Saturday Broadcast 50

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here’s your host Sara Causey. Hello. Hello, and thanks for tuning in. Today it is Monday, May 22. A little bit of housekeeping straightaway. The podcast will be on hiatus next week. Monday, the 29th is Memorial Day and I decided that for that entire week, I would take a break from podcasting. Use that time to relax and take care of other things around the farm. It is draining head times to have to go through this absolute BS news that we find. It wears on me some days it really does and I need a break. So there will be no Saturday broadcast that will be published on June the third because I will be off that week. There will also not be a Thursday episode that drops on Thursday, June the first just a little bit of housekeeping so you don’t think that I’ve run for the hills and decided to never come back. That is not the case. At least not so far as I know. on CNBC, we find McCarthy says decisions have to be made at debt ceiling meeting with Biden. Southwest states strike landmark deal with Biden to conserve Colorado River water. Bill Gates says the big winner in AI will be whoever makes a truly useful smart assistant first, Pfizer oral weight loss drug may be as effective as Novo Nordisk ozempic injection. So there you go six to one half a dozen the other. Everybody who has a problem with obesity can either just shoot up ozempic Or they can take a pill. Just no more comment on that. JP Morgan Chase raises key revenue target to $84billion after first republic takeover. The feds Kashkari says a June pause on rates wouldn’t indicate an end to hiking cycle and in the picture they’ve used he looks somewhat maniacal. I think about him because of the age of easy money documentary that I published a podcast episode on and just Yeah, wow, these people from the Fed. Walmart will offer pet telehealth and latest bid to compete with Amazon. Over on Yahoo Finance the debt ceiling also big news their debt ceiling Washington grapples with hard choices if no deal by June the first NASDAQ rises Dow drops as eyes turn to renewed debt talks. Jamie Dimon says JP Morgan plans on his tenure are unchanged. Pfizer is one of the top trending stocks. Mm hmm. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the magic weight loss pill they could compete with ozempic I wonder I wonder more Americans feel lousy about their finances. You don’t say in that we find the share of Americans who feel worse about their finances hit the highest level since 2014. A new report found after inflation and a swooning stock market last year eight into their pocketbook and savings. In 2020 to 35% of US adults reported that they were worse off financially than a year earlier. The highest point since the question was first posed eight years earlier. According to the Federal Reserve Board’s 2022 economic well being of the US households report released on Monday 73% said they’re doing okay or living comfortably financially down five percentage points from the previous year. And among the lowest levels since 2016. The survey which was fielded in October 2220 22. polled 11,000adults. Yeah, I would. I’m honestly surprised that 73% of people who responded said they’re doing okay. I’m surprised that the number is not lower to be honest. We also find PacWest pops after selling $2.7billion in real estate loans. Oh boy. I feel like that’s some more shadows of like, oh 809 on Business Insider. Today we find why job searches suck right now. Huh? Huh. Not a surprise. Under the little weird graphic they have about like an exploding computer thing. It says applicants are sending out hundreds of job applications and hearing nothing back. Ghost jobs, AI resume screening and a lopsided economy are making the job search miserable. Well, I wasn’t planning to do it again quite so soon, but here we go. To time to break them off something proper. I sure did. I warned you about every bit of that. In this article we read when Michael Keach was laid off in January after five years as a senior manager in the customer service department at Wayfair. He was tentatively optimistic after all quiche had been laid off before and had found work again quickly. He figured his experience at Wayfair, where hundreds of people reported to him and he launched a new communication platform would make him a standout candidate for a new role. Now, here’s something very important. I want to really have you hone in on this. Plus the broader job market seems strong, companies were adding hundreds of 1000s of new employees. Given these prospects, quiche wasn’t prepared for what happened next. He couldn’t find a job. Please don’t let that be you. Please don’t let that be you. And I mean, no disrespect to the person in this article, but please don’t let that be you. I have been on here and on my blogs, and any media outlet that will stick a microphone in my snoot saying No. Nyet. Nein. Huh-uh. The broader job market is not strong companies are not adding hundreds of 1000s of new employees. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Please don’t let that be you. Please have that RTO Survival Plan roughed out and please have a job loss Survival Plan roughed out because job hunting in 2023might look a whole hell of a lot different from what job hunting has looked like for you in the past. You may have a leg up maybe you had the job hunt in oh eight and oh nine and you have been in some real mud and some real muck and this is like a cakewalk for you. But if not, please do not let this be you. We also read in March quiche who is 51 described his job search on LinkedIn. I have participated in about 20 hours of interviews have received no job offers ghosted by recruiters and have my fair share of rejection emails he wrote. He said the job hunt has been one of the most mentally challenging experiences in my adult life, more taxing than his 20 year career in the US Air Force. Cages experience may sound extreme, but many found it relatable. Mm hmm. That’s because those of us who are involved in the job market every flippin day, have our finger on the pulse of what’s going on. It’s relatable because people know, they’re in the trenches, and they know that the hot air and hopium out in the mainstream media doesn’t match what they’re seeing in reality.1000s of other users shared comments commiserating with how surprisingly demoralizing they found their own job searches, their anecdotes and those of people I’ve spoken with suggest the world of hiring is strange right now. Oh, like unfrozen caveman lawyer, your world is strange, and it frightens me. Are there demons in the fax machine on Oh, no. economic instability, opaque hiring processes and the destabilizing rise of technologies like generative aI have converged into an environment where it’s hard for job seekers to feel like they have even a basic sense of what is going on in quote, I’m gonna say it again, for the people in the cheap seats up there in the nosebleed section. I see. Don’t let that be you. Please don’t let that be here. If you have a close friend, a family member that’s walking around with their head in the clouds, they’ve got that well, it might happen to the guy down the road, but it would never happen to me attitude. Have you tried to talk to them? Have you tried to open a dialog about this? I mean, you cannot change somebody else’s mind. And I published a blog post about how hard it makes us offline. And it sure does. You cannot prep for somebody else. You can’t force somebody else to make up a job loss survival plan. But by God, I have been on this podcast so much so that I’m taking next week off. I need a break from this. But I have been on the airwaves almost like an evangelist saying please, please get prepared. Please don’t buy the hype. Please don’t listen to the hot air and hope you’re proud. Please get your mind right. And do what you need to do to survive what’s coming. And I hope and I pray that you have today is Tuesday, May 23. on CNBC, we find Apple strikes multibillion dollar deal with Broadcom for us made chips. Republicans question June 1 debt ceiling deadline It talks zero in on potential trade offs. Microsoft says Bing can be default search engine for chat GPT users, Ron DeSantis will launch his presidential bid in a live event with Elon Musk. I feel like that tells me a lot about both of those individuals that they’re chummy with one another. I have a blog post I need to draw up hopefully sometime this week where I reiterate that Lord Elon was photographed and apparently in some way associated with some unsavory characters, and then he also has defense contracts out the wazoo. Is this guy in bed with the government? Good bae. He’s taking money from them. Is he in bed with the military industrial complex? Could be he’s taking money from them. Yet again. It’s like I just don’t get the appeal of Lord Elon. I don’t I never trusted the guy and people that want to fanboy out over him. I just frankly don’t get it. US Virgin Islands governor to be deposed and lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase over Jeffrey Epstein. Speak of the devil. peloton aims to rebrand as a fitness company for all with focus on app and tiered subscription pricing. We’ll see how that goes because I’m thinking of a company like Beachbody. And the last time that I took a look at their stock price it wasn’t doing so hot. So it’s like is peloton really going to be able to make this shift from treadmills and exercise bikes which for a while seem to be part of some kind of yuppie Zeitgeist. I guess you were living the dream if you had the expensive peloton, bicycle somewhere in a prominent place where people could see it even from the road. Now not so much. I mean, hello, it’s the economy stupid, but are they going to be able to make it by pivoting over into a fitness company out? I don’t know. I don’t know. Stay tuned. I guess. Over on Yahoo Finance. We find Netflix’s password sharing crackdown officially hits us users. Stock slip as debt crunch continues behind the new optimism on debt ceiling talks. What is the likelihood that we’re going to default and send the world into some kind of a cataclysm? It’s not impossible, I reckon. But I would say it’s probably highly unlikely. Buyers gobble up new homes amid inventory crunch. Do they though? Do they? Here’s why the US doesn’t have to pay off its $31 trillion mountain of debt according to Paul Krugman, that guy when governments for one reason or another run up large debts it is as far as I can tell, unusual to pay those debts off. Nobel economist Paul Krugman said Yeah, more than you before some of y’all gonna follow these economists right off a cliff just like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Jamie Dimon warns of 7% Fed rate banking crisis and bleak commercial real estate. Well, that shouldn’t also be a surprise to anybody. We’re gonna swing over to Fortune just for a minute to read turbulence ahead. Nearly four in 10 Americans lack enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense that survey shows. In the byline we find the 2022survey found that self reported financial well being was among the lowest levels observed since2016. The central banks researchers wrote I would believe that, in fact, I would argue that probably it’s more than four in 10 Americans who couldn’t cover an emergency $400expense when we look at debt people doing Buy now pay later for their groceries. That is a scary thing. Indeed. Today it is Wednesday, May 24. To be honest and perusing the headlines not seeing a lot of good news out there today. Over on Yahoo Finance stock slide is debt ceiling talks hit another snag, US stock slipped again as investors fretted over a potential US debt default. Debt ceiling talks stalled amid revolt from McCarthy’s right flank. Feds Waller says no stopping rate hikes until inflation cools. But wait a minute, I thought we were told that inflation was cooling. I thought that supposedly it was abating and we should all be feeling good about it. Things that make you go hmm. More Americans delay medical care due to cost. Yeah, I can understand that. And it is really effed up. That that’s the situation that we’re in. Just when I think that maybe just maybe I’ve gotten all the bills that I’m going to get from going to hospital twice with. No, something will surprise me. It’s almost like the American medical system says why Ain’t no hold my beer and watch this. I got to build the other day for $279 from the company that manufactured the heart monitor that I had to wear for two weeks. I shit you not, I’m looking at this bill going, what? Why? Why? Why would the manufacturer of the equipment be allowed to send me a bill for$279? So I investigate it naturally, because I’m not just going to pay it and be like, Oh, well, I guess it’s legit. There’s so many con artists and fraudsters. Now you have to take some responsibility for doing the legwork. It’s not right, but you have to do it. So essentially, it was well, we manufactured the equipment, and then we also were responsible for monitoring the equipment while it was on you and then being able to take the data, like extracting the data from the equipment to give it to a cardiologist who can take a look at it. Okay, you know, I told you before I got a $25 bill in the mail from a cardiologist who looked at one of my tests, and it’s like, Well, okay, well, nice work. If you can get it, I guess. If I got $25 Just for every time I’ve looked at a piece of paper, I’d be pretty wealthy too. It’s just Yeah, none of that surprises me. It’s sad that in so called First World America, people would be in that situation. But here we are. We also find Wall Street could be just two weeks away from giant market crash says Dr.Doom, who predicted the 2008crash. The byline reads negotiators have failed to reach a deal so far despite a hard deadline looming. Well, I try to stay away from these hard and fast dates like the click baiters on YouTube. You’ve got three more days. You’ve got one more week I got rid of those people on my feet. I don’t want to see that I think is ridiculous. We don’t know the exact timeline the hyperlinks probably do. But you and I as John and Jane Q Public do not two weeks away, maybe so maybe not. Is there a giant market crash coming? I would not be surprised. I’m trying to do my best to be ready for any contingency. On that note, we also find the US Treasury may have to break the law. To keep the world’s richest nation from default. The byline reads Congress is putting US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a tough spot. Oh, poor baby. So sorry for her. US Treasury may have to break the law. What a shocker. What a surprise. If we break the law then we go to jail but nothing’s gonna happen to the fat cats that’s for sure. We also find it’ll cost us our system as we know it. Billionaire Ray Dalio warns of a social problem because of the debt ceiling crisis. In the byline. We read the US is on track to default on its payment obligations if the debt ceiling is not raised. But according to Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, we’re all going to die. No. Not just, I’m being cheeky. When we get into such sour and dour material, sometimes it’s like, are you still paying attention? Are you still out there? Know what it what it reads in reality is the US is on track to default on its payment obligations if the debt ceiling is not raised. But according to Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, the problem could extend beyond a debt crisis. In the article we find the debt ceiling negotiation is ridiculous, because it’s not dealing with the problem. He said in a YouTube video, the billionaire investor explains that if the debt ceiling is raised, the US will just keep piling on debt, we owe no debt. And if the limit does not increase, the country will either have to default or cut expenditures. The problem is that we’re spending more than we’re earning. And it doesn’t have to be that way. He said, if we don’t fix that we are going to have a debt crisis problem and a social problem that’s going to cost us dearly. It’s going to cost us our system as we know it and quote, got it. So let’s hop over to wikipedia for a moment and read about the cloud pivot and strategy. Cloward and Piven were both professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work. The strategy was outlined in a May 1966 article in the liberal magazine the nation titled The weight of the poor a strategy to end poverty. The two stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits and then a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels. That would be a wake up call for the federal government particularly the day Democratic Party, there would also be side consequences of the strategy according to clarity pivot. These would include easing the plight of the poor in the short term, through their participation in the welfare system, shoring up support for the National Democratic Party then splintered by pluralistic interests, through its cultivation of poor and minority constituencies by implementing a national solution to poverty and relieving local governments of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare through a national solution to poverty in quote. In other words, if we want it to be a little bit more blunt about it, you get all of these people to enroll on into the system. You don’t just strain the system, you break the system, so that the federal government has to come in as a larger entity and provide a larger solution. Well, we can use that same analogy to what Ray Dalio was talking about here, except it is at the federal level, we’re talking about humongous amounts of money, and a giant government. And what he’s saying is that if we don’t fix this problem, it can potentially collapse the system as we know it. Now, I’m thinking back to that age of easy money documentary that I have talked about before from PBS Frontline. This idea that the system actually did break, the system actually did collapse entirely in 2008. But we were able to put some band aids on it and kick the can down the road to keep it going. How many more of these incidents can we have? I don’t know the answer to that question. Because when you look at our history, as a nation, you will see all of these boom bust cycles. It’s not like this situation is brand new. Is this being used as a sort of cloud pivots strategy to collapse the system and usher in a great r e s? E T? Is this part of agenda2030? I don’t know the answers to those questions. I’m not a hyper elite. I don’t go to the Bilderberg Group, I don’t sit on the web. So I don’t know. I’m just looking at this situation.And I’m like okay, so this is potentially just a bullshit political dustup. They’re gonna go through the fake fisticuffs of disagreeing, when we all know mean, if you have a brain in your head, I think by this point, you figured out that the little elephant piggies and the little donkey piggies are all piggies that feed out of the same slop trough. So they’re gonna go through their fake fisticuffs of disagreeing over this and duking it out and battling out for whatever they think is right Hall, and then they’ll put a bandaid on it,they’ll fix it and the crisis will be averted. That is a very real possibility. Another possibility is that the system is going to break again, as it did in 2008. And we’re going to see some real changes. Now, I’m not talking about zombies out in the streets to eat your brains.Mad Max, the Thunderdome. I don’t get into that kind of hyperbolic language. And I really get super frustrated with people who do. I likewise get frustrated with people in the prepper community who claim to be emergency preppers. But they’re really Doomsday Preppers they’re part of weird, in my opinion, creepy colts where they think that everything is the apocalypse, every politician is the Antichrist, every political problem that happens is the end times and some of the people in that movement, they have set it and set it and set it and some of them get into the cults where they literally try to predict the exact date that the world is going to end. And yet it keeps right on turning. So I don’t I’m not saying like the system is going to break and you’re gonna wake up the next day and be back in the stone age. I don’t personally think that I think that they could use it to usher in some legislation that we would find pretty unpalatable. I also think that certain sectors of the economy will see some pretty rough unemployment. And I, I just don’t want anybody to be caught off guard. I published a blog post earlier today about a cautionary tale. Yet again,we’re seeing somebody in the media saying I got laid off, and it’s taking me a long time to find something and that’s a shock to me. I didn’t expect it to be this way. And I’m sitting here as a subject matter expert and staffing and recruiting somebody who writes about the job market all the time going,at what point? At what point I think that and I want to I want to really want to be measured and how I say this. I feel like we’re at a point in history. I feel like we’re at a point in terms of the overall economy where ignorance is not going to be bliss for you. You need to keep an eye on the markets. You need to keep an eye on the job.market and you need to understand the viability of your job and the viability of the industry that you’re in. I have to do this all the time because I own and operate my own business. It’s very clearly to my benefit to know who’s buying,who’s selling, who else is out there, what’s the going rate,what’s happening, I have to keep my finger on that pulse are all go broke. And my point is, if you’re listening to this broadcast, and you’re a W two employee for somebody else, you need to quit making excuses. In my opinion, okay, that’s all this is like Dennis Miller has always said, it’s just my opinion, I could be wrong. But in my opinion, you need to quit making excuses. You need to quit screwing off on Tik Tok, and watching silly nonsense on Instagram. Do that after you’ve done some research do that after you have read for education. You better know the industry that you’re in, you better know the solvency of the company that you work for. You better know what the markets are doing. Because all of these markets are tied together. They are I didn’t make this rigged up crony capitalist system. I’m just the bearer of some bad news. You don’t want to be that person that’s in a news article saying or on a LinkedIn post saying I just had no idea that companies would rescind an offer. I just had no idea that the economy was bad. I just had no idea that we don’t have a3.4% unemployment rate. I had no idea that if I got laid off, I’d have to deal with Ghost jobs and ghosting recruiters and I don’t want that to be you. And the only person who can keep that from being you is you. Educate yourself. Knowledge is power. Oh my god, knowledge is power. Over on fortune.com we find companies like CVS and UnitedHealth are some of the world’s biggest businesses. Is that healthy for the rest of us? I’m probably not gonna go out on a limb here and see say probably not. Morgan Stanley, analysts see a fall for commercial real estate worse than in the great financial crisis. To be determined. Open AI Sam Altman and Google Sundar Pichai are now begging governments to regulate the AI forces. They’ve unleashed.Everything about that as dystopian. We’ve unleashed AI that we feel like we can’t control. So now we want the government we want the state who always has everyone’s best interest at heart to regulate it. crony capitalism collusion at its finest. Companies say they want to retain caregivers yet turn their backs on flexible remote work. Hmm. Yeah, that’s probably because corporate America will give lip service to certain ideas. tell you whatever the marketing department thinks sounds good at the time, but they don’t effing mean it.You’ll know the tree by the fruit of bears. Don’t pay so much attention to what they say.especially to those of us in the unwashed masses that they don’t care about. Pay attention to what they do.Are you looking for more? Don’t forget you can find Sara on her blogs at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And at Sara Causey.com. You can also read her content on Medium and Substack. On with the show.Today it is Thursday, May 25. on Yahoo Finance we find slimmed down debt ceiling deal starts to take shape. Oh what a surprise.In the byline. We read US President Joe Biden top Republican lawmaker Kevin McCarthy are edging close to a deal on the US debt ceiling.NASDAQ rallies as invidious ORS progressives apply new pressure as debt ceiling risks climb.We’re entering a brutal new era for the housing market. Oh, when we click on that we read if you don’t already own a home, you’re going to be screwed for years to come. Well, it definitely makes me think of Gordon Gekko in the second Wall Street when he’s speaking to that audience of college kids about being the ninja generation. And he tells them well, you’re all pretty much effed. You don’t know that yet. But you are. Will see.Attempting to time the housing market is a foolish pursuit. Oh,this is what typical for what we hear in the mainstream media don’t even try. Don’t even try.It’s just a fool’s errand. Sure,there are heaps of data forecasts and market experts who can offer theories on where home prices or borrowing rates are headed, but no amount of tea leaf reading can spare you from this harsh reality. home buying is ultimately a coin toss. If you’re very lucky, you buy a home right before prices boom.If you’re not so fortunate you pony up the cash just in time for the bubble to burst. Yeah,that’s that’s fair enough. You have quoted from if you meet the Buddha on the road kill him before this idea that at any point in time Human beings are making decisions based on limited data. We don’t know everything and we can’t know everything. We’re just muddling through trying to do the best that we can. In my opinion, that doesn’t absolve you from trying.And I think that even just that second Senate’s attempting to time the housing market is a foolish pursuit. Know that if it isn’t? No, it isn’t. Because if you’ve seen this movie before,if you are alive and well, and you are an adult in 06 07 08 09then you know, you have seen it play out before, you know what led up to the bubble. And you know what it looked like when the air started to come out of the bubble. So I think telling people like don’t even try, it’s a fool’s errand. It’s not successful, it’s just tossing a coin and reading tea leaves. I think that’s very irresponsible.But that’s the kind of crap in my opinion that we hear from the mainstream media don’t even try.There’s no point in trying to educate yourself. There’s no point in trying to time the market, you’re just going to toss a coin and hope it comes out in your favor. Well, you can help yourself to some degree by knowing what you’re looking at.We still check the listings, and whenever I’m logging in on realtor.com, to set my parameters up and just poke around, you will still find sales pending. I’m noticing it more in the cookie cutter suburbanite tract houses because there are in the immediate area probably three or four of those where they just seem to poop a house out overnight. It’s probably between 12 and 1600square feet. It gets pooped out overnight. And yes, those houses are sale pending when you go on realtor.com. In terms of property, where there’s some acreage, it’s a farmhouse with a barn and some fence, the pickings are slim, I really think that there are a lot of folks that are just hanging on to what they have and waiting.The things that are listed. It’s a vision of 2021 for me, because the stuff is overpriced crap.It’s lemon houses, places where it looks like the Hatfields and the McCoys are having some kind of warfare with one another. It looks like the people next door have an amateur junk yard going is problematic houses that are grossly overpriced, which is not at all the situation that we want to get ourselves into. I’ll continue to read. While these breaking points are nearly impossible to see in advance.They’re often glaring in hindsight, I’m going to butt in long enough to say that will become in prediction alert that will become a sort of broader narrative to the entire economic collapse. The breaking points are nearly impossible to see in advance but they’re often glaring in hindsight, that’s going to be the same bullshit that we hear later, mark my words. Perhaps the most shocking before and after for the housing market in recent memory, the moment when the fortunes of homebuyers diverged, creating what one expert called a housing economy of haves and have nots came in July 2020. That’s when it became clear that a wave of house hungry millennials and Space Star remote workers were turning the housing markets initial pandemic slump into a full blown frenzy. All button again to say this is more of the same. It is not the fault of the Fed of the cronies on Capitol Hill of corporate America. No,it’s not the fault of the assholes at the top of the pyramid who manipulate these markets to their own benefit.NaeNae it is the fault of John and Jane Q public. In this case,it’s the fault of house hungry millennials. You know, God forbid that they want to have a space of their own to call home house hungry millennials and space starved remote workers.Well, when we drive everybody back with our to you won’t be so starved for space anymore. And once the millennials realize that, as Gordon Gekko warned you many years ago, you’re all pretty much F well, that problem will get solved, will it not?The differences between those who bought homes before and after that turning point are staggering. People who got in before things went haywire, were able to dodge skyrocketing home prices lock in record low mortgage rates and stack hundreds of 1000s of dollars in home equity over the past few years. Meanwhile, people left on the sidelines have watched their rent costs eat into their downpayment nest eggs, median home prices soar by 30% mortgage rates shoot back up and the pool of available homes shrink to the lowest levels in recent history.Yeah. Do you not think well I’ll need to just put on my tinfoil suit here. Do you not think that this is being orchestrated on purpose and for that matter, the hundreds of 1000s of dollars in home equity over the past few years, a lot of that’s gone. A lot of that happened with the artificially manipulated bubble,a home that might logically had been worth 200k suddenly being worth 500k, seemingly overnight.That’s not normal. That’s that’s not the normal rate of your home’s value going up. That’s absurd. And it’s not sustainable. And I think those of us who have lived through this insanity before can all tell you that these boom bust cycles don’t last forever. They don’t. I think back again to Lou Manheim from the first Wall Street where he tries to tell but enjoy the ride while it lasts, because it never does.People come in, they make a quick buck during the bull market and they think that they’re something special. And then when the bear market comes,they don’t know how to handle it. And so it is here. But I think this idea of the the rent costs have eaten into their downpayment, nest eggs, they’re iced out of the market, I just don’t think that that’s happening on accident. And you can mock my tinfoil suit if you want to. But I mean, the information is out there UVA on nursing and UVB happy, you just read everything, rent,everything. It’s not it’s not hidden information. But yet you’re expected to ignore it and so many people do. It’s astounding. Over on fortune.com Here’s some more fear porn for you. Gen Z should never work from home if they want success or love in why you professor says, Oh, I see. So if you want to have a successful career and you want to find a suitable romantic partner, then you better get your ass back to the cube farm. Millennials and Gen Z say the economy is still making them depend on their parents for a place to live and to pay their bills. Yeah. I can see where that would be the case. Massive money manager Pimco, likens,passing a debt ceiling deal to passing a kidney stone. We are in the painful period right now.Prediction alert. That’s another narrative that you will hear as we go further into this economic downturn. It’s painful. We hate having to do these bailouts. We hate coming to you with our hat in our hand asking for that taxpayer money but it has to be done. It for the collective greater good. It has to be done.Wait and see. Wait and see.Today it is Friday, May 26.TGIF. Just a quick housekeeping reminder, the podcast will be on hiatus next week. Monday is Memorial Day here in the US and it felt like a very good time to take a broadcasting break. I will still be dropping blog posts. But I need the opportunity to decompress a little bit from podcasting and have a nice, much needed break.I’m starting to understand now why the large outlets will have these little pockets of time where they go on hiatus because it’s a lot. And to be honest with you, there are days when reading these headlines, just it gives me a headache because it’s like, what’s it going to take?At what point will john and jane Q Public wake up? At what point will more people rise up and say these headlines that we get day after day, week after week are just conflicting bullshit? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that. But I need some time off. That’s for sure. So no episodes, including no Saturday broadcast next week. New episodes will resume the week of June 5 To be determined exactly what day I’ll drop a new episode. But Saturday broadcast will resume and you’ll get a new episode at some point that week.In the meantime, y’all your girl needs a break. Over on CNBC, we find that ceiling negotiators close to a deal with IRS funding in the spotlight. Great inflation rose point 4% In April and 4.7% from a year ago,according to key gauge for the Fed. But wait a minute, we’ve been told repeatedly that inflation was cooling, inflation is abating. And I’ve been on here repetitively saying where is that exactly? Because we don’t see it at the gas pump. We don’t see it when we pay the utilities. We definitely don’t see it when we go to the grocery store. So inflation is abating where. Exactly. And apparently it’s not which see, this is another point of frustration for me, your own eyes, your own ears. Your own common sense can tell you that no. Inflation is not abating. To use the phrase desert Come on man. Tech layoffs ravage the teams that fight online misinformation and hate speech. Disney still has plans to spend billions in Florida despite its battle with DeSantis. Hmm, imagine that,huh? Huh? You know, it’s almost like we have crony capitalism.It’s almost like we have collusion. It’s almost like at the end of the day, when interests are at stake is going to always be whatever’s best for corporate America that wins out.Hmm, it’s almost like that. So another reason why I have told you and told you told you, I just don’t think we’re going to have some nationwide Power to the People strike against RTO. I wish I could tell you otherwise.I just don’t see it coming. I know it sounds pessimistic. But in my opinion, if it boils down to the wants, the needs and the rights of John and Jane Q public versus whatever corporate America wants, corporate America is going to win. I talked about this in a blog post that I wrote the other day where I was quoting this article from the Jacobin that talks about the last promise of remote work,like workplaces should be democratized. Workers should have a say, do we want to be on site? Do we want to be hybrid?Do we want to be remote? There should be more of an empowerment for workers. And I’m sitting here like, yes, there should be.I agree. It’s not going to happen. It’s not gonna happen.And I think that we need to have honest conversations about that.Because I think when we get too far into sunshine, lollipops and gumdrops, it’s not actually helpful. I’m thinking back to the old Gloria Steinem quote,yeah, the truth will set you free. But first, it’ll piss you off. It shouldn’t be pissing you off. But we’ve been lulled into such a state of zombification that people are like, Oh, screw it. I’ll play on Tik Tok. I’ll serve Instagram. I’ll play on Snapchat and oh, well, such as America. JP Morgan is developing a chat GPT like aI service that gives investment advice. Oh,God, pass hard pass. Over on Yahoo Finance. We were arrogant.Rh CEO says he raised already expensive furniture prices too much on shoppers. Hmm, that also sounds like the same freaking thing we’ve seen at the grocery store. On LinkedIn, we find neural link cleared for human trials. Oh, God, this seat right here. This is another reason why I need to take a break because I just read this and I’m like,good God in heaven. Like, ah, I have warned you about Lord Ilan and his very obvious connections to the government and his very obvious connections to the military industrial complex. I don’t effing trust this guy. As far as I could throw him. I don’t trust him. Not at all. I don’t understand the people that fanboy out because it usually is men. Oh, understand the people that fanboy out about this little dweeb. That’s about the nicest thing I can think of to say about him. I don’t like him.I don’t trust him. So in this article, we find neuro link Elon Musk’s brain implant company said on Twitter that it has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration or the FDA to conduct human trials.Well kill Sopris this MF er is already in bed with your government? Did you really think anything else was gonna happen?The company has been building a device that can be surgically inserted into the brain to sync up with computers, Jesus Christ,potentially treating conditions such as paralysis and blindness.I will butt in and say yeah,okay. So about consent. If somebody is paralyzed if somebody is blind, and they say,I’m willing to take the risk of doing this in order to accomplish a particular goal.I’m very libertarian about this.I don’t tell other people what to do with their body. If they want to take drugs, if they want to use alcohol, it’s not my business. If they get behind the wheel of a car and they try to bow down other people, it becomes society’s business. But look, if you’re in grandma’s basement, like all these Neo cons want to LARP if you’re in grandma’s basement smoking a doobie, I don’t care. I don’t care. And if somebody has a medical condition where they feel like the risk is worth the potential reward, same thing,it’s not my business. Looking at it, from my opinion, only, I feel like this is how these draconian scary things come about. They tell you all the good ways that this technology can be used, and they conveniently omit all the diabolical ways that it can be used. previous trials have only been done on animals and an earlier bid by neuro link to when FDA approval was rejected on safety grounds per Reuters.The FDA has yet to comment. But experts have warned that brain implants would require extensive testing to overcome technical and ethical challenges and quote, yeah, well, look, I mean,I’ll just kind of leave it at this. In the same way that I’ve said, some of y’all are going to listen to the so called economists and follow them right off a cliff like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, some of y’all are going to do that with these. E,the OT, that are clearly in bed with the government. They’re clearly in bed with the state.They’re clearly in bed with the military industrial complex.They’re all over corporate America. Some people are just not trustworthy, they’re just not. You have got to make up your own mind about certain things, whether it’s the coming job market crash, whether it is the air coming out of the housing bubble, whether it’s how you would survive a great recession. 2.0 Or I pray not but a Great Depression to point out.You have to be willing and able to ask yourself, those types of questions, the hard questions,instead of going off into tick tock or Instagram and saying,Well, I’ll worry about it when the time comes. Because what if I prepare what if I do all this strategizing and then nothing happens? Be glad of it. Be glad of it if nothing happens, stay safe, stay sane. Decide if you want to put lordy last chip in your brain. And I will see you in the next episode. Have a wonderful and safe Memorial Day weekend.Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We’ll see you next time.