What A Day - The Bear Market Necessities

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Inflation is at a four-decade high, and on Monday, stocks fell to their lowest levels since March 2021. We break down what’s happening in the economy, why, and what you need to know about what the Federal Reserve might do in response at its meeting today.Russian troops are reportedly in control of as much as 80 percent of the Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk. Jack Crosbie, a correspondent for Rolling Stone, joins us to discuss what he saw on the ground when he was in eastern Ukraine last week.And in headlines: the House passed a bill to increase security for Supreme Court justices, BTS is going on an indefinite hiatus, and an appeals court ruled that a 51-year-old Asian elephant named Happy was not a person.Show Notes:Jack Crosbie on Twitter – https://twitter.com/jscrosDonate to Crooked Media’s Pride Fund – https://crooked.com/pride/Sign up for Crooked Coffee’s launch on June 21st – http://go.crooked.com/coffee-wadFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, June 15th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Priyanka Arabindi, and this is What A Day, where we're acknowledging our role in damaging the dress Kim Kardashian wore to the Met Gala. We used it to clean up a spill. Yes, the dress was Marilyn Monroe's. We didn't know that. We just knocked over a soda and grabbed the first thing we saw. The other detail here is that we are constantly hanging out with Kim. Just a side note. That point was understood in our telling of the story. On today's show, we're going to get an on the ground report from Ukraine on what civilian

life is like right now. Plus, the K-pop band BTS says that they are going on a break. Say it ain't so. But first, we are breaking down what is happening in the economy, why and what you need to know about what the Federal Reserve might do in response at its meeting today. So on Monday, stocks fell to their lowest level since March 2021. You have probably heard the term bear market being used to describe what's happening. That is a term that investors use to describe a drop of 20% or more from recent highs. A bear market isn't an official benchmark, but when we dip into one, it usually precedes a recession. Yeah, that's not good at all.

Definitely not. So what happened on Monday was that the S&P 500 was down more than 21% from where it was in January. We've talked about the several factors at play in this economy before on the show. There is high inflation. Interest rates are rising. We'll talk more about that in a minute. There's still Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has had widespread effects. And of course, people are worried about heading into a recession, which affects how they spend money, how they make decisions, all of that.

Yeah, definitely. It feels like it's on the brain, right? Whether people know the specifics or not. So let's talk specifically about inflation and interest rates. President Biden is reportedly considering rolling back some of the tariffs that were imposed on China from the previous administration. That would be to help ease inflation even a little bit. So what is happening here? Inflation is at a four-decade high right now.

You don't need to be an expert to know that something is up. You can see it for yourself at your grocery store and your everyday purchases. Prices are up. Things are more expensive than they used to be. It is not fun to look at a receipt at any point in time these days. And to combat that,

the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates. So higher interest rates make it more expensive to borrow money. This can help stabilize inflation and prices, but it's a whole cause and effect cycle. Raising interest rates makes borrowing more expensive across the entire economy. So that means, you know, mortgages, business loans, corporate expansions, all of that type of stuff becomes more expensive.

This slows down those markets and consumer spending. And with less competition, prices can settle and in some cases go down. But of course, if you need to borrow for any of those things, you're in a tougher spot. Right. And so that brings us to the Federal Reserve, which is having a meeting today aimed at slowing down inflation. It sounds as though there have been quite a few of those. As of later, we've been talking about these happening. Definitely. So what should we know about this one? Yeah. So back in May, they raised rates by half a percentage point and suggested that similar hikes would follow. But inflation didn't slow down. Consumer Price Index

data released on Friday actually showed that inflation was at its highest rate since 1981. It was even more of an increase than was expected. So now the Fed is likely to discuss bigger rate increases, possibly its biggest increase since 1994 at that meeting today. Wow. A bigger increase means that it'll be even more expensive to borrow in any capacity. And the thought that that could happen

is what sent stocks into a tailspin on Monday. Yeah, so to that point, what's happening in the markets at this moment? Yeah, stocks closed lower on Tuesday than they did on Monday. Definitely not a fun time in the market. Do not recommend checking any of your stocks if you have them. It's not good.

But it was a lot calmer day than it was on Monday when many people were rushing to sell and there was a much bigger drop. And let's talk a little bit more about the actual economy here, some of the prices of things that people need every day. So as we were saying, inflation is at a 40-year high in the U.S. Prices are still rising on critical things like gas and food. Gas price increases specifically are being driven by the rising cost of crude oil. Those prices have been rising for a bunch of reasons. Oil companies laid off workers. They decommissioned rigs during the pandemic, and they were pretty slow to get

things up and running at full capacity after that. They're also worried that prices will crash, so they don't want to ramp up production, even though the Biden administration has been begging them to do so. And internationally, Russia is selling way less oil because of EU sanctions against them, and countries in the Middle East that have oil can't ramp up their production quickly enough to offset that change. So it's a bit of a supply issue there, and that is part of the reason inflation has been rising. We also continue to experience shortages. The latest one in the US economy is tampons. It's being blamed on the usual suspects, the supply chain, rising costs of fuel and materials. If you're experiencing this, I highly recommend trying out reusable menstrual cups

or discs if you can, if that is something you can afford or find. Switching gears from tampons to the Fed, definitely giving a little bit of whiplash, but I'm gonna do it. They are meeting today on those possible interest rate hikes. We will continue to keep you updated on what they do,

what it'll mean for all of us, and the shortages in our economy, all of the rest. Yeah, it is a crazy moment for sure. Yeah. Moving to international news now, more than 100 days since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, Russia's military efforts appear to be most strongly focused on the eastern Donbass region of the country. According to reports on Tuesday that cited regional officials there, Russian troops are in control of as much as 80% of the city of Sevier on Donetsk, and the last bridge connecting that city to territory controlled by Ukraine to the West was destroyed. That could also lead to a worsening humanitarian crisis in terms of evacuation.

Hundreds of people are trapped in a chemical plant in the city, though Russia has promised a humanitarian corridor set to begin today. Meanwhile, ahead of a meeting today in Brussels with allied countries, U.S. Pentagon official Colin Call said that the U.S. is not going to urge a ceasefire or more broadly, quote, tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate. Meanwhile, there is another brief Russia-related update on a story that we've been following for quite some time now. On Tuesday, a Russian court extended the pretrial detention for WNBA star Brittany Greiner for another related update on a story that we've been following for quite some time now. On Tuesday, a Russian court extended the pretrial detention for WNBA star Brittany Griner for another 18 days. Griner was arrested on February 17th when Russian officials claimed that she had vape cartridges with traces of hash oil in them in her luggage while passing through the Moscow airport. On

Monday, officials at the U.S. State Department met with her team, the Phoenix Mercury, to talk about attempts to release her. The State Department has said that she has been wrongfully detained. They have been talking about this for months, as have we. This is wild that it's gone on this long. I hope we get some good news soon. We need it. Truthfully. Now, as for Russia's invasion itself, I wanted to find out what life in Ukraine is like right now for people living there. So last week, I spoke with Jack Crosby, a correspondent for Rolling Stone, among many other things, who was in eastern Ukraine at the time. I began by asking him where exactly he was, and what he was hearing from people there. We're about Krematorsk itself is about 30 kilometers from the front lines in basically every direction except for due west. So it's kind of in one of

these little sort of pockets of Ukrainian control surrounded by areas that the Russians have pushed into either the front lines that were set up in the initial invasion in 2014 or new ones that have come down through military offensives up in sort of the north of the country. I've been here interviewing people inside Kramatorsk and interviewing people in the surrounding villages about what their needs are and, you know, when they're making the decision to leave. The military situation is very much sort of in flux. Most of the fighting has been concentrated around a city called Severodonetsk, which is about 80 kilometers to the northeast of me.

And when you're talking to people, how and when are people deciding what they want to do, where they want to go? So I was speaking to someone this morning who put it like extremely bluntly. If we all had money, we would leave. And I think at this point in the war, it's really sort of coming down to that financial reality for a lot of people. Right. But many, many have fled. You know, the cities and towns around here are extremely depopulated.

Yeah. And is that one of the more kind of noticeable changes since the war has started? Yeah. I've been to this city like a dozen times before, because before the war, this was basically the last major train stop before the kind of original front lines in 2014. Right. get you here in about six hours. You'd get on it at 6am with your big bag and your body armor and everything. And you'd get on it with a lot of like very sleepy soldiers and you'd be in Kramatorsk by a little bit afternoon. That train is no longer running because of the attack that we saw a few months ago at the Kramatorsk train station that killed 50 some odd people. So the difference in the city now is really striking. It doesn't appear to make a huge

amount of sense. Kramatorsk is still relatively safe. I know that's sort of ironic to say about a city where there was this horrific rocket attack that killed so many people at the train station, but it's largely out of the effective range of a lot of the artillery systems that the Russians are using in surrounding villages and things. It is struck occasionally, but its civilian areas have really been spared some of the punishment that surrounding villages have. And yet it's almost completely deserted. I spoke to one person who said he lives in an apartment building with 36 different flats and 31 of the families or individuals living in those flats have left. There's one restaurant open. I guess there's two.

There's a pizza place and like a, it's sort of like a barbecue restaurant that's open that basically all of the journalists have been going to every single night. And it's very sort of surreal to see the city like this. Right. I'm curious also, like, even while there's apprehension around the dangers of actually like living in various places throughout the country, Does it feel like there are these moments where Ukraine is like beginning to rebuild itself in any capacity, like even as we sort of have an unfinished story here, I guess? I mean, where I am? No, the cities where I am in the cities where I'm going are preparing to be destroyed. But yeah, I mean, things are very different in the west of the country. I spent most

of last week in Kiev in the capital, and things were very much getting back to not necessarily normal, but those like signs of life were returning. Like I went to a DJ night at this really cool little sort of like bar club complex area out in this old industrial district, you know, as New Yorkers will relate to like extremely Bushwick vibes out there and all these people like in extremely cool street wear and mesh tops and stuff and like pounding bass and dancing out there. I stayed in a really sort of cool and hip district of Kiev when I was out there that some friends live in. And yeah, just, you know, walked down and got a haircut one day and spent way too much money at the, again, like very cool, expensive European

streetwear store right across the road from me. So those lives are being put back together, but the impact and the influence of the war is like inextricably tied to them now. You know, the streetwear brand that I bought a hat and some pants from is called Riot Division and they sell like, you know, very sort of military inspired tech wear and they're donate portions of their proceeds to to various causes and and the dj rave techno night and everything like that is is part of a club that's hosting events like basically every night of the week you know open mic nights and comedy and rock shows and stuff like that and a portion of their proceeds are all going toward funding uh various military and civilian causes and things like that. So it's

very strange to see if like, there were like Bushwick, like art raves, like going on in order to benefit the Marines or something like that. It is interesting to see a society that has completely reinvented itself around war, where even like these normal signifiers of sort of life and culture are tied to it. Right. That is really fascinating. What is the feeling about like what the next phase of this is going to look like among people that you're talking to in the last couple of days? So it's hard to say because there are two ways of looking at this war. One of the ways of looking at this war is as a civilian who is on the ground, who is

living in these places, who is basically doing everything they can to continue living and surviving in this environment and taking every bit of normalcy that they can get. Oftentimes, that's accompanied by a lot of denial in some ways. The other way to look at this war is the way that most of the West views it, which is the picture is not good. There's a very real chance that Russian forces will be able to make significant territorial advances that some of the towns that I've been to in the past couple of days and some of the towns that are in this area will be taken and will be occupied or will just be sort of crushed in between the two armies. What I am pretty sure of, though, is that the shape of the conflict now is very different from what it was. And we've very much entered into a phase of it that is sort of just going to be a grinding

and long and bloody war of attrition. Nothing is going to happen quickly, and nothing is going to happen sort of gently or peacefully. That was my conversation with Jack Crosby, a correspondent for Rolling Stone. We'll let you know when his latest work is published. We can link to it in the show, but that is the latest for now. Let's get to some headlines. The United Kingdom was set to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda by plane yesterday as part

of a controversial immigration deal between the two countries. But just minutes before the flight was set to take off, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the seven asylum seekers on board were at, quote, a real risk of irreversible harm, forcing the UK to cancel the trip. For context, back in April, Rwanda and the UK entered an agreement that would allow Britain to deport people to the East African country if they had entered the UK illegally. There, they would be allowed to apply for asylum, and in exchange, the British government would pay Rwanda millions of pounds. But immigration rights activists worldwide have called the agreement inhumane ever since it was announced, arguing that Rwanda isn't equipped to receive refugees or guarantee their safety.

And the UN's refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, said that by entering the agreement, the UK was, quote, exporting its responsibility to another country. Tuesday's flight cancellation was the result of several legal attempts to block the scheduled deportation over the past few days, but it's unclear how long that relief will last. The UK's Home Secretary put out a statement yesterday saying that her office is already preparing for the next deportation flight. Okay, first of all, this is a wild idea. I don't know why anyone thought this was a good one. But second of all, I don't understand how these decisions get made so down to the wire, like minutes before the flight was set to take off. Like, you knew this was going

to happen, and legal stuff takes a long time. It seems crazy. Why? There's no reason for your scheduling to run up minutes ahead. Like all of us know the dates. It's all on the calendar. Come on.

That's a note for everybody across the legal system. We all know less of the drama, please. Congress acted in a bipartisan way yesterday to protect people from violence. Only it's just a handful of people who are extremely powerful. By a wide margin, the House passed a bill yesterday to increase security for Supreme Court justices and their immediate families. The bill quickly passed in the Senate last month following the leaked court draft opinion overturning Roe. There were some delays in the House, but a new sense of urgency came last week

after police arrested a man who was armed outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home. Lawmakers in the House voted 396 to 27 for the bill. Every Republican voted in favor of it. Meanwhile, 27 Democrats opposed it for various reasons. Seven of the nine New Jersey representatives voted against the bill because it did not include protections for lower court judges. They fought for that because back in 2020, a New Jersey district judge's son was shot and killed at the judge's home. Also, a group of progressive Dems voted against the bill because they hoped to tie it to another measure that would protect abortion providers. That measure lacked the same support as this one, which protects Ginny Thomas. So for now, the bill heads to President Biden's desk.

Well, Joe Biden's favorite K-pop group, BTS, shocked the world yesterday when they announced they're going on an indefinite hiatus. Still do not know what it stands for. The news came during a live stream event celebrating the group's ninth anniversary. BTS members said they needed a break after nearly a decade of churning out hits and they needed time apart to focus on their solo careers the hiatus might also allow some of the boys to carry out their overdue government mandated military service oh no using their skills to dance rap and sing the enemies of south korea into submission yesterday's announcement devastated bts fans worldwide who

often call themselves the bts army because of their gigantic size and militant twitter presence and for good reason it might trigger flashbacks to when other boy bands like one direction often call themselves the BTS ARMY because of their gigantic size and militant Twitter presence. And for good reason. It might trigger flashbacks to when other boy bands like One Direction have gone on a quote unquote indefinite hiatus only to never reunite. That's what an indefinite hiatus means. Yeah, it's literally in the name. BTS did promise fans during yesterday's live stream that they would return as a group, which Joe Biden should try to make happen in 2024 if he wants to continue to be president. That would honestly make up for some age gaps between him and, you know, the inevitable Republican nominee, if it's not Trump, who is also ancient.

I can picture the rallies now. It's BTS performing and his vote for Biden. You get to go see BTS. Exactly. Vote for Biden.. is the slogan. Put that on a poster. There we go. The efforts of the legal community to understand what animals are continue in New York. Or yesterday, an appeals court ruled that a 51 year old Asian elephant named Happy was not indeed a person. The vote was five to two, indicating at least two judges were willing to see Happy as a new type of guy. The case was brought by an organization called the Non-Human Rights Group, who wanted to free Happy from the Bronx Zoo, where he is currently housed, by arguing that he should receive the same protection against unlawful detainment, which the law extends to humans.

This protection is called habeas corpus. As one argument for their cause, the Non-human rights group pointed to a test passed by Happy, which proved that he had self-awareness. That wasn't enough for five of the judges, though, who acknowledged that elephants were smart, but said habeas corpus didn't apply to non-human animals. This by no means settles the question of whether animals can legally become humans, though, a process lawyers describe as doing a reverse anamorphs. Just last month,

the non-human rights group filed a habeas corpus claim on behalf of three elephants in a Fresno, California zoo, and the group celebrated the two dissenting opinions in yesterday's ruling, saying that they offered, quote, tremendous hope for a future where elephants no longer suffer as Happy has and where non-human rights are protected alongside human rights. The full guarantee of human rights extended to Happy should include a rent-controlled apartment in his area if he would like to leave the zoo because that would be a difficult and very humane thing to offer somebody. I don't know if he'd be able to fit in an apartment though.

Like I think we just have to offer him like a full house. That would be a small problem that we would resolve in court. We would have to establish a larger space for Happy to live and for him to live up to his namesake. We want that for him. We want that for him as much as anything. Get Happy an apartment. Get him an apartment. Don't have the rent go up for him. And those are the headlines. We'll be back after some ads with some exceptionally bad sound from two people who should stick to hyping cryptocurrencies. It's Wednesday, Watt Squad, and today we're doing a segment called Bad Sound. Take a listen to today's clip.

Some will win, some will lose. Some are to see the blues. Oh, my God. Some will be never. It goes on and on and on. Oh my God. No. Oh my God. Until he goes for the high notes, I will say that's just a bar karaoke vibe.

Not terrible. Beginning was totally permissible. I wasn't like, wow, I'm so impressed, but I wasn't like, oh my God, fully head in hands, cringe. Right, right. That was, of course, the rock and roll silings of the Winklevoss twins, oh my God, fully head in hands cringe. Right, right. That was, of course, the rock and roll silings of the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. They sang this in New Jersey last week. The two identical billionaires are famous

for accusing Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea and turning it into Facebook. Now they're on tour as a band called Mars Junction, which steals songs from bands like Jerdy and Blink-182 and turns them into nightmares. Here is an extra bad sound of Mars Junction covering Rage Against the Machine if you can handle it.

I knew that would be worse, and it was. Of course, the Winklevoss twins are busy doing other things too, like laying off 10% of the sap at their cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini, earlier this month. So Priyanka, what is your take on these rich twins living their rock star dreams? Hot people think they can do anything. And this is just evidence of that. This is wild.

And rich. Yeah, yeah. They got both. So clearly, nobody in their life will tell them, no, maybe this isn't the best idea sirs sirs plural maybe maybe no what do you think about this gideon i contest that it's not fun to bully in this situation because it's kind of a punch up if you will um so i i leave that uh undecided at. I just, this is not the tweeting internet twins I want doing covers.

That I want for the Krasenstein brothers. Yeah, I'm sorry. We only want the Krasensteins. Bring them back. I also think the Krasensteins would like get creative with the lyrics a little bit. Like they're just doing covers. Like that's not that exciting to me.

I think the Krasensteins would like find a way to make everything about like Robert Mueller and like Trump and like just change the lyrics. And that would that exciting to me. I think the Krasensteins would like find a way to make everything about like Robert Mueller and like Trump and like change lyrics. And that would be exciting to me. I'm basically saying I want the Krasensteins to do Weird Al, but only about political topics. But I'm co-signing. I agree with you fully. This is dangerous. We just made them a whole new grift.

Guess what? They will be selling out arenas around the country to frenzied liberals by this time next year. I will be there because I'm the tour manager and this was why I brought it up. That's so bad. Okay, that was bad sound. Exceptionally bad sound. Two more things before we go.

Juneteenth is coming up this weekend, and we want to know how you plan to celebrate. You can tell us by recording a voice memo on your phone, then you can email it to us. Our address is wad at crooked.com, and we'll play some of what you say on our show on Friday. Also this week on Positive America, the guys are joined by Senator Chris Murphy to talk about a potential deal on gun safety. Plus the second January six hearing

exposes Donald Trump's big lie. You can listen to positive America Tuesdays and Thursdays, wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, think hard about why an elephant is or is not a human and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the YA series called Animorphs, like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. I'm Gideon Resnick. And stop grilling us about wrecking Marilyn Monroe's dress. We've been over this a million times. If you leave something on the counter and I spill,

what am I going to do? I just thought it was a decorative towel. There were no towels. With a lot of little crystals on it. I thought you had good taste, Kim. It's Pete's fault for inviting us. Probably. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media.

It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance, Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran and me, Gideon Resnick. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard andashaka.