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Download today ABC's David Muir, the most trusted anchor in America.
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The most watched anchor in America.
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Thank you for making World News Tonight with David Muir the number one newscast in America.
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Most trusted, Most watched David muir on.
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The headline should read Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell tells Donald Trump to get his hands off the Federal Reserve and its independents for the second time in the last two weeks, Jay Powell, speaking to the American public, speaking to the market, speaking to the global economy and our allies, has told them, don't worry for as long as I'm here. As the Chairman, I'm not gonna allow Donald Trump to influence the Fed's independence. That's the only thing, that's the only thing that's keeping this Trump economy from burning up in the atmosphere is the stewardship, the navigation methods of Jay Powell and the rest of the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump's trying to attack Jay Powell, including bringing opening a criminal investigation into a building renovation going after Lisa Cook got stopped and stymied there by the United States Supreme Court, all in an effort to try to get his hands on our money supply. And if that happens, God help us and thank God or whoever you pray or don't pray to that Jay Powell is not going anywhere. I'm Michael Popo using my Wall street superpowers to bring it all together with you here about the Trump anomics, which in the last 48 hours has showed its true colors. You're here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. Take a moment and hit the subscribe buttons in both channels. You know, Jay Powell, you gotta go light a candle for Jay Powell every day. And now we look at the numbers that he. The turbulence created by Donald Trump that Jay Powell has to navigate through with the only thing at his disposal, which is his calm demeanor, his, his brilliant economics and economic sense, and his ability to control interest rates. He just decided, along with the rest of the Federal Reserve open markets committee, 12 members in majority, not to do anything about rates. He's worried about hyperinflation and super inflation. Higher prices for you and he should be. Consumer confidence numbers. I've never seen these numbers. Well, nobody's ever seen these numbers for 14 years. You got to go back to 2012 and well before COVID Define the consumers as worried about and deciding to close up their purses and checkbooks and bank accounts and not spend. And that's a problem because our economy, the gross domestic product, a large portion of it, is driven one of the major engines. Think of it as a twin engine plane. One of the major engines is consumer spending. And the consumer confidence index is a measure of whether people are going to continue to spend through 2026. And these numbers are worse than Covid. Can you believe it? People sitting around their houses, scared out of their minds, wearing triple masks, were spending more, had more confidence in the economy than they do right now under Donald Trump's stewardship. Is there any wonder the poll numbers are so bad against Donald Trump? In terms of the economy, he's underwater 30 points when it comes to favorable, unfavorable on how he's handling the economy, 35 points on affordability, which is a key issue for the Democrats. Now, what is in the polling of consumer confidence that Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve are looking at? This is what's coming up in the survey. Worry and instability about tariffs, about trade, about health insurance, about war, about affordability, about groceries, electricity and gas. And remember those, those signs that were up at one point or people put up on social media because they thought they were being snarky and funny about. I miss Donald Trump, I miss cheap gas and mean tweets. Well, you're still getting the mean tweets. But say goodbye to the cheap gas because in the last 24 hours, we just had the report that oil has now dramatically skyrocketed. A barrel of oil is now up to $70. To put it in perspective, it was $58 in December. That's a $12 increase. We're up over 3% already, which means you're gonna pay more at the pump. I thought that's why people voted for Donald Trump. They wanted to see lower grocery prices, lower gas prices, and they blame the Biden administration for not doing it fast enough. It's worse under the Trump administration. And we all know it. And we all know it. So oil up. Why? Because Donald Trump is saber rattling again, trying to flex whatever muscle he thinks he has against Iran. Iran, last chance. I'm sending in the USS Abraham Lincoln. I'm going to take you guys out. And Iran fired back and said, if you strike us again, we're gonna retaliate in a way that you can't even contemplate. I'm putting it nicely. And the oil traders are freaking out of what it's gonna do to the oil market. So when you take over the Venezuelan oil fields, just so everybody knows it didn't lead to a drop in oil prices, when you threaten Iran, you just destabilize the oil markets. And oil is skyrocketing. Pain at the pump for you and me, courtesy of the President of the United States. How about the US Dollar, how's that doing? Not great. Whenever you hear about gold and gold price, people flooding into gold and gold now at record prices we've never seen twice, three times what it was a year or two ago. That is because people are looking for a safe haven. They don't believe in government issued currency. They don't believe in the US dollar. The dollar is down 2% again, one of the lowest, the weakest dollars we've ever seen. And that's not helping. You think it would be at least be helping imports and exports, people buying products, right? No. I thought the whole reason for the April Rose Garden summit about Liberation Day and to put 200 tariffs, meaning taxes on you and me, on countries around the world, including most of our or all of our allies. I thought that was to fix the trade deficit. The difference between what we sell out, export, and what we buy in import. Nope. Export imports now about the worst number in the last year. It flipped upside down. It doubled. So the amount of our exports, the amount that we're selling out of the country, of our goods and services, agriculture, those kinds of things is down 4%. Imports, the things we're buying are up. People are like, well, what about the tariffs? Yeah, because the people who are supplying the incoming goods figured out a way to beat the tariffs. Let's be frank, through logistics. They bring it into different ports with different ships with different flags. So they figured out a way to beat it. Our allies figured out a way. And why are exports down? Because who's buying from us right now? We went after and attacked and demoralized and defamed our major trading partner, Canada. Our major trading partner, Mexico. Our major trading partner, eu. The economic union. When you take the economic union and you take Canada and you take Mexico out, I'm surprised the export drop isn't 4, isn't higher than 4%. I feel like I'm constantly compromising on comfort. I'll take a long flight for a getaway, wake up early for a workout or stand around for hours just to get the best spot at a concert. We give up comfort every day. Don't let style be another reason. Mack Weldon's Ace collection makes it effortless to look put together while feeling truly comfortable. Their new Ace line, inspired by their best selling sweatpants, combines everyday comfort with long lasting and confident looks. Upgrade your collection for the new year with new bomber jackets, half zips, sweats, crew necks and more@mackweldon.com and get 20% off your first order of $125 or more with code legal A F look. I've been wearing the Ace collection non stop. The sweatpants, half zips and crewnecks are crazy comfortable but elevated. 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Go to mack weldon.com and get 20% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code Legal A F that's M A C K W E l d o n.com code legal a f see, the beauty of the American economy when it was in the hands of an adult, not somebody who's erratic and mentally failing, is that it produces more than the American consumer can use. That's a good thing. If we produce more, the American consumer cannot consume all of the services and AI and technology, agriculture and, and goods, you know, retail and, you know, manufacturing things that the US economy produces. We need, we need foreign markets, we need our allies to buy from us. We don't need Canada doing deals with China. We don't need Mexico turning its back on us. And that's the impact so dirty little secret of the tariff program that the Supreme Court is likely to tear down is that it's we're doing worse on import and export. Then we turn to we got the dollar down, oil up. And now the Federal Reserve has looked at everything and said, yeah, we're not going to lower, we're not going to lower interest rates again. We've done it three times in a row. We're worried about inflation. But the independence of the Federal Reserve and Jay Powell is the fight here. So here's Jay Powell talking about the independence of the Federal Reserve.
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Let's play it the point of independence is not to protect policymakers or anything like that. It just is that every advanced economy, democracy in the world has come around to this common practice. It's just an institutional arrangement that has served the people well and that is to have a separation between, to not have direct elected official control over the setting of monetary policy. And the reason is that monetary policy can be used through an election cycle to affect the economy in a way that will be politically worthwhile. So this isn't, I'm not talking about the US Context. This is every advanced economy democracy of any size. So it's a good practice. It's pretty much everywhere among countries that look at all like the United States. And I think if you lose that, first of all, it will be hard to restore the credibility of the institution if people lose their Faith that we're making decisions, you know, only on the basis of our assessment of what's best for everyone, for the wide public, rather than trying to benefit one, one group or another. If you lose that, it's going to be hard to retain it. And we haven't lost it. I don't believe we will. I certainly hope we won't. But it's very important. And the reason it's important is that it's enabled central banks generally not to be perfect, but to serve the public well.
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Now this is the second time that Jay Powell has fought back against Trump administration. Three weeks ago we saw a late night video where again, Jay Powell came out swinging after it leaked that there was a criminal investigation against the Fed and against him. Because they're renovating 200 year old buildings and they're running, they're running, they're running over budget. No surprise after, after Covid, there's something called, you know, increase in supply chain costs related to construction, you know, and the rest. And so he fought back. Remember that video clip? Let's play that.
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On Friday, the Department of justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. That testimony concerned in part a multi year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation. Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.
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So we have the extraordinary situation where the outgoing Federal Reserve chairman who's leaving in three months is telling the public, is telling the Supreme Court, is telling the world, don't give up on the American economy. This madman will be out at some point and I'm not gonna give up on the independence of the Federal Reserve and give him the ability to oust people he doesn't like. Now, eventually, Trump will may get enough seats on the Federal Reserve seven seat board of Governors to take control of the Federal Reserve, fire all of the Federal Reserve regional president bank presidents and get control of interest rates. But not yet. Not without a fight about the independence of it all. So we'll continue to follow it here on the Midas Dutch network, Legal af. Thanks for helping us build our substitute community for Legal AF and our Legal AF YouTube community. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called Wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal Layoff are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on Substack Come over now to free subscribe.
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Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year.
- [16:59]
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- [17:00]
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