Saturday Broadcast 19

08 Oct Saturday Broadcast 19

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news, 10/3 – 10/7.
✔️ CBS News is telling you outright that The Fed wants to crash the job market and increase unemployment. Please, please do not ignore this info.
✔️ Housing prices are set to decline across the country. I’d love to print that article out and mail it to every arrogant realtor and broker I encountered last year who INSISTED we would never see a decline in prices ever again. 😒
✔️ FB is reportedly doing PIPs and quiet layoffs. I told ya so!

Links I mention:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fed-interest-rate-hikes-unemployment-increase-layoffs-inflation/

https://www.yahoo.com/video/wall-street-u-housing-market-093741575.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/04/jolts-august-2022.html

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/professor-fired-over-hard-class-6018546/

https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/facebook-to-purge-thousands-of-workers-in-quiet-layoffs/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/amazon-halts-corporate-retail-hiring-4984097/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/6/23388247/layoffs-recession-labor-market

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/another-big-company-exits-illinois-6032362/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/07/jobs-report-september-2022.html

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/gen-z-getting-too-much-sway-at-work-6024698/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Siren courtesy of Pixabay.

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Hello, Hello, thanks for tuning in. Today it is Monday, October 3. So not only is it October q4, but it’s the third day of October already. And I’m like, please, please don’t take the animal away from me. I’m so ready for it. The leaves around here haven’t really started to change yet, but we are at least having cooler mornings. We’re not having the insane 100 degree days. It does get warm in the afternoon for sure. But it’s cool in the morning, and you’re getting a little bit of fall preview. And because we’re in the dark half of the year, it’s not still brilliant sunlight at 930 at night and I’m completely okay with that. Did a little bit of Halloween decorating over the weekend and that always lifts my spirits Halloween, Thanksgiving. It’s like this is my time and I’m I’m so grateful. So I’m sort of like okay, let’s not let October go by at the speed of light. September I was okay with. For me. It was a September to remember not in a good way. I started off the month having terrible tendinitis in one of my feet. I messed up the tendon and while I was trying to convalesce from that I came down with the sinus infection from hell. So it was like apparently my body is just not going to cooperate for the entire month of September. Now that I’m feeling better, and I’m on the mend knock on wood, I would really like to just enjoy the season. Oh, boy, then there’s the economy now. All right. So CBS published an article I will be putting out a special broadcast in the morning to talk just specifically about this because CBS News released an article titled, buckle up America, the Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment. Spoiler alert, the Fed is planning to crash the labor market, unemployment is going to go up. They’re talking about a million or two people being unemployed, and they throw it out so cavalier like it’s nothing, oh, a million or two people are going to be without a job. The people who are still working are going to see their wages stagnate, but you know, inflation. Yeah, they’re not gonna take the blame for it in none of these economies where they printed up fiat currency. Like there was no consequences to it. It’s just free money. It’s like it’s money that comes out of the sky. It’s not backed by anything. We can just print, print, print, or print print. It couldn’t possibly be that. Oh, no, no, no, no, it has to be the fault of the average working class American. And even beyond that, it has to be the fault of anybody that has a backbone that wants to continue working from home. If you don’t want blind obedience to corporate America, then it’s your fault that the economy is in the shape that it’s in. Mm hmm. Sure, sure, of course, it is. Leaving all of that BS and propaganda aside, I cannot tell anybody what to do. Just speaking solely for myself, I would really, really want to know that I had a job loss survival plan mapped out. If I was working somewhere as a full time w two employee and it was tolerable. I wasn’t in a situation where I genuinely felt like my physical and mental health were suffering. If I was in a place and it was tolerable, I would really want to figure out how can I become integral to this place? How can I be the last one standing, I don’t want to be the surest person to get a pink slip. I know right now that we are at odds in the workforce about to quiet quit or not to go the extra mile or not. I believe me personally, I would put all of that aside, instead of getting philosophical, I would get really practical really fast. You I’ve told you before I can go into recession mode very quickly. Indeed. I can cut down the fun budget, I can get rid of discretionary spending, and I can turn into Little Miss cheapskate pretty quickly. And I think I would want to do that in terms of my job. Instead of waxing philosophical about, Well, should we quiet quit? Where are we at in late stage capitalism, which in my mind is really crony capitalism, I would want to think about the practicalities of my life. How am I going to keep the lights on? How am I going to stay fed? What am I going to do to make sure that come with me in this economy, myself and my family are taken care of I would want to get down to the practical matters first, just me can’t tell you what to do. But I would want to really, really stay aware of my industry, the company I was working for the overall job market itself, et cetera. I would not want to get blindsided by the Fed, deliberately crashing the job market because they’re literally telling you on CBS News that that’s what they’re going to do. If you ignore that after you’ve been patently told, I’m not really sure what else anybody can do for you. Over on CNBC, we have headlines today such as stocks a surge to kick off October and a new quarter as bond yields tumble Dow closes up 760 points. We’ll see how long that one Next, we will see, we will see Kim Kardashian settles SEC charges over crypto promo post on her Instagram. Okay. I guess is if I needed any other reason to just completely tune out the crypto market, that would be one of them. Oh, over on Yahoo Finance, it’s a similar scene. Stocks surge as Wall Street claws out of a brutal September, un calls on fed and central banks to rethink rate hikes. Amazon deal spree raises number one question from investors? Well, here’s the question for me. Yes, these retailers are having deal sprees. And depending on your financial situation, you may be in a position to pick up some things on the cheap. Or you may be trying to do whatever you need to do to survive, keep the lights on keep food on the table. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go out and make meaningless purchases. I wouldn’t say well put a here’s a $300 barbecue grill and it’s on sale for 65 bucks, but I’m gonna have to put it on my credit card. In my mind if I’m having to put something on my credit card because I can’t genuinely afford it, then it’s not a bargain. I wouldn’t want to take on any unnecessary debt right now. That’s just me. I can’t give you financial advice. But I sure wouldn’t want to take on unnecessary debt. Just because I felt like something appeared to be a bargain. Housing prices, we’re looking at 10 to 20% discount off retail prices, realtor says, yeah, and on that note, also on Yahoo Finance Today we find Wall Street says the US housing market to see the second biggest home price decline since the Great Depression. Hmm, I sure would love to print this out and mail dozens of copies to every arrogant realtor and arrogant mortgage broker I dealt with last year, who told me that these prices are not coming down. They are only going to go up. We are not in a housing bubble. We could never have another 2008 I mean, they were on their soap boxes. They were so full of themselves and so conceited. I wonder now how some of them are getting along. I really do. I really do. I wonder sometimes the ones who were just you know particularly galling to me and particularly had bad attitudes, I wonder sometimes like are they broke yet? Oh, I know you shouldn’t you shouldn’t be full of Schadenfreude there, but I can’t help it. You know, when somebody is just that full of themselves, and so out of tune with reality, when they get to come up into it does feel good. So I’m going to read a little bit of this for you now. National home price declines are uncommon, but it does occur on occasion. I’ll be it happened in the early 1980s. Then again in the early 1990s. And most notably in the years following the 2008 housing crash. That said sharp home price declines are incredibly rare. Only the Great Depression and the Great Recession saw nationwide home prices fall in the double digits range. That history or lack of history is why recent outlooks published by Wall Street Titans are raising eyebrows. Not only is there a building consensus on Wall Street that we’ve entered into a period of falling home prices, but there’s also a consensus that it will be the second sharpest home price declines since the Great Depression. And quote, yeah, to me, this is again, like no doubt territory. If if you’ve had your mind, right, if you’ve been listening to people that you feel like have a high know like and trust factor for you, if they make a prognostication that comes true. If they throw some information out in the market, it’s not just clickbait. It’s not just napalm to try to get everybody upset, but it’s actual good. Reporting. It’s actual good knowledge that helps people. I don’t think any of this is going to be a surprise to you. I enjoy Orlando miners channel. I’ve talked about him several times before, and I’m not shilling for him. It’s not like he asked me to plug his information. I like his style. And I like that he is candid about saying who wants to be holding the bag right now? Not me, believe me? I’m so glad. I am so glad that I did not find something overpriced. And just say, well, I’ll go for it, because it’s two and a half percent. Where exactly will the mortgage rates end up? When the dust settles and the smoke clears on all of this? I have no idea. I mean, we’re nowhere near as high as they’ve historically been in the past when you look at what people were having to pay back in the 1980s. I mean, we’re nowhere near that kind of territory right now. So could it get worse? Of course it could. But I think the more that you can allow cooler heads to prevail and take a step back. If you don’t have to move if you don’t have to sell this might not be the time to do Do it. And here again, we’re still seeing article after article about people who have buyer’s remorse they got into that FOMO and that YOLO last summer they purchase something. And even if they didn’t necessarily overpay by some gross egregious amount, they figured out they got a limit. Or they figured out that it really wasn’t the thing that was going to make them happy. I go back to that episode I recorded about Lauren Vermont’s book, cruel optimism, what if the thing that you’re pursuing is actually keeping you from being happy? What if the thing that you think is going to make you feel good or to have a good life is actually keeping you from feeling good and having a good life? In my case, if I had gotten saddled with a lemon house with a lot of problems, or I’d gone somewhere, and it turned out to be high crime, dangerous for myself dangerous for the people in my life, or my animals, That’d be terrible, absolutely terrible. So sometimes, those delays and setbacks are actually for our benefit. I know some of you don’t believe in fate or don’t believe in higher powers. And I respect that. But I do think sometimes in life, being told no, is actually a good thing. And we may see some of that happen going across the job market. As I think more people wake up and say, Wait a minute, I don’t think that I want to hippity hop and make a job change just to make a job change. Some of them may find out that just staying put for a little while longer turns out to be a better strategy than making a move and regretting it later. Again, I cannot tell you what to do. And if you’re in a situation that completely sucks, and it is detrimental to your physical and mental health, then you may still have a window of time here to get to a place that’s healthy that doesn’t have a toxic company culture. That’s only a decision that you can make for yourself, but I would at least encourage you to be thinking in that general direction rather than burying your head in the sand. Today, it is Tuesday, October 4 on CNBC. We have headlines today, such as Twitter shares surged 22%, after Elon Musk revives deal to buy company at original price. So what was all of the hoopla about with the bots? I don’t know, was he just putting it out there to expose the truth? plant some seeds of discord? I have no idea. Stocks roared back from 2020 to low s&p 500 on track for best to day gain in two years. Why the Federal Reserve won’t be so quick to ease up on its inflation fight. And if you don’t think that those two headlines are connected, I don’t know what to tell you. As reported in the broadcast I published earlier today, they are actively trying to crash the job market. The Fed is not being quiet and they’re not being shy in what they’re saying. Please do not ignore that kind of intelligence. Also on CNBC, we read job openings plunged by more than 1.1 million in August. Under the key points we find job openings in August totaled 10.0 5 million a 10% drop from the 11 point 17 million reported in July, and more than a million less than expected. The job openings and labor turnover numbers are watched closely by the Federal Reserve, which is trying to reverse runaway inflation that has pushed the tight labor market. Mm hmm. Right, right. Of course. Of course it has. Because there’s no way that runaway inflation has been caused by giving out money like it was candy, printing up fiat currency willy nilly, like there would be no consequences. Of course, not. All of you job hoppers that took place in the great resignation. All of you that wanted to get more money for yourselves and your families. Those of you that want to continue working from home, it’s your fault. It’s your fault. You’re the responsible party for inflation, for currency crashes for the housing bubble. It’s all your fault. Course. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find Musk’s Twitter deal is back on Professor fired over hard class. Job Openings plunge most since 2020. Medicine to close one New York office Poshmark scooped up in $1.2 billion deal. I’ll interject to say we’re going to see more of this. We’ll see banks merging together probably banks that are in trouble will find not necessarily a healthy bank that buys a bank that’s in difficulty but maybe two poopoo banks merging together. I’m hearing a lot of whispers on the wind about that. As you may know Credit Suisse is in trouble. There’s a lot of rumors flying around that they’re having their Lehman Brothers moment to be determined. We will say this is to me like the Nord Stream pipeline incident. Thus far Nord Stream has not kicked off world war three. I I don’t necessarily know that Credit Suisse is going to be like the Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns moment that really kicks off the global financial crisis. I don’t know that it’s not. But I really think we’re on a slow roll down a bad Hill. I don’t think that there’s any one particular catalyst, we’re going to be able to point two. I think, again, just my opinion, not any economist or financial planner or advisor, in my opinion, because we’re in such an everything bubble. And the overall economy is in such a dirty place. I don’t think there’s going to be one particular catalyst that we can point to, I think it’s going to be a wide variety of things. That put us on a slow roll down a bad Hill. Biggest us chip factory goes to New York, over 500,000 in Florida, still without power, should rideshares report assaults. Um, why would you not? I mean, yeah, I can’t with that. If we click on Professor fired over hard class we read when 82 students at New York University signed a petition complaining that an organic chemistry course was too hard. They didn’t ask for the professor who taught the class to be fired, but in why you terminated Dr. Maitland Jones Jr’s contract. The New York Times reports, the decision has prompted debate about how much colleges owe students as we emerge from a pandemic outrage over how much power Gen Zers have over non tenured professors and concern that reduced academic rigor could result in less qualified professionals. In this case, doctors in quote, yikes. You know, I’ve heard some commentators talk about how China and Russia are probably laughing at us because of the softness or the purported softness of America at this point in time. I’ve thought that for a long time, to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s strictly a generational thing. In so many ways. We as Americans are spoiled, we have so many luxuries, we have so many things to be grateful for. And when you juxtapose that with the way that people in Eastern Europe live, it’s startling. I’ve talked before about the little bob which key did which key the little grandmas and grandpas in the Ukraine, who stayed after Chernobyl and said this is our home and we’re not leaving, we’ll raise our chickens. If we have medical or dental problems, we’ll take care of it ourselves. I mean, you think about somebody getting drunk on vodka and pulling their own teeth with pliers if they have a problem. I mean, that takes some something. I don’t think the average American American ski I don’t think that the average American probably has that. Not saying it’s a good idea. I’m not getting on the airwaves telling you to drink vodka and pull your own teeth with pliers. I’m just saying that when you juxtapose the amount of will, let’s think about Keyser Sosa in The Usual Suspects. It’s not that you have to be the toughest person in the world, you just have to have the will to do what the other guy won’t. I don’t know that America possesses that anymore. When I was in school, I find it hard to believe that we would have been able to get a petition going to have a professor fired, there would have had to have been something really egregious. Like if the person was a sex harasser a pervert, a weirdo, something like that. But if you had a difficult class, if you knew that that person was just going to be a nightmare. You either avoided taking their class or you did it and you just did what you had to do to get through it. I can’t I just can’t imagine like, okay, we’re just gonna petition you out. And then the university saying yeah, okay, the class was too difficult. So by, okay, we just, it’s like when we compare all of these things put together like the Feds going to crash the job market, they’re already saying and we’re finally being allowed to know. So this jolts report telling us that the jobs are lower than expected by over a million postings. In my opinion, I think we’re beginning the transition from dress rehearsal to opening act. This is kind of like the actors and actresses are on the stage. Everybody’s getting organized. People are getting their things together to begin opening night, for whatever this is recession, depression, whatever, whatever we’re going into, I think we’re starting to transition from dress rehearsals to opening act, and the job market crashing is going to be phase one. What else happens in it? I don’t know. But we’re beginning to see the initial signs, I would not be naive, I would not ignore reality. I would get a job loss survival plan put together I would try to get out of debt, I will try to have money in savings. I cannot tell you what to do or give you advice. All I can do is speak for myself. And that is something that would be very, very, very important to me. I wouldn’t want to be paranoid and hyper vigilant, but I would want to stay aware. I would want to have a general general sense of preparation. You know, if I use something, I replace it. If nothing else, it’s a good hedge against inflation because when you go to the store and everything’s more expensive than it was the time you went before then you may as well pick up Things like saline solution or Pepto Bismol or Tylenol, if you need those things and put them back so that you have them in the medicine cabinet, you have them around when you need them. It is not fun to wake up in the middle of the night sick and not have something that you need. And as I’ve talked before, as more of these stores go out of 24/7 mode, the possibility of just running to Walmart in the middle of the night, probably not going to be there, or being able to have someone deliver something in the middle of the night, probably not going to be there. Whatever shaping up in Europe, we don’t know whatever shaping up with the economy. Here we see the early warning signs of trouble, but we don’t know exactly how deep and wide it’s going to go. So I would rather be prepared and sleep a little bit easier at night than ignore the data. As I mentioned in the broadcast earlier, when the guy down the road loses his job. It’s a recession when you lose your job. It’s a depression. I would want to be prepared for Come What May I’d want to have a good game plan a good strategy war gamed out so that at least I felt like I had some idea of how I would respond. I get it the old Mike Tyson quote, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. We’ll start Wargaming out what you would do if you got punched in the face. Okay, where are the gaps in my preparations? Where are the holes in my plans? Where can I shore things up a little bit better? If you do that, in my opinion, you are going to be head and shoulders above people that are just blithely unaware. They’re keeping up with the Kardashians or they’re looking at snippets of headlines, they’re going along with these pundits that say everything’s fine. Oh, a million or two people gonna be unemployed. But don’t you worry about that? Well, what if you’re one of the people that’s unemployed? What if your whole household What if there are two or three adults of working age in your household and you all lose your job within a month or two then what I would rather be prepared than caught off guard. On that note, I got a pop up alert this evening from the New York Post with a headline of Facebook to purge 1000s of workers as part of quiet layoffs report says I’ll read some of that for you now. Facebook executives are in the process of executing quiet layoffs of underperforming workers that could lead to 1000s of employees getting pink slips. According to a report. Several employees told The New Site insider that as much as 15% of the company’s workforce could be slashed within the next few weeks. One employee told insider that managers throughout the company were told to select at least 15% of their teams that are categorized as need support. Facebook employees took to the workplace app blind where they speculated that it was likely whoever was placed in the 15% category would be out of a job. Eliminating 15% of Facebook’s workforce means that some 12,000 employees could be out of a job. Those who are deemed of needing support are widely perceived to be failing to meet performance goals. These employees are then subjected to new requirements under a performance improvement plan, Pip, which is seen as a precursor to losing one’s job in quote. Oh, time to get the height man. Sarah was right yet again. I hate to say I told you so. But the fact of the matter is I did. I’ve been on the airwaves for months now. I’ve been on my blog for months now. naivete in my opinion is coming at too high of a price. No the market. Know your own individual situation at work. Beware the dreaded Pip. Today is Wednesday, October 5. Before I get into news and today’s headlines. I just want to revisit the weather for a second. Because some of you who live rural some of you who are out in the country are involved in agriculture. This is always something that we have to have on the forefront of our mind, especially during the changing of the seasons. The almanac for my part of the Midwest thus far has not been correct. They were calling for somewhere around the 20th to 23rd of September there being terrible, violent thunderstorms, maybe even a tornado outbreak, followed by cooler temperatures and then us having a cooler than normal and rainy October Bump, bump bump bump. No. No, it is dry as a bone here. My pasture looks awful. It’s brown and dead. The cattle have grazed a lot of it down. So we have not had this cooler than normal and wet October. If only mean that would be nice. But no. That’s not to say, however that their prognostications for the winter won’t come to pass. There are other tips and tricks and bits of folklore that we like to use in agriculture and that’s one of the things I want to talk about. Just for a minute because winter is coming. We know that And so some of the other signs and signals that we look for I still have not found any local persimmons that I can cut into just yet. So I don’t know about snowfall and that kind of folklore around here. But in terms of other things, yes, the squirrels are manic, they’re trying to get all of their nuts and things put away into their squirrel nests. I’ve not seen any lazy squirrels acting like they don’t think winter is coming. There’s also some folklore about the nape on the back of a cow’s neck, the thicker it gets. And the earlier that happens, the colder the winter. All of my cows have that right now. In fact, one of my oxen is already getting his full on wintertime coat. He looks like a Rhodesian Ridgeback right now because he has this layer of wintertime for coming in all over his back. And that actually started happening in September. So that tells me we are definitely going to have some cold weather. My sheep are very woolly. Their wool is very, very thick. It’s like you have to go through layer upon layer of wool to ever get to any actual skin or lanolin. My horses already have their wintertime coats. They’re fuzzy. It looks like practically overnight, they went into dandelion mode, and started to get their winter time for and again, that’s been happening since since September. So in terms of snowfall, what will we see? Will we really have these blizzards and snow squalls like the Almanac is predicting? Maybe it could happen, but I do think we will have a cold winter. And that’s not what anybody wants to hear when we’re talking about energy crises, firewood shortages, I think there are some places that are trying to ban the use of wood burning stoves. So I think we will be in for a winter of discontent. I hope that I am wrong on that. I don’t think that I am. Now if we zoom over to CNBC, we have headlines today, such as s&p 500 closes lower on Wednesday after two days of strong gains. And the picture they have that goes with the article is this trader that kind of has his tie loosened a little bit and his mouth is just hanging open, like a GFI. I think that’s how a lot of people are going to feel whenever the Poopoo really does hit the fan. I think that’s how a lot of people are gonna feel like holy crap, I just got smacked upside the head with a two by four. On that note, I will be talking in tomorrow’s episode on the podcast about a recent fortune.com article saying most bosses feel like remote workers are going to get laid off first, when the layoffs happen, which let’s face it, they’re going to in some parts of the market, they’re already happening. remote workers are probably going to be the ones to get the stink eye first. Ignore that kind of information at your own risk. I believe we’re starting to transition out of dress rehearsal in the opening act. I think we’re starting to move from here’s some warning signs. Here’s the early reading of the tea leaves into holy crap. It’s happening. OPEC plus to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day to shore up prices defying us pressure. So what do you think that’s going to do? Unless we have some kind of period of deflation, it’s going to happen there is the price of oil is going to go back up. So for those of you who thought this temporary respite in gas prices was a boon, it was a sign that things were going to be all right. I would not bet on it. Universities are going to continue to suffer colleges struggle with enrollment declines and funding. Well, you can be surprised by that. I think that a lot of people as they’ve gone into tech sector jobs that didn’t require a degree, people have looked at the insane low cost of student loans, who can really be surprised. I read an article earlier today on medium.com sort of arguing the point about people setting education to the sign in general. And that’s scary. I wrote an article back when I was doing my Patreon channel about how a majority of Americans cannot read at a sixth grade level. If that doesn’t terrify you, it damn well should. And it’s not respective of generation. I think it includes people like ages 16 to 74, a majority of them cannot read at what would be considered a sixth grade level on a conversation one time with a friend and he was kind of, you know, poking at me a little bit and fun about what’s the point of a master’s degree in English. And it’s like, well, it helps with content creation. It also helps, you know, being able to read, it helps with being able to think critically, we sort of told people it wasn’t important to read. We told people it wasn’t important to have a mind of your own and then we wonder why there’s a mass of drooling idiots that seem to come from Idiocracy that are like, Oh, I didn’t know it was misinformation. But a note was fake news. Isn’t that kind of what happens when you tell people to stop reading? Isn’t that kind of what happens when you stop allowing freedom? thought and freedom of speech. I mean, isn’t that sort of just a natural byproduct? I remember when A and D had their top people of the last millennia and Gutenberg was at the top of that list because of the printing press, the dissemination of information, the ability of people to read, to come to their own conclusions. And here we are. Here we are, all of these gifts that we were given the ability to absorb knowledge and and what is it wrought? I don’t want to wax too philosophical, but make up your own mind on that. Inflation in Australia is hurting everyone from restaurant owners to diners. Well, so it is in America as well. Ford hikes starting price of electric f150 Lightning for second time in less than two months. Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter may take inspiration from Chinese super apps. Oh, great. What could possibly go wrong there? Over on Yahoo. Finance, it’s a similar scene. Stocks cap volatile session, lower snapping two day surge. Oh, but we had a two day surge wasn’t everything great for two days. What Elon Musk’s Twitter ambitions could mean for Tesla oil prices. We’re going to see 65 Before we see 100 Perhaps so, but I bet we’ll see 100 again, housing brought to its knees by the Fed experts says US national debt surpasses $31 trillion. Fed may have to maintain course, for credibility purposes. Adjustable Rate Mortgages are back but it’s not 2008 Oh my god. And if you believe that then I have some oceanfront property I’d love to sell you right here in the landlocked Midwest. Good grief. Boeing stock could rise by 90% analyst argues. Okay, okay. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find OPEC plus to slash oil production. Amazon halts corporate retail hiring. Target crashes the Tupperware party. Rei nixes. Black Friday for good. Mortgage rates hit 16 year high. Spotify buys moderation firm Kenzan. Musk asks for original Twitter deal. Yeah. So if we click on Amazon halts corporate retail hiring we find Amazon has confirmed that it’s pumping the brakes on filling corporate positions and its retail business through the rest of 2022. The hiring freeze first reported by the New York Times affects retail operations and tech roles worldwide in Amazon’s stores business, but spares its cloud computing division. The retail side had about 20,000 job of job postings. As of Monday, the Times notes, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that we expect to keep adjusting our hiring strategies and says they’re open rolls and other departments across the company cost cutting layoffs, hiring slowdowns, and hiring freezes that hit the bulk of the tech world as growth, decelerates and economic uncertain economic conditions persist. And, you know, over on fortune.com That article I’ll be talking about in Thursday’s broadcast, there’s a an expert who talks about how there’s not mass layoffs in the tech sector, and she just doesn’t think there will be for the rest of q4. Right? Right, right. Sure. Of course. Mm hmm. sounds completely inaccurate to me, but whatever corporate media puffy. So I guess the other thing is, I’ve talked before about some of these companies, zombie companies, in particular, having 58 Open wrecks on the same day that they announced they’re going bankrupt. Please do not be fooled by open job postings and use that as your only barometer to gauge a company’s health. I’ve talked about it before many times. And I know there are people that don’t want to hear it. There are people that have absolutely no expertise whatsoever in HR, or hiring or the job market that will get up on their hind legs and argue with me about this point. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, but they will. I’ve tried to warn people before that there are places that will just have evergreen job orders posted there. The jobs are open all the time. They don’t ever take them down. Maybe they’re going to hire maybe they’re not. Sometimes these businesses will post job openings for optics only. It makes them look good. They’re not actually going to hire anybody. It’s just for the optics. But you’ll have somebody usually a mansplain or a bot or a troll that’s like auditors don’t believe that they wouldn’t post a job if it weren’t true. Yes, they would. Yes, they would. So on the same day that there’s a hiring freeze there’s 20,000 open jobs. I’m on the same day that one of these hot air zombie companies goes under. There’s 10 Open wrecks on the job openings page. Don’t be fooled. Use good Caveat emptor use good judgment and think for yourself. Today is Thursday, October the sixth. Apparently, people are not anticipating a super great jobs report tomorrow, which, hey, if you tune in on a regular basis, that should not be a surprise to you. I’ve been saying for quite some time that I don’t think unemployment is 3.5 or 3.7%. think we’ve been sold a false bill of goods on all that. on CNBC, we have headlines today such as Musk must complete Twitter deal by October 28 to avoid a trial judge rules. Now what was the point of whistleblowing about bots and fake accounts? I’m still sort of scratching my head on that one. Because if he was going to buy the company no matter what, and he didn’t manage to negotiate a better price point for himself. He’s just like, Screw it. I’m gonna buy it anyway, then, what was the point of revealing the the amount of fake accounts on there? I can’t quite make sense of that yet. But I’m sure there’s a reason behind it. Stock futures inch lower ahead of September’s jobs report, Friday’s jobs report could be a case where good news isn’t really good. How can you even read that with a straight face? I mean, I can’t it’s like, how about we get real here and just start talking about what’s actually going on that we are indeed in a recession, and the poop who’s getting ready to hit the fan fan? Okay. stocks closed lower as investors await September jobs report, Dow drops nearly 350 points. So on that note, there was an article earlier today on vox.com. I will be talking about it in a separate episode, because I really feel like this kind of information deserves its own separate episode. But the article is titled the pandemic could have changed how employers think about layoffs. And in my opinion, this is really setting the tone for the new narrative, which in my opinion, is we’re gonna go ahead and tell you that the labor market is softening. We’re gonna go ahead and tell you that there aren’t as many open jobs as we were once peddling to you, but it’s okay, because you don’t need to worry about layoffs. And I’m like, I’m not really sure that that’s something that I would hang my hat on. If I were a full time w two employee. I would not want to just be blithely unaware right now, and I wouldn’t want to assume that layoffs wouldn’t happen in q4 Because somebody somebody some talking head in the media said so. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find Tik Tok owner racks up $7 billion in losses. Another big company exits Illinois. Fourth round of layoffs hits peloton. Biden pardons cannabis convictions. Princeton doesn’t need your money. Some workers aren’t quitting as much. Yeah. And that’s one of the things I’m going to talk about in that separate episode. Because they’re trying to push this idea of people are still quitting in droves. The great resignation is still in full swing. And I’m like, No, it’s not. It very well could be in retail, hospitality, gym labor, the kinds of fields where there’s always a high turnover rate. There’s always people looking, there are always people hiring and firing. But in terms of so called White Collar knowledge work, hell no. People are not hippity hopping and leaving at the drop of a hat like they were last year. That’s not in my observation. So be careful with any of these puff piece articles in my opinion, that are trying to tell you layoffs are not coming and know that people people are still just quitting in droves. They’re just quit quit quit quit quit. No, no, no, no. Cashless is king. What’s next for gas prices, pessimism fueling job hunts. Right. Okay, let’s see if people were doing great and everything was fine. Why would there be a sense of pessimism? Probably because the job market is not nearly as hot as you’re being led to believe. Probably because the Fed has outright told you on CBS News that they want to crash the job market. They want to see more people unemployed, and they want people who are employed to see their wages stagnate. They’re not hiding it folks. So when we click on another big company exits Illinois we find Tyson Foods the largest US meat company by sales is the latest major company to plan its exodus from Illinois. It’s relocating all corporate roles from Chicago and nearby Downers Grove, as well as those in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota to its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas. The transition which involves moving roughly 1000 employees while expanding its corporate campus will happen over 10 months. Tyson says the new strategy will foster closer collaboration enhance team member agility and enhance faster decision making. Those who prefer not to will be managed on a case by case basis per Tyson spokesman, Boeing hedge fund Citadel and construction equipment maker Caterpillar have all announced plans to relocate from Illinois this year. Interesting, you know, I would imagine that it probably has something to do with the cost of doing business as well as the high crime rate in those locations. I mean, I’m just saying, this is another example where common sense would kind of tell you what’s really going on with that situation. Today, it is Friday, October 7, I am very, very glad it is Friday. This is another week of feeling quite tired and ready for a break. Still noticing not quite as many people just generally out in traffic, not as many people in the stores when I was out running errands earlier. Again, this could be because some county and state fairs are going on in various places here in the Midwest. So it could be that people are off work, and they’ve chosen to go to one of the fairs. I’m also suspicious that because that is no longer considered a pandemic. I know a lot of kids have gone back to school and are not doing the distance learning anymore. And I’m wondering, because of this big push for RTO if a lot of adults have had to go back to the office, and so if you’re able to do your shopping and run your errands at a time when most white collar workers are going to be in the office, you may not encounter as many people time will tell after the fair season is kind of over with here in the Midwest, if things go back to the way that they were. I also wonder if inflation is finally catching up with a lot of people around here. For a while traffic would be crazy. It just seemed like everybody was out and about. And I’m like, okay, in these bigger cities where they’re talking about seeing no one and stores being half empty, like that wasn’t my experience. still seeing quite a bit of fronting things being pushed to the front to make it look like there’s more there. There’s also almost more like an outlet store atmosphere, even when you go in a normal department store or grocery store. It’s almost like if you see something and it’s there, you may as well get it while it’s there. Because it either won’t be there the next time that you go, or the price will already have gone up. It’s just crazy times we’re living in. Speaking of crazy, if we zoom on over to CNBC, we have headlines today such as Tesla stock had its worst week since March 2020. During a very intense seven days for Elon Musk, down drops 600 points, NASDAQ closes 3% lower as rates pop after September jobs report. On that note, unemployment rate falls to 3.5% in September. Really, I mean, oh, my god, payrolls rise by 263,000 as job market stays strong. Now if we click on that bit of hopium, we find non farm payrolls increased 263,000. For the month short of the Dow Jones estimate of 275,000. The unemployment rate was 3.5%. down 2.2 percentage points as the labor force participation rate edged lower average hourly earnings Rose 5% from a year ago, slightly below the estimate. Leisure and Hospitality healthcare and Business and Professional Services led sector gainers. Hmm. Wow, wow. So we got just a little bit of intel from various outlets saying, hey, the job market is starting to slow down things are not quite as robust as they have been. And then we get this insanity. In my opinion, that’s what it is. Because as I’ve said many times, I’m in the job market every single day. And this report is not reflective of what I saw in September. It’s definitely not reflective of what I’m seeing right now. So am I sitting here telling you that there are no jobs anywhere that no one is hiring and we’re like in some sort of Mad Max apocalyptic scenario? Absolutely not. I’m not saying that at all. And in one of those articles I mentioned earlier, they were talking about specialized sectors of the economy specialize difficult to find skill sets. Yes, there are still people looking for these extreme niche roles. Go find us the rabbit in the hat with a bat and a six, four and Paula, like that kind of thing. But as far as there being just like masses and masses of jobs, no. I also mentioned these places that are just going out of business, places that took out the PPP loans. They took out they put up a sign in the window that said help on it and it stayed up there for months upon months upon months, they had a whine and moan. Nobody wants to work. Everyone in Gen Z is lazy, blah, blah, blah, and now they’re going out of business. In my opinion, this is all being set up to convince you that the job market is Oh hot. It’s gonna be okay when the Fed crashes it. I don’t personally believe that, but I really feel like that’s where the narrative is going. Over on Yahoo Finance, it’s a similar scene. Stocks tank treasury yields spike. As jobs report dashes hopes of Fed pivot. US stocks cratered on Friday in their worst day since the throes of September sell off, as the government’s monthly employment report signaled Federal Reserve officials will proceed with aggressive interest rate hikes, No duh, that’s what I literally just said, they are putting out all of this hopium and hot air and Bs in my opinion, because that’s what they want to do. revisit that article I talked about on CBS News, where they literally said people are going to be unemployed, wages are going to stagnate. So they’re putting all this bull crap out there about oh, wages have gone up 5%. I mean, they’re still not keeping pace with inflation, but wages have gone up 5%. And now we’re back down to a 3.5% unemployment rate. Yeah, that own labor market is going to be so robust, it’s in such good shape, it is not going to matter when we crash that thing like the iceberg that took down the dynamic. And it’s like, huh, right. Of course, of course, there’s also a headline that reads, housing expert says it’s no time to celebrate. Indeed, it is not, I’ve recently kind of dipped my toe back in the water, because I still have the same goals with my real estate quest, I still have the same goals of expansion. There are still animals that I know I could help that I want to adopt, that I want to be able to take care of. And I am just maxed out. And I’m also just ready for a little bit more privacy, a little bit more of a sanctuary, a little bit more of an oasis. And it’s just insane. Still yet in the Midwest, you have these people putting doodoo poop houses on the market for crazy amounts of money, and or wanting to do all kinds of bizarre maneuvers. There was a place I drove by earlier. That’s like a house and a barn, what they call the barn on 10 acres. And I go out there and I look, but it was supposed to be 20 acres. Okay. And so I’m looking at this. And I’m like, what, what even is this? How is this land even laid out? So I find out later that the current owner is wanting to do like the house and 10 acres, but then somehow keep what she’s calling a barn and another 10 acres for herself and run across fence between them. And what she’s calling a barn. And what I would call a barn are two different things. I mean, basically what she’s calling a barn as a glorified tool shed, you might be able to get half a dozen chickens in there if you were lucky. But you wouldn’t be able to have any actual animals. I mean, like you wouldn’t be able to have a stable for your horses or an area of shelter for cattle. And I’m like, here we go. Again, this is like 2021 all over again, the same kind of shenanigans and chicanery and absurdities that I saw last summer. Here we go all over again. Only now with the interest rate being higher, it’s like I have to really think and get super strategic, even more so than when they were 2.5%. And people just wanted to grossly inflate the value of their junk. Twas ever Thus, I mean, I’ve been down this road before. I’ve told you that when I bought in 2007, which was also a highly auspicious time to be in the real estate market. That first house was like seven or seven and a half percent. You deal with it. There are ways if you can get a good enough bargain. There are ways that you can deal with a high interest rate, one of which is to refinance later on down the road. That’s not financial advice. I can’t tell you what to do. I’m just thinking out loud and speaking for myself. That is always an option. And I will tell you, I am seeing a few like the initial leading edge of short sales, auctions and foreclosure homes and more people who are on the razor’s edge of those things, trying to hurry up and get the hell out. before it happens. I am seeing a few sort of strays if we think about like on the radar screen, you’ll see a few strays here and there of people that are are going under already. Not that I’m celebrating that please understand I’m not. I just know how this movie plays out. Because I saw it before in the Great Recession, I know that there’s going to be more of that coming. So I’m trying to balance out being patient, waiting for something that really is a good deal that’s going to make the most sense for myself, my family, my animals. Getting a good financial deal wanting to do this expansion. It’s one of those things that’s like sort of tricky. I hate the term middle age. I am loathe to use it but occasionally it comes in handy. And I think sometimes in middle age, you just get to this point where you’re like, Alright, I have to juggle all of these plates. I have to figure out how to do what’s best for all parties involved. And that includes financially because being house poor is not fun. And as some people that got FOMO last summer found out, it really sucks. If your house poor and the house is a women, so then you can’t afford to fix anything up. You can’t afford to personalize it. You can’t afford to do repair work. You’re just stuck with something that completely sucks. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn news, we find job growth slows as fed moles hike. I don’t think they’re mulling it I’m pretty sure they’re gonna do it. Gen Z getting too much sway at work. Oh, boy, that sounds like that Bank of America memo. Men underwhelmed by its own app report says Big Apple loses luster among young Hmm. Probably because there’s been an uptick in crime and it’s really freaking expensive to live there. I don’t really think that that’s a mystery. coming to theaters near you Netflix, who’s gonna go to a movie theater to watch Netflix. I mean, I’m just saying recession fears stymie the rental market. So when we click on Gen Z getting too much sweat work, which is yet again another glorious example of generational clickbait we find businesses may be placing too much attention on the likes and dislikes of Gen Z. The group consists of only 68 million people a relatively small number compared with the millennial and baby boomer generations fortune writes, I’m gonna but in long enough to say what the hell happened and Gen X we are yet again forgotten. I’m gonna I’m going to also button to say that Gordon Ramsay has been doing an episode or a series of Hell’s Kitchen, this time around where it’s like 20 Somethings versus 40 Somethings I’m like, Oh, this will be great. But like, honestly, hashtag real talk. It’s mostly just millennials. It’s like the older so called geriatric millennials, versus the younger millennials with like a couple of stray Gen Z kids and a couple of stray Gen X ers at the upper end, and I’m like, this kind of sucks, because it’s almost like watching the old Millennials versus the young millennials duking it out over who’s going to be the top dog in the end. And I’m just like, I don’t even think I really care. Sorry, I’ll continue to read that said millennial consumer preferences have broad overlap. And as one career expert told fortune, not everything is about generational divides, the desire for flexibility and to work from home, for instance, I don’t think that’s Gen Z. I think that’s COVID. She said and quote, he I mean, I would at least partially agree with that. Because it’s not about Gen Z. It’s really the shift towards people wanting to work from home or work from anywhere, be remote, have more privacy, more freedom, more flexibility that is not relegated to any one particular generation. I would also argue that we have to factor in things like introvert versus extrovert issues of neurodiversity. I know for me, it has been so amazing, to be able to really call my own shots and make my own decision. So that if you have somebody that is highly extroverted, they’re really not sensitive at all, to autism, and or neurodiversity, and they’re the type of employer or client that’s like, No, you’re going to get on this effing zoom call, you’re going to sit down, shut up and be on camera, because that’s what I want you to do. I can cross them off the list immediately and go on with my life. It is so fantastic to not be beholden to being on camera, or to have to sit through a meeting that could have been an email, sit through some long phone call, that could have been an email. It’s awesome. That has nothing to do in my opinion with Gen Z. So I think what this commentator gets, right, is that COVID was the catalyst. No, it’s not about generational clickbait. And I don’t even think it’s about COVID anymore, because we’ve been told repeatedly that that is over with now we can all go back and cross pollinate and all of that. So I no longer think it’s about fear of pandemic and health scares and whatever. I think it’s more like, we know that we can be productive at home. We haven’t had to pay obscene amounts of money for child care, elder care, pet care, etc. We don’t want to go back. Nobody wants to sit in the office with Sally Sue and the cornhole board. The genies gone out of that bottle. As I have predicted before, will this be some kind of lasting hell? No, we won’t go. I don’t think so. I just think as a nation, we have too many people, including affluent, so called affluent upper middle class individuals who live paycheck to paycheck. They don’t have enough in savings to really cover themselves for a significant length of time. They’re drowning in personal debt. How in the hell are those people going to Say I will sit at home for six months with no income if that’s what it takes. I just don’t see it happening. I could be wrong about that time will tell. We’ll see. In the meantime, stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode.