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

Summary

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PBD Podcast Ep. 686 Summary

Episode Theme:
The PBD Podcast delivers a dynamic, real-time panel discussion on key economic, political, and business events. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David and the Home Team (with Jeff Snyder, Tom, and Brandon) dissect breaking stories: the overwhelming passage of the "Epstein Files" bill, Trump's controversial 'Piggy' insult and his Saudi dealings, the AI/tech market's wild ride, Bitcoin’s recent correction, headlines about American affordability, and rumors of Tim Cook stepping down from Apple—all with spirited debate and signature candor.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. Epstein Files Release: True Transparency or Political Theater?

• What Happened: Congress passed a bill (427–1) to compel the release of Epstein-related files, with only Rep. Clay Higgins voting 'No,' citing privacy concerns for innocents and witnesses.
• Key Panel Reaction:
  • All participants were skeptical that meaningful information would be revealed due to broad redaction powers.
  • Noted the bill still allows the Attorney General to redact content for “national security” or ongoing investigations.
  • Both parties seemingly want to suppress truly damaging disclosures.
• Quote – [14:22]:
  • “The political theater goes on and on… Democrats can say, 'You’re still not showing us everything,' and Republicans can say, 'We released the files, but protected names.'” – Patrick
• Public Distrust:
  • Noted how bipartisan and public appetite for ‘the whole truth’ is rooted in the belief that “elite people play by their own rules.”
  • Burnout and cynicism pervade public opinion due to years of manipulation and withholding.
• Notable Moment – [13:00]:
  • “Always be concerned if your government does something unanimously… it’s not impossible, but highly improbable.” – Tom

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2. Trump’s ‘Piggy’ Slam & Saudi Visit with MBS

• The Incident: Trump tells a reporter, “Quiet, Piggy”—a phrase so unconventional the panel questioned its authenticity.
• Panel Take:
  • Trump’s raw style is both polarizing and a source of vicarious satisfaction for some voters.
  • "Sometimes he’s the Troller-in-Chief… and that’s what I voted for." – Tom [20:14]
• MBS/Elon Musk Exchange:
  • Trump, MBS, and Elon Musk’s meeting featured playful exchanges but tough questions about business, 9/11, and Khashoggi.
  • Trump downplays any conflict over his family’s business and pivots to promoting a $600B–$1T Saudi-US investment deal.
• Geopolitical Context:
  • The Saudis are under financial pressure due to the drop in oil prices.
  • US-Saudi relations are about mutual dependence; America provides investment and arms, the Saudis seek to diversify economy.
• Quote – [35:39]:
  • “The Saudis have to drive a toaster through the car wash and get to the other side without getting electrocuted.” – Tom (on the balancing act Saudi Arabia faces)
• Media Warfare:
  • Trump attacks ABC’s press credentials, threatening “their license should be taken away” [32:58]—showcasing his combative stance against legacy media.

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3. AI/Tech Market Mania: Nvidia, Mag 7, and Bubble Fears

• Nvidia Earnings “Super Bowl”:
  • All eyes on Nvidia, supplier of must-have AI chips.
  • Analysts expect 54% revenue growth but fear any shortfall could spook markets.
  • Historic parallels drawn to Cisco during the dot-com bubble.
• Market Skew:
  • “Mag 7” (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla) now represent nearly 40% of S&P 500 market cap—a sign of concentration risk.
  • If Nvidia and the other six pull back, market sentiment and indexes could tank.
• Quote – [51:55]:
  • “Seven companies represent nearly 40%... It’s the only team playing well.” – Patrick
• Is Main Street Sharing the Boom?
  • Nope. The real economy (bonds, labor, staples) is weaker, and rising rates are squeezing most Americans.

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4. The ‘Labor Recession’ and American Affordability

• Reality of US Households:
  • Majority of Americans—up to 60% (per audience poll)—report living paycheck to paycheck.
  • Wages aren’t keeping up with pandemic-era price surges in homes, cars, and even food.
• Labor Market:
  • Job growth is stalling or negative (per labor stats and ADP surveys).
  • Prime-aged borrowers (30–39) are defaulting on car loans at record rates, not just subprime.
• Recession Odds:
  • UBS puts the odds of a US recession at 93%, based on hard economic data.
  • Bank refi denials hit all-time highs; banks signal caution by tightening credit.
• Quotes – [60:57]:
  • “That is the bank’s way of saying the economy sucks… They have all the information and the stuff on here doesn’t qualify.” – Jeff

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5. Housing Fixes & Portable Mortgages: Innovation or Illusion?

• Portable Mortgage Proposal (transferrable interest rate to a new house):
  • Audience was overwhelmingly in favor, even if logistics are unclear.
  • Skeptics argue banks (and ultimately the government) would have to guarantee new risks and potential losses.
  • Explained how 1982’s Garn–St Germain Act killed earlier mortgage flexibility for bank profit.
• Affordability Crisis: Root Cause
  • Income growth lags far behind inflation and cost-of-living increases, not just in housing.

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6. Solutions for Affordability Crisis

• Panel’s Prescriptions:
  • Jeff: Stop claiming the economy is “booming”—be honest, curb government interference, and let the private sector work.
  • Tom: Cut food and energy prices, modest rate cuts, subsidize power for data centers, repeal tariffs.
  • Brandon: "National gold rush" for homebuilding—decrease regulation, focus on trade skills, restrict corporate homeownership, and expand production of materials (lumber, cement).

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7. Trade Skills, Immigration & Education Debate

• Ford’s "Labor Shortage":
  • Ford can’t fill 5,000 mechanic jobs at $120K/year; panel says solution is simple—raise the wage.
  • “There is no such thing as a labor shortage. You want to fill those bays? Pay the market rate.” – Jeff [84:37]
• Decline in Foreign Students:
  • Foreign enrollments dropped 17%. Does welcoming “the best and brightest” help or hurt the US? Panel splits: value if it’s highly selective and non-exploitative.
  • Robust discussion on what student loans (potentially government-backed) should fund: general consensus to focus on trade and STEM skills, not “unproductive” degrees.
  • “Why are taxpayers funding this stuff?” – Patrick [94:32]
• Audience Strongly in Favor:
  • Poll and superchat responses overwhelmingly support limited government lending—only for technical/trade/STEM skills.

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8. Bitcoin’s Correction and Macro Risk Appetite

• Headline: Bitcoin dropped 25% after a record surge; panel views this as short-term market sentiment, not a death knell.
• Michael Saylor’s Take – [103:21]:
  • “If you’re going to be a bitcoin investor, you need a four-year time horizon and you need to be prepared to handle the volatility…”
• Panel Agrees:
  • Bitcoin’s movement reflects risk tolerance and macro trends, especially interest rates.

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9. Retirement Age: Reality Check

• Finding: Most Americans think 63 is ideal to retire—but math shows later is smarter.
  • Full social security at 67; retiring at 62 reduces benefits 30%.
  • Rising longevity and medical costs mean most must work longer.
• Quote – [110:10]:
  • “You’ve got to work as long as you can… not only are we living longer, the costs are going up.” – Jeff
• Panel Wisdom:
  • Early retirees are often miserable; happiest are “still needed, still contributing.”
  • Community poll found 29% of the audience plan to work past 70.

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10. Rising Paycheck-to-Paycheck Living & Systemic Health

• USA Today Study: 1 in 4 American households use 95% of income for essentials; panel says it’s probably closer to a third or more.
• Root Causes:
  • “K-Shaped” recovery is nothing new, but the bottom population segment is swelling each cycle.
  • Healthcare cost spikes after 2008 further squeezed household budgets.
• Quote – [121:26]:
  • “It’s an economy that doesn’t work… it’s lack of income, lack of jobs, lack of mobility.” – Jeff

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11. Shadow Banking Crisis Looming? Blue Owl, Private Credit, and Underwriting Breakdown

• Hedge funds/investment managers are struggling to provide liquidity as redemptions mount.
• Echoes of early 2008: “Give me my money back!” scenario warning.
• Notable Quote – [129:13]:
  • “We see this in every credit cycle… greed takes hold, you rationalize away the risk.” – Jeff
  • Tom analogizes to "The Big Short" movie: when hedge funds freeze redemptions, trouble is brewing.
• Regulatory eyes turn to BlackRock’s role in risky private credit deals—potential bubble.

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12. Tim Cook’s Reported Departure from Apple

• News: Apple said to accelerate CEO succession planning, with John Ternus in line.
• Legacy:
  • Cook credited for consistent, safe management and huge growth (23x vs. Jobs’ 86x).
  • Criticism: Not enough innovation/new products. Apple’s global phone share and replacement rate are both flat/slipping—new leadership is timely.
• Quote – [138:37]:
  • “He was the right fit at the right time. Now, maybe it’s time for someone to try new things.” – Brandon

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On bipartisan Epstein bill:
  • "Always be concerned if your government does something unanimously… highly improbable." – Tom [12:40]
• On Trump’s 'Piggy' insult:
  • "Sometimes he’s the Troller-in-Chief—exactly what I voted for." – Tom [20:14]
• On Mag 7 dominance:
  • "Seven companies represent nearly 40%... it’s the only team playing well." – Patrick [51:55]
• On portable mortgages:
  • “People don’t know the details, but overwhelmingly they like the idea.” – Patrick [66:42]
• On labor shortages:
  • "There is no such thing as a labor shortage. Pay the market rate." – Jeff [84:37]
• On student loans:
  • "Why are we paying for this stuff? Doesn’t make any sense to me that we’re funding this stuff." – Patrick [94:32]
• On household stress & retirement:
  • "You gotta work as long as you can… costs are only going up." – Jeff [110:10]
• On private credit risk:
  • "We see this in every credit cycle… greed takes hold, you rationalize away the risk." – Jeff [129:13]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Epstein Files Bill & Skepticism: [10:47 – 27:16]
• Trump’s 'Piggy' Slam & Saudi Visit: [18:03 – 41:03]
• Nvidia, Market Concentration, & AI Bubble Risk: [43:11 – 54:17]
• Labor Market Crunch, Refis, Recession Odds: [54:17 – 68:38]
• Portable Mortgages & Housing Affordability: [62:07 – 69:27]
• Panel Solutions for the Affordability Crisis: [71:58 – 80:08]
• Ford, Foreign Students, and Education Policy: [80:17 – 99:39]
• Bitcoin Correction Analysis: [99:39 – 107:43]
• Retirement Timing & American Savings: [110:10 – 115:22]
• Paycheck-to-Paycheck America: [115:31 – 122:47]
• Private Credit/Blue Owl Crisis: [128:16 – 135:57]
• Tim Cook Stepping Down: [136:25 – 142:46]

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Closing Tone

The discussion was animated, candid, and laced with skepticism toward official narratives and “solutions” from above. The pragmatic, sometimes biting tone reflected frustration with establishment politics, elite immunity, and government economic fixes, but also a populist belief in common sense and American resourcefulness. As always, Patrick and the team encourage informed debate and audience engagement.

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For more, follow Jeff Snyder’s Eurodollar University and join the PBD Podcast for deep dives every week.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Did you ever think you would make it.

[A]

Adam?

[C]

What's your point?

[B]

The future looks bright.

[C]

My handshake is better than anything I.

[B]

Ever sized right here. You are a one of one.

[C]

My son's right about.

[A]

I think I've said this before. Things aren't.

[C]

I don't.

[B]

I don't, I don't. I don't mind doing that. I mean, we can have a place set up here. Folks, we're having a very deep conversation with homeschooling and Tom and I got into a big fight because Tom is saying sixth graders don't have enough homework. I'm telling them. Why are you giving these kids so much homework? Tom, turn off your phone, please. Turn off your phone, please. Tom is obsessed with homework for sixth graders and I don't think it's healthy. Why do you want kids to do homework till one o' clock in the morning? You tell me the positive of a 6th grader doing homework till 1 o' clock in the morning.

[C]

How are we going to get them to be fair? Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[A]

It was 11 o' clock a couple.

[B]

Seconds ago by the time. No. How are we supposed to eventually going to be 2 o'?

[A]

Clock?

[C]

Listen, we need seventh graders in factories making iPhones, 16 hour shifts. How are we going to do it if we don't give them proper education?

[A]

We need trade school so they can have Ford mechanics.

[C]

That's exactly.

[B]

Anyways, guys, please.

[C]

Manual dexterity test.

[B]

Let us get back to our fights here. But we have. We have. I am surrounded right now by three geniuses, okay? These guys are brilliant. Like, literally, like Brandon, you know, he's the only guy I met in my life that's got two degrees. He's got a bachelor's and a master's in national security. We got Jeff Snyder here who does some of the best work when it comes down to the technicalities of the market. You're going to hear when he starts speaking. You're going to get smarter by the end of this podcast. And then obviously, in my opinion, Tom's on the sharpest guys I met in my entire life. And I'm going to do my best to try to moderate today's discussion on what's going on with the markets. Last night we got home at 10:45 from Dallas. We were at the annual Goldman Sachs founders family founders meeting. Phenomenal meeting to see what's going on. The the vice chair of Goldman Sachs was the Rob Kaplan talking about what he thinks going to happen with the marketplace. Emmett Smith gave a talk. I can't even tell. I couldn't believe I went to him afterwards. I'm like, brother, you, you give an incredible message. Ross Perot sold Dallas. Ross Perot Jr. Sold Dallas. And a role he plays as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Tom, if I'm not mistaken.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

A lot of the families he was.

[C]

Governor, chamber of Commerce.

[B]

He was a whole enchilada. He was phenomenal. Yeah. And then the government of governor Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was there bunch of different guys. But it's a very good conversation. We'll share some of the stuff with you guys here today. Let me get into the stories and then I'll tell you what has happened on December 12th and we'll get right into it. Tim Cook, the man who took Apple from the day Steve Jobs died. It was worth $100 billion to now 3, maybe $4 trillion depending on the month, is deciding to step down beginning of early next year. Some are happy, some are concerned. We'll definitely talk about that. Trump is considering portable mortgages. Here's how they work. Yesterday, Rob Kaplan even openly said, I'd like to know what these portable mortgages are. This is kind of like some of the people that are not selling their homes. They got a home loan that was on three and a quarter or something like that and they're worried about selling it to give up the three and a quarter for five and a half or six. They're trying to find a way to you can literally transfer that rate to a new loan. Everyone's trying to know how they're going to do it. Maybe we'll get some of our brains here to break that down for us.

[C]

Some of the mortgages, we'll bring that up.

[B]

Bitcoin prices and free of free for all weeks after hitting all time low. People are panicking. Some are worried. Tom is saying there's nothing to worry about. We will cover that as well. Trump scraps tariffs and beef, coffee and tropical fruit and push to lower grocery store prices. Trump is considering Ford CEO Jim Farley says he can't fill 5,000 mechanic jobs paying $120,000 a year. And this is the part, Jeff, I think that you talk about the labor recession and some of the other people talk about labor recession. Brandon, I know you got some thoughts on this as well. People are having AI children. You ready? Are you ready for an AI children? You want to have an AI child? A perfect AI child that does nothing wrong, but people are having AI children with their AI partners according to Futurism.

[A]

Sounds boring.

[B]

Yeah, sounds like the movie her, by the way, which was in my opinion one of the worst movies I've seen in my life. Most Americans think 63 is the perfect age to retire, but they're dead wrong. Wait till you hear, according to Money Wise, what the new age should be for retirement. Some of you for I'm telling you earmuffs. When we go through and you're going to want to leave the podcast, you're going to be so upset with us. But it's not us, it's this guy talking about the story. Omaha Steak CEO warns American families will soon face a $10 a pound reality for beef. Jake and I were talking about the other day. I took the kiss to have ice cream. Five kids had a scoop of ice cream. Brooklyn had her gummy bears. I think she had M&Ms. One of them had gummy bears and one of them had marshmallow. Five scoops of ice cream on waffle cone. Each had one scoop was $64. I asked myself what average family can pay $64 for ice cream. I was blown away, but apparently that's the price today. Number of new Foreign students in US falls 17% over visa worries this is probably the H1B visa conversation that people are afraid of having, but I think we need to be having Toyota opens Massive North Carolina Battery plant confirms $10 billion US investment oil and gas demand could grow until 2050. According to Wall Street Journal, the number of households living paycheck to paycheck have risen. Why so USA Today story How building affordable housing became hottest game in LA Electric Florida Boomtown is now America's Foreclosure ground zero. Wait till you find out what city that is. Trump is. We talk about that. Record property tax increases slam Chicago homeowners as downtown owners see cuts. Wasn't this guy not supposed to raise taxes or do anything? This incredible mayor guy that is destroying a once great city. And then we got a couple other stores we'll get into with AI. Boom is fueling a memory chip shortage that could hit cars and phones. Google is looking at $40 billion for Texas, the data center and Tropic to spend $50 billion on USAI infrastructure. And then we got a couple stories that I think Jeff and Tom both want to talk about. The Blue owl plunges to 2023 low after blocking exit from fund. And there's two stories that will address both of them as well. And then, folks, there was a. There was a clip yesterday with. What do you call it? Epstein. They voted for it. I want to say it was 427 to 1, if I'm not mistaken. And one guy that voted against it is famous now because you probably had never heard of him before. And if he wanted to get famous, this was one of the ways of doing it. Clay Higgins is officially the only guy that voted against releasing the Epstein files. And he actually tweeted about it, explaining why he didn't. And maybe we'll get into that as well. And some. Some guy who works. He works on this street's name, Pennsylvania. I want to say the streets name. He told somebody to. Quiet Piggy. He told someone. Quiet Piggy. I don't know if you guys seen that clip or not. Have you seen that Quiet Piggy clip yet? Maybe we'll address the Quiet Piggy clip as well. Gang, if you got big plans for 2026, I am telling you right now, I can't tell you how many conversations we're having about business planning. There's a reason why we went less than 22 hours to Dallas and come back. Because we want to see exactly what's happening with 2026. We're planning for our family, for our businesses, ourselves. And if 2026 is a big year for you as well, I want you to watch this clip. Rob, can you go to the clip with the Jenga to. To show them what happens when it comes on to business plan and how all of these things are necessary? Go ahead, Rob. Business is a lot like Jenga. Every piece matters. You need a vision carefully. You need capital. You definitely need capital. Let's put this here. Oh, listen, hanging on. On one piece here. By the way, you need the right team for sure. This almost fell off, by the way. You need sales. As good as this looks. If your foundation isn't built on a good business plan, you know what happens? The whole thing crumbles. If you have big plans for 2026, on December 12, I'm hosting an event called the Business Planning Workshop, where all day we go through the 12 building blocks of writing an effective business plan so this doesn't happen to you. If you haven't yet registered, click on the link below. Let's spend an entire day together on December 12th. Looking forward to seeing you there, folks. Click on the link below. Get registered. You can watch it with your friends, family, and this is going to be people watching this from 100 plus countries. And you can find a way to just get registered at the lowest level or you can find a way to be on the screen so everybody can see each other. And at the end, we'll do a Q and a for 90 minutes. All right, having said that, let's get right into it. Rob, what is the audience saying is the first story they want us to get into? Let me guess. Okay, I don't even have to guess. All right, go through that story. So they voted for it and it ended up being what, 4:27 to 1 on releasing the Epstein files. And a lot has been released since there. Is this the breakdown, Rob?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Go for it. We begin with Congress approving a bill to force the release of the government's files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. CBS News reporter Erica Brown joins us now from Capitol Hill. Erica, can you explain what happened in the Senate? Yeah, Lindsey. Just a short time ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor to get unanimous consent that would deem this bill automatically passed.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

We don't need to watch it. I thought it's like a little bit different breakdown. It's like two people sending it to each other. So. So it's Senate and House, Rob. Right. That both said they're passing it. And then as we're going through this, the only guy that didn't Rob, if you can pull him up, Clay Higgins. He's the only person that didn't do it. Representative. Republican. Representative. I want to say he's out of where? Why do I think it was Oklahoma? I don't know if it's Oklahoma. Louisiana. Louisiana. Okay. And if you don't mind going to his Twitter account for us to just let him give his argument why he didn't do it on Twitter. He explains this is Why I voted no. And I've been a principled note on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people, witnesses, people who provided the alibis, family members, et cetera. If enacted in this current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigation files released to a rabid media will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Anyways, that's his reasoning behind it. Go a little bit lower up to see what it says. Because there's a community notes ribbon as a claims misrepresent. The HR4405. The bill includes redactions from victims and uninvolved individuals. Massey explained victims can't release names due to lawsuits forcing them to homelessness. Okay, so maybe there's a little bit of contradiction there. Tom, your thoughts with what was released yesterday? Are we gonna learn anything? Are we gonna see anything? Or is this just another one of those, you know, they're gonna release it just to say they did?

[C]

Well, always be concerned if your government does something unanimously because it's technically a mathematical and a statistical, you know, not impossibility, but it's highly improbable. Like, if they're voting on raises for themselves, all of a sudden you say, hey, Senate and Senate. Everybody was like, what is it? You know, you take all the congressmen, all the Senate, boom, done. So what has happened here is they're all voting to release it, but there's two asterisks in it. The Attorney General, Pam Bondi, can elect to redact it, I think, for matters of national security, A or B, if it would interfere with an ongoing investigation. Help me out here. You know, guys, I think those were the two exceptions, which means that Pam Bondi can swing by the CIA and get all those groovy black highlighters out and go through the whole thing and basically have the same situation as they had when they handed those binders to the social media people and they walked out with the binders that said, yes, Epstein files.

[B]

This. Isn't that. That.

[C]

Yeah, no, no. Supposedly that was. That. This is now, but that had a bunch of stuff that was already released.

[B]

But that didn't go through House and that didn't go through Senate. That was just more like a marketing stunt that they did.

[C]

It turned out to be a marketing stunt. Exactly right. But now the. The government's saying it's going to end.

[A]

Up being a marketing stunt again. Because Bondi's going to go over there, she's going to redact a bunch of.

[C]

Stuff with all those CIA black highlighters.

[B]

You think it's going to be a public. Of course it is.

[A]

I mean, why did both parties agree to this? Yeah, that's what you're saying. When they both.

[C]

The logic of building right back to that.

[A]

She's going to redact a bunch of stuff which will allow the Democrats to say, you're still not showing us everything that's in the files. And then the Republicans can say, no, we released the files, but we had to protect names. And the political theater goes on and on and on.

[B]

Got it. So you don't, you don't. Brent, are you any. Are you in a different position here?

[D]

No, I'm not. I'm, I'm so, unfortunately, I'm so burnt out by this one because we've been like kind of let down and misled and manipulated so many times. Like, I, I'm never going to expect to get a satisfying answer with this thing in terms of like learning new information. Like they said, there's no way that 427 people would vote in favor of it if it's going to do anything damaging to powerful people in a big way.

[B]

Okay, so I'm curious, Jeff. We've had a lot of different theories why we believe they haven't released it yet. We have our own theories why some of the information. You know what? Is because there's so many Democrats that are on there. No, it's because so many donors that gave money to Trump are on there. Oh, my God. Elon Musk, when he tweeted then there was a big fallen out of. No, it's because of maybe Trump's relationship with Epstein. Why do you think all the information is not being released?

[A]

Why isn't it not being released? I think a lot of it has to do. I mean, why is it that this is such a mainstream topic that everybody wants to get into? I mean, like you said, this is the number one, number one the audience wanted to hear. Why is that, though? Because people believe that there is a two tier structure, at least two tiers in this country.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that the elite people have their own set of, you know, rules and benefits. And if you're in the club, you're in the club, and therefore the rules don't really apply to you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so I think that's why everybody has really taken to the story and you get into the idea of the establishment versus regular folks, the uniparty I think that's exactly what we're seeing.

[B]

But flip it though. What I'm trying to ask you is you're a smart guy. What are you speculating is the reason why both parties have held back from releasing it?

[A]

That's exactly cuz people are right.

[B]

People are right because both of them.

[C]

Have guys on the list.

[A]

There's this idea that, you know, American public is a bunch of stupid idiots who don't know anything. But you look at time, survey after survey for something like consumer confidence on the economy. Americans know better about the economy than every economist that has ever lived. Same thing with politics. In a big data sort of way, in a big crowd sort of way. American people have.

[B]

Collectively. Yeah, collectively, that makes sense.

[A]

They have an idea of what's really going on here. And the reason why this story won't go away is because people sense and every time something happens.

[B]

So what's more likely to happen? It going away or the truth coming out?

[A]

It going away.

[B]

Oh, you think it'll, you think it's going to go away eventually.

[A]

There's too much incentive to not to. To just continue to dangle the carrot. Yeah, as much as necessary. And then just like, like this sleight of hand magician.

[B]

What I do like about it is that we're learning a few new things. Where, you know Hakeem Jeffries, you saw that email that reached out to Epstein to want to ask him for money. And then when he did, he says he'd like to set up a meeting with Obama. And then here, I don't know if you have the clip, Rob with Ro Khanna is being asked about it and he just got out. He has no clue. And look at his reaction. He doesn't even know what to say. Go ahead, Rob. On Hakeem Jeffries campaign soliciting money from Jeffrey Epstein himself back in 2013.

[A]

It's the first time hearing about it.

[B]

Obviously Homer said it on the floor.

[A]

Well, I don't know if it's true. I mean, I mean, you're just saying it, but obviously anyone who took money from should return the money or didn't donate the money.

[B]

And I don't step down as leader.

[A]

I have to look at, I have.

[B]

To look at what you say is the first time he's a reasonable guy and he's, he's a little bit.

[A]

Return the money. Mutually assured destruction.

[B]

Mm.

[C]

What a great way to put it. Yeah.

[A]

You want to take out Trump or one of the Republicans. We got the dirt on you too. So let's just bury this Thing. Let's be. Let's get together, hold hands, and bury this thing and just move on.

[B]

Yesterday, a reporter was asking a president about Epstein, and I've never seen him use this phrase before, but he told her, quiet, piggy. Rob, can you. Can you pull this up? Rob, I don't know if you have it or not. I watched it multiple times because I'm not going to lie to you. I thought it was AI and I had to verify because. Go ahead, Rob. This is a real good story about.

[A]

Bronx and his dad, Ryan. Real United Airlines customers.

[B]

We were returning home, and one of.

[D]

The flight attendants asked Bronx if he.

[B]

Wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kath and Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat.

[C]

I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

[B]

That's Andrew, a real United pilot.

[D]

These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

[B]

It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way. Shopping is hard, right?

[A]

But I found a better way. Stitch fix online. Personal styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size, style, and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want.

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Plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started [e-mail] Spotify. That's stitchfix.com Spotify.

[B]

So he dictated a couple of members to him. 73 break. You're going to find out.

[C]

What did he know with respect to.

[B]

Bill Clinton, with respect to the head.

[A]

Of Harvard, with respect to all of those people that he knew, including J.P. morgan.

[B]

Shifts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Jennifer, go ahead. Go back a little bit with.

[C]

With the finger in her face.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's also the smile in his face.

[C]

Right.

[A]

The way he delivers those lines.

[B]

Do it again.

[C]

He looks her right in the eye.

[B]

What do you think about this? What about this quiet piggy?

[A]

He's a great politician. He connects with people. I think a lot of people, just regular folks, would say, I'd love to be able to do that to some of these reporters.

[C]

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

[B]

I'm in Dallas. I'm in the hotel room hidden thing.

[C]

I want to do it.

[B]

I want to do it.

[C]

And he's doing it for me.

[B]

I'm in the bathroom. I come to Jen. I said, babe, the president just said this. She watched. Her instant reaction is she couldn't stop laughing. The fact that a president told a reporter, quiet piggy. Who. Who says that? I mean, you can say f you. You can say you mother. No, no. What's worse? I'd rather be told that than be called a piggy. Be quiet, piggy.

[C]

And they're all searching for how. That it's racial or sexually or.

[B]

By the way, is this the one? Right away.

[C]

Wait, according to reports, this is the reporter that the President called Piggy.

[B]

Has anybody asked him why he called her piggy?

[C]

Not that I'm aware.

[D]

I'll look.

[B]

What is. What is the.

[A]

Like, there has to be a bad.

[D]

She doesn't look super.

[A]

Has to be a backstory to be some other.

[B]

Does she have pigs as a pet? Like, I'm actually curious. Like, is there like a little nursery.

[C]

I'm fetish. This little piggy had. This little piggy did this. And by the way, all the way.

[B]

Home, while this is happening, you know what happened yesterday? Larry summers to his 30 students. He got up to his. Did you see this, Tom? Larry Summers gets in front of his 30 students, and one of the students recorded it and posted it. Rob, do you have this one? Or you want me to send it to you? Yeah, in front of his students, he apologizes. He apologizes and says, hey, because of what happened right there. Rob, go ahead, watch this. With respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein and that I've said that I'm going to step back from public activities, but for a time, but I think it's very important. So there you have it. So Larry Summers comes out, apologizes. Some lady is called little Piggy. You know, you got another story from New York Post comes out where they're talking about what some of the girls said about Epstein, which we'll cover that on Friday because that's Vinnie's favorite story. We won't cover that today.

[C]

More of an Adam story. But.

[B]

Yeah, well, Listen, it is what it is, but we'll cover that on. On. On Friday. Rob, what are the new things that we learn? What are the new things that we learn? Because there was. There was a. Is this the one with Johnson?

[C]

Yes. This is where Mike Johnson talks about it being a security issue. To release. A national security issue. To release the Epstein file unredacted.

[B]

Go ahead.

[C]

All right, number five, national security concerns. Okay. The discharge requires the Attorney General to release within 30 days, quote, classified information to the maximum extent possible. This ignores the principle that declassification should.

[B]

Always rest and always has rested with.

[C]

The agency that originated the intelligence. Why? So that they can protect their critical sources and methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies and intelligence agencies.

[B]

Okay, so this goes back to kind of what you were talking about, the fact that nothing's going to be released. Yeah. Do you. If there's one thing that Glenn Beck was talking about this, I think it was yesterday, maybe even a few days ago, he was talking about this, where there was a specific part that they were leaving out. Part where it said they're trying to get Trump, that. I want you to realize that the dog hasn't barked. The dog that hasn't barked is Trump. This is an email exchange between Epstein, I want to say, and the dog that has embarked was Trump. And they. They hid the name of the individual, which was Virginia. That's the one. Rob, if you want to zoom in a little bit. So this is email correspondence of Jeffrey Epstein, who is he sending it to? Gmax. I want you to realize that the dog that has embarked is Trump victim. They hid. So you wouldn't know who that person is. This is what the Democrats were using for many years. Spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been mentioned. Police chief, etc. I'm 75% there. Meaning he hasn't prompted to do anything with her. Apparently. Zoom in, going a little bit more. And then the direct correspondence victim Mar? A Lago Trump said, he asked me to resign. Never a member, ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Jelaine to stop. Okay, so who is the victim? The victim is Virginia Giuffre. Okay. And when Virginia was asked about the relationship with the President and the question was asked, Donald Trump was also a good friend of Epstein. And this questioner, going back and forth, I don't know if you have that one or not, Rob. And she responded, he didn't partake in any Any of the sex with any of us is what was said in there. Right. But he flirted with me. So this is some of the stuff that is coming out. I think. I think it's good that it's being released, even though if it's a little bit, we're still getting more than we had the day before. I don't mind if more and more information is being released and being talked about, but the reality of it is I'm convinced there's guys on both sides, and I think a lot of people are probably in the same place as well. They just don't want the world to know who these names are. They think it's a much better place to keep it to themselves. Tom, I'll give you the last word and we'll go to the next story.

[C]

If anybody thinks that this is. First of all, Vinny's not here, but I will speak up for the horrifying effect that happened to the victims. And I'm not equivocating the two things I'm about to say, but there's a reason why they all say they're in favor of campaign finance reform and they pass resolutions that do nothing. There's a reason they're all in favor of the line item veto, and then they don't pass any resolutions, because that is the uniparty, that is the establishment, and that is what the American voter can see in the clear light of day and is pissed off about. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. And now you have something as volatile as pedophilia and the victims, and it just has pushed Americans over the top. Want an answer? Yeah.

[A]

I had one more thing, of course, one thing that we've learned from all this, especially the Larry Summers thing. It's true, right, that there is this other.

[B]

I think there is some progress with information that's. Yeah.

[A]

It's not specific, but it does confirm everybody's gut feeling.

[B]

Larry Summers apologizing. Jeff that's a pretty big deal.

[A]

But it goes along. People are right. They know that there's something there. So.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So I'm. I'm more of the. Of the thought of. I'm more optimistic that a more is going to come out. It's never going to fill the appetite of the audience because they want 100%. But I'm. I'm coming from a place of. I think there's going to be some progress and more information coming out. Not 100% of it, but more of it coming out for us to get smarter with what happened here? Because the more and more stories you see with these girls, that's devastating. That's someone's daughter, that's someone's niece, that someone's today their wife, that someone's sister that experienced something like this. And you can only imagine as a younger brother, you know, my sister's a few years older than me. I was always extremely protective to the levels of that even somebody. There was a guy, she had a. She had an ex boyfriend. One time, this poor guy, I get out of the military, he is 10 years older than me. We're at the church and he walks by. I'm in my uniform. I'm 18 years old. My dad is begging me to not do anything because we did something to the guy when he left the gym one time when I was 15 years old, 16, I don't know what it was. It was a long time ago, that level of protection that you have for the people around you. So I'm sure a lot of families want to see justice with this. So we'll see what happened here with the story. Let's go to the next one now. More things yesterday. MBS is in town yesterday. Okay, when he's in town, Ronaldo's there, Musk is there. And while MBS comes in, Trump is going to say hello to him. He slaps Elon Musk in the butt. Rob, you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, he slaps Elon Musk in the butt. Like Vinnie was saying earlier, as if, hey, welcome back. You know, you. As long as you apologize, you're welcome back. Here. I don't know if you have the clip or not. Is that the one? Okay, right there. Go ahead, Rob. It's a little tap in the belly. Checking a six pack. Okay. And then if you want to show Rob the exchange with the media, there's a couple of them. That's one of them. And then we'll go to the other one as well while they're having fun together with the investment that he's making. Is this the whole exchange? Oh, this is the one, Rob. Is this the whole exchange? Two minutes.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Yeah. Let's watch us. Go ahead, Rob. Watch us, folks. Mr. President, for your family to be doing business in Saudi Arabia while you're president, is that a conflict of interest? And your royal highness, the US Intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 911 families are furious that you are.

[C]

Here in the Oval Office.

[B]

Why should Americans trust. Who are you with?

[C]

And the same to you, Mr. President.

[B]

Who are you With. I'm with ABC News, sir. You're with who? ABC News, sir. Fake news. ABC Fake news.

[A]

One of the worst. One of the worst in the business.

[B]

But I'll answer your question.

[A]

I have nothing to do with the.

[B]

Family business I have left and when I, I've devoted 100% of my energy.

[C]

What my family does is fine.

[B]

They do business all over. They've done very little with Saudi Arabia actually. I'm sure they could do a lot. As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job. You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happened but he knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that.

[A]

You don't have to embarrass our guests.

[B]

By asking a question like that. Questions you asked. Mr. President, you allow me to answer. You know, I feel painful about, you know, the families of 911 in America. But you know, we have to focus on reality, reality based on CIA documents and based on a lot of documents that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people in that event for one main purpose is to destroy this relation, to destroy the American Saudi Arabia relation. That's the purpose of 911. About the generalists, it's really painful to hear, you know, anyone that been losing his life for you know, no real purpose or no, not in a legal way. And it's been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We've did all the right steps of investigation etc in Saudi Arabia and we've improved the whole system to be sure that nothing happened like that. Painful. There's another one that happens as well with the investment of 600 billion a trillion if you want to find that. Jeff, what do you think about that exchange? Well, what the reporter asked and then MBS actually wanting to answer it, not wanting president to defend him, protect them.

[A]

Yeah, there's a lot going on here. I think the Saudis are in a lot more trouble than people realize given oil prices and the oil economy over in Saudi Arabia. And I think there's a huge incentive for the United States to offer support but also Saudi Arabia to give them something as well. So I think there's, it's not really about the, you know, these political distractions. It's more about, hey, we've got some real trouble going on here. We need to get along really well.

[B]

Brandon, what do you think?

[D]

Yeah, I 100% agree. There's been, I think it's like 80% of their GDP is from oil. And they're putting a huge initiative into building things to make it more of a desirable vacation destination. So, I mean, so it's a weird place to take that conversation, like for 9, 11 questions and Jamal Khashoggi questions when there's, you know, a lot more interesting things to talk about than that. And there's, like, very little information about that stuff. So, yeah, I think the main reason that we're doing a lot of work with them is because we need them and they need our investment to make it a more desirable vacation destination.

[B]

Well, here's Rob. I don't know if you have the other clip where he says ABC should lose their license. Is this the one, Rob? No, I. He was so unhappy with the question that he comes back explaining to her on how many different news companies lost lawsuits to him. And then he came back and said this about abc, go for it. And people are wise to you Hoax and abc.

[A]

Your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. And I'll tell you something, I'll tell you something.

[B]

I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it's so wrong. 97%. We have a great commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that, because I wish it would let it finish. Because the next thing he says right there is about the fact that there's a reason, because the average audience, if they hear that, they're going to say, you can't just go take a license out. There's a part where he says, When 97% of your news was attacking me. Is that the part, Rob? Did you find it?

[C]

I'm listening to it right now.

[B]

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

[C]

I'll tell you what my thoughts are. He campaigned on energy, not independence, not isolationist, but he campaigned on drill, baby, drill. He came right out and he said it, and it's going to be drill, baby, drill. We were there in Washington on the inauguration Day where it was a key part of his speech. There he waving to the crowd and he said, and drill, baby, drill. And guess what? It's having an effect. And Saudis have a Rubik's Cube. They have to solve. They need to cooperate with the United States. But with regard to Gaza, but they don't want to be seen as patronizing the United States to the other members of OPEC who are also other Arabic and Muslim countries. They don't want that, but they need it. The price of oil is coming down, which is actually going to help certain things. It's already helping gasoline and then coming up heating. While in the United States electricity is expensive for other reasons. But then the Saudis have this arms merchant service that they, they run and they get a lot of support and arms from us. So they got to kind of, it's like they have to here's what I think is going on right now with Saudis. The Saudis have to drive a toaster through the car wash and get to the other side without getting electrocuted. And right now there are so many things from economic pressure to political pressure to the war. They got to take their steps. There is a reason that you take a look at mbs. You've seen him many times. He was not stammering but he was really searching for words and stuff. He was not the normal mbs. Hello, I hope the oil and everything is going good. Here's times you can see MBS looking so confident. That guy looked do you look confident to you?

[B]

A message from McAfee wondering why the post office is texting you or why you owe thousands of dollars in toll fees because someone's trying to scam you? The good news? McAfee can help. With McAfee's award winning scam detection, it's easy to tell what's real and what's fake over text in your inbox and online. If they're FA you won a free gift. Seriously, if they're faking it, they're not making it past us. Get award winning scam detection today mcafee.com Keep it real. The holidays are all about family. But at the Chrysler Wrap of the year sales event, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile and the most awarded minivan in America, the Chrysler Pacifica with the most standard safety features in its class, available stow n go seating and the available stow and back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the year sales event based on Ward's small van segment based upon the latest available competitor information. Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc. I think he is. The question about the toaster analogy, Tom, is if the toaster is plugged in you're in trouble. But if it's not plugged in, you will make it through the car Wash, so you know that oil price is.

[A]

Plugged in the toaster. I think that that's exactly right.

[C]

Exactly right.

[B]

And. But I do think Trump is using the leverage to get what he wants.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

He's using the leverage to get what he wants. Rob, if you want to play that clip.

[A]

But that's, that's where his comment comes in. He's defending.

[B]

I know, I know he is, because he's trying to get that 600 billion to a trillion dollars because he knows.

[A]

Saudis don't have it. That's the thing. They're already out there borrowing dollars. Last year, for the first time a long time, the Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian economy had to borrow external funds. They actually borrowed more in dollars outside of Saudi Arabia.

[B]

How much was that? How much did they borrow?

[A]

I don't know. I don't know exactly the number.

[B]

Wow. Saudi. The government borrowed more money.

[A]

Yeah. Because with oil prices down, with so many of those internal projects sucking up resources in Saudi Arabia, they actually have some of a cash shortage in Saudi Arabia.

[B]

You're right. Last year they borrowed $23 billion. Yes. Government planned to borrow about $23 billion.

[A]

Net asset acquisition in 2024 was actually negative.

[B]

Negative.

[A]

Which means they're borrowing more outside the country than they're bringing in.

[B]

The total national government debt increased to an estimated $319 billion.

[A]

They're scaling back all those male mega projects. They're scale. The fiscal deficit is off the charts. So you're saying Saudi Arabia's in trouble.

[B]

They may not even have the 600 billion to invest here.

[A]

No, no, they're.

[C]

They need 80 oil. They need 80.

[B]

Okay, so then let me ask you this. Minimum, let me ask you this.

[A]

So your analogy. The toaster to the car wash. Exactly right.

[B]

So let me ask this question here. So then if that's the case, does the President know that? Don't you think the President knows that? So then if he knows that. Is this just market?

[A]

What can I give you to cushion the blow? Because I don't want $80 oil. What can I give you to help you in transition so that, you know, Saudi Arabia doesn't fall apart if oil continues to go lower?

[B]

I thought I said they're buying, they're selling them jets. Yeah, right. I don't know what the number was. I thought I saw $100 million a pop.

[A]

And that was something that had been never even on the table before. They said, we're never going to sell you the 35.

[C]

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

[A]

The other way to make money is if prices won't go up, how do you make more money? Sell more stuff.

[C]

2X the volume at $70.

[A]

If Venezuela is off the table, then.

[C]

They could sell it for 70 and.

[A]

Then they can live with $50 oil.

[B]

Got it.

[C]

So this is a little Rubik's Cube, but I think the guy that's in the chair there, look at that. He was very. Look at his body language. Look at how he was. Forget the reaction to the question from abc. That pissed him off and it should have. But look at the confidence he has. And look at this.

[B]

This is the part, Rob, this the clip I want you to play.

[C]

This is the guy we voted for.

[B]

I think it is $100 million per F35. And if they were to buy, say roughly 48 of them, which is the number that they're talking about, a Saudi requested for 48 of them. That'd be $4.8 billion for the F35s. But here's a $600 billion investment. Go ahead, Rob. Thank you. Because you've agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States and because he's my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I'm going to have to work on him. But it's 600. We can count on $600 billion. But I just want to say it's.

[A]

An honor to be your friend and.

[B]

It'S an honor that you're here and if you'd like to say a few words. But thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. We believe in the future of the United States of America. We believe in what you're doing, Mr. President is really creating a lot of good things and good foundation to create more economical growth, more business in America and it will also your work for the world peace. I believe, Mr. President, in the today and tomorrow we're going to Announce that we are going to increase that 600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment. Real investment and real opportunity by details in many areas and the agreement that we are signing today in many areas in technology and AI and materials, magnet, etc. That will create a lot of investment opportunities. So you are doing that now. You're saying to me now that the 600 billion will be one trip. Definitely. Because what we are signing to. To facilitate that. You can pause that rough.

[C]

So, so, so you're picking up the dinner check.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And dessert.

[B]

Look, you get in the guy that like you said, Tom, you know when we were talking about who to have as a president, you want to vote for somebody that negotiates on your behalf. That's what he's doing. Rob, is this another club he got?

[C]

This is one more. This is where President Trump shakes NBS.

[B]

His hand and then they make fun of Joe Biden.

[C]

Go ahead.

[B]

Son of the league, Mr. President. And Trump doesn't give a fist pump. I grabbed that hand. I don't give a hell where that hand spin. I grab that. I don't give a damn where that hand's been. So you little piggy and announce. I don't give a damn where the hand's been. Brandon, what are you thinking?

[D]

Yeah, no, I agree with a lot of them what these guys are saying. I think that like Saudi has been in a tough spot for a long time. Like they're very much anticipated stating that the demand for oils or their, their reliance on oil is going to be a problem for them one day. So they're trying to just make it a destination that people want to go to. So I think that's why the, the subsidy here is that us is investing in I guess property or like, like vacation type of real estate. So they're trying to make it like an attractive destination for rich people to go to to offset some of that blow.

[B]

Why are you pointing at me when you said that for rich people to go to. You're so.

[D]

I was waving my hands around.

[B]

Okay, I got it. Yeah, it's just window waving hand moment.

[C]

Right.

[B]

So Nvidia said there's a major call going on today that everybody is waiting for. Okay, the forecast of Nvidia, what is it going to be? Okay, today or tomorrow, it's either going to be a bloodbath. It could be a very, very interesting day. Rob, if you want to play this clip, go forward with Nvidia's earnings.

[C]

How big are Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday night?

[B]

It's a Super bowl, not, not just for tech earnings, but I think this market.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I mean, the reality is, is that there's only one godfather of AI and that's Jensen and Nvidia. Look, it's the foundation in terms of what demand looks like in terms of what we're seeing. And you know, G and I talk about it often, I think it's going to be actually a huge positive growth catalyst that we see not just for Nvidia, but for tech stocks. But it all comes down to on Wednesday night, you're going to be able to hear a pin drop on trading for us around the world. I just don't know, Gene, how you even plan for this normally. You know, you've got the Analys estimates, you've got a little bit of whisper number. If they kind of come in a little bit above it, it's good news. Everybody knows Nvidia's numbers are going to be gigantic.

[C]

We all.

[B]

Is that a fair statement?

[A]

Yeah, it's not only a fair statement. Back on the 28th, Jensen went at the GTC.

[B]

He basically gave us the playbook through the end of next year.

[A]

He said this 500 billion in Blackwell and Rubin revenue. If you take that for work, for his word that they're going to be able to do that now, if they.

[B]

Can get supply, that implies a 54% revenue growth rate for next year. The Street's at 41%. That's come up from 34 to 41.

[A]

But that's the gap, as I think about this, Brian, that's the gap between where they've sold the bar in the 28.

[B]

He gave us 54% revenue growth.

[A]

I don't know a lot about Wall.

[B]

Street, except I do know this 54% ain't going to do it when it comes to the stock is it's going to have to be better than 54%, isn't it? I don't think it needs to be.

[A]

Better than 54 this week.

[B]

I think it needs to be better than the 41 where the street's at. Yep. And to Jean's point, look, we came back from asia, being there three weeks, demand to supply for Nvidia chips is 12 to 1. So it comes down to this one. 12 people want to order for every one potential chip that exists to order. So there's, there's one chip in the world fueling the air revolution. And that's why it speaks to our view that anyone, that all the time, anyone talks about an AI bubble. Here we are in the third inning of where this is all point out. And I think that's why this is an inflection point. You're going to see ultimately what the demand looks like from Jensen himself. And I think the view is a bullish. I mean, I was going to say, what do you think about his pink jacket? But what do you think about Jeff, what they're saying here?

[A]

I think the, you know, it's a lot of words to basically say we have no frigging clue what's going to happen. And what happens in all of these disruptive technological cycles is that, yes, the numbers look good until they don't.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is a 12 to 1 demand to supply? Well, one of these days it'll be 11 to 1 and then it'll be 10 to 1. As all these companies reassess the numbers that are being thrown around, the amount of revenue that's just required to even have a prayer of breaking even. And then let's talk about the products themselves. It doesn't live up to the hype. So where are you going to get the demand from to maintain that type of growth rate? So the danger isn't necessarily that it's, you know, Nvidia's earnings today won't be 61% or 62%. It's whether or not we're actually seeing tangible results that actually match expectations.

[B]

Tom, your thoughts?

[C]

There's a lot of forward that's built into Nvidia and what Jeff just said is correct. But I'll tell you something else that people are looking at right now. Rob, if you could really quick go find Cisco and go Max. Yeah, Cisco Max. Yep, the chart. You have the Cisco and Max. And then put, then pull up Nvidia. Max. No, Cisco's earning chart. Cisco stock chart. Yep.

[B]

And.

[C]

Yep. And go to Max. All right, let's see if you can find the dot com bubble. It's easy to see. It's, you know, it's right there. Now let's go take a look at Nvidia and go to Nvidia stock chart and go Max. There you have it.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Nvidia is on the front end of Cisco. What was Cisco? Cisco had 70. Go back to Cisco. Cisco had 70% market share in 1999 of routers 7 0. And then they bought, they were given all the IBM patents and IBM said screw it, I'm out of the router business, as the story goes. And they were at 84% market share of routers at the beginning of 2000. Oh, March 2000, first quarter. Go right there, right There, right there. Yep, yep, yep, yep. There you go. First quarter 2000. That's what, 80% market share in a brand new market. Well, we need routers. Routers have to be everywhere. It's going to power the Internet. They have to interconnect each other. That's correct. That's very, very correct. Now go to Nvidia and you have here the one guy with the Blackwell chips that's got massive market share. This is what people are looking at when they say AI bubble. These are not a bunch of bears running around like Elizabeth Warren hoping the sky will fall on capitalists. These are people really looking at it and saying, wow, could this be an AI bubble the same way we had an infrastructure bubble for the Internet? And if so, that's, that's kind of tough. What I look for after hours today is do we head for an adjustment, not a crash, but do we come to an adjustment where PEs come back into a line with a little bit of reality. And the way you do that is forward forecast. And if forward forecast doesn't say and we have demand, what's demand? They're going to ask what is demand? 12 to 1, 13 to 1, 11 to 1. If the demand's coming back, they'll say, well, demand softening maybe. Now we've got all the chips ordered that we need for the data centers, even though you still have to make them. But we priced in all the profit and making those chips into that spike right here. And what's their PE52? That's not horrible. Yeah, it was 52 yesterday.

[A]

But if you listen to CNBC, they'll tell you it's cheap.

[C]

Yeah, exactly right. So what I think about Nvidia today, Take a breath, it's going to be okay. There could be. And by the way, the option volume is suggesting that there could be a 7% downward swing today in the price. And it's.

[B]

That happens. How will the market react?

[C]

The market react badly because what was Nvidia's peak three weeks ago? 208 or 210? 208, 207 I think intraday there was like a 208. So. And now we're down at 186. So we're 20 points down. 10% down another 7% would be 17%. That is a very typical correction. Yesterday at Goldman Sachs event people talked about you get 15% correction in a hot frothy market is not unusual. And then they say you grow into your pants. Right now your pants are kind of baggy because the prices Come down. But now through sales dominance, market share, you grow back into your pants. And so it's a really big thing. Just like they said today, it is the super bowl. And it's going to determine whether we have like a Merry Christmas or where we have a managed Christmas. And what I mean by that is does the market begin to make a little bit of adjustment and then people have to say, okay, maybe I'm a little more cash for the fourth quarter, maybe I'm. This will be normal things that happen, but there'll be a lot of, look, the liberal media wants to see an adjustment so they can say, I told you it was a bubble. All these Wall street bastards, you know, now they're taking it, you know, and these guys just lost $2 billion. They didn't, they lost that on paper, on, on net worth and stuff. And so one way you're going to have, I think a flat, slightly up response and the other way you have a down response. But I don't see that we have Nvidia saves the world like it did last summer.

[B]

Yeah. So I have a whole follow up question, but I'm going to come to you to see if you have a different take on this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I got a follow up for you guys. Go ahead, Brandon.

[D]

Yeah, I think the entirety of not only just the stock market, but the like entire US economy is, looks well on the outside looking in because of the AI, I guess bubble, because of the like national flywheel that has all these giant seven companies spending money hand over fist on these chips from Nvidia and probably because they're competing to create the best AI product. And like that's what the data centers are for. But like that's like the sole reason that the economy looks good right now. I think that the actual Main street is doing much worse than the stock market. But I think that if Nvidia takes a dive, the entire market takes a dive because it's probably what, like 8 or 9% of the S P right now?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And what is 8 or 9%?

[D]

Nvidia.

[B]

Oh, so Nvidia is 8 or 9%. But the question I was going to ask all three of you guys is this year S&P 500 rate of return is roughly 13 or 14%, give or take. Right. Do you know what percentage of the s and P500 is a max seven companies?

[C]

And it's kind of mag.

[B]

28. Huh?

[D]

28.

[B]

35 to 37%.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Seven companies represent nearly 40%.

[A]

That's why they're talking about it being the super bowl because it's the only team playing well.

[B]

But this is the scary part though, right there. If you look at it at 35 to 38%, the, the seven companies, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia.

[A]

And so the question is, are these stocks representative of the.

[B]

That's the question, yes.

[A]

Or are they representative of justice?

[B]

So then this is so. So fellow on my nectar is asking me a question yesterday and I told him, I said we're going to talk about on the podcast. So he's, he's getting the, the preview on this. So SMP's up 13, 14. Market's doing great. You take seven out of. It's a very different story. Right, so what is the market doing? How is the market doing? What's the market looking like when it comes down to wanting to, you know, buy properties, you know, other industries, hotels, you know, you're seeing some data coming out that just doesn't make any sense in certain other industries. So how bad are things outside of Max 7? Jeff, I'll come to first.

[A]

Yeah, that's the market you want to look at is not stock. Stocks are somewhat their own reality. The market you want to look at for economic fundamentals is bonds, interest rates, shapes of curves and things like that. Esoteric indications. But I will say for the stock market, I know we want to get into this a little bit later. Bitcoin cryptocurrencies is sort of a proxy for general risk taking. With bitcoin being crushed over the last couple of weeks, it suggests that there is a growing anxiety about a whole bunch of topics I think we'll get into here. That's not just related to Nvidia and what their demand versus supply numbers are. It's the overall environment. Has the AI bubble gone too far and what will that do to the overall economy if it does start to falter here? What are the underlying mechanics in the economy itself and does that actually, does that lead to the marketplace, the financial marketplace looking to take more risks in things like buying stocks or investing in real economy projects? Because I know we were talking about this a little bit. You're right. The mainstream situation is not like it is in what you see in Nvidia and AI. You just look at the consumer staples stocks, for example. They are huge laggards to the rest of the market. Yes, they're up. They're not up nearly as much. So the overall. That's why I think Bitcoin in particular is useful as a proxy for the marginal risk taker in the Marketplace. And that one has turned decisively ugly over the last couple weeks.

[B]

Okay, so when I look at ubs, UBS just comes out and puts. I guess this is the word we're gonna be using today. UBS comes out and Rob, if you wanna pull this up, puts US recession odds at 93%. Damn is what they said. Not 50%, not 40%, 93%. Some may even ask if you were to take the Max 7 out, are we in a recession? But nobody knows it.

[D]

That's market breadth, right?

[B]

Right. UBS currently assigns a 93% probability of US recession based on its analysis on hard data such as employment, industrial production, income and consumption.

[A]

So you look at the macroeconomic statistics heading into the summer, I mean, before the government shut down. You look at the labor report. I mean, there's a negative payroll number on the board for June. So we're already job shedding. And that's been confirmed by ADP and a number of other surveys, including the Federal Reserve's own surveys. Consumer. We talked about this earlier. Consumer sentiment has been decisively negative all year because consumers realize there are no jobs. So the situation on mainstream is far more dire than people who are only focused on the stock market are really getting a sense of.

[B]

Tom.

[C]

So I'm about to get slaughtered on both sides. On one side, you hear me talk about the market. The market is managing itself to the, to the benefit of the shareholders. That's what the market is doing. So as you said, Wall street is its own world. It's a very big world. And by the way, Mag7, they talk about Mag7. Mag7 is bigger than all of the European stock markets, all a L L. So Mag7 is bigger than the entire continent of Europe on an investment basis. So it is a huge red flag.

[A]

That's the right.

[C]

That's right. They should have their own flag, their own blue flag with seven stars on it and be like, we got your. We got your EU right here.

[B]

500. Wow.

[C]

Yep. And so now then. So they are managing to manage profits, which includes layoffs, which includes active use of AI and a lot of things like that, because they're trying to manage profits. That's stock market, I'm going to call it right here. I have felt for the last two months that we should be using the phrase labor recession because I believe we are in a labor recession. And I think that there are numbers that the government under Biden has been. They haven't fully, you know, fixed the way they were doing. Let me, let me say why, Pat, if you Overstate actual labor because they use average incomes and a percent of income for tax and then a percent of income for spending. You're overstating GDP estimates. Make sense. Oh, you didn't have that many people working, so you can't take 20. I think that 17%. Take 17% up for taxes and the rest is what they spend in the economy on this, that and the other. And they overspend. Here are some facts going on right now. Credit cards have hit 1.25 trillion. We're back, we're back into that territory again. So number one, number two, car repos are going to be the highest this year since. You ready for this number, Pat? 2009 car repos this year will be highest since 2009. It's almost there right now. And all it has to have is a little bit of trend in November, December, and it beats 2009. The fastest grown delinquency. By the way, people like Cox Automotive, they cover repos. They like to say. Oh, no, no, you're just talking about subprime. Subprime borrowers got into trouble because interest rates were so high and they had 9 and 10 and 11% loans. No, no, no, no, no. Would you like to know right now, today, going into fourth quarter, the fastest growth in delinquencies in car loans is prime borrowers. Not super prime.

[A]

Prime and prime that are age between 30 and 39. So prime working age borrowers, correct?

[C]

That's exactly right. Thank you very much.

[A]

Red flag.

[C]

We're on that. Also that also what you have. That's just that you now also have people talking about mortgage delinquencies. And by the way, Rob, would you pull this up the chart I sent you, it's the one on the refi denials. Look what is happening to mortgage refi denials. It's not that one. It's the other one I sent you. I sent you just the, These are the two that were sent. No, no, no, no, no. Down in my email, there's a couple of them. The mortgage charts denials are up in red. Yep.

[B]

So Tom, while he's looking for this, I just looked this up. So here's. And I'm going to bring you back to you because with max 7s and P is up 15 to 16% year to date, without it, it's still up 12 or 13%.

[C]

That's correct. They're, they're successfully managing it. Consumers.

[B]

How much of it is Max 7 driving everybody else? So if maximum clients, everybody else follows.

[C]

Yeah. And, and by the way, it gives you protection.

[A]

If you have the Mag 7 stocks that are rising, then you can buy everything else and justify it as the market is going higher.

[C]

Yeah. Is this the go to refinance? The next one down on the left column. Left column, right there. Go take a look at that, Pat.

[B]

Holy moly.

[C]

This is the denials and refis. These are all the people that coming out of Coke. Remember when they came out of COVID and some people got 7 1/2 and 7 3/4 and some eights. Remember that? Yeah. Well, guess what's happened? The, the rates now have down to six and a quarter, six and an eighth or pay a point and get five and seven eighths. But they're getting denied by the bank. Why? Because you're late on your car loan and your credit card is 1.25 trillion. That's what's happening right now.

[B]

This is, if you look at this here, the blue is application rate, which is the lowest it's been in 10 years. The last 24 months. The higher one just first quarter, that's higher interest rates.

[A]

Some of that is due to higher interest rates.

[B]

Okay. Which is fine. Which is fine because we see the decline coming from Q2 of 2021 when they started increasing rates, rates and that just kind of came down. Right. And in the last 12 and a half, you know, 18 months it's been flat. But for rejection to be at 45.7.

[C]

All time high since they've been measuring it.

[A]

Stop it. That's the banking sector.

[C]

All time high since they've been measuring.

[B]

Are you kidding me?

[C]

I am not kidding.

[A]

That's the banking sector saying.

[B]

When did they start measuring it though?

[C]

2010, 2012?

[A]

That statistic I think goes back to 2003.

[B]

Well, that's, that's a good ample enough of inventory of data. There's enough events that's happened since then. So. Okay, so you said something while I interrupted you. I was speaking. Both of us were speaking at the same time. I want to make sure the audience hears what you said. That is the way of banks saying what?

[A]

The economy sucks. That's banks saying. We have all of the fundamental information. When somebody fills out a credit application, we've got their jobs, we've got their income, we've got their credit score.

[C]

Underwriting every.

[A]

Well, when they actually do it.

[B]

Well then let me get into it. Let me get into.

[A]

So the banks are saying, I have your information here and the stuff on here doesn't qualify.

[C]

Can we add one more thing to put in perspective? Meta 2 weeks ago had 11% decline. Remember the stock Facebook Meta had a big decline. A week later they sold to the street $25 billion in bonds. How many times oversubscribed was it because you know when they say oversubscribe, more people want it than can get it.

[B]

Not many.

[C]

5X.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

There was $125 billion at the door willing to trying to get in because.

[B]

They want to put the money to.

[C]

Work and because they're going to get a fixed interest rate from Facebook. Facebook's got to sell the bond at a rate. So what they're saying is they trust more of the bond right now than they trust the actual stock price.

[A]

That's why that number is why.

[C]

So it drops 11% but Facebook is able to sell.

[B]

But let me get to this. So I don't want to confuse the two. I don't want to confuse. I want to stay here. I stay here.

[C]

But it's all the same.

[B]

I understand it. But we're talking about mortgage mortgage application specifically. So I want to get to the story here because this was a topic yesterday also when we were at the Goldman Sachs meeting when they asked the vice chair Rob Kaplan on what what the thoughts are on 50 year mortgages as well as this mortgage, portable mortgage. So Trump is considering portable mortgages. This is New York Post. Here's how it works. Federal Housing Agency Director Bill Pulte said the government agency is actively evaluating portable mortgages which would allow homeowner to transfer their loan from their current home to a new home when they move. With portable mortgages, the homeowner would effectively be able to keep their existing interest rate and terms instead of paying off the loan and getting a new one. It's a strategy designed to inject movement into a stagnant housing market. Many homeowners would be buyers have remained on the sidelines because they are reluctant to trade their sub 3% mortgage rates for today's loans hovering around 6 and a half percent. Realtor.com senior economist Jimmy Kimmel told Fox Business that these types of mortgages aren't compatible with the architecture of US Mortgage finance. Nor would they fix the broader affordability problems facing the housing market if they were. So the question is what? I have a million dollar home, but I have a million dollar home. I'm paying three, three and three and a half percent. Now if I want to go sell this, yes, I bought the house at 700, I will get $300,000 of equity out. So if I get the $300,000 equity out and I go buy A different house. I'm going to have to go from a three and a half to six and a half. So I'm better off staying in this and not having to remove that three and a half. I have. This is a way of saying you can actually keep that interest rate and take that loan into a new house, sell your house and buy another one and you won't lose that interest rate. But how do they do that, Jeff?

[A]

Yeah, how do you do that?

[B]

How do you do it?

[A]

The question is, I mean, what bank.

[B]

Is going to prove that?

[A]

You have to, you have a collateral swap. You have to look at what is this house going to be collateral for the new loan? I mean, the logistics of that are pretty close to nightmarish.

[B]

The logistics to me would be who's gonna entertain that, who's gonna prove that? And if they did, of course, you.

[A]

Know how this is gonna work. What they're gonna say is the government's gonna come in and say we'll guarantee, we'll guarantee something about this to get banks to do it. We'll cover you. In case you thought you had this one house that you lent against, now the buyer swaps to another house. If there's any problem with that house, the second house that the mortgage ports to, we'll cover the difference. That's what's gonna have to happen. And I think that's exact the way that they're moving.

[B]

That would be a trillion dollar solution though. I mean, it's not.

[A]

I don't think it'll work, but I think that's what the government is aiming to do.

[C]

Okay, I take you back to 1982, and in 1982, the Garne St. Germain Depository Institution Act. Rob will find it. I'm sure he will. And what happened is they sat there and they said, they came to Congress and they said, hey, it's 1982. What were interest rates starting to do?

[B]

This is post Carter.

[C]

Yep, the interest rates were in trouble. And so at that time you could have an assumable loan. When you bought my house, Pat, you could assume my loan and its competitively low interest rate. As long as you. Jeff, my friendly banker said, oh, let me check out Pat. Yes, not only you, you determine the price yourself, but as long as he has the difference between the loan and your and that you have and the price, you guys do it. But you know what? He's a perfectly fine consumer to me. I will approve him to assume your loan. And you got my 5% loan or my 3.5% loan and you were happy and you bought my house in 1982. Until the entire financial sector ran to Congress and said, we need the Garden Saint Germain Depository Institution Act. You make it. You have to make it legal for us to. To call all mortgages to full payment upon sale or transfer. You have to make it legal for us to do that. Here. Here's your act. You can do it. Great. And they all ran back, and guess what? Every mortgage in America had to be paid on sale of the house. It wasn't that way before 1982. And that way, the banks got to put the new prevailing interest rate on your house. And that's how it worked. And now they're looking to go back to that note. All the banks are going to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this. We're not doing this. Because the banks would have to manage money differently if you had locked in fair and square for a 6% mortgage. And the rates are at 9. Prime rate is up.

[B]

I want to show you something, though. Watch this. Rob, can you go to the poll you just ran? Just watch what the audience is saying. He ran a poll. The question is, are you in favor of Trump's administration plan of portable mortgages? Okay, look what the audience is saying, 56% is saying yes. Right? Meaning most people I talk to, they don't know how it works. They don't even know how you're going to do it. But guess what they're for, man, if you're going to do. I'm for, you know, allow me to keep my rate. Allow me to keep my rate. To me, the sequencing of challenges you face with this is you have to go to the banks and say, guys, just transfer the rate to a new loan. What's the big deal? You already have the risk on there anyways. Just transfer it. No, I gave that rate four years ago. I don't want to do it to a new loan. The rates are now this. I'm losing money on that. Well, do it anyways. It's okay. Just do it anyways. Because you're better off having a client paying the mortgage instead of them defaulting on it. And it's going to create more activity. No, no, no, we don't want that. We're not even approving this. The lowest, highest rate of us rejecting applications.

[C]

But you gave it to grandma for 30 years.

[B]

Stay with me, Tom. Stay, please. Let me just go through this flow real quick and then interrupt me. So, and then, so. But no, we're lowering we're ejecting 47% of people with mortgages today. We don't even want the application. And they're going to go. Yeah, but you have to do it because people are not buying homes because they can't afford it. Yep, but. But I have to stay in business. I understand you have to stay in business, but. But, but we got it. We got to find a way to make money, and that's going to go to Jeff's thing, which the only solution is going to be. What? Okay, listen, wink, wink. Just do it. You know, we'll give you the protection we'll come and protect for this. You see where this is going?

[A]

I mean, we're even talking about the real problem here. Everybody talks about affordability. It's number one. It's the number one political issue across the spec. It's the reason why that poll is like.

[B]

It is. Yeah.

[A]

You cannot blame people for saying, I want this because affordability is a problem. But what are we really saying when we say affordability? What we're saying is, when we went through the pandemic, prices rose much faster than incomes did. Housing prices rose much faster. Car prices rose much faster. People fell behind because of the pandemic and the lockdowns and the supply squeeze and prices going higher. That's what people are saying. What they're saying is I don't have enough income. I don't have a job that pays me enough to pay for all these higher prices, whether it be houses, cars, or even food. We're gonna talk about beef. So we're not even talking about the major problem here, which is a macroeconomic problem of the Main street labor recession. We don't have enough income to price.

[C]

Now you said it. I said it. Now you said it.

[A]

Well, I like that term. I think it fits really well.

[C]

I'm not calling the market. I'm calling labor.

[A]

Me, too. Macroeconomic fundamentals. I don't care about the stock market.

[B]

Can you do me a favor, both of you guys explain this to the audience that's watching this right now based on numbers, data, what you mean by it. So what is the difference between a, you know, labor recession? What's the difference between other types of consumer recession? What's the difference between other types of recessions that we have?

[A]

I don't think there's any real difference because to me, the macro economy has to be a labor economy. It's not. If. If the. If we're seeing labor market that is actually shedding jobs, which means it's no longer Growing. It's no longer adding jobs, it's actually subtracting jobs because companies are cutting back. And why are they cutting back? Because they don't have enough profitability. There's not enough business coming in. Generalized downturn. If you have an economy that's shedding jobs, it's in a recession. I don't care what you want to call it. I don't care if the nber, which is the group of economists that get together and decide what is a recession, what isn't. We don't care what they say. This is, again, like I said, this is the reason why people are so pissed off and angry is because they fell farther behind after the pandemic and with the labor market going into this recessionary condition, they're falling further and further behind. They're not even making up the ground that they lost several years ago. So people, this is what, when they talk about affordability crisis, this is what we're talking about. Always goes back to the labor market, jobs and incomes. There are not enough jobs. There is not enough income. That's enough to pay for even just the price changes from several years ago, let alone any additional price changes that come about this year and moving forward. So I mean, labor recession, that's a pretty, pretty descriptive term.

[B]

So let me come to you guys. Here's a question. And how do you address the affordability challenge right now going into 2028, both parties have to address the affordability issue, right? Midterms is around the corner. With midterms being around the corner, we're 12 months away from the midterms is where we are. I want to say Kalshi and Kalshee is saying give or take. I want to say it's Cauchy that said this, that 70% likelihood that the Democrats are going to win the midterms next year, it's going to be a plus minus more Democrats than it is going to be with Republicans. That's what the numbers are at. It could change right now where it's at, but the last time I saw it was at 70%. So if it's going right now, yeah, there you go, 72%. Cal, she has Democrats winning versus and by the way, the closest it got was when a couple weeks ago. What was the number? 55. Okay. But it's pretty much Democrats. All right, so you guys are consultants to both political parties. They want to find out how do you fix the affordability issue? How do you do it, Jeff?

[A]

Well, one thing you got to stop doing is to make the Same mistake that politicians have been making since the pandemic hit. And really going back further than that is to say the economy's booming. This thing, this sucker's great. Just look at the stock market. That just pisses people off more than anything else. You want to know why there's a socialist as mayor of New York City? That's why. Because people don't have jobs. They don't have enough income to pay for things. And here you are telling them how great everything is. If this is great, sign me up for socialism. That's one thing you got to stop. We got to stop saying the economy is booming. And this is. This is. This tracks with political parties all over the planet. You look at countries around the rest of the world. You look at Germany. Germany just changed governments. It's already incredibly unpopular because they said, well, we're going to do this major fiscal spending push. We'll call it a bazooka. Massive, huge, $500 billion euro, fiscal stimulus. Not gonna do anything. It's all theater. You gotta stop with the theater and start attacking the band aid.

[B]

Give me two more.

[A]

Two more.

[B]

Give me. So it's three consultants. Stop the government.

[A]

Start being honest.

[B]

Okay, start being honest. It's gonna be hard, but what's the next one?

[A]

The next thing is to get the hell out of the way of the private economy. We have way too much government interference. One of the biggest problems that we've had since 2008 to 2009. What they call nowadays fiscal dominance. That's simply that every time the economy stumbles, what happens? We need a stimulus package. We need the government to come in and do tax cuts and massive spending tarp.

[C]

We'll fix it.

[B]

That's where it started.

[A]

That unleashed the debt monster. And that's what we need to. We need to stop government creeping into every aspect, not just economic life, but the bigger the government gets, the more it gets involved into your social life, too. So we need the government to get the hell out of the way of the private sector and stop thinking that's going to fix every problem with this law or this band aid or that band aid. We actually need the government to do what it was supposed to do when it came into office and say, get the hell out of the way.

[B]

Well, I mean, it looks like what. What could be happening here is it could be that they want to take the interest rates back to zero, lowering it, which we talked about it off camera when Tom was talking about every time they lowered rates to zero. And it stays at that for two Quarters. The whole quantitative easing, if you keep it at 2/4, seniors who are reliant on the money that they're getting as interest rate cost them $70 billion. So for instance, if I got $2 million in an account and I'm 72 years old and I'm getting 4% income off of them. Just making up a number here, 2 million, 4%, 80 grand every year, babe, we're not tapping to our savings. We're just living off the interest. Two million eighty grand, year. As long as their lifestyle is $6,600 a month, we're going to be okay. We're going to. Oh, that's perfect, babe. And then they do quantitative easing and then they go to zero. And then that 4% that was giving me 80 grand a year now goes to zero. I'm getting zero. So now my 2 million becomes 1.92. Well, my 9.2 becomes 1.84. Then, you know, and the next thing you know, took $70 billion away. $71 billion we give or take from the seniors. But Tom, going back to you, how do you fix the affordability issue?

[C]

Okay, I like what he said. He said, number one, messaging with truth. Number two, theater. Can you fake it? Number three, get out of the way, you know, on regulation. So that is, those are more broad. Let me go more narrow so that we kind of compliment each other here. Right now Americans are feeling a pinch for two simple reasons. Inflation jumped under Biden because he printed all the money, number one, and those prices never came back down, especially cost of housing. What can you do to help right now? I believe what I'm seeing in the labor market and things, the Fed who's been looking at these figures and right now doing a head fake on people. And by the way, I looked it up today on some of the the markets, the Kalshi market today, it says it's only 50, 50 to even get a 0.25 cut. The and, and by the way, economists, the CME Watch group just go to CME Watch, Fed Watch. Yep. CME Watch tool. Take a look at this. These are everybody listening, watching the fed. They're at 50, 50. They only believe there's a 50% chance of a 0.25 cut by Powell in December. There needs to be a half a rate cut and then hold, hold and let that help people. Also, you know who that helps? That helps establish Unidos who has a great big giant refi of T bills coming in the first quarter, end of first quarter, I believe a giant stack of T bills have to refine the first quarter. If you move the interest rate down now, Trump's government budget can refi those at a more, more moderated rate. Now let's go the consumer power and food. What he just did is taking off the tariffs on fruit products, fresh fruit and some things last week. Very important, very important. Now he's got to go to protein, chicken, pork and beef. You got to figure out how we help those prices come down for the consumer. And the next one is power. Right now, data centers, I'm going to get pissed off. Data centers are being built not with profits, but with bonds. I looked at it last night, I was up till 1am and I realized just how much of this data center build out is being bonds. And they said, oh, we're making so much money on this and so much money AI services they are, but they're doing it. And what they're doing is they're creating excess demand for a limited supply of electricity. So the price is going up. You take a simple stroke of the pen. All it takes is Trump to do this. Part of your bond has to be a two year subsidy on the excess electricity that you're using so that the communities that are getting the benefit of jobs, there's a few jobs for construction and people that want to work at the data centers that their local electricity prices don't go up. But don't do it as a government subsidy, don't do it as a tax credit. Say, look, you want to build the data center, then you either have to do what Google did and what Oracle did, where they build the small nukes, you know, they got the permits for the small nukes right next to data center. So that's Google and Oracle saying, well, I'll just build my own power right here because there's not enough power for me to buy. And I'm going to build my data center the other way. I build the data center powers right over there. Fantastic. Chesapeake will give me the, the power. I think Chesapeake operates Three Mile island right now. How much percent of their Chesapeake's output for the restarted Three Mile island has Microsoft bought for the next five years? 100%. They're buying 100% of the output of the Three Mile island power plant. Microsoft is doing it. So food, electricity and interest rates right now. And interest rates will help the credit card balances. But the power be very simple. Saying, hey, if you're building these data centers, you either have to build your own power or you need, as part of the bonds, you need to Do a two year prepay. Got you.

[B]

Brandon, how about you?

[D]

All right, so easy. You got create a national gold rush around the idea of building homes. Like I don't want to hear anything about the 50 year mortgage or the portable mortgages or anything like that. Like cut taxes to zero for home builders. Subsidize people who want to do it. Create incentive programs where you can apply for a low interest government loan to build the home. Then you don't get taxed on once you sell it. But these homes have to be protected from the acquisition of companies like Blackstone and blackrock, because that's another thing pushing the price up. So I don't want to go all, you know, communist or whatever and say you can't buy houses. But the new houses like from this point on, like maybe for the next five years under this program can't be bought by a company because there's like a 4 million home shortage in America for these type of homes. Cut zoning laws, remove regulations around lumber. Like we have like the second most lumber of every, any country in the world and we're, we have a lumber shortage somehow for building homes. And then like we only produce 2% of the world's cement. So the government couldn't invest and subsidize in companies that want to become a cement company. It costs like 500 million to become a cement company. We used to produce like 80 of the world's cement. Now today it's 2%. China produces 50%. You know, so that's for housing and then I would say for food. You know, why not like invest in stuff like vertical farming and not be so reliant on like the traditional farms. Why not subsidize the ranchers who like are getting crushed by the, the big four beef companies and investigate these big four beef companies who are kind of sketchy by the way. I think two of them aren't even domestic companies. So they like lowball the hell out of these ranchers. And that's why there's like a such a shrinking supply of beef.

[B]

So, so here's what I want to do while you guys are talking about this. With labor shortage, there's two stories I'm going to read to you and you tell me what direction we should go with this. So one story, ford comes out CO for Jim Farley says he can't fill 5,000 mechanic jobs at $125,000 a year salary. $120,000 a year salary. We're in trouble in our country, Rob, if you want to play this Clip go forward.

[C]

As of this morning, we had 5,000 openings. A bay with a lift and tools.

[B]

And no one to work in it. Are you kidding me? Nope.

[C]

$120,000 a job a year.

[B]

But it takes you five years to learn it.

[C]

Take a diesel out of a super duty, it takes a lot of skill. You need to know what you're doing. And God forbid we ever get in a war.

[B]

Google's not going to be able to.

[C]

Make, you know, the tanks and the planes. So this is a self defense for.

[B]

A country issue issue. But how I think about it is wow, right there. By the way, did you just hear what he just said?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

He said if we go to war, who are they going to go to to say, can you build this XYZ for me? They're not going to go to Google, they're not going to go to Apple, they're going to go to these guys. And it takes how many years he said to train to take a diesel?

[A]

That's it, right?

[C]

You're just training master mechanics.

[B]

And by the way, he said it earlier when you said about education early on in the first three minutes. But go ahead, you were going to say something.

[A]

That is the whole problem right there. What he's saying is that if somebody has to invest five years of their time and likely huge expense to become a master mechanic. So yes, they're, they're promising 120,000 a year job, but somebody has to invest their time, effort and money to become qualified and people do not want to take that risk.

[B]

Okay, so this is coming to my next question. Okay. And I want to know what the solution is. So if we have a labor shortage, if we have companies like Ford that are sitting there saying hey man, I need 5,000 people at 120, I'm having a hard time. If we go to war, how the hell am I going to build this stuff for you? When the US government comes knocking on the door saying hey guys, we need it right now, we need you to build this for us right now. Then a story comes out of Financial Times, number of new foreign students in US falls 17% over visa worries. And Jeff, I want to know what you're going to say about this. You sound like a pretty reasonable guy. So American universities, Rob, I think got a clip on this one here. Is this, is this, she's just given the report on it?

[C]

Yeah, she's just giving the news.

[B]

I'm just going to read this here. It's fine. American universities have suffered one of the sharpest ever declines in Foreign enrollments in the face of tough policies from President Trump. With the number of new international students falling 17% this year, a survey of 825 US higher education institutions showed 57% report falling new enrollments by students, while only 29% recorded an increase, any increase. The result raised concerns over the impact on universities of declining tuition revenue, along with the less tangible effect that having fewer foreign students will have an innovation economic and economic growth. The data provided by the International Institute of Education, sponsored by the State Department, compounds a drop of 7% in new international enrollments in 2425, including a follow 15% among graduates who make up the largest short. This is a significant decline, which shows that government policies have implications, particularly at the graduate level, where the US Benefits the most, says Fanta, the chief executive of nafsa, the association of International Educators. So when we're looking at this here, okay, and we're looking at labor shortage, Ford's having a hard time placing companies are laying off the debate about allowing others to come from other countries. Then President Trump says, we're going to have 600,000 Chinese students coming here to become students. He gets pushed back by Laura Ingram, says, why not 300,000? Well, you know, we want 300,000 more. It's better to get the brains here. You know, the colleges need students, the colleges need money. So that labor shortage, how do you solve it?

[A]

There is no such thing as a labor shortage.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The problem with Ford is the 120,000 salary is not high enough. You want to fill those bays, Char. Char. Pay the market rate, the rate that will get people off of the couch to invest in their time and effort and become those mechanics.

[B]

You think that would be the change?

[A]

Yes. There's no such thing as a labor shortage. The only labor shortage comes about when companies are refusing to pay the market.

[B]

Clearly. Okay, so then who. If he's choosing those numbers, if you go to salary.com, he tells them it's not working.

[A]

I don't have the mechanics. At 120,000, then you need to pay 250,000. It's that simple.

[B]

You think at 250 he gets that $500,000?

[A]

I don't know what the number is, but it's higher.

[B]

So you think that's the solution?

[A]

This is the solution for any time of year.

[B]

So that's.

[A]

And then the other thing.

[B]

Then go on the other visas? Yes.

[A]

Does anybody here really think the number of students in college correlates with anything that has to do with economic advance? We've had more people in college over the last 40 years, and it hasn't contributed much to, you know, the. The what's opposed to the advancement. The working stock of the United States. You put more people in college, all it does is make money for the colleges. And you said that to yourself when you read the article, said that's more money. With the Chinese students coming in, does that actually advance American interests, whether it be economic or national interests, or is it just more money for the colleges to expand? Whatever it is colleges do these days.

[D]

Does it change if they're studying productive things, though, versus things that are not productive?

[A]

How do we know? I mean, how do we know, I.

[D]

Guess, what the economy needs. Like, if there's, like, people who are unqualified for needed jobs and then people start going to school for those jobs, is that more productive than people going school for, like, gender studies?

[A]

But that's the thing. Do the Chinese students come in? What are they actually studying?

[B]

They're not studying gender studies.

[C]

A lot of Americans are, though.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but that's what I'm saying. More people in college doesn't necessarily solve the problem here.

[B]

Yeah. Rob, can you. Can you do me a favor? I don't know about that. Can we debate that? Can we debate that argument? Take the opposing position. Are you comfortable? Again, take the opposing position. Go. Go with that.

[D]

The colleges do make the country more productive.

[B]

Yeah. No, no, no. Two things. Not just colleges. It's okay. So if we. If we. If we are not willing to bring the best and the brightest in here. The other day, I'm in Goldman Sachs, okay? They had their orientation class. I don't know if you caught what happened tomorrow. They're at the orientation class. I walked up to see who's at the orientation class. Obviously I'm not supposed to go there. I walk up and I'm just sizing everybody up. You know what I'm sizing up? What do you think I'm looking at? What do you think I'm looking at? I. That's the Norient. I can't. It's a new orientation. Higher. But what do you think I'm looking for?

[D]

Their eyes. Like what their eyes look like?

[B]

I want to know ethnicity. I want to know age. Okay. And then I want to know attire, because I want to know what's the dress code expected when you go into the orientation? I want to know ethnicity. I want to see patterns.

[A]

I walk up something like that. It's young male Asians.

[B]

Well, it's interesting. Then I walk with them to Put a security right in front of the door immediately when we came back. Tom, I don't know if you noticed that part or not. So you know what you notice? You go on a floor, one of the biggest insurance Companies in America, 300 engineers, 80% all Indians. Okay, who are there of the 80% that are Indians? Some of them came to us from IIT Institute, which in many cases, IIT Institute crushes MIT when they put them against each other on education. It's very hard. One out of every 40,000 applicant gets accepted to IIT Institute. Some weird number like that. Rob, if you can verify. So I'm pretty accurate on what percentage of folks make it to IIT Institute. Not mit. IIT Institute. So should we not entertain taking the smartest, the brightest of other countries to come here and help us out, or should we. Should we do it the other way around and make the investment here? That's also the debate. And I know we've had this debate and it's something most people are not comfortable with, but what would you say about that?

[D]

I think we could do both. I think that we could be very selective of who we take here. And yeah, of course we want phenoms and people who are like, excellent. But no, we don't want to get into a situation where we're deciding to choose somebody from overseas because it's cheaper and because the employer here, that's cheaper.

[B]

I'm not worried about cheap. I'm willing to pay market, whatever the market price is and even a little bit more. I'm not saying 25 percentile. I'm saying 50, 75 percentile. Like you actually are willing to pay the money to get the best of the best.

[D]

Yeah, and if it's the best of the best, that's fine. Then, like, that's a net positive. If it's a small number of people, you're very selective with it, and that's one thing. But I think kind of bleeds into the wage thing where people, their companies feel like they could pay less. Or people who come from overseas.

[B]

No, that's not what I'm thinking. I'm just thinking the competition of if, if, if we have certain jobs that maybe we're not doing a good job training in. Should we not put some competition for others to come in and, you know, compete for those jobs? Or should we wait? Now his solution is there was 5,000 jobs at 120. If he offered a 250, he didn't. He's just making up a number like you were Just spitballing here. If it's 250, he's going to get those jobs placed. Okay, maybe there's a point to it where you can may, but is that the solution? Is that do I pay 80% above what the market is paying for me to hire whatever the person is? Do I, Do I, do I compete and bring some other people that want those jobs? I don't know. Well, I'm asking, I'm debating to see.

[D]

Think about this, like 93 of all student loans come from the government. So why are we giving loans? People who are majoring in unproductive things. Like, like if we need certain jobs.

[B]

I love that idea.

[D]

Yeah, we need certain jobs. Why not just give loans for the job for the majors that we need. Then we'd have a bunch of engineers and you know, AI people or whatever. The, the thing in mechanics, whatever we need are we flood the market with that. If we only give loans for that for a couple years for college students, but you know, we still have a whole mix of some useless jobs, some useless degrees, some important degrees. So I think we can could steer the future education in whichever direction we want to if we use the power of the student loans.

[B]

What do you think?

[A]

One of the problems with that is that, you know, like you said, the government gets involved in the business and then it becomes a price thing because the price of education goes way up, which means that people are spending inordinate amount of money on degrees that don't ever pay back. Yeah, that's what we're saying when they're unproductive. Unproductive is you're not really creating value there. And the value proposition is all screwed up by the government. So you don't have a labor market that is actually elastic enough to meet the match needs. People are confused about which direction we go. And this again gets back to the Ford thing. With Ford not paying the market rate for mechanics, that skews where people go. We want more people in trade schools to be able to do that, but yet they see the wage rate is 120,000. That's not really enough because I'm going to have to major expense to educate myself. But if they were paying 250,000, that would draw more people into trade schools. So there is screwed up market signals all throughout the educational system because of the government's interference. And it's not really about deciding which jobs are going to be productive. It's the fact that we flooded these colleges with just students. I mean we tell kids from the very beginning, you need to go to college, you need to go to college, you need to go to college. And half the people should never go to college. But because they go to college, the price of college goes way up and it screws up the market signal for the entire labor market.

[B]

I agree with Brian.

[A]

Then the point I'm making is that maybe we don't need to keep pushing people to college, whether they be us or foreign born.

[B]

But check this out. Here's a question. So what if we go his route? You know, you're at the meeting yesterday and all these guys are talking about, I'm a G5, I'm a G3, I'm a G2, I'm a G4, you know, fifth generation wealth, first generation wealth, second generation wealth. And then the one thing, one of the families, they, they did a family reunion annually. 90 people show up and it's getting more and more complicated. The family had the biggest G cheese company in Wisconsin, Sargento. Am I saying correctly?

[C]

Sargento?

[B]

Yes. 1.7, $1.8 billion in revenue. And one of the kids was talking about, you know where it's at. A lot of people, people, oh my God. So 1.7 billion. Every kid must be a billionaire in their family. That's not the case because you have to share that with, with two, 300 people eventually, you know, 100 people eventually got grandkids, all this stuff. But if you don't hit certain numbers, the family doesn't fund your education. If you don't go through certain criteria. I actually love the most basic concept of if you're not getting a degree in xyz, why are taxpayers funding it? No, by the way, you're a taxpayer watching this. I'm talking to you. You're watching this podcast. Just a very honest. Can you guys just flood the comment section and if you do a super chat on this topic, I will read. I don't care what the dollar amount is. What would you say are jobs that if the government is funding to get a degree, let's just say some of these folks that we're paying for, what, what positions would you be okay with? What type of degrees? What would you say? I'm okay with that. I'm okay with this. What would you for sure be against you funding? You're the taxpayer. What would you be against you funding? What would you say? There's no way in the world I want to pay for that. What would it be? Think like a parent, your kids, if they say, daddy, you have money, I want you to pay for my college Tuition, what wouldn't you pay for? You'd be like, you're out of your flipping mind. I'm not paying for that. That right. What would it be? Can you guys comment below? Rob, can you read off some of the stuff that people are saying, you know? Okay, so engineering. They pay for trade schools. I'm seeing multiple Trade school, trade, trade, by the way. Amir. Trade school. Timbo. Trade, trade, trade. Abraham Peters, he just gave a super chat, but not an answer. So trade school, social studies. Not paying for that. Trade school. Engineer, by the way. 50%, 30%. The answers here are trade. Engineering. Okay. Fashion, design. Not paying for it. Plumbers against all of it. Against paying anybody.

[A]

Can we remember political science from the list too?

[B]

Of course, political science. I mean why would you get that, right? Well, you know, Tom, what do you think about what Brandon is saying? Because I kind of agree with them as a parent, I'm willing. You told your daughters right you had a certain things that you're not paying for college degrees. How come we're not doing that? That's very easy. Common sense decision to make.

[C]

Well, I'm going to add a word to the debate here. Underwriting. We were talking about insurance. I basically taught my daughters what the word underwriting meant. Underwriting is the process by which a life insurance or an insurance will put a price on your policy based on risk. How old are you? Do you smoke? Have you had cancer? What kind of car do you have? Is it in a garage? Underwriting is all around us and I expose to them underwriting. I will cover your education and do things based on the usability and the value of the major. You don't have to go into venture capital or that line like I did or something like that. You don't but find something that matches your heart. But let's go find something that's applicable and they completely understood it. I gave them facts and data. So I think we cause student loans if they're going to be independent student loans. Cosign for your kid, let your kid get whatever you want. But you co sign for that loan the same way that you co signed for their first checking account when they were 16 years old. I had to do that for Bailey to get her the checking account. Pat. I had to stand good for a $500 visa that's attached to her checking account. You know where I'm going.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The government didn't help me. Yeah but if the government would say, well look, if you want to co sign for your kid to have gender studies at at Brown and you want to co sign on that, go to your bank and get whatever student loan for your kid and co sign for it. But if you want the federal effing government to stand behind that and then to put one of their, you know, horrifying loan processors, these predatory loan processors on student loans, then wait a minute, wait a minute. The underwriting standard for the United States will be this. Now, the second, let me give you another fact. $44 billion comes into the economy because foreign students, by and large don't get loans. They come with money from those countries. 44 billion comes in because they pay the tuition, they pay for books, they pay for room and board, pay for food. And once they pay for food, they pay for toilet paper. So they're here out in the United States spending $44 billion on that. And so they come back. Now here's the next part I go to. You force the universities to use their endowments to subsidize everything from professor salaries to the tuition. The purpose of the endowment used to be that, hey, I want to give Pat a scholarship. Hey, Pat, you're trying to. And by the way, I talked to friends that did this. They're holding a letter from Stanford and a letter from usc. This is a real case study. And they're looking at who's going to give you the best financial aid because you're an exemplary student from Glendale. And they're looking at it and says, you know what, I'm going to USC because I can get an engineering degree both places. I can get a business degree both places. But guess what? I get a little bit better deal from uc. I'm going guess where that came from. Their interest in their profits and their endowments.

[B]

How much did you say, Tom? 44 billion.

[C]

44 billion comes in the US economy in tuition and other spending from foreign students.

[B]

So what do you do with that? You're the president, you're an advisor. Do you say no?

[C]

If you say no, that means that that money doesn't come in. And so the schools are going to screen.

[B]

Which would you rather have the money coming in or the government financing a fine arts degree, taxpayers paying for it?

[C]

I step on the air hose at the federal government.

[B]

Which one of the two are you against?

[D]

More?

[B]

Because there's an audience that's going to say, I don't want neither.

[C]

I would turn down the foreign student visas not to zero sum comes in and then I would adjust what the US taxpayer is going to underwrite on those student loans. And I think you're going to and I think you're going to get there.

[B]

Okay, let me read some of these super chats because I rarely ask for this. So limit federal student loans to those technical skills and jobs that need that this nation needs to grow. No student loans for gender studies. This is OFD 56. Okay, next one trade skills and STEM careers. This is Blake Castillo. Okay, next one Elevate to the unknown Management information systems. Okay, next one from Razor 3 i9 fund Technical Engineers STEM with a contingency of commitment aka they work for the government for two to four years. This also provides a return on investment and gives experience for private sector. Interesting. Next Abraham, the answer to Ford is hiring from high school shop class as interns and train them up to master mechanics. Now I don't know if that's but I like the fact that you're seeing what everybody else is saying. Common sense. Why are we paying for this stuff? Doesn't make any sense to me that we're funding this stuff. I think you've got a very good point that you're making, Brandon. Thanks Jeff. I think you want to say something.

[A]

I used to say that's not what government does. Government doesn't do common sense.

[B]

Yeah, well that's a good point. Let's go to the next one. Next one to me I want to get into is Bitcoin. You hear a lot of people right now saying Bitcoin free fall. It's a, you know, this is it. This is horrible. Bitcoin price in free fall weeks after hitting all time high. Let me read this story to you. So we got almost exactly one year after rising to above 90,000 for the first time in its history Bitcoin has fallen back to its level suffering a severe price crash. A record breaking rally took the cryptocurrency to an all time high above $125,000 last month. With some market analysis fearing the student the sudden drop could be a beginning of a a more sustained bear market. Bitcoin was trading on $93,000 on Monday morning marking a 25% decrease over the last six weeks. Previous price cycles have seen Bitcoin lose around 75% of its value after hitting the record high. Here's what Michael Saylor had to say about it. Go ahead, Rob. Welcome to Walgreens. Looking for a holiday gift? Sort of. My cousin Freddy showed up to surprise us.

[A]

Oh, sounds like a real nice surprise.

[D]

Exactly.

[B]

So now I have to get him a gift.

[C]

But I haven't gotten my bonus yet.

[B]

So if we can make it something really Nice, but also not break the bank.

[C]

That'd be perfect.

[B]

How about a keurig for 50% off? Bingo. Saving all season. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way. Walgreens offer valid November 26 through December 27. Exclusions apply.

[A]

Hello, friends.

[B]

Guess who?

[A]

That's right, it is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of.

[B]

Duty Black Ops 7 with three expansive.

[A]

Modes, 18 multiplayer modes, maps, and the.

[B]

Tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever freaking seen.

[C]

Call of Duty Black Ops 7, available now.

[B]

Rated M for mature.

[A]

Last time our next guest was on CNBC, he was expecting Bitcoin to be $150,000 by the end of the year. Want to find out if he's changed.

[B]

His tune since late October?

[A]

Given the recent move in the crypto space, you're looking at Bitcoin right now at $94,000. 632. Michael Saylor is here. Strategy founder and executive chairman. Good morning to you. What do you think? 150 by the end of the year. What do you think's happening here?

[C]

You know, I think we all want to go to the moon, but if you want to ride the rocket, you got to be prepared to pull the GS. Over five years, Bitcoin's had like six brutal drawdowns. If you roll the clock back 13 months, we were sitting around 68,000. And then after the Trump election, we had this, this incredible rally from 68 to 106,000 in five weeks. If you go back 14 months, we are about 55,000. And so if you'd said we're going to go from 55,000 to 94,000 in 14 months, that would have exceeded any reasonable investors expectations. Over five years, Bitcoin's up about 50% a year on average. For the five years gold and S and P are setting the cost cap, that of 14%. My company's strategy is up 71%, equivalent to Nvidia. There's no other stock in the S and P that's done any better. So I think the volatility comes with the territory. If you're going to be a bitcoin investor, you need a four year time horizon and you need to be prepared to handle the volatility in this market.

[B]

Okay, so what do you think? What do you think is going on right now with Bitcoin, Jeff?

[A]

I think it's a barometer of short run risk taking. I think what he just said is absolutely true. If you're going to buy Bitcoin. Four years at least. I mean, bitcoin is a long term thing. It's not a competing currency. It's a risk asset. It's a store value. It's not going to be replacing the dollar because we don't even use the dollar. So Bitcoin is simply just a barometer of people's short run risk taking. So the price decline now doesn't mean bitcoin's going to be wiped out or it's going to go to zero. It just means that right now there's a lack of demand for risky assets in the marketplace, which I think we can use as a gauge for overall short run risk aversion about some of these other factors that have nothing really to do with Bitcoin. It's not really about Bitcoin here. It's about the market psychology.

[B]

Brandon, where you at?

[D]

Yeah, that makes sense that Bitcoin would be the first one to go. But I think it's like super dramatic that you're saying it's fallen off a cliff and this and that. I mean like, like he said in the video, like right before Trump got elected, it was in the 60s and just because Trump gets elected and they're expecting all kinds of favorable things for crypto, it shoots up to over a hundred thousand and that's been kind of baked into the market since Trump got elected. Like the, the AI hype and the AI buzz and the, that like the AI narrative is like really the story that's been carrying not just crypto but the whole market like since Trump got elected. So I, I think it's normal. I mean, I'm still, call me crazy, I'm still sketched out by bitcoin because the creator's name means Central Intelligence. When you translate it to English, you'll never convince me that's not weird and we've never seen before. But yeah, in terms of just looking at like a chart, I don't think it's like a concerning crazy thing. I think like they're, they're, people are just getting shaken out.

[B]

Tom, where you at?

[C]

So there's, where I'm at is I see two major things happen. First of all, all this macro, all the market uncertainty doesn't help specifically. If interest rates are going to be higher, then I can get higher rates on cash and I don't have to go to riskier things like bitcoin to get my return. Higher rates means that those are less appealing. Well, now we're seeing 50, 50 for just a 0.25 rate cut. And I'm now waving my flag for a 0.5 rate cut, as many others are for December. I don't want to impact retirement fixed income. So the first thing is macro market uncertainty is out there. Made everybody nervous. Then. What happened this week is I call it the liquidation dominoes. The liquidation dominoes, there is massive profit taking by the crypto proxies. And the crypto proxies are the companies like Michael Saylor who basically have a product they're selling and they make profits, but basically they, they pile all this bitcoin onto their balance sheet. And so they're a crypto proxy. The crypto proxies took profits because where we are right now, I believe we are $10 under where we were on January 1st. Am I correct? On a full, on a year to date basis. I think it was right there. Right. That we're back where we started. Did you enjoy 2025? You're back where you started. Well, then you have what? Also the leverage positions. You know, investors that have a lot of cash may not have to do this, but investors with not a lot of cash. Read all the Reddit things. It says, hey, use 10 grand to buy Bitcoin and get another 5 grand of it because you can borrow against the 10 grand at 50%. You follow that?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

They're all over the, you look at the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Reddit logs and the, the Reddit chats. Oh, do it this way, do it this way. Well, guess what happens when the price comes down. You get auto traded. What's auto traded? You have a margin account out. Hey, for your convenience, we automatically traded out because that asset was going down. Your margin was different than 50%. So we auto traded and they happen. I heard that in the last two trading days, $917 million in Bitcoin was sold on liquidation.

[B]

Auto trades.

[C]

So guess what, there's the other domino. And then lastly, profit taking by the independent investors where you saw the, the first part of this two weeks ago when it started, people jumped out and said, well, I've made enough this year. And those are the part timers that aren't the long termers. So the short term sold out. You know, auto trades took away people that were under margin. Crypto proxies, you know, took some profit out. And then everybody doesn't like the fact that the interest rates aren't going to go down, which makes a risky currency like bitcoin more value. Yeah.

[B]

So, okay, again, I think the best thing I took away from everything with this. If you're going to get into bitcoin, have a minimum of a four year way of looking at it. If not, it's not worth it. Almost like buying a house. If you're buying a house for three months, it's a bad investment. If you're buying a house for 10 years, five, 10 years, you should be fine. So if you're buying a bitcoin, look at it the same exact way as well. Not day trading like some of these guys are doing. Let's go to the next story. Next story is the following Retirement Age okay, Most Americans think 63 is the perfect age to retire. But they're dead wrong. Here's the big number to bet on. You ready folks? Earmuffs. If you're that age 63 or higher and you're thinking retirement, you're probably not going to like this story. So I want to, I want you to brace for impact on what number they're giving away here. It doesn't start with the number six. Okay, so let's go through it. According to 2024 Mass Mutual Retirement Happiness study, most Americans retirees Pre retires consider 63 to be the ideal age for retirement with an average retirement age of 62 which coincides with the earliest age for claiming Social Security benefits. Today's retirees are coming close to that mark. But future retirees may find it difficult to retire in their early 60s. More than a third of pre retirees 35% report that their retirement savings are short of where they would need to be to completely retire on ideal age according to massmutual study. Meanwhile, 34% of pre retirees believe that a there's a decent chance they would outlive their savings with 2020% 22% of retirees sharing the same concern. Put simply, retiring 62 or 63 may be popular, but this may not be ideal when you consider all the factors that are in place. Your Social Security benefits would roughly be 30% lower for you Tower at 62 versus full retirement age 67 depending on where you were born according to New Social Security Administration. Another factor to consider is longevity. As of 2023, overall life expectancy in the US is 78 years old according to Centers CDC. However, typical Americans life expectancy can stretch into 80s and even 90s depending on their gender, date of birth and state according to the Yale School of Public Health. In other words, if you retire at 62, you may need to ensure that your nest egg is big enough to keep you afloat for up to three decades. When you consider all the data and eligibility, it may seem the ideal window for retirement may be around 67 years old. Okay, so what do you think about this, Jeff?

[A]

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

[B]

Tom, thoughts?

[C]

I'm looking for a statistic here, Rob, maybe you can help me. I read that 30% of your lifetime medical costs will happen in the last 18 months of your life. And so you need to be ready for that so that you're not wiped out prematurely, number one. Number two is I look at a lot of people that I know, they want to work and they want to stay active. Now, do they want the same job they did if they were a mechanic at Ford with the arthritis, can they continue to be a mechanic at Ford? No. Could they be a tutor or a teacher part time? Sure, they could. I know a lot of people that want to stay active. And you look at them and I'm serious. I look around, the people I know, they say, I'd like to keep doing something, but I'd like to keep doing something that I enjoy doing. And it's not walking up and down a Florida beach with a metal detector. I really want to do something I enjoy, but I'm not going to work that much. But I want the social aspect of it and I want to feel productive. People that talk about. Also, I think there's a average lifespan for people that take permanent retirement and actually do nothing, not even community service or volunteering. It's shocking that how much shorter the lifespan is versus the people that do something in terms of community service or keeping their 30% of your lifetime medical hitting your final 18 months. Yep, there it is. So you better be ready for that so that, number one, you can pay for it. What's a good way to do that? Get some basic benefits from a company that's willing to pay you part time and do something you really love doing and stay active.

[B]

Makes sense. Brandon?

[D]

Yeah, so remember we talked about that time, that if you for 40 years, you make 60,000 a year, you give 10% of that to the S and P every year, you end up with 2.3 million after 40 years. So that's one thing. We've conditioned people to not save like that because of the stupid FDR Social Security stuff that, like, got people into the state of not having to save money. And, like, we just create this mindset of, okay, Social Security, 401k, you're going to be good. Don't worry about. But nobody's good for it. It's like, I think that 5 million is probably the number that you need to retire if you retire at 70, to not be stressed out. But it's offensive to think that people will still want to retire in their 60s. Like. Like, that was the age in the. In the 1930s. So, you know, I would make fun of anybody who tried to, like, say, make the case for retirement in the. In their 60s.

[B]

If you can do it and you chose to do it. It is what it is. If you set yourself up, you know, if you. If you say, well, I'm going to retire whatever age I want, you know, listen, if that's what you want to do. What I've noticed is people retire early. They're typically miserable, okay? And I'm not talking about everybody. The happiest people I know, my dad's one of the happiest people I met in my life. He's 83 years old. He's still working, okay? And I have relatives that stop working in their 40s. They're the most miserable, miserable people I met in my life ever because they stopped working. So it's not even about the money. And, oh, my God. Life is not all about work.

[C]

And life is.

[B]

No, it's not about that. It's about contributing. It's about constantly being seen as that person is needed. My dad, till today, is needed. We need him. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, we need him. There's a he, there's a value for the individual to say, this family needs me, dad, we need you to go pick up the kids. We need you to go drop off the kids, man. I am still needed to exist and live and serve and give. We need that element of being there. But for some people, like Rob ran a poll right now. If you look at the poll, it's interesting what it looks like. Like, if you can pull this up, you know, what age do you plan on retiring? Look at this. Some people put before 60. 22% early 60s, 25% late 60s, 24%, 70 plus 29%, our audience, 29% are planning on working to pass 70. The people that want to work past 70, I want to have dinner with you. Okay. I want to meet you. I respect you, everybody, like all of you guys that you're watching this. But the people that are 70 plus, we should have dinner with all the people that are in the 70 plus category and we should do it later on when we're 70 plus and everybody's got a job or a business, we sit down and talk to each other.

[A]

Well, in my experience, one of the reasons why people, early retirees are, as you said, miserable because a lot of them are, is because they continuously fret about having enough savings. They're always a slave to the market. Am I going to make enough in the stock market? Like you said, the idea that the government's going to cover you, that has been embedded in the national psyche and that needs to go away completely. But even those who realize that the government's not going to be there. Is the market up today? Is it going to be up next week? Oh, my God. If the market goes down, what if we go into a recession? What am I going to do? That's why they're miserable. So if you work as long as you can and get to earned income or save, God forbid, what you actually need for retirement, that's where the happiness.

[B]

Okay, so this next story though, Jeff, is the number of households living paycheck to paycheck has risen. Why? This is a USA Today story. Why?

[A]

Labor recession.

[B]

We're going to come back to it here. Why? Why is this happening, folks? So, Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it. New bank of America analysis shows one in four U.S. households is living paycheck to paycheck with almost nothing left after the basics. Researchers track spending on groceries, housing, gas, childcare and utilities. They found many families are using 95% of their income just to cover those necessities.

[A]

The report highlights a K shaped economy.

[C]

Where higher income Americans are doing far.

[A]

Better than those at the bottom.

[B]

President Trump has dismissed affordability concerns as a con job pushed by Democrats. Okay, so before we get into those stats, quick feedback to USA Today editor, Turn the music down. What was like who? Can you forward this to the editor, USA Today, please. If you're watching this, why do you have the level so high? Lower it. And I like your taste for music because it was like they're trying to find that Blade. Remember Blade, the movie back in the day? Like the opening of the movie? I like the taste for music, but just lower the temperature a little bit on that. Wesley Snipes. Tom, your thoughts on this?

[C]

Well, this is kind of what we've talked about today. And so I won't be repetitive, but this is the statistics proving what we're saying is true. The Biden recession raised the price on things. And right now people are 1.25 trillion in credit card debt they're actually using for gasoline and.

[A]

Food.

[C]

So that doesn't mean that they're using that paying it off the end of the month. They're not. And so they've got some problems here. And this is why I was saying that I feel that if the President took immediate steps on energy and what was the two things they talked about, energy and groceries, and take steps on those two things to help Americans with affordability. Because guess what, there are jobs coming. Is there a panacea coming? No, but there's just Toyota announcing about a battery plant in what, Tennessee or something that's going to have 5,100 jobs at that battery manufacturing plant. So in other words, jobs are coming, things are happening. But we have a gap between the. This is the time where we're in the hospital bed and we're waiting to get better. And so there's a lot of things we have to do for Americans. And this is what they are. The other side of it is, and I'm going to put this just as 10% of it. You know, there's an awful lot of consumption spending in the United States that the average consumer could pull back on. I mean, how many subscriptions do you need for, you know, for cable and digital media? Do you need Netflix and Hulu and Dan, Dan, you know, when you look at some of those things, you know, there's an opportunity for people to be a little bit more efficient with the dollar and they'll say, no, no, no, no, no, because when I'm feeling down, I really need those things. But right now, we could do things for the American household path if we want to as a country. And Trump could start with a stroke of the pen. And then I think he should be waving this flag, is saying, this is what I inherited. This is now it coming home to roost. But I'm the guy that's going to fix it. I'm going to start today with some energy things and some food things, and I'm going to help. But he is right. Every about the media wants to take everything and turn it into affordability and beat the crap out of him with it.

[D]

It.

[C]

So the President is correct that the Democrats want to cause everything to be that and to blame you for that. Oh, it was colder today in Nebraska. That's an affordability thing. That's a fault of the President Trump. Right. You know, missile found in Cuba, foot locker. You know what? If American affordability been different, that missile wouldn't be there. They can't play that fricking game. And that's where the President has got really thin skin, and he should have. But right now, he's got the pen, he's got the pulpit. He's had, had really effective policies that he's put in. He's negotiating with people like the Saudis we saw. He's got the power, he's got decision, momentum. Go after food and energy right now and show America what leadership is all about on affordability.

[A]

Jeff. Hey, Rob, can you pull up? You go to St. Louis, Fred. Real personal income, excluding transfer receipts. This is an income stat, and it's a broad income stat that shows you the aggregate level of private income in the.

[C]

It's one of my favorite databases.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What do you own?

[A]

One of the few things the Fed actually does, Fred.

[D]

You have to type in the full.

[A]

St. Louis Fred, Fed, Fred. And then real personal income, excluding transfer receipts. So this is just private income, and it's adjusted for prices. There we go. So you got real disposable income and real personal income. And you notice, first of all, in 2008, that series fell off and it never came back. We've been living in an economy for the last almost 20 years where we don't have enough income. And then you look at 2020, just after the spike in 2021 and 2022, it levels off again. So what I'm saying is American income has been falling further and further behind, further and further behind. And people know it. That's why they're all upset to voters. Voters are upset. That's why they're upset at politicians. They keep falling further and further and further behind. So the statistic that we were talking about here, was it one in four, living paycheck to paycheck? I actually think it's higher than that. I think it's probably closer to a third.

[B]

Well, let me tell you what's interesting, what you're saying, because, Rob, can you pull up the poll? Our audience. Our audience is like. It's not like they're watching a show that socialism, that rich people are bad and capitalism's horrible. Our audience polling living paycheck to paycheck. Zoom in. Okay. 3,000 people voted 59.

[A]

That's more like it. Again, it's not a, you know, labor market, whatever you want to call it. I don't want to. Who cares what we call it? It's an economy that doesn't work. And I hate the term K shaped economy, by the way, because every economy in existence is K shaped. You go back to the Great Depression. Rich people are doing well in the Great Depression. An economy is doing well when there are few people in the bottom part of the K. That statistic we just went over for real personal income shows that there are way too many people in the bottom part of the K. It's lack of income, lack of jobs, lack of labor market mobility and growth. That's why people are living paycheck to paycheck.

[C]

And one of the drivers in 2008 was shortly thereafter was a dramatic change to the cost of health care in America driven by aca.

[A]

And so when we all save money on health insurance. Did you get the message?

[C]

And if you. If you want. You like your doctor?

[D]

No.

[A]

Yeah, I kept. No, I didn't keep mine.

[C]

You keep your doctor. But Pat right there, if you go. If you could also look. And that wasn't the only thing, but it was a major impact on the American household. The truth about what happened to the cost of health insurance for everybody else except the 30 million people that supposedly got Obamacare and got benefits. And look that we never recovered from that. So we created the gap. You see how the lines stay together. Remarkably.

[B]

It's getting wider, Tom. That's concerned.

[C]

But now at the top, the last.

[A]

Two years, this is why people are so upset about the 2008 bailout. Because that was a watershed moment. Because they think, well, the bankers got bailed out. I've been falling further and further behind for 20 friggin years.

[B]

I don't blame them.

[A]

No, I don't either. I mean, you have to look at that.

[B]

You have to look at that. You should have let some of those companies go. And this too big to fail concept.

[A]

The idea was to play a little bit of devil's advocate. The idea was if we bail out those firms, that wouldn't happen.

[B]

But it did.

[A]

But it did.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And nobody's ever accounted for it.

[B]

Who's the gentleman that we bring? The economist that we've had on a few times, Spencer.

[C]

Richard Warner.

[B]

Richard Warner. Richard Warner that we bring on and he breaks this down. They call him the godfather of quantitative easing. I think that's the nickname that's been. He's.

[A]

Quantitative easing did work.

[B]

It didn't.

[A]

It did not work.

[B]

Have you. Are you. Have you guys done anything together or.

[A]

No.

[B]

You and him?

[A]

No.

[B]

Never have.

[A]

No.

[B]

Yeah. Brandon, where are you at with this?

[D]

Oh yeah, Trump's got to stop acting like inflation's gone because it's kind of like gasling everybody when you're saying something that's different than the reality. Like he's going to lose a lot of people if he keeps saying this. Like we would respect a plan of action if he came out and said like okay, this is this way because of this. But to act like it doesn't exist, to act like, like no, the stock market's great, the, so the economy is great and that's disregarding probably 80% of the population. So I don't know if he actually thinks that that's the case, what he's saying or if he's trying to.

[B]

Well, this is what they're saying. A year ago, Thanksgiving to today, classic Holiday feast down 3%. Dinner rolls down 22%. National brand frozen vegetables down 15%. Stuffing gravy mix, fresh cranberries down 3 to 4%. National brand pumpkin pie down 3%. Prepared mashed potatoes down 1 1/2%. So they're sharing some of these numbers on what's going on. That groceries is down a year over year. That doesn't mean it's not lower period. But they're given a date on what's happened since Biden was in versus him.

[D]

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

[C]

Yeah, I think CP cpi.

[B]

Look at this here, look at this year. Look at this year. Tom change from 20, 2416 pound. Is that 16 pound frozen turkey is down 16.3%. I don't think that's poundo Rob. Is that a.

[C]

No, it is, it's a 14. 14 pound I think is what they call a tom turkey. So 14 to 16 it's like a 10 person. Thanks.

[B]

Okay, got it. So down 16 three 14 ounce cube stuff and makes down nine dinner roll. You saw the 1. 3 pound sweet potatoes down 37%. 1 pound of veggie tray carrots and celery down up so that I'm sorry up 37, up 63. Up 17 frozen peas up. A gallon of milk is up 16 three. That's big. And then miscellaneous ingredients down. Canned pumpkin pie about the same. Two frozen pie crusts down point eight half pint whipping cream up three point two. So sum up some down. But listen if the, if the if 60 of our audience is saying they're living a paycheck to paycheck and by the way, by the way for some of you guys that also said can I challenge you a little bit? So 60 of you guys that said are you also part of that camp that said you want to retire before 60? Are you also part of that camp that said you want to retire 40, you know, early 60s or late 60s? You think that mindset and serving you financially. Don't get me wrong. I understand what what's going on with the economy. Totally get it. I understand what's going on with challenging things are living paycheck to paycheck. But maybe we can also have an adjustment in our mindset. Not saying they don't need to do their things but also for us to have real managing of expectations of what it's going to look like. Like the odds are most of you watching this if you're below 40, you're probably going to touch 90. Okay, you're probably going to touch ninety. 85, 88, 87 life expectancy. With the way things are going to be, who knows where we're going. So we need to be also managing expectations better with how things are moving forward. Let me do one other story here before we wrap up. Here's a story I'm going to go to Blue Owl. Okay. Plunges to 2023 low after blocking exit from fund okay, so let me read this to you. I know Jeff, you and Tom both have a lot to say about this. I'm going to come to him. We'll wrap up the podcast with this year. So Blowout Capital Inc. Shares have fallen to their low since 2023 December after the alternative Asset Manager restricted investors from redeeming capital from one of its oldest private credit funds. Shares dropped almost 6% on Monday, closing at 13.78. The firm announced earlier this month that it would merge its $1.8 billion non traded business development company Blue Out Capital Corporation 2 with its 17.6 billion dollar publicly listed vehicle Blue Owl Capital Corp. Or OBDC. But investors in non traded fund won't be able to redeem their capital until the merger closes, which is expected to happen early next year. Invested in the acquired vehicle will swap their holdings for OBDC stock. That means they could see paper losses as much as 20% if the deal closes at current share price given that OBDC shares are trading at much higher of a discount compared to the value of the fund business. Jeff, thoughts on the story?

[A]

There is a growing problem in what's called private credit or shadow banking, whatever term you want to talk talk about it. It is potentially it could, if it continues to go in this direction, it could turn into a financial crisis. And the reason is because a lot of this private credit, without getting into the really the deep weeds here, it's just a source of. Of relending in the economy. So you have these investment funds that borrow, they get ceded by wealthy investors, a lot of hedge funds, things like that, they borrow in wholesale markets like repo to leverage up the returns. And it's basically these investment funds, these private credit, shadow bank funds, are blank balance sheets. They've been heavily involved huge volumes over the last several years because the regulated banks haven't been lending in risky sectors of the economy. So private credit funds have been absolutely banging the table on volume, volume, volume and credit growth without really paying a whole lot of attention to the fundamentals, to the underwriting. Underwriting has gone by the wayside here.

[C]

There's that word again.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And it's a very important word. We see this in every credit cycle in human history. Greed takes a hold of everybody. You rationalize away the risk. All the kind of stuff, all the bubble behaviors that we associated in 2008, we're seeing it again here in 2025 in private credit. So what that could potentially lead. What's really happening is there's a lot of losses because there was a lot of dumb lending that took place over the last several years as they were voluming up and growing and whatnot. We don't know have, because it's sort of in the shadows. We don't have a real idea of what those losses might actually end up being. And of course, that feeds into mistrust in the marketplace, and it could from there potentially spill over into something bigger. So what we're trying to figure out is how many losses there are and who has them, and if there are enough of them, who is going to end up paying the bill. The problem with that process of a downside of a credit cycle is that it can spill over into the general marketplace, where if there's not enough information, and believe me, there is not, then people just say, screw this, I want my money back. This is what happened in the earliest stages of the 2008 crisis. And I don't want to get. I mean, I'm not making a comparison to 2008 in any other way than that's. It's just the Process it takes. What you had is you had a bunch of hedge fund investors that were earlier exposed to subprime mortgages and really subprime mortgages that looked a lot like this, securitized structures and whatnot. You had hedge funds, investors that said, I don't know what's going on here. I'm not getting any answers from my fund managers. They're not telling me the truth. All I know is that there's fund guys over here that are losing tons of money. I don't want to be one of those. Give me my money back. So what you had was a bunch of hedge fund redemptions hit the marketplace, which then created a cascade of selling that became the 2008 crisis. So what we're seeing here with the Blue Owl story is the latest in a series of escalations moving in that same direction. It started with Tricolor, then it was First Brands, then it was a couple of small regional banks that were exposed to First Brands. And it was Primaland then we started getting notice from ubs. UBS said, we're shutting down a couple of our hedge funds. Why? They started getting hit with Redemptions. And so this Blue Owl story is again, the same thing. Hedge fund investors are saying, give me my money back. And these funds, they're not even exposed to the bankruptcies that we see so far. And so what that potentially tells us is that the investors in these institutional spaces are getting cold feet about the entire space. And if that's the case, then you have what become what started out as potentially a credit crisis starts to become a liquidity crisis.

[B]

Tom.

[C]

Well, exactly. And now for everybody that was listening to that, I'll give you an easy visual. In the movie the Big Short, you have the wealthy individual, I forget what his name was, comes in and sits down with Michael Burry and says, we want to take our money out. You can't do that right now. I'm freezing all withdrawals. He says. He says, michael, you can't do this. I want my money back. I'm calling my attorney. Remember that whole interchange? That is exactly what we're talking about here. And Blue Owl was trying to merge things together. They were literally trying to build the Jenga that was built on the table in the Big Short, where they talk about all this because they were trying to take Blue Owl 1 and Blue Owl 2, put them together so that they could have diversified risk. And they said, you can't do a redemption while we're putting this together. Well, then, guess what? Then the merger broke. They couldn't get it together. They couldn't get all the approvals they needed, so it stopped. Meanwhile, we covered Tricolor last week on used cars where they found that the asset value of all the used cars that were out there was less than the value of the subprime auto loans here. Which is why everybody was saying, oh, it's all subprime, subprime. But it's not. Now you have this happening and by the way, U.S. regulators have fired the first shot and it's called HPS Partners, HPS Investment Partners. They're a private credit arm of a company called BlackRock and they're responsible for running highly leveraged but high returns. So their charter go find things that maybe might be untenable for other people will be smarter. So they put 400 million backed by receivables. The receivables of the company's pat appear to be fake future sales. Wow. So now blackrock's got HPS going, wait a minute, these guys lied to us. The telecom guys lied to us.

[A]

They never checked.

[C]

So now BlackRock is like. And BlackRock's on the saying, it's not us. It was a division of us at arm's lengths that we call HPS Baloney. It was your.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Oh, it was hps. You knew them. But you've deliberately set it up to keep some distance there. But now the federal investigators are coming in here going, hey, you 18 year old college boys got beer in there? Are you having a party you shouldn't be. And so that's the knock at the door. So what we're seeing here is some things out there when times get good too long, Pat, what happens? People get sloppy. You've talked about it. You've talked about it so many times in the businesses that you've ran that I've watched you and that I'VE sat next to you and watched you run them. When things get really good, sometimes that's when people get sloppy or get a little careless or cut corners. Ladies and gentlemen, your private capital market, and it's coming.

[A]

The problem is that the private capital market is huge.

[D]

Huge.

[A]

It's gotten to be really huge. So it actually can impact a lot more than 20.

[C]

And why in 24 did BlackRock agree to acquire it? They wanted the return. So you guys have figured out European telco and you figured out how to get some of the bonds on the equipment building they have there and you've done this. Yeah. I'll give you 12 billion for that whole stack. That's what they did. Now US Investigators are going back, going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me some of this was fake? Receivables and sales that didn't exist. So BlackRock, how did you not catch that? I didn't know that. Yeah, you were a bad underwriter.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

Where's your diligence?

[A]

Nobody wanted to underwrite. Everybody wanted, wanted to do. It's bubble behavior. Everybody just wants, I want the 12.

[C]

Billion because I need the return. I don't care about the red light on diligence.

[B]

We know personally, we know a company that is at that seven year mark of having raised a ton of money. And those guys are coming saying, hey, we need that money back. We need that money back. We don't care how you get it. We need that money back. You've reached that moment here. Did you have any thoughts on this? I'm going to go to the Tim Cook story just quickly.

[D]

I think we're like, it's crazy to me that nothing's happened in the last 15 years where this, it's been this like, great growth in like the stock market, asset prices. So like I'd be shocked if something didn't give eventually. So like, just like he's saying, yeah.

[B]

Last one here is Tim Cook. I know this is one you wanted to talk about. Tim Cook may step down as Apple CEO as early as next year, says reports. This is from Entrepreneur magazine. Rob, is this him speaking or is this him?

[C]

This is a Reuters report on the succession.

[B]

Okay, go for it. Go for it.

[C]

Apple is stepping up its succession plans.

[B]

As it prepares for CEO Tim Cook to step down as soon as next year. That's according to a report in the Financial Times which cited several people familiar with discussions. The report said that John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook's most likely Successor Apple insiders were quoted as saying the company's board and senior executives had recently intensified plans for Cook to hand over the reins after more than 4014 years at the helm. The report also said that Apple is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period. Cook became CEO in 2011 after Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs resigned, ending his reign at the tech giant he co founded in 1976 in his parents garage.

[D]

Yeah, so I guess you could take the approach with this of Apple wouldn't be what it is today without Tim Cook. But also you could take the approach of saying that Tim Cook was just like this conservative guy who inherited the creations that Steve Jobs already created and played it safe and maybe, you know, was the right fit at the right time where he just did the conservative things instead of the overly aggressive things and they blossomed into like the $4 trillion company because of the conservative nature of him. But also people are criticizing Apple for not being innovative enough stuff and not doing anything with AI, not creating a lot of new products over the last couple years. So I think it's kind of like a debate between those two things. Like I wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs like had not died and wasn't CEO from like, like until today instead of Tim Cook. Maybe Apple wouldn't be the same, maybe it'd be much bigger. But I don't know. I think that's something interesting to consider. I don't think it'll be like, I think it's probably time for him to step down and it could be a good thing because I kind of have a point where they haven't done anything.

[B]

That's the exciting, the criticism is right there what you said, what is the new product? So versus if Steve was there, maybe they would have new products. To me, I'm 50, 50, I think sometimes crisis happens and nobody expected him to. You know, when he got his cancer he started doing his walks and everybody's wondering who are you going to get? And he brought the finance guy on, bit of a guy, that's the safer guy. And he came in and he did a decent job. He took it from where it was at. And right there, if you look at it from 10-05-2011, which is when Steve Jobs died to today actually thing was it October 11th when he died? October 5th, 2011. Yeah, when he died to today, 2,280 return. Yeah. And you know what I did, I ran 14 years prior to that to see how that compares against Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was at the previous 18, 14 years. He had a rate of return of 8, 600. So he 86x the business where, you know, Tim Cook 23x. But that makes sense. The company was newer. The company was, you know, had newer announcements that was being made. A lot of the products was made under Jobs. So you would expect that uptick. But Tom, where you at with this year?

[C]

So a couple things. First of all, I think he did a good job making a very nimble, profitable, driving Apple. But the succession plan that they needed, they needed five years ago. And it's the product success recession plan, it's to diversify that. I'll give you a very interesting stat here. At its peak, Apple had 18% global phone market share because remember, once you get outside the United States, Android's everywhere.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

And now it's 17%. Now the smartphone marketplace is bigger. So the 17% is of a bigger pie. However, the pie is now looking to slowly shrink for two reasons. One, most everybody has a phone. Phone penetration isn't going to be the magic push. Get one for mom, get one for your kid. We've played that game right, in Europe and United States and in developed Asia, which is Korea and Japan. All of that's there. However, the other part of it is they're making phones too good. People are not replacing their phones the way Apple once experienced. So people are keeping phones longer. And if the economy's not so good and the phone's working just fine, you don't replace it here in the US and so they need a new, they need more product, they need more push. And I think the next CEO is going to have to inherit an Apple that just like under Tim Cook, needs to kind of find its way forward.

[A]

Jeff, I think what you said exactly right. I mean there's the criticism is did, why didn't Apple reinvent itself to a certain extent 10 years ago? Were they just happy just, you know, the business that they had built, the Jobs had built and just managing the mature life cycle of the business? And why weren't they pioneering new new fields in technology?

[B]

Did you see who's replacing Tim Doe, the VP of product? Right, the SVP of product.

[A]

Did they get the message a little bit like you to your point, did they get a little bit bit too late?

[B]

Yeah, but guess what? Listen, they're making a move. We're going to learn this guy here, you're going to hear a lot of his name. If this guy ends up replacing him because he's reporting to Tim Cook. So he's been hardware engineer since 2021. We'll see. We'll see what's going to happen. Universal pen guy. What else do we know about him? He began his career as a mechanical engineer designing virtual reality headset at Virtual Research Systems. Join Apple in OH one as a member of the product design team working first on Apple Cinema display. In 2013, it was appointed vice president of hardware engineer under Dan Riccio and he overseed the product of AirPods, Mac and iPad. All right. I mean, sounds like a qualified guy for them, but we'll see what happened. Having said that, folks, we are at the end of the podcast. Jeff Snyder, really enjoyed having you on. Jeff's got a YouTube channel as well called the Eurodollar University. If you haven't yet subscribed, Rob, can we put the link below for them to go follow? Jeff, it was great having you on, man.

[A]

My pleasure. This was awesome.

[B]

Yeah, really enjoyed having you on. Yeah, take care everybody. God bless. Bye bye, bye bye.