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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business. In the Becker Private Equity podcast, we try to bring you one to two market and business insight episodes a day, plus typically an interview with a brilliant business leader. We're recording now during the Christmas season from about December 20th, 22nd to January 5th. The cadence will slow down a little bit, but, but we sure appreciate you listening. And Merry Christmas and happy, happy holidays to everybody. Today's discussion is the economy, the good, the bad and the ugly. So here's our quick take on four or five thoughts on the economy. First, on the good side, we still have at least a somewhat expanding economy and we're at a spot where the stock market has hit record highs this year. The Nasdaq is up by 20% about for a third year in a row. The S and P is also substantially up again. And for those that are in the markets, 50 to 60% of us in America, a really good year in the stock market again. So that's the good. And the economy is still not contracting. And that's also good. The bad, the bad is that inflation remains somewhat elevated, not as bad as it was, but lots of lack of clarity and some of the inflation numbers, but again, moving to be not as bad as it was, but, but the bad. Another piece of the bad is unemployment is riveted up to 4.6%. And even though we have high overall employment and we also have a lot of open jobs, I think at the last count almost 7.8 million jobs are open. If you are unemployed at any time, and particularly during the Christmas season, what a depressing and difficult situation. So unemployment remains a real challenge at 4.6%. And that's the bad. And you could also call that the ugly, but that that can likely get worse too, over time and lots of threats to employment and employment numbers. Finally, the ugly is a lot of the growth and a lot of the stock market being up can be attributed to the fact that we're using deficit spending to goose the economy some. So right now we're at 38 trillion, three and a half trillion in debt. That's up from when I was growing up from less than 10 trillion in debt just 20 years ago to so up to 30, you know, 38 trillion, 39 trillion in debt. And that's the bad, that's the ugly. And so when I look at that debt, I look at these three different things. The market way up, unemployment higher bad, inflation still strong bad, and then the deficit, 38, 39 trillion, which is essentially goosing the economy in a lot of different ways. That's really ugly. And again, as we often say, debt kills families, countries and companies. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast Again. If you text Scott Becker at 773-766-5322 and you go online and buy our book Building Great Businesses, Create Momentum, Overcome Setbacks and scale with confidence, we will send you an Amazon gift card for $25. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
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