The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #162 (Other Notable Stories) - Small Businesses Big Problems, Bailing Out Banks, SPR Drain

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week: -Small businesses are fucked -Housing collapse -BRRRRR -BoJ defends the undefendable -McDonald’s going upscale -Banks on the brink of bailouts -Pissing in the SPR tanks -Canadian economy and so much more From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Good start there. Okay, where do you want to start with notables here? Well, just there's a bunch of them, but I think we're going to fly by them because there's a Bloomberg report that came out this past week, and it's showing that U.S. small businesses are teetering on collapse because rent delinquencies are up substantially. And it's a staggering 43% of small businesses were unable to pay their rent in full in April.

And they're saying this is due to economic headwinds and i find this funny because when i hear everything to do with the economy from some people they say it's fine so i'm not sure how it is these people are struggling to pay their rent but of those that did pay their rent to 52 did not pay april's rent on time so it if you break this down, 43% are unable to pay their rent in full. And the ones that did, 52% don't even pay it on time. So that's pretty damning. These landlords, they're going to be suffering at a time when borrowing costs are higher and running costs are higher. So it's going to make it more challenging for them to make ends meet so rent costs for these small businesses obviously have gone up quite a

bit also profits are significantly lower than before so if you combine the two factors you can understand they don't have enough money to pay these rents now if you want to break down which states have the highest percentage of renters small business renters that are unable to pay their bills texas is leading the league here 52 that's pretty high then it's followed by massachusetts california and maryland but yeah like texas i wasn't expecting that but it's california i i would have put them on the top of the list in fact new york i thought i even put even higher than that but this is california i i would have put them on the top of the list in fact new york i thought even put even higher than that but this is damning stuff small businesses i'm not sure how much it

makes up for the the economy united states i think it's a small figure in the grand scheme of things but it's just as you say another signpost that things are not heading in the right direction and as these businesses fall dreams fall alongside with that these are people that are going to be looking for handouts some support on the social system that's already strained as it is just it just gets worse and worse every year so i don't know what else to say about this this story here i mean either 43 seems very high though doesn't it it really does who's reporting that is does and reporting people reporting the jobs numbers like is it the same random number generator behind that it's always high so if they'll

revise this later on to about 13 better i don't think that's the case and could you imagine you're a landlord you know you're collecting rent and then these guys are late or not being in full what do you do you evict and what do you replace them with like you get the building back if you squat in it that's what the landlords are doing you're squatting in their own buildings that's actually a good idea then you serve from a new you pay nothing and it's yours that's actually gonna if you claim your name is like just use a pseudonym like pablo or something they can't fucking trace it to the landlord like yeah i'm pablo what the fuck here you go pablo here's your new building we should

have put this content behind the patreon paywall this was that was good we're gonna save a lot of people a lot of money i think that's true yeah but which state was it any particular as new york i think that was guilty of that they're all i mean I mean, some of the stories you see, we haven't done a landlord eviction slash squatting stories on the show in a while, but there was that one, that one clip that was on Twitter. I must've said to a million people, honestly, some woman owns a house. She's been gone a while. So it was New York.

Yeah. Someone is squatting in the house. She goes to get them kicked out. The squatters call the police and she gets arrested for trespassing. You can't make it up. And when people say, this is obviously small business owners are not going through this, at least not yet. But when people say that private property is not the right you think it is, boy, oh boy. If that set of rights goes by the wayside, Len, you are in for a treat in the United States. The social fabric will dissipate quicker than anyone can imagine, for sure.

Joey, there's – and I want to hear your take on this because I could not figure out what the fuck to make of this. And it's a total trad-fi story. That's why maybe I can't wrap my head around it is because the united states treasury said they're going to be launching a buyback program and they say this is the first time this has happened since 2002 i think they were doing it from 2000 to 2002 the fuck is all this all about like i don't quite understand what it is that they're trying to achieve i'm not exactly sure what it is you're trying to do because they're all they're still also trying to sell a whole bunch of debt over

the next little while um they're not changing the amount of debt is remaining the same so they're still selling debt but doing a buyback program they're buying they're buying the debt so it's like like yeah kind of so basically they're they're buying the debt. So it's like- The old debt that's cheap. Yeah, kind of. So basically they're buying debt. My understanding is the auctions have not been great in the treasury market. So I think when you have an auction, this is way above my head, but I'll do my best here. When you have an auction, basically you issue debt at different durations or whatever, and people either buy it or don't buy it. And the thing is, if someone doesn't buy, I don't know, at a regular auction, if you ever go to Brian's auction here in Southern Ontario, okay? If someone doesn't buy-

Do they sell treasuries? Is that how they want to show up? They sell skids of Lay's chips. But if this keeps up, there can't be that many more months before treasuries start to appear in the lots. Oh, the CBP is going to show up. Yeah, I'm going to bid on a lot of those. A lot of skids of US treasuries here.

Yeah, 10-year, 4%. Denny Takers. So I think a lot of people are saying that, look, I'm not going to buy any of these treasuries because I think rates are going to go up over the course of five or 10 years, which may happen. I have no idea. So what they do is they buy back treasuries that are on the market. And so if I look at, I'm trying to find a decent summary of it here, but the program will involve weekly buybacks

of 2 billion in coupon securities and up to 500 million in tips, which I think is inflation protected securities, something like that, treasury inflation. Think about that, $2 billion. This is the thing, okay? I am totally like nihilistic on this now. I actually don't think any of those numbers are real.

They're made up. I don't think anyone actually knows how much they're buying back. The balance sheet, the general ledger, it's all just made up. All those numbers don't matter. It's just so like Bloomberg or Seeking Alpha or whatever can report something. Someone can write something about the treasury auction instead of just they bought back a bunch. They have to say they bought back 2 billion. The jobs numbers we know for sure are made up, like statistically impossible similarities month to month. They're made up.

Let me read this here and then we can see what we can do with this. The treasury market has always been the largest and most liquid segment. This is written by AI. I'm not going to read this actually. Speaking of such a dog shit website. Anyway, the point is they're not selling at all. Yeah, they're not selling any long-dated treasuries. I know. It's indicative that people no longer have faith in the US debt market. No, and I have an awesome idea.

Let's buy some and let's do a giveaway on the show. Can we get them for cheap? If no one wants to buy them, can I get a couple for like a buck? What's the minimum bid? I don't know. Let's give it away at a show you gotta get dj boyapati can tell me next time i listen to i'll message him be like hey buddy let's get a couple bucks together me you joe consorti len we'll we'll uh we'll get a couple of uh skids of treasuries here we can do it except bitcoin I doubt it.

Not yet, but they should. And so anyway, the whole point is that no one wants to buy the debt. So they just buy it themselves. Is that it? And then when you... I love how it works. Well, here's the thing, right? It's confusing for us because we're just a couple of guys with day jobs who do this for

shits and giggles. The only reason I know about any of this stuff is because it affects my Bitcoin bag. So otherwise, I just don't care. Or it affects the price of my house. Otherwise, I just don't care. But there are people whose entire career revolves around these systems who don't have a fucking idea how they work. One is Stephanie Kelton.

One is the other guy from that MMT video, the Biden economic advisor, who's talking about how debt is issued through treasuries. He doesn't know. One is the other guy from that MMT video, the Biden economic advisor, who's talking about how debt is issued through treasuries. He doesn't know. It's like two minutes long. And at the end of it, you got to ask yourself, if this guy was explaining to me how he's going to change the oil in my car, and he was that confident about that subject, I wouldn't let him do it. Now you're telling me this guy runs a $100 trillion economy on the quote unquote largest power on the planet, both economically and militarily. And that's the explanation we got? Oh boy, we got problems. We got problems. And so I don't know.

I look at all this stuff and I just think, nah, I think I'm going to stay in Bitcoin. No one seems to really know what's going on. We're issuing debt and buying it ourselves. By the way, we probably do that here too. I don't know what we would call it. I'm sure our treasury auctions are a joke. Like who's buying Canadian debt? Can you imagine?

But apparently this buyback is the first time in 22 years. What happened 22 years ago? Any idea? I, well, so did Canada do the same thing around that time? And did they stop? I don't know. These are things, I'll be honest, and even with respect to the price of Bitcoin, I don't even fucking care these days.

It goes where it goes and I buy it regardless of the price. We've been doing bond buybacks since November 8th, 2022. Continuously. It looks like it. So what does it say when it was before when it started up again? It when it was... I don't know.

Or when it started up again? It was a gap of a couple of decades. I need a poorly produced Tiff Macklem explainer on Twitter to figure this out. Could you imagine if it was an AI Tiff? That'd be awesome. Is there a discernible difference between AI Tiff and... Come on.

He has... Did you see him on stage with Powell a couple weeks ago? He was kind of funny. He is funny, I think. I didn't give him enough credit, but Powell's funnier. Powell's funnier. I think Powell has got a career on MSNBC

if he doesn't just become a hedge fund manager, and it's going to be great to hear him with Joe Kernan, Scott Wapner, and Jerome on Fed Day talking to Jeff Gundff gunlock i think that would be outstanding content like i would pay for that what is tiff going to be around if there's a change in government are are they going to go through the the process of turfing him uh it seems like yeah i think you're right and you know what it's that's a that's a political move but like really what tiff macklin has been doing is no different than any other central banker in the world so yeah this was just par for the course there is no there is no you know

nation central bank outside of the u.s um is just empire style central banking, as Hervoy and Moritz would say. They're doing everything in unison. The US marches to the beat of its own drum, but everyone else doesn't. I saw a good article today or yesterday, I forget now, but this idea that people are waiting for rate cuts and stuff for Bitcoin to really rip. If it becomes clear Trump is going to become the president in late summer, early fall, just the possibility or potential or likelihood that Powell is removed from that chair and Gensler is removed from that chair is going to send Bitcoin to the moon. Because those are two guys who are operating outside, quote unquote, outside of political mandates, who seem to have their hearts set on policies that are detrimental to the price

of Bitcoin. If they get booted, then look out all this stuff. It's interesting, right? You don't really think about that. I think about rate cuts a lot, but I don't think about stuff like that. It is true that that would send the price absolutely flying. What would happen if Tiff Macklin was removed here with the price of homes? Skyrocket, right? Conservatives are calling for rates to come down. And so I i you know i don't think they have any better ideas than any other government around the world housing is a problem in most modern economies i think at this point and uh i don't know how do you sell this is you know we're far afield here but how do you sell uh the how do you sell to the public to the to the homeowning

public you know for this to become sustainable the price of your home has to drop by 30 or 40 you can't and when they say affordable housing that's really what they mean but no one ever says it right so i don't know let's think about of the price of the canadian dollar the dollars the dollar's in bad shape yeah i'm gonna talk to rich about that tomorrow too but and the dollar, compared to the United States, is holding steady in the 71 cents range. It's been like that for some time. It hasn't really changed all that much. It's not like the yen, right? Like the yen, if you look at what's happening

in the past week and a half or so, like one US dollar was able to buy at one time, you know, two, three weeks ago, 150 yen. Then all of a sudden sudden it went up to 160 yen and it happened suddenly and then now it's dropped back i don't know what it's a 152 153 it just it's a massive swing we're talking like several percent in a day that's been done this is for a currency one of the third or fourth largest economy in the world yeah i was talking to mike about this on friday after we were done airing, done with Money Talks, and we were both marveling at the clear two things, right?

One, the Japanese government clearly intervening in the currency market. And number two, the Japanese government clearly lying or obfuscating all of a sudden when they're doing currency interventions. They never used to do that. Now they're not saying how much or when until it's way after the fact and that tells you a ton oh yeah oh yeah you were trying to defend that 150 now they're saying 160 is the new line in the sand where they don't want to cross look if this happened to the japanese yen again this is the third or fourth largest economy in the world i forget what the fuck it is it can happen anywhere aside from the united states of course that will happen last dollar milkshake right yeah exactly i've been saying that japan is the canary in a coal mine

it's the one that's first that's gonna disappear if you look at what happened you know it's lost the yen 40 of its value against the united states dollar in just two years yeah did you know it's lost the yen 40 of its value against the united states dollar in just two years yeah did you know that joey like that is i'm looking at the chart right now it's actually mind-bending uh but that's a significant amount for stable currency from a stable economy 40 of its value in two years the same could happen to the euro the same could happen to the british pound and the same could happen to the canadian dollar the singapore dollar luckily is safe but all those other ones i mentioned it can certainly happen to that i it's you know if it happens over that much period of time of two year period of time is that something that's going to just make people

their jaws drop i don't think so no one even knows len no one even pays attention to stuff stuff like housing potentially could go even significantly higher because if you're talking about a currency that is failing then the price of a hard asset is desirable asset that is hard to create anymore like a house is going to go up significantly now there are counterparty risks for owning a home but bitcoin luckily doesn't carry those same type of risks so i just wanted to point out what is happening in japan is it's interesting to say the least so yeah i'm not sure i'll add any more to what we said there everything's possible i don't know

i mean i'll add one thing on the robin hood they know that i'm on trading view uh robin hood's earnings are this week too so again suspect timing everyone you know picking their battles very carefully here including the japanese central bank anyway what do we got next see google is letting go of some people now remember the economy is doing fine right but it's being reported that hundreds of core employees have been given the pink slip by google and this is part of a reorganization from within the company this is as per a cnbc article and well they're letting people go, but they're going to be hiring corresponding roles in Mexico

and India. So that's pretty weird. Yeah. According to Google's website, the core unit is responsible for building the technical foundation behind the company's flagship products, and for protecting users online safety. So it seems like to me, these are very important roles, critical roles to Google. And I wonder why they are opting to go with non Americans, or non people not residing in the United States to fulfill these roles. So as of right now, 50 positions were axed right away from their sunnyvale california location i hope they're not going to ask acts also the position of the

assistant trailer park supervisor but that's a different sunnyvale altogether but looking at this just another indication that shit is going in the wrong direction google this is a huge fucking company and they're getting rid of important positions i mean they're totally getting rid of but rehiring restructuring and having people from mexico and india perform these duties this is again trending in the wrong direction how many more of these we have to see before we fucking do something i hope people take notice of this i don't feel the same way you do about this i think that yeah i think that most tech outfits now even though they publicly condemn musk for all his uh you know his passion about free speech and whatnot uh they're

all looking at the twitter model where they cut what 80 of the heads engineering social committee you name it and And the platform works just fine. I mean, apart from the sex bots, there's a lot of sex bots on Twitter. But I mean, apart from that, everything works pretty good. I like the verified perks. I think the app is pretty good. The algo generally feeds me stuff that I'm interested in. Sometimes it just feeds me rage bait, but if I stay away from it or scroll through it quickly, it adjusts. And I don't know. I think it's something that most of these tech companies are looking at now and saying, man, we could probably do this.

And just in case we can't, let's hire them back at Indian wages or Mexican wages just to be safe. It's not that hard to figure this out, is it? I think, again, if you look at... God, I'm walking on eggshells here, but I'll try my best, Len, for you, okay? There are clear gaps in expectation for wages between the average American or Canadian and the average Indian worker. We've seen them over the years, both here domestically in Canada and, uh, also overseas.

If you call, for example, like, I don't know your insurance provider. I called my insurance provider, my healthcare provider, uh, last week. And the person on the phone was not Canadian. Um, we've talked on the show before about the freshie, uh, the terminal operators that are remote cashiers, basically, for these companies. They're in India. There's a lot of labor over there that's, I think, in a lot of regards, as competent or close to as competent as they're American and Canadian

and whatever European country counterparts. And they'll work for one-tenth the cost. Google's not a dumb outfit. These people know what they're doing. They're very bright. And I would just say that you're going to see way more of this going forward. Because I think a lot of those jobs were the product of overexpansion, number one. And number two, I think some of those teams and some of those products have reached maturity like how many more how many engineers do you need on search at this point you know do you need still 100 engineers this is for building the technical foundation behind the company's flagship products and protecting users online safety so it doesn't sound like to me online safety is is basically the social committee right don't forget that it's not

safety is not security safety is hate speech and other nonsense that these guys, you know, govern and regulate and have their hands in that pie all the time. As I get closer to being demonetized on YouTube with every word, I'll just continue and say that I think that this is going to continue. And once again, I don't see that it's going to change anytime soon. There's other, there's technologies that can do this work. There's cheaper labor that can do this work. There's cheaper labor that can do this work. And, you know, when I think about something like the safety stuff, they take a shotgun approach anyways.

It's not like anyone is having high level conversations with lawyers or anything. They're just taking channels down or issuing strikes willy nilly. They don't care. So why not just have someone else do it? They don't need any, I don't need a, you optics look bad when you're hearing about optics Len these guys are stealing every ounce of data you give them and selling it to every person who wants it they don't give a fuck about optics

for an election year the optics do matter who cares and both political parties need these guys to compete that it doesn't matter I would agree but it could be something that is easily I don't want to say agree but it could be something that is easily i don't want to say exploited but you could take that and you weakness you think yeah

you can amplify the weakness sure and if you have the person that wants to replace the incumbent you can easily point at something like this and it's a laundry list of shit that's out there and it's just add this onto that list and say look fucking things aren't that good and here's another reason why jobs are going to other countries why is that things clearly are shitty and it's under your watch why did this all this happen well we'll see what happens moving forward let's uh we'll talk about some bank failures really quickly the week or the weekly segment on bank failures no we don't talk about them a lot i think we're gonna start again here pretty i posted recently on nostridat it's we're due for some bank failures it's it's gonna fucking

right that the btfp program ended not too long, and that was almost like a life jacket for some of these smaller banks in order to just weather the storm from these higher rates environments. And we have normie news out there, CNBC reporting that this is the fucking headline right from the CNBC. Why hundreds of US banks may be at risk of failure. They're reporting on this. They're fucking showing this because there was a consulting firm called Claros Group, and they conducted some research and they analyzed some 4,000 banks in the United States. And they found of those 4,000 banks, 282 of them were facing a dual threat of commercial real estate loans and potential losses tied to higher interest rates remember the ptfp program ended this is exposing a lot of their assets to that high interest rates garbage and the majority of these banks are smaller

banks with less than 10 billion in assets remember 2 billion was just never were throwing out just a few minutes ago as being fuck all 10 billion is five times fuck all so if you look at the fdic is only going to be supporting people up to 250 000 should these banks go tits up but we've seen in the past that they've gone above and beyond this and made everybody whole so we have now 282 banks that are being identified as potentially going to have some real problems moving forward that's seven eight percent of the overall banks united states granted they're the small ones the majority have less than 10 billion in assets but you know they have users they have customers there's loans out there and you can't have some or all these banks fucking go tits up and still have the economy running the way it is right now which ain't running all that good but you know let's throw on some more garbage into

this and you know the dumpster fire is going to get even bigger and hotter as a result. So yeah, there you go. Bank failures. Yeah. We're going to be talking about this a heck of a lot moving forward. And I suggest people get one of these, these stress balls.

They're fucking really good. If you're working in these banks, it's going to keep you sane and talk about serenity now as well. But yeah, what are your thoughts on this? At least as the dumpster fire intensifies, we can, you know, hopefully put some tent encampments around them keep them warm as long as those fires burn through the winter we might uh might be able to get a few people through

a difficult time right that's pretty good that's a positive yeah let's get we and you could do them all these universities and colleges that have these protests going on because you know i'm sure there's some going on in some cooler parts of the states because you know i'm sure there's some going on in some cooler parts of the states i know we're in may there's still going to be some areas that are northeast northwest they're still relatively cool so yeah get these dumpster fires moved over there let's get these protesters nice and warm because we don't want to have any frostbite cases is you know what it's too expensive to have them go to the hospital they don't have the money to afford this so yeah i'm with you there let's take let's take this a disadvantage and turn it into an advantage

you know another disadvantage is is the spr have you been following the spr what is there what is there to follow that you know they're trying to keep gas those guys are going to drain it to nothing you know until november they're going to keep gas as low as they fucking can and they don't want people waking up to the fact that everything is so much more expensive because of the policies they've put in place, the wars they've chosen to fight and support. It's all just bad news over there.

Well, if you look at the chart, they were slowly replenishing it. So they weren't depleting it. It was a very slow increase month to month week to week but still there was net gain it wasn't a net loss so i gotta give them i gotta give them credit for that but recently they said they're going to be stopping the the replenishing of the spr so refilling it is unfortunately going to be taken off the table because they're saying that the costs have gotten too large so any new bids have been pulled,

but that wasn't a time when oil was above $80 today. It's slightly less than $80. Right. So it may be time. They're going to start replenishing this again. I don't know. It just seems like politically it makes sense for them maybe to stop refilling it and start releasing it and keeping gas prices low.

But eventually, this has to get refilled, right? They just can't leave it at low rates, right? Low reserves. You just, I don't know. It just seems funny. But anyways, the price of oil, it's less than $80. And that's as of today's dollar, too. So maybe it's a steal.

I don't know. Maybe they did the right thing by selling it off at a higher price and then replenishing at a lower price i mean that's maybe the move of the year who knows do you believe the eia numbers on what's left in the spr you know what i don't even there's no other place to get the numbers right you have to get yeah so like for me to question it i never even thought of it maybe it's bullshit i don't fucking know you you have an opinion in it right what do you think it is well it sounds like i mean just based on history you're saying it's total bs it's made up yeah i think it's made up how can they possibly

know how much is in there well they have the dipstick they just pull it out and oh yeah it's right here i realize people will be like well you know they're measuring it they presumably remember the first leader that was put in and you know ever since then they know how many leaders they put in and taken out yeah maybe but i doubt it i can't honestly then like i just can't get over this stupid jobs number thing from two weeks ago that's fucking it pisses you off well because it's it's such, it's just so low effort. Like if you're going to cheat on the numbers, like at least make the numbers look different. Instead, you pick the only numbers that are just like statistically impossible

to achieve and immediately everyone's calling you out. Like what? So like, why should I believe anything else these guys talk about? I think the numbers are fudged to... What is the best way to put this? I think the numbers are all fudged to smooth out what they want the eventual policy positions to look like. So for example, they keep on doing these quote unquote releases and there's still plenty

left to release, keeps the price of oil down, blah, blah, blah. They change the jobs numbers and then suddenly when they want to start putting a cut into the ether, the jobs numbers are terrible. They're way worse than they ever have been before, way off the trajectory, way off the predictive markets. Then you start talking about like, I don't know, what's another good example of this? There's probably a million out there. My head is racing. I had way too many coffees today. I just think that these numbers

are all made up. And so when I see these numbers, they got this down. This is the best part, right? This reminds me of the Canadian Immigration Live Tracker. Are you telling me these guys know exactly how many thousands of barrels are there to six digits. So like, you know, they tell you right now there's a, how many 364,000 barrels of oil in there or 366,000, something like that.

I have no idea. This is a hard chart to read at the very bottom, but do we, do I really think they have that kind of tight control over the, the volume of oil in there honestly i don't maybe there is shrinkflation going on and the size of a barrel has gotten small galen weston is manufacturing the barrels they're yeah they're outsourcing it from loblaws and other people so this is a yellow barrel that says barrel on it yeah no name and if you compare a

barrel from 10 years ago you could visually you can see my god they're much bigger than they are now but to the naked eye just getting a barrel today seems like a regular old barrel so they can say they have you know 700 000 or 300 000 barrels but we're using now a smaller barrel to define how much we have so it could be just shrinkflation is taking hold. And it's another thing that's just being fudged as a result. I just think it's so great. I don't know, man. I mean,

I just, it just doesn't, I just don't believe it. Am I crazy? Like I know people online, especially the FinTwit heads, who's like entire existence relies on like interpreting data. And I'm,

I'm, I'm data driven. The data is made up, moron. What are you driven by? It's made up. How does anybody who claims to be making a career off being data-driven, you're like Danielle DiMartino Booth, who's writing books about how the Fed works, how these things operate, how they're all data-driven, how they make decisions. Or you're like, I don't know, like another hedgy or something like that, or someone who runs a fucking investing newsletter service.

And then your entire worldview is hit by a fucking asteroid the size of the one that killed the fucking dinosaurs. And you're like, you just pretend it didn't happen. You just pretend that all the other data you quote unquote built your career on was real the whole time. How can you do that? How can you just ignore what just happened? Everyone just forgets about this. Not only is the data made up, but the people making it up are so brain dead, low effort people that they can't even try to make the numbers look believable. Why should I believe anything these guys say?

Like I said, the data is just the data, capital T, capital D. It's just invented numbers to smooth policy changes, I think, or smooth, you know, the periods between policy changes. How else am I supposed to view this? That's why you gotta get these talking heads because they come on and they say a few things and at the end everybody

feels good. Unfortunately... They don't fucking know anything. Gunlock is the only guy, honest to God, Jeff, Gunlock is the only guy who knows anything. I think everyone else is brain dead. He's the only guy who talks to bucks somebody get some fucking makeup and hair done they come on and they fucking give you god like don't even don't even say that there's at least len is referencing one person who's adjacent to the space who demands 200 for hair and makeup and let me tell you that's like a bullshit man that's 200 us by the way 200 yeah if we told you who it was you'd laugh but also cry anyway mcdonald's man let's talk about mcdonald's because it's going to be a matter of time before

they turn into fine dining i'm not sure if you're following the price are they but they're they're experimenting with a bigger burger are they not didn't they see, yeah. So what's the cost of that bigger burger? Is it going to be 25 bucks? And I'm not sure if you've even seen, there are also some locations that it has, they're minimally staffed. It's all computerized, the whole system. So if you look at what's going on, they say that the price of the value meals,

their combos, all this shit, it's creeping up. And now it's going to be impacting low cost, low, sorry, low income customers. They're saying that those particular individuals are, quote, starting to crack. So, man, you see this, they're saying sticky inflation. Can't believe that's a term sticky inflation. But they're saying this is one of the reasons why this is a big problem consumer confidence is also shattered and people are reducing their cost in every which way possible and mcdonald's unfortunately is feeling the pinch so if you're looking what's going on this company has they've been making money hand over fist there's always been a steady stream of customers coming in but now if you have the lower income bracket priced out wow this is going to impact what's going on with mcdonald's this is another what you call a signpost right let's look at what's going on here and say what the fuck if mcdonald's is going to have problems generating revenue fuck like what's going to happen moving forward like again another reason

why i'm going to buy Bitcoin. This is the only place in the world where you can get content related to burgers that leads you back to Bitcoin. The story I was talking about during the Q1 earnings call on April 30th, McDonald's CEO Ian Borden said, our team of chefs around the world have created a larger satiating burger.

Oh, but I want to know the cost. Is it going to be like, as I said, I mean, it's going to be more for sure. Or they're going to, or it'll be some kind of like, you know, cheap pseudo food that they're going to just pump into the normal menu without telling anybody, right? I don't know.

How much, they're already going to be plant-based in some regard and others like- They don't, I don't think McDonald's has a plant, McDonald's is not plant-based anymore, I don't think. Then their patties are like probably paper thin as it is. How much more could you slice off it, right? They're pretty thin. I'm guilty of having gone to McDonald's recently, but it was for breakfast.

So I don't really know. Hash browns or something? The breakfast burrito. I will say the hash browns have not gotten any salt. They sell burritos? Yeah, breakfast burritos are pretty good. I make those at home too, but I was on the road and I was like, yeah, you know what? I want a coffee.

I want some burritos too. They're good. They're pretty good. McDonald's those at home too, but I was on the road and I was like, yeah, you know what? I want a coffee. I want some burritos too. They're good. They're pretty good. McDonald's salsa also, oh God, top notch. I don't know what they're putting in there. Probably some kind of addictive drug in any way. Yeah, I think you're right about the bit about the lower income bracket. I don't see any...

When I go to McDonald's now here in Dundas, it's all like boomers just enjoying each other's company and having a coffee. I don't really see anybody eating McDonald's the way I go to McDonald's now here in Dundas, it's all like boomers just enjoying each other's company and having a coffee. I don't really see anybody eating McDonald's the way I used to. And I don't know what to make of that, which is weird because there's a lot of firepower in there for ordering. And obviously the kitchen is fully functional, full service, but I don't think a lot of people order a lot of the stuff on the menu. So is there like a shift coming in business? I don't think a lot of people order a lot of the stuff on the menu. So is there like a shift coming in businesses in business?

I don't know. I don't know if you follow Starbucks at all, but I look at Starbucks and like, I think that's a pretty good example of a business that's headed the wrong direction, like very clearly. And one of the things I noticed in the earnings call, I got to find it here at zero.

What is the last time you've been inside a Starbucks? in the earnings call i gotta find it here it's zero calorie i'd love to know that what when it's last time you've been inside a starbucks oh man i don't know long time i just i want to quiz everybody here i don't think certainly not this decade i don't think last decade i've been in the starbucks yeah so it's probably like fucking 15 20 years since i've been in it so i'd love to hear people how many people go to a fucking starbucks to people in a chat yeah the uh the starbucks team is you know talking about how they're researching a zero calorie uh energy drink for uh to sell and someone on twitter commented like did starbucks just say they discovered black coffee? I thought that's perfect. They had a fucking announcement about a low calorie energy drink and they sell coffee as a business.

There's a lot of companies now who are, I think, finding themselves on unstable footing for the first time, thanks to a number of different factors, whether it's the dietary preferences of their client base, the financial status of their client base, or the sudden competition and willingness. Honestly, Len, this is not even a shot at foreign workers, though I think there are a lot of shortcomings with some of the foreign workers I've seen or new Canadian workers. I don't know what the politically correct term is in a lot of the restaurant settings that I've been to recently. I think there's a general lack of concern and pride in service work in general. I would sooner go to a local coffee shop here in Dundas and pay double the price for a couple of coffees if they'll let me bring my dog in and they have something nice to say about

what's going on in the neighborhood that day, or they're competent, or they're asking questions and engaging with me and stuff like that, and the service is better and the product's a bit better. I think a lot of people are doing that now, right? They may be spending less overall, but enjoying the things they spend on a little bit more. And so why would I go to Starbucks to pay? I used to have a girlfriend whose father called it four bucks. And so I'll steal that term. Why would I go to four bucks for a coffee if I can go somewhere else? It is now for sure more than $4 now, right? It is now for sure.

I dated this girl 12 years ago. I would say that it's probably $6 now for a large coffee at Starbucks, if I had to guess. I don't know. That's much cheaper than I thought it would be. No, for a drip coffee, how much can it possibly be?

$6 for a drip coffee is fucking insane. I have no idea. Think about the margins on that. Think about the margins on a drip coffee at six dollars a cup that's why starbucks made fucking bank for a long time you sell i gotta look i'm gonna tell you right now it's the same fucking water that you put in tim hortons or fucking dunkin donuts and just a different bean hot coffee featured just a pike place that's their standard medium roast a venti which is a large i think right is that a large i don't know uh let's see this is good content for people who are listening what it doesn't even tell you the fucking because i think it varies per location that's why really certainly

i if you buy it it does wow you gotta be kidding me holy smokes well if you're downtown toronto and you're getting a starbucks versus downtown or outskirts of sudbury if there's one out there i'm sure it's gonna be a different price they don't even show you they won't even show you the price online unless you sign in that's a bad sign for the it's gotta be a ton oh my god anyway all this to say that uh a lot of businesses now find themselves on you know yeah unstable footing like i said i think it's very clear there's gonna be some problems what's gonna happen now you have all these businesses that are fucking struggling to collect sorry pay rent they're just small businesses. Then you have established businesses, these franchises like fucking McDonald's. They're losing all types of customers

that they would normally rely on. There's going to be a change in the way things are done. And then on top of that, these bricks and mortar stores, I think a lot of them are just going to disappear. I don't know what's going to happen with those locations. Will they turn into residential living areas? That's going to be one you don't i don't know what's going to happen with those locations will they turn into residential living areas that's exactly one week right like you think about it if you're going to scale back on commercial or change commercial into residential you just you know you know i'm not sure what the process is but if they're not being occupied by commerce

then it makes sense to occupy with something else yeah like have somebody live in it and right like that's you know you talked about it a little bit last week with respect to canada post and they're saying one of the options that they would have is you know the places above canada post you could turn those into livable quarters yeah you know what i mean i i know some of it's laughable there is some truth to that as well right like if you have a place up there that is not occupied and you can convert it into residentials why not how many canada posts you know have a second level i don't know i i don't go out there there's a there's a depot there's a depot near me and uh like in the end like a standalone post office neither of them

have a second level i can't imagine i think the majority don't the the ones that i frequent are usually in shoppers drug mart and you know shoppers is its own unit and the other place you know the guy i'm not going to mention his name but it's a standalone unit so yeah okay it's top notch yeah visit visiting with him at some point in the future i'm sure yeah and we won't discuss that yeah anyway uh yeah i think that's it joey i think we let's get it let's get out of here i'm i'm uh i have to edit this now god the editing process is going to become so much more cumbersome once uh spotify forces me to use their stupid tools but anyway can't you just download and edit yeah you can't you can but then you have to i don you can, but then you have to, I don't know,

I have to figure out a workflow. I'm so used to this workflow that we have, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, God bless everyone. It's not something we like here at the CBP. No, we don't. We don't at all. Come back tomorrow, me and Rich Diaz, 7 o'clock, Len and Fundamentals from Rock Paper Bitcoin on Wednesday at 7, I think.

I think it's at seven o'clock right that is it 7 p.m eastern yeah and then uh you know until then take care of yourselves and uh have some fun out there yeah don't be a cock or go to the bitcoin magazine conference don't forget everybody lots of other other stuff on CBP media network, including two whites and a blue me, Joey, my brother-in-law, Mike,

and our friend will talk about all the problems millennials are having with finance, romance, and just getting by. If you'd like CBP, if you like the NHL 94 podcast, I guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it.

Two whites and a blue anywhere you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you.