're actually using for gasoline and food. So that doesn't mean that they're using that and paying it off the end of the month. They're not. And so they've got some problems here.

And this is why I was saying that I feel that if the president took immediate steps on energy and what was the two things they talked about, energy and groceries, and take steps on those two things to help Americans with affordability, because guess what? There are jobs coming. Is there a panacea coming? No. But there's just Toyota announcing a battery plant in what, Tennessee or something that's going

to have 5,100 jobs at that battery manufacturing plant. So in other words, jobs are coming. Things are happening. But we have a gap between the – this is the time where we're in the hospital bed and we're waiting to get better. And so there's a lot of things we have to do for Americans, and this is what they are. The other side of it is – and I'm going to put the – this just as 10% of it, you know, there's an awful lot of consumption spending in the United

States that the average consumer could pull back on. I mean, how many subscriptions do you need for, you know, for cable and digital media? Do you need Netflix and Hulu and, and, and, and, and, and, and, when you look at some of those things, you know, there's an opportunity for people to be a little bit more efficient with the dollar. And they say, no, no, no, no, no, because, you know, when I'm feeling down, I really need those things. but right now we could do things for the American household pat if we want to as a country and Trump could start with the stroke of the pen and then I think he should be waving this flag is saying this is what I inherited this is now it coming home to roost but I'm the guy that's going to

fix it I'm going to start today with some energy things and some food things and I'm going to help but he is right every about the media wants to take everything and turn it into affordability and beat the crap out of him with it. So the president is correct that the Democrats want to cause everything to be that and to blame you for that. Oh, it was colder today in Nebraska. That's an affordability thing that's the fault of the President Trump, right? You know, missile found in Cuba footlocker.

You know what? If American affordability been different, that missile wouldn't be there. They can't play that freaking game. And that's where the president has got really thin skin and he should have. But right now, he's got the pen, he's got the pulpit, he's had really effective policies that he's put in. He's negotiating with people like the Saudis we saw. He's got the power. He's got decision momentum. Go after food and energy right now and show America what leadership is all about on affordability. Jeff. Hey, Rob, can you pull up, you go to St. Louis Fred. Real personal

income excluding transfer receipts. This is an income stat. It's a broad income stack that shows you the aggregate level of private income in the economy. It's one of my favorite databases. Yeah. What do you on? One of the few things the Fed actually does. Fred. Fred. It was a step in the full thing. St. Louis, Fred, Fed, Fred.

And then real personal income excluding transfer receipts. So this is just private income and it's adjusted for prices. There we go. So you got real disposable income and real personal income. And you notice, first of all, in 2008, that series fell off and it never came back. We've been living in an economy for the last almost. 20 years where you don't have enough income. And then you look at 2020, just after the spike in 2021 and 2022, it levels off again.

So what I'm saying is American income has been falling further and further behind, further and further behind, and people know it. That's why they're all upset to voters. Voters are upset. That's why they're set of politicians. They keep falling further and further and further behind. So the statistic that we were talking about here, was it one in four living paycheck to paycheck? I actually think it's higher than that. I think it's probably closer to a third.

Well, let me tell you what's interesting, what you're saying, because, Rob, can you pull up the poll? Our audience. Our audience is like, it's not like they're watching a show that socialism, that, you know, rich people are bad and capitalism's horrible. Our audience, polling, living paycheck to paycheck, zoom in, okay? Three thousand people voted 59%. That's more like it. Again, it's not a, you know, labor market, whatever you want to call it. I don't want to, who cares what we call it? It's an economy that doesn't work. And I hate the term K-shaped economy, by the way,

because every economy in existence is K-shaped. You go back to the Great Depression. Rich people are doing well in the Great Depression. An economy is doing well when there are a few people in the bottom part of the K. That statistic we just went over for real personal income shows that there are way too many people in the bottom part of the K. It's lack of income, lack of jobs, lack of labor. market mobility and growth. That's why people are living paycheck to paycheck.

And one of the drivers in 2008 was shortly thereafter was a dramatic change to the cost of health care in America driven by ACA. And so when we all save money on health insurance. Did you get the message? And if you if you want you like your doctor? No. Yeah. I kept in the I didn't keep mine. You keep your doctor. But Pat, right there if you go if you could also look and that wasn't the only thing, but it was a major impact on the American household. The true about what happened to the cost of health insurance for everybody else except the 30 million people that supposedly got Obamacare and got benefits. And look, that, we never recovered from that. So we created the gap. You see how the lines stay together remarkably? It's getting wider, Tom.

That's that concern. But now at the top. Like at the last two years? This is why people are so upset about the 2008 bailout. That was a watershed moment because they think, well, the bankers got bailed out. I've been falling further and further behind for 20 friggin' years. I don't blame them. No, I don't either. I mean, you have to look at that. You should have to look at that. You should have let some of those companies go.

And this too big to fail concept, you should let them. The idea was, and you play a little bit of devil's advocate. The idea was if we bail out those firms, that wouldn't happen. But it did. But it did. Yeah. And nobody's ever accounted for it.

Who's the gentleman that we bring the economists that we've had on a few times? Spencer, uh, uh, uh, uh, Richard Warner. Richard Warner that we bring on, and he breaks this down. They call him the godfather of quantitative easing. I think that's the nickname that's been he's been... Quantitative easing did work. It didn't. It did not work.

Have you guys done anything together or no? You and him? No. Never have. No. Brandon, what do you have with this? Yeah, Trump's got to stop acting like inflation is gone. Because it's kind of like gasoline everybody when you're saying something that's different than the reality.

He's going to lose a lot of people if he keeps saying this. We would respect a plan of action if he came out and said, like, okay, this is this way because of this, but to act like it doesn't exist, to act like, no, the stock market's great, so the economy is great. And that's disregarding probably 80% of the population. So I don't know if he actually thinks that that's the case what he's saying, or if he's trying to... Well, this is what they're saying. A year ago, Thanksgiving to today. Classic holiday feast, down 3%. Dinner rolls, down 22%. National brand, frozen vegetables, down 15%. Stuffing, gravy mix, fresh cranberries.

down 3 to 4%. National brand pumpkin pie down 3%. Prepared mashed potatoes down 1.5%. So they're sharing some of these numbers on what's going on that groceries is down a year over year. That doesn't mean it's not a lower period, but they're given a date on what's happened

since Biden was in versus him. Well, have you ever seen the way the government measures the CPI where if one thing gets too expensive, they change the things in the basket so they can make the play with the number? So I don't think the vast majority of our government in data is complete BS. So when they give us a number, I don't trust it that much.

Yeah. I think CPI Look at this year. Look at this year. Look at this year. Change from 2024. 16 pound. Is that 16 pound? Frozen turkey is down 16.3%. I don't think that's pound or rap. No, it is. It's a 14.14 pound, I think, is what they call a

Tom Turkey. So 14 to 16, it's like a 10% thanks here. Okay, got it. So down 163. 14 ounce cube. stuff it makes down nine dinner roll you saw the one three pounds sweet potatoes down 37 percent one pound of veggie tray carrots and celery down up uh so that i'm sorry up 37 up 63 up 17 frozen peas up a gallon of milk is up 16 3 that's big and then miscellaneous ingredients down canned pumpkin pie about the same two frozen pie crust down point eight half pine whipping cream up 3.2 So some up, some down.

But listen, if 60% of our audience is saying they're living a paycheck to paycheck, and by the way, for some of you guys that also said, can I challenge you a little bit? 60% of you guys that said, are you also part of that camp that said you want to retire before 60? Are you also part of that camp that said you want to retire, you know, early 60s or late 60s? you think that mindset is serving you financially? Don't get me wrong. I understand what's going on with the economy. Totally get it.

I understand what's going on with challenging things are, living paycheck to paycheck. But maybe we can also have an adjustment in our mindset, not saying they don't need to do their things, but also for us to have real managing of expectations of what it's going to look like. The odds are most of you watching this, if you're below 40,

you're probably going to touch. 90. Okay? You're probably going to touch 90. 85, 88, 87, life expectancy with the way things are going to be. Who knows what we're going? So we need to be also managing expectations better with how things are moving forward. Let me do one other story here before we wrap up. Here's a story I'm going to go to. Blue Owl. Okay. Plunges to 23 low after blocking exit from fund. Okay. So let me read this to you. I know Jeff, you and Tom. both have a lot to say about this. I'm going to come to him.

We'll wrap up the podcast with this year. So Blue Al Capital, Inc. shares have fallen to their low since 2023, December after the alternative asset manager restricted investors from redeeming capital from one of its oldest private credit funds. Shares dropped almost 6% on Monday closing at 13.78. The firm announced earlier this month that it would merge its $1.8 billion non-traded business development company, Blue Owl Capital Corporation, two with its $17.6 billion

or publicly listed vehicle, Blue Owl Capital Corps, or OBDC, but investors in non-traded fund won't be able to redeem their capital until the merger closes, which is expected to happen early next year. Invested in the acquired vehicle will swap their holdings for OBDC stock. That means they could see paper losses as much as 20% if the deal closes at current share price, given that OBDC shares are trading at much higher over discount compared to the value of the fund business. thoughts on the story? There is a growing problem in what's called private credit or shadow banking, whatever term you want to talk about it. It is potentially, it could, if it continues to go in this

direction, it could turn into a financial crisis. And the reason is because a lot of this private credit, without getting into really the deep weeds here, it's just a source of relending in the economy. So you have these investment funds that borrow, they get seated by wealthy investors, a lot of hedge funds, things like that. They borrow in wholesale markets like repo to leverage up the returns. And it's basically these investment funds, these private credit shadow bank funds are blank balance sheets. They've been heavily involved, huge volumes over the last several years because the regulated banks haven't been lending in risky sectors of the economy. So private credit funds have been absolutely banging the table on volume, volume, volume, and credit growth without really

paying a whole lot of attention to the fundamentals, to the underwriting. Underwriting has gone by the wayside here. There's that word again. Yeah, exactly. And it's a very important word. I mean, we see this in every credit cycle in human history. You know, greed takes a hold of everybody. You rationalize away the risk. All the kind of stuff of bubble, all the bubble behaviors that we associated in 2008. We're seeing it again here in the 2025 in private credit.

So what that could potentially lead, what's really happening is there's a lot of losses because there was a lot of dumb lending that took place over the last several years as they were volumin up and growing and whatnot. We don't know. Because it's sort of in the shadows, we don't have a real idea. of what those losses might actually end up being. And, of course, that feeds into mistrust in the marketplace. And it could from there potentially spill over into something bigger.

So what we're trying to figure out is how many losses there are and who has them. And if there are enough of them, who is going to end up paying the bill? The problem with that process of the downside of a credit cycle is that it can spill over into the general marketplace where if there's not enough information, and believe me, there is not, then people just say, screw this, I want my money back. This is what happened in the earliest stages of the 2008 crisis. I don't want to get, I mean, I'm not making a comparison to 2008 in any other way. Then that's just the process it takes.

What you had is you had a bunch of hedge fund investors that were earlier exposed to subprime mortgages and really subprime mortgages that looked a lot like this, securitized structures and whatnot. You had hedge funds investors that said, I don't know what's going on here. I'm not getting any answers from my fund managers. They're not telling me the truth. All I know is that there's funds. fun guys over here that are losing tons of money, I don't want to be one of those. Give me my money back.

So what you had was a bunch of hedge fund redemptions hit the marketplace, which then created a cascade of selling that became the 2008 crisis. So what we're seeing here with the Blue Owl story is the latest in a series of escalations moving in that same direction. It started with Tricolor, then it was first brands, then it was, you know, a couple of small regional banks that were exposed to first brands, and it was primalind. then we started getting notice from UBS. UBS said we're shutting down a couple of our hedge funds.

Why? They started getting hit with redemptions. And so this Blue Owl story is, again, the same thing. Hedge fund investors are saying, give me my money back. And these funds are not even exposed to the bankruptcies that we see so far. And so what that potentially tells us is that the investors in these institutional spaces are getting cold feet about the entire space. And if that's the case, then you have what becomes.

What started out is potentially a credit crisis starts to become a liquidity crisis. Well, exactly. And now for everybody that was listening to that, I'll give you an easy visual. In the movie, The Big Short, you have the wealthy individual, I forget what his name was, comes in and sits down with Michael Burry and says, we want to take our money out. You can't do that right now. I'm freezing all withdrawals. He says, Michael, you can't do this.

I want my mind about it. I'm calling my attorney. Remember that whole interchange? That is exactly what we're talking about here. And Blue Owl was trying to merge things together. They were literally trying to build the jenga that was built on the table in the big short where they talked about all this. Because they were trying to take Blue Owl 1 and Blue Al 2 put them together so that they could have diversified risk. And they said, you can't do a redemption while we're putting this together.

Well, then guess what? Then the merger broke. They couldn't get it together. They couldn't get all the approvals they needed, so it stopped. Meanwhile, we covered tricolor last week on used cars, where they found that the asset value of all the used cars that were out there was less than the value of the subprime auto loans here, which is why everybody was saying, oh, it's all subprime, subprime, but it's not. Now you have this happening. And by the way, U.S. regulators have fired the first shot. And it's called HPS partners.

HPS investment partners. They're a private credit arm of a company called BlackRock. And they're responsible for running highly leveraged but high returns. So their charter go find things that maybe might be untenable for other people will be smarter. So they put $400 million back by receivables. The receivables of the company's appear to be fake future sales. Wow.

So now Black Rock's got HPS going, wait a minute. These guys lied to us. The telecom guys lied to us. And they never checked. So now Black Rock is like, and Black Rock's saying, it's not us. It was a division of us at arm's lengths that we call HPS.

Bologna! It was you. It was HPS. You knew them, but you've deliberately set it up to keep some distance things. But now the federal investigators are coming in here going, hey, you 18-year-old college boys got beer in there? Are you having a party you shouldn't be? And so that's the knock at the door. So what we're seeing here is some things out there when times get good too long, Pat, what happens?

People get sloppy. You've talked about it. You've talked about it so many times in the businesses that you've ran that I've watched you and that I've sat next to you and watched you run. them when things get really good sometimes that's when people get sloppy or get a little careless or cut corners ladies and gentlemen your private capital market and it's coming and the problem is that the private capital market is huge it's gotten to be really huge so it actually can impact a lot more and why in 24 did black rock agree to acquire it they wanted the return so you guys have figured out European telco and you figured out how to get some of the

bonds on the equipment building there have there and you've done this yeah I'll give you 12 billion for that whole stack. That's what they did. Now U.S. investigators are going back going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me some of this was fake receivables on sales that didn't exist. So BlackRock's going to say, I didn't know that. Yeah. You were a bad underwriter. Where's your diligence?

Nobody wanted to underwrite. Everybody wanted to do, it's bubble behavior. Everybody just wants to get the deal of them. I want the $12 billion because I need the return. I don't care about the red light on diligence. We know personally, we know a company that is at that seven-year mark of having raised a ton of money and those guys are coming and saying, hey, we need that money back. We need that money back. We don't care how you get it. We need that money back. You've reached that moment here. Did you have

any thoughts on this? I'm going to go to the Tim Cook story. Just quickly, I think it's crazy to me that nothing's happened in the last 15 years where it's been this great growth and like the stock market and asset price. So like I'd be shocked if something didn't give eventually. It's like just like he's in. Yeah. Last one here is Tim Cook. I know this is one you wanted to talk about. Tim Cook may step down as Apple CEO as early as next year says reports. This is from Entrepreneur Magazine. Rob, is this him speaking or is this him... This is our Reuters report on the succession plan.

Okay, go for it. Go for it. Apple is stepping up its succession plans as it prepares for CEO Tim Cook to step down as soon as next year. That's according to a report in the Financial Times, which cited several people familiar with discussions. The report said that John Ternis, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering,

is widely seen as Cook's most likely success. Apple Insiders were quoted as saying the company's board and senior executives had recently intensified plans for Cook to hand over the reins after more than 14 years at the helm. The report also said that Apple is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period. Cook became CEO in 2011 after Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs resigned, ending his reign at the tech giant he co-founded in 1976 in his parents' garage. Yeah, so I guess you could take the approach with us of Apple wouldn't be what it is

today without Tim Cook, but also you could take the approach of saying that Tim Cook was just like this conservative guy who inherited the creations that Steve Jobs very created and played it safe and maybe was the right fit at the right time where he just and did the conservative things instead of the overly aggressive things, and they blossomed into the $4 trillion company because of the conservative nature of him. But also people are criticizing Apple for not being innovative enough and not doing anything with AI and not creating a lot of new products over the last couple of years. So I think it's kind of like a debate between those two things.

Like I wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had not died and was CEO from like until today instead of Tim Cook. Maybe Apple wouldn't be the same. Maybe it'd be much bigger. But I don't know. I think that's something interesting to consider. I don't think it'll be, like, I think it's probably time for him to step down and it could be a good thing because they're, I kind of have a point where they haven't done anything. That's the criticism. The criticism is right there, what you said.

What is the new product? So versus if Steve was there, maybe they would have new products. To me, I'm 50-50. I think sometimes crisis happens. And nobody expected him to, you know, when he got his cancer, he started doing his walks and everybody's wondering, who are you going to get? And he brought the finance guy on a bit of a guy that's the safer guy. And he came in and he did a decent job. He took it from where was at.

And right there, if you look at it, from October 5th, 2011, which is when Steve Jobs died to today. Actually, was it October 11th when he died? October 5th, 2011. Yeah, when he died to today, 2, 280% return. And you know what I did? I ran 14 years prior to that to see how that compares against Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was at the previous 14 years.

He had a rate of return of 80%. 600. So he 86xed the business where, you know, Tim Cook 23X, but that makes sense. The company was newer. The company was, you know, had newer announcements that was being made. A lot of the products was made under jobs. So you would expect that uptick. But Tom, where are you at with this here? So a couple things. First of all, I think he did a good job making a very nimble, profitable driving Apple. But the succession plan that they needed, they needed five years ago, and it's the product's a session plan. It's to diversify that.

I'll give you a very interesting stat here. At its peak, Apple had 18% global phone market share. Remember, once you get outside the United States, Android's everywhere. That's right. And now it's 17%. Now, the smartphone marketplace is bigger. So the 17% is of a bigger pie. However, the pie is now looking to slowly shrink.

for two reasons. One, most everybody has a phone. Phone penetration isn't going to be the magic push. Get one for mom. Get one for your kid. We've played that game, right? In Europe and the United States and in developed Asia, which is, you know, Korea and Japan. All of that sir. However, the other part of it is they're making phones too good. People are not replacing their phones the way Apple wants experience. So people are keeping phones longer. And if the economy is not so good and the phone's working just fine, you don't replace it here in the U.S. And so they need a new, they need more product, they need more push. And I think the next CEO is going to have to inherit an Apple that just like under Tim Cook needs to kind of find its way forward.

Jeff. I think what you said exactly right. I mean, the criticism is why didn't Apple reinvent itself to a certain extent 10 years ago? were they just happy, just, you know, the business that they had built, the jobs had built, and just managing the mature life cycle of the business, and why weren't they pioneering new fields and technology? Did you see who's replacing Tim, though? The VP of product, right?

The SVP of product. Did they get the message a little bit too, like, to your point? Did they get a little bit too late? Yeah. But guess what? Listen, they're making a move. We're going to learn this guy here, you're going to hear a lot of his name, if this guy ends up replacing him because he's reporting to Tim Cook.

So he's been hardware engineer since 2021. We'll see. We'll see what's going to happen. University of Pengai. What else do we know about him? He began as Korea as a mechanical engineer designing virtual reality, et cetera, virtual research systems. Join Apple in 01 as a member of the product design team working first on Apple

Cinema Display in 2013. It was appointed vice president of hardware engineer under Dan Rissio. And he overseed a product of AirPods, Mac and iPad. All right. I mean, it sounds like a qualified guy for them, but we'll see what it happened. Having said that, folks, we are at the end of the podcast. Jeff Snyder, really enjoyed having you on. Jeff's got a YouTube channel as well called the Eurodollar University.

If you haven't yet subscribed, Rob, can we put the link below for them to go follow? Jeff, it was great having you all, man. My pleasure. This was awesome. Yeah, really enjoyed having you on. Take care, everybody. God bless. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.