01 Oct Saturday Broadcast 18
Key topics:
✔️ ICYMI news, 9/26 – 9/30.
✔️ Russell Brand is moving his content to Rumble. I predicted on Saturday Broadcast 16 that he’d be slapped down and censored soon. Happened even faster than I thought. (And yes, I finally got a hype man to announce my accurate predictions. 🤣)
✔️ Home sales cooling, wages not keeping pace with inflation . . . some of the goofballs who tried to deny the reality of bubbles and artificially manipulated markets are gettin’ awfully quiet now.
✔️If we can’t coax you back to the office, we’ll tell you that you’ll be outsourced and made obsolete for staying home! 😒
Links I mention:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/27/gm-delays-return-to-office-mandate-after-employee-backlash.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/economy/economy-inflation-savings/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bN3U69Nm_E
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/white-collar-workers-face-new-threat-4981841/
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Siren courtesy of Pixabay.
Transcription by Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos!
Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in recording this portion of the broadcast on Monday, September 26. So crazy to think that when this episode publishes, it will be the first day of October. Not a complaint by any means. I love this time of the year. It’s just crazy how time seems to fly. We’re in the hot part of the year where every day seems to be a sticky Inferno and then we finally get into the fall and it’s like woosh, like slow down a little bit. I want to really enjoy some autumnal weather and the changing of the leaves and all that on CNBC. Today we have headlines such as s&p 500. notches new Closing low for 2022. Dow falls more than 300 points on surging dollar. Wall Street’s fear gauge hits highest level since June. Putin grants Russian citizenship to former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. Bitcoin bounces Interpol hunts for dough Quan. Whoa, boy, Biden’s student loan relief could cost $400 billion Congressional Budget Office says hurricane and nears Cuba on path to strike Florida as category for home purchase cancellations remain above 15%. What to know before backing out of your contract. So obviously that doesn’t sound good. If we’re thinking about people getting into a real estate search and now they want to say wait a minute, we want to back out. That’s never a good sign. Over on Yahoo Finance, it’s a similar scene. Stocks extend sell off as fed fears currency turmoil persist. US stocks had yet another losing session Monday with equities poised for more turbulence this week as fears of excessive fed tightening and a wild run in currency markets rattled investors, Bank of England watching closely as Sterling hits all time low versus the dollar. One veteran strategist guests at a bear market bottom Well, that’s all it is, is is a guess. remote work drove 60% of the boom and housing fed study. I feel like this is another case of blaming everything on remote work, you went home, you got to work from your home office on a laptop instead of being bought in seat in the cube farm. So you’re responsible for pretty much everything that’s going wrong in the country, which is insane. I, in my opinion, okay. Could be wrong. In my opinion, this was definitely an artificially manipulated market. But I think to say it’s all the fault, the fault using air quotes here all the fault of people who work from home is ridiculous. I mean, what somebody can afford at a 2.5% interest rate, which has nothing to do with a remote worker, a remote worker sitting there, writing code on a laptop has nothing to do with a mortgage interest rate. That person doesn’t set what the interest rate is for a mortgage. But what someone can afford at a 2.5% interest rate versus what they can afford at a 6.5 or 7.5% interest rate. It looks totally different. Your purchasing power goes down significantly every time that there’s one of these rate hikes. So I think to make the assertion that working from home, cause the housing bubble is crazy. Now, I think you can say that people certainly did look around their surroundings and say, Oh, now that we’re home more, maybe this is not quite what we thought it was. Maybe the house no longer has enough space. Maybe the neighborhood has gone downhill. Maybe some people have gotten into the neighborhood that you’ve never even met. But now that you’re all sort of cloistered away together. During work from home, you realize I don’t even think we want to be here anymore. There absolutely. Was that situation happening. So I’m not going to bury my head in the sand and say that people didn’t look around at their surroundings and say, maybe this isn’t quite what we thought it was. And a lot of people looked at Zillow or realtor.com, almost like real estate porn. There was even a Saturday Night Live skit, lampooning that exact thing. Let’s get on Zillow and look at Dream houses, we’re never gonna buy them, we’re never gonna go look at them. We just want to like play pretend. So I get that, but to essentially say that remote work is largely responsible for this artificially, in my opinion, artificially manipulated housing market and the subsequent crash that’s coming. That’s absurd. It’s the same thing to me as the corporate Fat Cat saying that remote workers are responsible for inflation. It’s basically like, whatever is wrong in the country, we’re gonna say it’s because you got to work from home. Therefore, you need to get your butt back in the cube farm. It’s like they’re not even hiding their true intention anymore. Meanwhile, over on ink.com Today there was an interesting article titled Facebook’s 30 Day list was recently extended to strong performers that could devastate employee morale even for people who get rehired. The byline reads the practice of telling employees to apply for an internal job and land it or be let go. Sounds reasonable in theory, but it’s terrible in practice. Of course, I will drop a link to this so you can check it out for yourself. I’ll read some of it for you now, sales were down and forecasts showed we didn’t have enough work to keep production employees busy. I have a great idea. Our boss said, before we lay any binary employees off, let’s give them a chance to apply for open shipping jobs. Hold that thought? Well, it sounds odd that a business would need to simultaneously layoff employees and hire new ones it does happen. The bigger the company and the more diverse its operations and functions, the more likely a change in demand could mean you need to cut production employees even as you add more engineers to develop new products. That’s currently happening at meta Facebook’s parent company. Staffing reductions are one aspect of the company’s cost cutting response to a downturn in the digital ad market. Every manager needs to think about each person on their team and the value, they are adding to meta. If a direct report is coasting or a low performer, they are not who we need, they are failing this company, as a manager, you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative for meta, then they go on to reclone old Xbox company town hall from earlier. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here. Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit is that I think some of you might decide that this isn’t the place for you that self selection is okay with me. In other words, if you don’t want to be here anymore, whether we put you on the dreaded Pip, or we tell you to apply for something internally, you don’t get it. And so you’re fired. I mean, what kind of choice is that? I can I can go for this promotion, or go for this other open job and I either get it or there’s the door. I mean, that does sound pretty cutthroat. I’ll continue to read. Maybe that’s why as medical staffing in certain functional areas, affected employees are given the opportunity to apply for other roles in the company and find a new job within 30 days, a period employees call being put on the 30 day list. The practice isn’t uncommon. Google recently told a number of employees they would need to find another job in the company within 90 days. What doesn’t make sense is making employees apply for those jobs. In our case, we knew who we wanted to keep. We knew whether they were good team players. Good leaders possess solid work ethics were self starters, we knew them. If mark and Becky and Melissa applied for a certain job. I already knew which one I would choose. Why make them go through the charade demeaning as it certainly feels of applying and quote, so I understand the argument that he’s making there. Why are you adding insult to injury by asking employees to go through an internal application process, especially if you already know who you want to keep? Why would you not rather give them a pink slip and some kind of severance and the ability to draw unemployment benefits while they look for something else? Instead of making them go through some kind of obstacle course that you already know they’re destined to lose? Honestly, everything in this article makes me want to vomit. You know, I mean, I see stuff like this, and I get it. Like I understand why a lot of people have bad feelings about HR. But if I may stick up for the profession a little bit. Here’s the thing. A lot of these edicts come from the power brokers on Hi, they don’t come from the HR department. It’s not some HR manager or corporate level director of human resources that saying, why don’t we have these employees play Hunger Games, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s typically not where these kinds of missives and directives are coming from. It’s usually coming from C. O. C. O. ‘s company, ownership board of directors, the shareholders, the stakeholders, you know, the people that are part of the one big club that you and I are not in, it’s typically not Sally Sue the HR manager in Omaha. This is typically coming down from on high. And of course, it’s gross to make people jump through hoops and play games. I think the whole thing is weird. And I hope that we don’t see this as a trend across other industries. Because the idea of well you either find another job within the company, you apply for it, you’re successful at getting it or there’s the door. mean to me, that’s a lot like a pip when you’re put on one of those awful pips. And you’re told like, well, you’re either going to turn water into wine or you’re gone in 60 days. They’re pretty much in a roundabout way telling you there’s the door. Here’s the amount of time that you have Have to go look for gainful employment somewhere else if that’s of interest to you, because we’re gonna give you these redonkulous standards that nobody can meet. And then at day 60, you’re gonna get pulled into the conference room and told, Hey, listen, Bob, we’re so sorry that you can perform signs, wonders and miracles. But I mean, we did give you the chance to do it, and you just couldn’t. So by, well, we’ll mail your things to you at the end of the week, or whatever. So I think in some ways, that’s what this 30 day plan is, you either find another job in the company, oh, and you get it, you interview for it, and you get it, or there’s the door. Who would want to do that, I mean, you’d have to have a very strong commitment to staying at that company, you’d have to, you’d have to feel like, I really enjoy it here. And I’m willing to do some other job just to stay with the company or just to keep my tenure. But here’s the thing, here’s the other side of that argument. Because I believe we’ve gone from the carrot to the stick. We’re so many of these companies are telling people aren’t to or it’s your job. We already know, truth be told, we know that unemployment is not 3.7%. And we know that there’s not two legitimate, well paying jobs for everyone unemployed person, we already know that. So I feel like they are empowered and emboldened in a bad way to be able to treat people however the hell they want to, because they know that the day is coming, where the general public is going to be made aware, the economy is in the dumper. We’re not in some high rolling, free flowing, economic rebound economic recovery, we’re just not. There’s so much evidence to the contrary of that. I mean, if we were if people were doing great, and everything was fantastic, why would these people be looking to cancel their housing contracts? Why would they be saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe we got caught up in FOMO, maybe we got a little overly excited, we’re looking at the interest rates, we’re looking at the bank balance, and we’re thinking, maybe not, maybe it would be better for us to lose our earnest money and get the hell out of here than to be on the hook for an overpriced house. Just some food for thought, as I always say, I can’t give you advice, and I can’t tell you what to do. I would say for me, if I were on a pip, I felt like there was a bullseye on my back and the company, I was working for a firm that told me you either invent a job that we give the green light to or you’re gone. You either apply internally and go through that process and we keep you or we don’t, I would definitely want to have a plan B. Even if I love that company and I wanted to stay there, I would want to have a plan B and a safety net set forward. So that just in case, it didn’t go the way that I thought it was going to I’d have some other place to go. I’d have a means of making money and providing for myself and my family. If the Poopoo hit the fan. Today it is Tuesday, September 27. on CNBC we have headlines such as s&p 500 ns Tuesday down, after notching a fresh bear market low Dow slips more than 100 points, GM delays return to Office mandate after employee backlash. Well, imagine that I’ll drop a link to this article so you can see it for yourself. Because essentially what they’re saying is okay, we’ll back off a little bit for now. We’ll let you peons and plebs have the opportunity to ease into the idea of coming back to the office, but we’re not going to change our plans, we still really want you back. And I think at the risk of sounding Debbie Downer. We have so many people living paycheck to paycheck and dealing with personal debt, that I find it very hard to believe that more companies won’t follow suit. So even if employees have a backlash and say, hell, no, we won’t go at some point, they’re going to be so economically squeezed. They’ll have to go. And I believe corporate America knows that. And they’re just sort of biding their time. A lot of companies have already moved from the carrot to the stick. So I think the ones that are still trying to use the carrot eventually will get to the stick. I hope I’m wrong on that. But I really don’t think that I am Walt Disney World to close parks for two days as Hurricane and approaches Florida. Home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of the s&p Case Shiller Index. Hmm. Boy, I sure would like to show that to every arrogant realtor and broker last summer who told me that we are not in a housing bubble. that prices will only go up. Demand is going to hold steady. This is not 2007 or 2008. Huh, huh? Who looks the full now? Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find Florida braces for hurricane Ian. Big Mac shows pain of dollar search. salaries aren’t meeting living costs. I don’t think that you would really need a headline to tell you that I think most people are already aware that their salary is not keeping pace with inflation or than inflation. Should is not really 9.1% I think we kind of all know the Emperor’s not wearing any clothes, their home prices see forceful pullback, theft wave has retailers on defense, stocks slip again, after opening up. Yikes. CNN actually has a more detailed article, of course, I’ll drop a link to it. 71% of employees say that their pay is not keeping up with inflation. And this is actually up from 58% of people who reported that back in February. Again, I don’t really think that we need a news outlet to tell us that this is what’s going on. But it is frustrating at times the amount of hot air and BS that the media typically puts out. Oh, inflation is easing. Oh, wait a minute. No, it’s not Oh, stocks are up we’re seeing a rally maybe the worst of the bear market has already been seen. Oh, Whoops a daisy, maybe not. Use your own best judgment. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again, critical thinking, doing your own research, looking around and seeing what’s happening in your area. What’s going on in real time where you live that will serve you very well, in my opinion. As an addendum to today’s news a couple of hours ago, a video was published on YouTube by Russell Brand announcing that he would be moving his content to rumble due to censorship by YouTube. Now I have hired a hitman to get on here so that I don’t have to brag on myself. Drumroll please. Sara was right yet again. On Saturday broadcast 16th. I predicted that Russell Brand was teetering on the edge and would probably get censored soon. And now we’re here. Today it is Wednesday, September 28. on Yahoo Finance we have headlines today such as stocks rally as Treasury yields retreat. Bank of England pivots. US stocks surged Wednesday afternoon as Treasury yields retreated from a sharp ascent and investors cheered on a surprised policy pivot by the Bank of England. Druckenmiller says would be stunned if no US recession next year hmm I’d be stunned if we’re not in a recession right freaking now. Netflix stock surges on double upgrade as Wall Street tears on Add tear. Halloween participants expected to reach pre pandemic levels in 2022. Biogen Alzheimer’s drug made the first effort of a clear win. I hope so. I really do. You always want to hope that there’s a cure and eradication for some terrible disease. So let’s think positive on that. Three reasons the US dollar is strengthening. So it sounds like for the most part, if you go over to Yahoo Finance today, you’re going to see a lot of good news. I hope it’s accurate. I’m skeptical, but I hope it’s accurate. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find work from home drove housing costs higher says the Fed Of course, of course because work from home and the average working class person is responsible for everything. Inflation, the housing bubble, whatever, just add water and stir. It’s your fault. Oracle fined $23 million in bribery probe. California goes big on pay transparency, banks fined $1.8 billion for illegal app use home prices see forceful pull back hurricane and smashes into Florida. Earlier today on LinkedIn. There was also an article they published about remote work and surveillance. As you know, I have not been shy in voicing my opinion on this matter. And in my opinion, if you have any piece of employer tech, regardless of what it is a phone, a laptop, a tablet, a thumb drive, whatever, assume it is being used for surveillance purposes. Please do not be naïve. In your approach. There are some states and municipalities that require an employer to disclose if you’re being surveilled. And if so how are they doing it? A lot don’t. And I think it’s better to be safe than to be sorry. Because if you have any other tech in your house, you have to just assume it is being used so that they can look at your keystrokes. Take a look at your screenshots, whatever. So do not be naïve on that point. Don’t do anything on that computer or tablet or cell phone that you wouldn’t do with your boss standing right there in the room looking at you because probably for all intents and purposes they are today it is Thursday, September 29. Yesterday, we did hear about the sabotage of some kind on Nord Stream, the natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. At this point, we still don’t even really know for sure what happened. If it was sabotage, which let’s face it, it very well could have been, who’s responsible for it? What will be the outcome of this? And one of the things that I want to interject here, I understand there is so much gloom and doom, and so much fear mongering going on. There are already people on YouTube screaming and yelling, this is world war three, this is how it begins. I don’t necessarily know that that’s the case. And let’s be very candid. Some of those same people have been screaming world war three, Great Depression, economic collapse. For years now, the least little dust up that happens in the news, they want to immediately go on social media, and hype everybody up and rant and rave and act crazy. I think some of them have the mindset of, well, even a stopped watch is correct twice a day. If I just keep screaming crisis and putting out fear mongering on my YouTube channel, eventually I’ll be right. So I’m not gonna sit here and say that I think that this Nord Stream sabotage or accident, or whatever it was that happened, and whoever it is, that is eventually blamed for it come went May. I’m not gonna sit here and say that this is the official kickoff to world war three. mean, it seemed like we were headed into very dangerous territory, no pun intended, whenever Russia went into the Ukraine, and look at how long that has played out. No, we’re not in world war three. No nuclear attacks are happening. So I think that we do have to let Cooler heads prevail, we have to be careful not to get sucked into weird drama, and fear mongering on the internet. Yes, we need to be aware, we need to stay cautious and to have a good game plan. But I think that’s just good advice. In general, I have been battling a sinus infection from hell, this week, I have a bonus episode that will drop on Monday, you’ll really hear it in my voice on that episode, it really hit me hard. And sometimes the medications that you have to take make you feel as wonky as the actual sickness you’re trying to cure. But it was a great reminder for me of having what you need on hand. I’ve talked in some of the previous Saturday broadcasts about whispers on the wind that I had heard that some of the 24/7 retailers, were never going to go back to 24/7. And then in fact that 24 7 365 availability of stores would just go away, it would be like when I was a kid, there was no expectation in the 80s, that things were going to be open 24 hours a day, if you got sick in the middle of the night, and you didn’t have what you needed, you were gonna have to wait till the pharmacy opened the next morning. And that was that. But we have gotten into such an expectation of everything being available on demand. And when that goes away, you need to be prepared. It’s not about World War Three. And what happens with Nord Stream, it’s about having just general good emergency preparedness in life. I mean, look at what’s going on in Florida with Hurricane Ian, you have to have a survival plan, whether we’re talking about natural disasters, or we’re talking about waking up sick in the middle of the night. Because that’s not fun. If you wake up at one or two o’clock in the morning, and you realize you’re coming down with something, you go to the medicine cabinet, and you don’t have what you need, guess what you’re going to be waiting. There was one pharmacy in the town closest to me that had gone back to 24/7 operation. And they recently scaled that back, they had a sign up saying that they were going to new hours, I think it’s like seven to, I think like seven to 11 during the week, and then eight to eight on the weekends, something like that. So you wake up at one or two o’clock in the morning and you realize you don’t have pain reliever stomach medicine, whatever it is that you need, you’re gonna be waiting until that store opens in the morning. And that is not any fun. So having things on hand, and even other provisions that we like to have when we’re sick toast, seven up crackers, chicken soup, Kleenex, it’s so good to have those things already put away so that when you have that middle of the night, oh, oh, my stomach is upset or Oh god, I think I’m getting strep. I’ve got to wait until I can do telehealth and get some antibiotics. At least I can take some medicine in the meantime, having that kind of stuff on hand and ready to go so that you have what you need. You can essentially be your own temporary version of a Walmart or your own temporary version of the grocery store until those things open back up. I think it’s smart, smart decision making. Can’t tell you what to do. But I know I have been very grateful that I already had things like Kleenex, throat lozenges, and some over the counter meds here while I waited for my prescription to get called in There were things that I could do to not suffer so much. So again, in my mind, it’s not about World War Three and screaming that cataclysms are coming. It’s just about do you have what you need to get by on a day to day regular basis? And if you don’t? Do you have the money? Do you have the ability to put a little stockpile back of things that you know for sure you’re going to need at one point or another. Over on CNBC, we have headlines today such as s&p 500, closes at New 2022. Low as Apple shares Helm. broad market sell off. What happened to that rally yesterday? Surely evaporated quickly didn’t jobless claims hit five month low despite Feds efforts to slow labor market? I almost can’t even read that with a straight face. I’ll post a blog post about that tomorrow. But it’s like who believes that? Who even believes that mean? The article itself goes into how the Fed is still going to have to find inflation? You know, but Winky wink It’s okay. Because look at this hot job market. And I’m like, How can this not be obvious? It seems very clear to me what they’re doing and the narrative that they’re pushing. Toyota CEO doubles down on Evie strategy amid criticism. It’s not moving fast enough. In a reversal, the education department is now excluding millions from student loan relief. And you know, that’s not going to go over well. You know, it’s almost like, in the same way that I think we can’t completely trust corporate America and the fat cats and the Wall Street bankers. It’s almost like we can’t totally trust the state either. Imagine that. Senate passes stopgap funding bill to avert government shutdown and provide more Ukraine aid. Hmm. Well, regardless of whatever you may think about that conflict, when we look at how many people are suffering here, how the middle class is perpetually getting squeezed and seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Is it really the right thing for us to be sending all of these millions and billions of dollars over to the Ukraine? I’ll let you decide that for yourself. I’m just saying. Over on Yahoo Finance, it’s a similar scene. Stocks crater as Apple leads losses in broad market sell off top Apple executive out after crude remarks and a tick tock video, I don’t even care enough to click on that. got bigger fish to fry. Mortgage rates raced towards 7% Hit 15 year high. You have talked before when I bought my first house, I think that the interest rate I got was like a seven or a seven and a half percent. And looking back on and it was like man that that was expensive, you know, especially when you consider how low the rates were last summer during the summer of FOMO and Yolo. And somebody with good credit could get a two and a half percent interest rate. But yet some people think that the market wasn’t artificially manipulated. I mean, really, Apple stock plunges after a Bank of America issues rare downgrade. New York lays out plans to mandate zero emissions vehicles by 2035. Coin base stock labeled underweight by Wells Fargo stocks bear market will continue into 2023. No. Tech’s ugly quarter will likely bleed into October. We also learned today that DocuSign is going to cut 9% of its workforce so about 670 people. So even though that article over on CNBC is acting like jobless claims are down layoffs have abated I’m like where is that the reality? Every time that I look on layoffs dot FYI or you just open the side panel for LinkedIn, you’re going to see new layoff announcements. In fact over on the side panel, they’ve never taken down the bullet point that says layoffs latest companies making cuts. That’s just become a staple of what you see when you go to the side panel for LinkedIn news every day. Caveat emptor use good judgment. Be willing to read between the lines, I’ve said it before and will continue to say it in my opinion, being naive is coming at too high of a price. I don’t want anybody out there to be steamrolled by what’s yet to come. I feel like I’ve already lived through this movie a couple of different times. I remember it during the.com boom and bust and I remember it again during the Great Recession. I feel like I’ve already seen the movie. I know how it plays out. I know how it ends, and I would just really not want anybody to get crushed underneath it. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. I don’t know. But that’s one of the reasons why I’m on every Saturday, putting these broadcasts out to try to help whoever I can. Whoever has ears to listen, let him listen. That’s all I’m trying to do. Today it is Friday, September 30 a little crazy to think here we are the last day of September. This episode will do off on the first day of October, not a complaint by the way, definitely ready for the fall and winter seasons, bring it on. Totally ready. In terms of what I’m seeing on my little shopping trips here in the Midwest, things are still in short supply, depending on what it is. And depending on where you are, no, I will not tell you that you’ll walk into a grocery store in my neck of the woods at least and not find anything to eat. It’s just sometimes the soup may look decimated, and then the next week, it might be fine. Next week, it might be the laundry detergent that’s in short supply, I did notice that a lot of medications over the counter medications were gone. And I had heard and I think I talked about in one of the previous Saturday broadcasts that there was a predicted shortage of like cold and sinus and flu type medicine that would hit sometime this winter. So again, I can’t tell you what to do, I can’t give you advice. But I would definitely say speaking for me and my household knowing that probably there’s going to be a need for those things at some point over the winter. I’d rather have them and have them on hand. You know, I talked in the portion I recorded yesterday about the sinus infection from hell, and then you know, having some stomach difficulties from the medication that I’m having to take. You don’t want to wake up at two o’clock in the morning and realize that you don’t have what you need. Now, I’ve also heard some whispers on the wind, I can’t confirm this. So I’m just going to kind of put it out there in vague terms and tell you do your own research, try to find out for yourself if this is true. But I had heard a while back, which I also mentioned yesterday that 24/7 stores were really going to go away, there wouldn’t be any more 24/7 Super Centers or 24/7 pharmacies, at some point, all of that would just cease. Now I’m hearing a similar whisper on the wind that eventually we will see more brick and mortar stores closing down and or becoming distribution centers. And that there will be an increased push towards online shopping and delivery. Really, what we’ll see is more retail going the way of Amazon. Again, I have not been able to independently confirm that from multiple sources. So I’m not sure at this point, I’ll just tell you, it’s a whisper on the wind that I’m hearing. Maybe that’ll be the case, maybe it won’t. But I think it also goes back to the point I made yesterday, don’t wake up at one or two o’clock in the morning and realize you don’t have something that you need. People who already live in a rural way are accustomed to that they typically don’t get up at two o’clock in the morning and run to the pharmacy, they have what they need on hand. But it makes for a pretty long and miserable night if you’re sick and you don’t have something that you need. Or if you get snowed in if there’s inclement weather, if something happens to a point where you can’t physically make it to a store, a delivery person can’t make it to you, you’re going to need to eat, you’re going to need to drink if you need medication, you’re going to want to have that on hand, Kleenex, toilet paper, paper towels. So again, I can’t tell you what to do. But if it were me, I would want to make sure that I had preparations I had things on hand and ready to go so that I didn’t get stranded at home without being able to find what I need. And if this whisper on the wind is true, and we will see more brick and mortar stores going away and becoming distribution centers so that there’s more online commerce, there’s more delivery, it also might not be a bad idea to get things that you’re going to want to touch and feel and pick out for yourself. I’m not opposed to online shopping at all. Heaven knows that I buy things from Amazon too. But there are times when you want to be able to pick something out for yourself. You don’t necessarily want a personal shopper or somebody a distribution facility picking out for you. So if there’s certain things that you really want to have and see and touch and experience in person, it might not be a bad idea to take care of those things. Now I can confirm it just telling you what I’m hearing the beat on the street if you will. Over on CNBC we have headlines today such as Facebook scrambles to escape stocks death spiral as users flee and sales drop. Disney reaches deal with activist investor third point will add former meta executive to its board. Wow. So we have escalated now to a death spiral. Dow tumbled 500 points on Friday to end September down nearly 9% Well what happened to that bear market rally? What happened to that dead cat bounce? Aren’t we all supposed to be super excited? Kind of looks like that to didn’t go so well. Good riddance September, we gauge the damage in the market and get ready for October. Hurricane Ian makes landfall in South Carolina after devastating Florida. So that’s been apparently a very awful weather event. Yet again why I think emergency preparedness is so important. Sometimes we get into this mindset that emergency preparedness is just doomsday preparedness. It’s gloom and Doomers all the time. saying, this is the apocalypse, it’s the end of days, it’s world war three, I read something in a Nostradamus quatrain. And I’m convinced it’s coming true. But that’s not accurate. An emergency can be something on a local level, it can be something on a state level, it can be something on a personal level. If you’re that person that wakes up puking your guts out at three in the morning, it’s going to feel like a personal emergency for you. So it’s not about preparing for the end of days, it can be just preparing to make it through the night or make it through a week or two without provisions. Over on Yahoo Finance, we find stocks plummet to close out brutal third quarter for Wall Street. US stocks recorded another week of sharp losses Friday in a downbeat into a month and quarter wrought by vicious selling that tipped all three major averages into a bear market. Well, maybe this is progress in some way, at least now they’re willing to admit that we’re in a bear market. I don’t know how long it’ll take before. There’s an official admission that we’re in a recession. But I guess at least they’re willing to say it’s a bear market now, which I think anyone with common sense is known for quite some time. Congress fails to regulate its own trading again, Noda, as should be a surprise to absolutely no one. Morgan Stanley expects home prices to dip next year, depending upon where you are in the country that’s already happening. I’ve been candid before about what it’s been like in my part of the Midwest, I’m not seeing that many price drops, some Yes, but it’s not really across the board. And there are still people who are trying to put due to poop houses, overpriced cracker boxes, myth, trailers, etc, on the market for absurd prices. So I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for what’s happening in bigger cities to trickle in here, time will tell from what I’ve heard, again, kind of whispers on the wind, people within the real estate community that I talked to, on and off, it’s probably not going to be a very fun 2023. In terms of being here in real estate in the Midwest, we’ll see. You never know, maybe there, there will be some Hail Mary pass that saves the day. But I think maybe for those of us kind of looking to pick something up at a bargain, or at least not get fleeced, you know pick something up, that’s not a complete piece of crap house that will be good for our needs. It may be into next year before we’re able to do that. We’ll see. Nike says difficult Christmas season is coming. But still hope. That’s something else that I’ve heard quite a bit is that this Christmas season is not going to be very pleasant. People are not going to have as much disposable income presents are going to be cut down. I would say some of the retailers do have pretty good sales going on. So if there are people in your life that you want or need to buy gifts for, it might be a good time, if you can afford it, I would never, ever, ever tell anybody to go without food in order to buy someone a Christmas gift. If you can make something homemade and just say hey, it’s the thought that counts. That might be the way it has to go this year. Another possibility might be to check out marketplaces online, as well as like yard sales or garage sales. I did notice I guess because the weather was pretty pleasant today. It was a Friday and the weather was nice. I saw quite a few people having garage sales and yard sales. That being said, I did not see a lot of takers. And I don’t know if it was just the time of the day that I was out doing my errand running, or what. But I didn’t see as many people out on the road. There wasn’t as much traffic as there has been on previous Fridays or previous weekends when I’ve been out and about. And I really did not see people at these garage sales and yard sales. So some people may have missed a golden opportunity to get rid of things while individuals had a little bit of disposable income. This could be a sign that the pullback is finally reaching my part of the Midwest. I don’t know. Alternatively, people may have been at some kind of event maybe they were at athletic events. Maybe they were at the county fair. There could have been other things that they were doing today and that may be where people are. I do think it’ll be interesting to hear like the State Fair, the county fair. What was the turnout like were people spending money on overpriced food and drink was attendance up attendance down? Because the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people that can find cash if they want something bad enough if they have decided we’ve clamped down we’ve been forbidden all of this fun. Now we want to go to the fair and eat funnel cakes for the next week. They will find a way over on the side panel for LinkedIn we find headlines today such as in hit South Carolina, Florida deaths rise which is horrible My heart goes out for all those people. white collar workers face new threat. Nike drowning in excess inventory, student loan forget given us not for all hmm, imagine that. Apple loses $120 billion amid downgrade. Why car dealerships are here to stay. Now if we click on white collar workers face new threat we learn those working from home maybe concerned about pressure to return to the office, but there is another threat lurking on the horizon. If high paying white collar jobs can be done remotely outsourcing them to cheaper areas could save organizations money, Fortune writes, experts have predicted a post COVID surge in so called tele migration. But recent data also show that highest paying jobs are often the ones most easily done remotely with the biggest gains and work from home going to knowledge workers during the pandemic the threat may loom largest for them now, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are enabling more computers to replace white collar workers to end quote. I feel like to some degree this is more fear mongering. This is more we’re going to blame work from home for everything. Everything every bad behavior in America, inflation, the economy, the housing bubble. Now we’re going to tell you that if you don’t RTO if you continue to work from home and you’re you know a so labeled white collar knowledge worker, then eventually you’re just going to get steamrolled by having your work outsourced. You know, I’m kind of like Rocket Raccoon, there ain’t no thing like me set me and if somebody feels like they can get a bigger better deal somewhere else, go for it. I’ve tried to do outsourcing I’ve tried to work with people that offered to do a job for pennies on the dollar. And you know what, it sucked the outcome sucked every single time. So maybe I’m not as worried about this as I should be. I feel like sometimes in life we have to pick our poison you know, I’m not gonna sit here and worry that the Nord Stream situation is about to kick off World War Three because I don’t personally believe it is I think this is just yet another another drumbeat another we’ll see what happens with it but I’m not going to lose sleep over it tonight. I’m not going to lose sleep over this fear porn either. white collar workers face new threat. Oh, of course they do. Of course. Let’s don’t forget this platform is owned by Microsoft either. It seems pretty clear to me that corporate America is pushing the overall agenda and the overall message that you need to get your butt back in that cube farm. We’ve as I’ve said many times before, I think we’ve gone from the carrot to the stick. So now I guess we’re going to add to the stick the boogey man in the corner. If you don’t RTO you might get outsourced dododo No, okay. All right. I’ll bear that in mind LinkedIn. Thank you. All right, it’s tired. My voice is kind of wanting to go I’m still dealing with this sinus mess. So I am going to avail myself of a nice good rest. Stay safe. stay sane. I will see you in the next episode.
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