Saturday Broadcast 3

At this point, Saturday broadcasts will continue. Too much news, too much 💩hitting the fan.

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news from Mon-Fri.
✔️ On Wednesday, The Fed bumped up interest rates by 0.75%, which is the largest hike we've seen since the 90s. Meanwhile, inflation is more like the early 80s. And shows no sign of slowing down.
✔️ With more and more layoffs and hiring freezes, do you really think  unemployment is less than 4% nationwide? Cuz I don't! There's a lag between what's happening in real time versus what gets reported.
✔️ It's getting more important than ever to be strategic about who you are listening to and where you're getting information. Personally, I'd be careful of toxic positivity and people on LI telling you, "This is fine. Everything is fine. It's all OK." Uhhh, is it tho?!?

Links I discuss in this episode:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inflation-bumming-us-out-other-economic-happenings-taylor-borden/

https://belmontstar.com/a-bear-market-jobs-what-you-need-to-know/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/ev-startup-elms-to-liquidate-5360020/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/workers-lose-pandemic-superpowers-5892218/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/millennial-lifestyle-subsidy-ends-4832121/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/most-ceos-see-recession-poll-shows-4836353/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkkxCk4uW9k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogaeyi94WhM

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/06/17/toxic-positivity-your-li-feed/


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

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Siren courtesy of Pixabay. 

Transcript

0:06

Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in. Starting to think these Saturday broadcasts might just become a regular occurrence, at least in the short term because wow, Deep heavy existential sigh. My goodness me, what, what a time? What a time. I'm still out here banging my drum that if you're not paying attention, if you're engaged in a blissful slumber and you think that the great resignation and a hot job market are going to last forever, you need to wake up up up. If you haven't yet. I kind of don't know what you're waiting for. I don't know if you're waiting for some big official proclamation that the poop storm has begun. But I think in a lot of ways, the doodoo has already hit the fan. And it's starting to fly out into the atmosphere and you just it's not about panic. It's not about Chicken Little The sky is falling and zombies like World War Z are going to be out in the streets teach your brain that's not what this is about. It's much more about you waking up, tuning in and being alert to ever changing market conditions. Earlier this week on Monday, I got this little I don't know what you'd call it a sort of like an easing that LinkedIn does. And the headline on it I kid you not was inflation is bumming us out and other economic happenings. Yeah, do you think and they have a little portion in there. That's kind of like a TLDR summary type thing. And I want to read that for you now catch up on headlines from the last seven days. Inflation hit yet another 40 year high last week jumping 8.6% from a year ago, gas prices just reached a milestone. Mortgage demand is dropping. the pay gap between executives and average workers seems as wide as ever, global economic growth is expected to slow this year, according to the World Bank is a tech slump on the horizon. Job hoppers are leaving behind extra work for ex coworkers and quote, Well, isn't that just a ray of sunshine? If you skim just a little further down, they asked the question, what's the deal with inflation? And the little bullet point reads inflation hit another 40 year high last week with everything from gasoline to Lawn Care costing more green? Most Americans aren't confident in the economy because of it. Peter Atwater, an economics professor at William and Mary said that consumer sentiment tumbling could cause many to pull back on spending potentially leading to a recession and quote, so one of the things that I want to interject here is this feels to me a little bit like victim blaming. Well, not a little bit. It feels a lot like victim blaming, if I'm being honest, sort of like setting this stage of well, you guys didn't want to keep spending some of you decided to like I don't know put money in savings and not be the grasshopper that's saying all summer. So because you're pulling back on spending, you naughty little Lemmings, you didn't do what you were told we could go into a recession, we could potentially go into a recession, naughty naughty. And I'm sitting here like, aren't we already in a recession? I mean, who who out there is still waiting for like some official proclamation to be sent down from on high and I mean, who are you waiting for to tell you this? And what what further signals are you waiting on? I'm just sort of scratching my head like what what more is is it going to take also on Monday of this week? Here are some of the little headlines snippets on the side panel for LinkedIn news. Stocks tumbled into bear market. Cooling prices may mean more jobless crypto markets drastic plunge. Google chat bot says it has a soul. Wow. Wow, we will we will so here we go. You know I've said before, here I think and then also over on my Patreon account that I don't really think that we're headed into like World War Z. Escape from New York, Blade Runner, Mad Max those types of like complete societal collapse, utter destruction zombies out in the streets, robots and replicants and genetically modified hybrid things taking over that maybe I'm wrong. You know, you see a headline like the Google chatbot says it has a soul and you're like, holy poop. I don't want this to go explicit. Holy Poopoo. What What? What? So yeah, that's another topic for some other time. I don't I don't have the energy to try to get into artificial intelligence saying it's become sentient, and it has a soul. For right now. I will stay to more of the economic not good news, such as stocks tumbled into a bear market. On June 1, I think it was so earlier this month I was interviewed by the Belmont star and the topic at hand was like what do you need to know? In a bear market? If we do go into recession? If we do go into a bear market? What then what do you need to know from like an HR and staffing point of view about what will happen to the job market as a result, I'll drop a link to that in the write up for this podcast episode. If you haven't read it. Shameless plug for myself to toot my own horn, I recommend that you go and check that out. Because you don't want to be caught flat footed. You don't want to be caught off guard, you want to be ready to roll for whatever is about to happen. I personally think we're already in bear market territory. I think we're already in a recession. I think we're at the beginning stages of the Poopoo storm. And I think honestly, we've been in the beginning stages of the Poopoo storm for several months now. Now, some people would argue we've been in the beginning stages of it ever since the pandemic started. I don't know about that. But just speaking from what I'm seeing day in and day out in the job market, the kind of pullback, the kind of contractions that I'm seeing with the decisions that are being made. I'm definitely worried about what's yet to come. On Tuesday, we got some more wonderful headlines, crypto giant Coinbase plans layoffs, which seemed a bit like a fait accompli in my mind as soon as we started seeing people posting on LinkedIn about having their offers rescinded it sort of seemed like layoffs were probably not that far behind. We also have has worked from home doomed the sick day and it's like, I'm not even gonna go there. I'm not even gonna go there. Because in my mind, that's more You naughty naughty working from home, you need to RTOS you can actually call in sick when you need to. And it's like just in whatever. Whatever. We also have is the Fed mulling a steep rate hike. I'm sure that by the time this episode is published, that will have already happened from what I'm hearing on Wednesday. That's going to be the case and it probably is going to be steep. I guess it's going to have to be steep to try to combat inflation. We'll we'll see. We also have the headline Evie startup E L M S which stands for electric last mile solutions to liquidate and I will read the blurb here. Less than a year after going public in an SPAC merger. Commercial electric vehicle maker electric last mile Solutions has announced it will file for bankruptcy. The Michigan based company's market value accelerated to 1.4 billion shortly after it started trading and the firm clocked 10s of 1000s of pre orders. But it has since suffered a fleet of troubles. The founders resigned in February after being accused of improper stock purchases, ie LMS cut 24% of its workforce the following month, and it was revealed that it was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. All those issues made it extremely challenging to secure new funding imagined so the company said in quote. Wow, just tons of good news. Now there's something else that I became aware of on Tuesday that I want to pull the curtain back and let you know about, you know, sometimes when you are an expert in your field or you're good at interfacing with the media, then you'll get pitches given to you or people will reach out to you and say hey, I want to get a quote or would you be willing to sit for an interview. And then there are also websites where you can go to work with reporters if that's something that you're interested in doing. And I saw were a major outlet. I won't say who it was I will just say a major outlet is looking for sources to talk about layoffs. And more specifically, they're wanting people to comment on what it's like to get laid off in the age of virtual work. Like what do you do when people are needing to get cut? They need to get a pink slip but they're not but in seat in the office anymore. So what does that tell you? What it tells me is that they're planning on more layoffs coming and that means whether you decided to come on back to the office and sit in the digital pan Opticon or whether you're sitting at home working remotely. This media outlet is planning to be doing more stories about what it's like to get pink slipped when you work from home. Not not the time to bury your head in the sand by any means. As the day went on, and people were wasting time on BS nonsense like recruiter sharing the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard leaked conversation meme just just throwing that out there That's a what a great thing to waste time on. We also learn that Redfin and compass are laying off staff, as well as the IT provider, automox, hope I'm saying that right IT provider, automox lays off 18% of its staff. So the hits just keep on coming. Also, early this week, a friend of mine texted me said, Hey, there's this person on YouTube. And it sounds like they're plagiarizing you. And so I checked it out, I watched part of the video, I've been busy. So I didn't have time, honestly, to sit and watch the whole thing. And I'm not going to call anybody out. Because who knows, I don't want to get some kind of industry war going with somebody else. But it hit my ear that way, too. It sounded like this person had my blog posts and my podcast episodes in front of them, and was sitting there even using some of the same exact words and phrases and metaphors that I have used. And I'm like, Huh, okay, well, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know. So from a plagiaristic point of view, I wasn't very happy about it. But looking at the big picture, I'm glad that the word is getting out. And I'm glad that more people are feeling compelled to say, hey, wait a minute, the great resignation is not going to go on forever. People are not going to get insane pay bumps every single time that they leave a company, especially if we have really high unemployment rates. If the competition for each job that actually is open becomes much more difficult. If you show up expecting to get a 20 30 40% Pay bump to walk in the door, they're going to tell you no. So looking at the big picture, I am glad that more people are getting on the airwaves saying hey, wait a minute, a poop storm is coming. Or a poop storm is already here. And you need to adjust accordingly. Plagiarism not cool, you know, get get get some of your own ideas, get some of your own metaphors, you don't have to copy somebody else out there. But definitely get the word out. On Wednesday, as we were all kind of waiting to see what the Fed was going to do with their meeting, I watched a video on YouTube. And it said that I have to make this disclaimer. But here we go. I don't know anything about this person, I have not watched every video that this man has ever made in his life. If it turns out at some point down the road that he's a looney tune, I don't want to get hate mail about it, because I don't know this guy personally. So watch this video by Dan at I allegedly I will drop a link to it in the write up so you can check it out for yourself. As I said, I've not watched every video that this man has ever recorded. I don't know what he's about. I watched this video. And I wanted to bring it up because he talks about a conversation that he had with a mortgage broker at Bank of America. And it was so telling. It's like, here we go again. This is deja vu am i i feel like Bruce Banner, when Tony wants to create vision. And he's like I'm caught in a time loop. That's exactly how this feels. And so Dan was talking about having this conversation with a broker at Bank of America. And the broker was telling him Well, right now, yes, the interest rates are high. Of course, that's going to depend on your credit, the amount of money you can put down your work history, financial profile, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all the cya stuff that bankers do. And so this broker said to Dan, that they're trying to encourage people if they're wary about the current interest rates to just get an adjustable rate mortgage. And so Dan said to him, Well, when do you think that the interest rates will go back down? Like how long will this person have to deal with the adjustable rate mortgage before it goes back down and then they can refinance and the banker was like, Well, of course we don't know that we're just encouraging them to do that as maybe like a hedge against the inflation maybe they've got a shot at it coming back down one of these days. And I just, you know, I sat there and I, I just it it gave me a headache like I got so angry that it gave me a headache. I mean, we we have been here and we have done this before. So one of the things that I want to say in this broadcast is please be careful of anybody that has a vested interest in trying to part you from your money because I you know, I lost count when I was still trying to do my real estate expansion and looking and looking and looking and not finding and not finding getting very disheartened by the whole thing. I look back on it now and it's definitely like that Garth Brooks song about unanswered prayers. You know, there are times when you get delayed on something. It's it's not about quitting forever. It's about saying I'm just gonna wait I'm gonna strategically quit and wait for conditions to improve. And I am so glad that things played out the way that they did. Because I would not want to be holding the bag right now, I just wouldn't. And it scares me to think about people who might not know any better, they might not have been out in the housing market when the bubble popped the last time, they may not understand that they are playing with fire to get an adjustable rate mortgage. Now, as I've said in my boilerplate, many, many times, I am not a professional financial advisor, or planner, I'm not a mortgage broker. I'm not an economist, I don't sit on the World Economic Forum with the power brokers. There are a plethora of things that I don't know, I'm a private individual, and I am not giving you official financial advice. If you have any questions if you have any qualms you need to talk to a professional, and you need to do some due diligence on what it means to have an adjustable rate mortgage. Because do you want to be left holding the bag if rates just continue to go up? and up and up? What if you get laid off? What if you burn through your savings? What if the inflation continues across the board and you're getting so pinched at the grocery store and at the gas pump that you're having difficulty making that exorbitant mortgage payment? I mean, this is the time to look before you leap and to really think take the emotionality out of it. And I need to tell myself that because I'm really upset. You know, it just it is upsetting. That's the best way for me to put his so upsetting to me to think about people that just don't know any better being exploited by the system by greedy bankers and unscrupulous lenders. And then you've got people I think I started to say this just got upset but you know, I lost count of how many times that I had people tell me this isn't like it was before. The loans are not bullcrap loans were being so much more careful. We're not handing out loans like candy, blah, blah, blah. And that's all it was. It was like that teacher on the peanuts. Why? That's all I heard. Because I was there. I lived it. I remember with my own with my own set of memories in my own brain what it was like, but it scares me. For people who weren't there. It scares me for people who don't know, and how they might be exploited by the system. Keep your head on the swivel, don't get paranoid. But you know, if you're thinking about making any kind of major purchase right now, do some due diligence, get with a professional talk things out and just use some good Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware if someone is trying to sell you a bill of goods, and they have a vested interest and trying to part you from your money. On Wednesday afternoon, we got the official news which a lot of people were already expecting to be honest, that the Federal Reserve would approve the largest interest rate hike since 1994. It pains me and makes me feel old to say this, but some of the people listening to this broadcast were not even alive in 1994. So this is going to be the biggest interest rate hike that you've seen in your lifetime. They also at least hinted from what I understand that they would continue to do these rate increases throughout the year, in order to try to slow down the economy and reduce the inflation. That's also going rampant. I mean, that's as bad as it was, I guess, or maybe worse than it was in the 80s definitely some of y'all listening to this. We're not around back then. So it's um, it's getting kind of hairy out there. So if you're sitting there wondering, well, how does this impact my day to day life, I feel really disconnected from what's going on in Washington DC, what politicians and power brokers are doing, I get it. So one of the ways that it has an impact on you is it does affect credit card rates. And it can also because the rates are impacted, it can also in some respects, like influence the strength of your credit score overall. So it's it could definitely hit your pocketbook. If you have and utilize credit cards. It can also have an impact on what banks are able to offer as far as like your rate of increase or your rate of interest on your savings account. Even if you're not involved in the housing market right now, which hopefully you're not hopefully you're in a position where you can just sit on the sidelines and ride this nightmare out. As you've seen, I'm sure it also has an influence over what lenders offer for mortgage rates. I mean, we have seen those go up and up and up and up. So when somebody could afford to borrow at let's say a two and a half percent interest rate is gonna look really different at six and a half percent. I understand that on paper that doesn't Sounds like a lot. But it really does impact someone's purchasing power. It truly does. It can also impact things like what kind of rate of interest you'll get on an auto loan. Or if you're wanting to do one of those home equity lines of credit, again, I hope you don't have to do that in this economy. But if you really needed that money, and you had to, it's going to have an impact potentially on that. If you have a 401 K, and you're involved in the stock market, I'm sure you've already seen a decrease in what your 401 K or your investment portfolio was worth. So even though it may seem like well, okay, this power brokers are having this meeting, and they're gonna bump up interest rates, and it's people are acting like it's a big deal. I don't really get why. Well, that's why, because these things do trickle down. Poopoo rolls downhill, I'm sure you've heard that phrase. So you will be seeing the impact of this rate hike sooner rather than later. I saw a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday, I'm not going to say anything about who it's from or what their situation is, because I don't know. But the text I thought was interesting. And so I'm going to read a portion of it for you now. It amazes me that there's so many jobs available that people aren't getting the roles. Last night, I was on Target's career site, well over 11,000 jobs posted. There's other places with just as many roles open, but people aren't getting these roles. What kind of unicorn are these jobs wanting? The perfect candidate doesn't exist. People aren't perfect, but they are willing people are willing to learn. People are willing to work people are willing to try. So give people a chance. It's literally that simple. And quote, this is a type of thing that I would normally get into more depth on over on my Patreon channel. But let's dissect what's going on here. You know, yes, there are companies that are holding out for what they feel like is a hand in glove perfect fit for the jobs. Why is that? Because they see what's coming. They are aware of what's happening. How many times do I have to give the George Carlin quote, it's one big club and you and I are not in it, they know what's on the horizon. So they feel like if they can post a job and have candidates vying for that open position, and they can wait, it's not urgent for them to fill it immediately. That's what they're going to do. The other thing is some of these roles are just open wrecks that are posted for show. They may have been posted two or three years ago, and nobody has bothered to take them down off the sites. Some of these roles might be evergreen positions, meaning they want to just get a pipeline of candidates built up so that whenever they actually are ready at some point yet to be determined in the future, to pull the trigger and hire someone they have people already in their ATS system that they can call and start asking, Hey, you applied for this 500,000 years ago, are you still available and interested? These things happen? So don't be deceived. When you're going out and looking at websites. You're like, well, this company says they're hiring like 50 Different people right now. I'm sure that that's a good sign. Is it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. This is another case where you need to use Caveat emptor and do some due diligence and look before you leap. Not not everything that glitters is gold. And not every company that has tons of positions posted may actually be hiring for those positions anytime soon. So if you tuned in to LinkedIn on Thursday, then you saw headlines like stocks sync after Fed rate hike, Tesla shifts cuts into higher gear, Spotify to cut back hiring by 25% Revlon files for bankruptcy. They also asked the question, Will remote work reduce inequality? I think it's amusing that they're asking that question after so many companies have started their push to come all back to the office and their darling Elon Musk you know, they also have a headline up about Musk's Twitter meeting bumps shares their darling Elon has already said you can go pretend to work somewhere else. If you don't come all back to the pan Opticon. There's the door. But then they have this little remote work reduce inequality and it's like, Are you pretending to care? I mean, what what's even up with that? That's another topic for another time. If I get off on that, then we will definitely be here all day. One of the things that I want to point out is this idea of spin, because we have this headline Spotify to cut back hiring by 25% and I want to read the little blurb to you underneath the article here. streaming service Spotify is set to slash hiring by 25%. The company announced in a memo obtained by Bloomberg, the news comes following several years of hiring growth for the company which added 2000 additional employees from 2019 to 2021. Just recently Spotify CEO Daniel Eck. Hopefully I'm saying that right predicted huge growth for the business with plans to take the company to 10 times its current size, aiming to reach 1 billion listeners by 2030 and generate US Dollars 100 billion in revenue. numerous companies have announced hiring reductions and freezes amid decades high inflation that is prompting recession fears and quote, cutting back hiring, whatever you want to call it. It's sort of like a rose by any other name, hiring freezes, layoffs, cut backs rescinded offers, it's all pointing in the same direction. So just want you to use good critical thinking when you see these headlines where they're trying to maybe make something seem a little bit less dramatic or a little bit less drastic or less sad than it actually is. Just remember, it's all leading down the same road, in my opinion, which is recession. Also on Thursday, which was the same day that I published the podcast episode, well, that didn't take long in reference to the fact that the work from home window closed even faster than I thought it might. LinkedIn published an article titled workers lose pandemic superpowers and I will try to remember to make sure I dropped the link to it in the write up for this podcast episode. I'm gonna read the blurb for you now. The days of employees exerting their influence over employers and dictating when and where they work, maybe grinding to a halt, kills Sopris growing economic uncertainty and mounting anxiety around a potential recession going to break in long enough to say it's not potential. Who out there is still waiting to be told that we're in a recession right now. Come on, to use the phrase digit or come on man. All right. growing economic uncertainty and mounting anxiety around a potential recession wink are prompting hiring freezes and slowdowns and company chiefs appear to be growing impatient with remote work a cluster. What a great way to put that a cluster, a cluster of prominent CEOs such as Elon Musk are growing more emboldened in demanding a return to offices. Data from swipe card tracking company Castle systems show office occupancy at a pandemic high of 44% last week, and companies appear less fearful that workers will desert them if they forced them back to their desks and quote, wow. Wow, I'm again going to stroke my long devil beard thoughtfully and say, gosh, you know, I wonder if there was anybody out there who was warning you that this was coming down the pike? I wonder if there was anybody who was writing this on their blogs, but publishing this in their podcast episodes, talking about it in depth on their Patreon? Who could that be? Going to channel some Dana Carvey from there? The end goal God, those those episodes of church lady from the 80s were great, Weren't they on this that that was that was a golden age for sure. Who could it be? Hmm, I don't know. So here we are. I mean, this is no longer projecting out into the future, what could happen or what's going to happen? We're here. This is the here and the now this is reality. And so if there's anybody in your life, that still trying to bury their head in the sand and say, Well, the great resignation is still going strong. There's this labor shortage, and I can call all of my own shots and get exactly what I want. You need to wake that person up. You need to show them some reality. And I understand, believe me, the phrase about shooting the messenger. Sometimes people don't like it when you wake them up out of their slumber. But if it's somebody that you care about, you don't want them to wind up unemployed or maybe it's a family member and you feel like if they get unemployed, they're going to hit you up and want to live on your couch rent free. You need to tell them to wake the hell up. Now, not later, not in a month, not any year. But right now. Later in the day, we had some additional wonderful headlines such as another bruising day on Wall Street. Boston's notarized cuts 25% of staff, Gen Z wants big bucks and chill. Delta cracks down on Lounge Lizards, millennial lifestyle subsidy ins and is the Robin Hood era over the article about Gen Z is basically the same thing that people have said about every generation that's come along, probably since the dawn of time, they're spoiled. They're entitled they want everything upfront. I mean, we've we've heard people banging that drum for so long, it's almost not even worth going into anymore. They've they've said it so many times about every generation. It's like I did find this article about millennial lifestyle subsidy ends to be interesting. And I I'll read a little bit of it for you now because the title of the articles were like wait a minute, what So here's here's the little blurb. perennially unprofitable tech startups such as Uber and DoorDash have long subsidized their prices backed by venture capital funding in a quest for constant subscriber growth. So are the free rides now ending with the Federal Reserve raising interest rates faster and faster to head off inflation. The Halcyon Days of cheap rides and food delivery may be over for good energy inflation and rising, rising wages for lower income workers are conspiring with conspiring with the higher cost of borrowing to stick customers with the full bill are used Eric Thompson in a piece in the Atlantic and quote, I do find it intriguing that here we go, we're in a recession. And the side panel of LinkedIn wants to beat up on the millennial and Gen Z years. And I just thought to myself, Well, I wonder why that would be. And I want you to ask yourself the same question. There are going to be people out on the job market. Now they're out in the work world that we're not privy if we can call it that to the hellscape. That was the Great Recession of Oh, eight to about 2010. They were living, there were kids, they were living at home with mom and dad, they weren't out in the workforce yet. And they probably just don't understand the full extent of what it was like, in the same way that I can't understand the full extent of what it was like to live during the Great Depression, because I was not around in the 1930s to have that experience firsthand. They don't know what they don't know. And I'm going to repeat something that I have said before in my blogs and on this podcast, which is you need to get really freakin intentional and strategic about who you're listening to who you're getting your cues from whose information you choose to believe. I am not a financial planner, economist, attorney snower of all wisdom, etc. So please don't mistake my podcasts or my blog for me giving you official advice. I'm putting things out there for your entertainment only and for your possibly to use information for your decision making. And that's it. So whether we're talking about so called experts or whether we're talking about the person on the street, you want to be careful and strategic about who you're taking your cues from, because my LinkedIn feed is still littered with Bs nonsense. And that's all it is. You know, over on Patreon, I released an episode called the LinkedIn feed and Idiocracy. And that's pretty much where we're at. And I see posts all the time about pandering. That's all it is. They're telling people what they think the audience wants to hear. It's like bread and circus really, in my mind, oh, the 40 hour work week is barbaric. We shouldn't even be doing it anymore. We should hold fast and demand high wages, even though recession. We shouldn't allow corporations to try to cut wages to deal with the recession. We just all should have one big mutiny. We should demand this, we should demand that. And I'm sitting here, you know, scratching my head going, Lord have mercy. Because there's going to be some people that just get slapped down hard by corporate America. Am I saying it's right? Hell no. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that's reality. Do we live in a perfect world? We surely do not, I would invite you to go to YouTube and listen to that old Huey Lewis and the new song Perfect World. Keep on dreaming of living in a perfect world because there ain't no perfect world anyway, that's not the situation that we're in. So if you're sitting around, you sort of head in the clouds idealistic. I don't know that this is the time for that. I definitely don't think it's time for hashtag good vibes only. I think it's time to get strategic and to look out for yourself and your family. As I'm sitting here right now, recording this Thursday portion of this broadcast that I'm going to release on Saturday, there is a report on the local news about how the housing market is still going strong. Even though things might cool off soon, things are still going strong. The Fed is bumped up interest rates and mortgages are you know, higher than they've been in years and years and years. But the housing market remains strong. And they have a realtor who you know, maybe she just has a really good skincare regime. I don't know to me, she looks like she's 14 years old. And she's on the TV telling everybody Oh, you know, we're still in She talks like a Kardashian. Sorry, she does. Oh, we're still really behind on the number of houses that will meet the demand. And I mean, we're still closing deals, and I'm just sitting there, like, okay, okay, you know, y'all can play games if y'all want to, but you know, I know ne ne ne ne so be careful who you're listening to who you're taking your cues from, especially if that person has a vested interest in selling you something. Well, we've made it now to Friday evening and unless something happens in the overnight hours, which I won't be able to cover because I've got to get This out for publication. Here's the top headlines though the wonderful news of the LinkedIn side panel workers out of stock at Amazon. SpaceX fires Musk critics. Most CEOs see recession poll shows. Tesla prices surge American volunteers missing in Ukraine. Another crypto lender orders freeze, Starbucks app hobbled by tech issues, not great headlines. So under the headline most COC recession poll shows, I'll read the blurb for you hear the proportion of CEOs around the world who think a recession is looming has surged to 60% from 22% late last year and 39% at the end of 2020. The boomerang and expectations for economic contraction tracks a battle against rising consumer prices that has become more pitched. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday hiked interest rates by the most in almost 30 years, lifting them point seven 5%. As it said it was becoming more difficult to avoid slower growth in the fight against inflation. The Conference Board survey shows 15% of global executives think the economy in their region has already begun to shrink and quote, so the 15% who are telling you it's already shrunk in their area are the ones that are on the ball, or they're at least the ones that are willing to be candid about it. Personally, again, I'm not an economist don't sit on the World Economic Forum and not a power broker. Me personally, I think we're already in a recession. And as I've said many times I'm not sure what it is that you're waiting for. Who if you if you want Moses to come down from Mount Sinai or you want the Lord to come down and tell you okay, we aren't, we aren't now in a recession. thou shouldest prepare it unless that's what you're waiting for. Like I'm not sure what other signs and signals you need. If you zoom over to CNBC, you'll find headlines such as s&p 500 rises slightly on Friday, but still posts worst week since 2020. Bricks drops 10s of 1000s of small business customers as Silicon Valley adjust to new reality. We also find Bank of America economist says his worst fears around the Fed have been confirmed. So we want to consume the news without allowing the news to consume us. We want to sort of take a look at this and say alright, this is information for my decision making. It's something that I can take from it what I will, in order to help me plan ahead for the future. Hopefully, we don't want to get panicked. We don't want to say the sky is falling zombies are getting ready to eat your brains. But we do want to think about what could happen what kind of poopoo storm might be brewing in the future. Earlier today, I released a blog post called toxic positivity and your LinkedIn feed and the opening paragraph of that blog I want to read for you now. This is the time to get strategic on who you listen to and who you get your advice from. The saying I've been using in my household is let's consume the news but don't allow it to consume us. There is plenty of strange baloney going on around the interwebs these days. Everything from nothing to see here, Move along, move along to the world is dying. We are entering Mad Max or Escape from New York, everyone will get their brains eaten by zombies. As per usual, I tend to think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I want to caution you against listening to people who are on either side of the extremes as well as people that just want to do hashtag good vibes only job market still really strong 10s of jobs open like oh my God, be careful with that. You know, I cannot sit here and tell you who to listen to and who not to listen to but I can say you know what, use good use good judgment. Use good critical thinking. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is not everything that glitters is gold. So I think moving forward, one of the things that's going to be so important is who you decide to listen to and who you decide to saddle up with. As we go into whatever type of recession or poopoo storm we're getting ready to face I have no idea how deep and wide the recession will be. I have no idea how long lasting it will be how many people will be impacted by it. Is this a blip on the radar and my spidey senses are all like ooh, you know I have the Peter Parker Peter tingle about this. I really do. I go a lot on my gut instincts as well as the job market because I've been in it for so long. I have pretty good sense of when the when the poop and the job storms getting ready to hit the fan. And I think we're seeing the beginning stages of it. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. But I'm not going to sit here and say well, you need to only saddle up with me you need to only listen to this podcast. I have all the answers all I surely do not know I do not know I don't have all the answers. I probably have a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of them at best. But I feel that I'm self aware enough to know that you know, some of these people, the so called influencers on social media and LinkedIn commentators, they're just panderers. They're trying to tell people what they think those people want to hear. So be insightful and incisive, about who you're listening to and who you're taking your cues from right now. You know, you you have your own best interest and your family's best interests at heart. If you're spiritual, pray on it. If you're not meditate, listen to your higher self. Try to get in touch with your own gut instincts and get a read for what you think is getting ready to happen. In the meantime, stay alert, stay safe, and I will see you in the next episode.