Saturday Broadcast 61

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news, 8/13-8/18.
✔️ While y'all were losing yer minds over a country song and a movie, Fitch was talking about downgrading more banks, maybe even JPMorgan Chase. Does it ever seem like these neocon vs neolib stories are meant to be ridiculous distractions from real news?
✔️ Developers want to scoop up Hawaiian lands post wildfires. I can almost hear a sound in the background... "You vill own nozing und you vill be happy..."
✔️Maxed out credit cards, pay debt or buy food, etc. Does that sound like a resilient economy to you?

Links:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/13/56-percent-of-student-loan-borrowers-will-have-to-choose-loans-or-necessities.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/young-adults-are-more-reliant-on-credit-cards-than-ever-before-172038233.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-are-still-ransacking-their-retirement-savings-134840735.html
https://survivingtomorrow.org/hyper-elites-are-desperate-for-a-recession-because-they-want-to-buy-your-assets-for-cheap-1e8800f836
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/apple-maps-looks-to-post-car-future-6389410/
https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/07/18/hey-remember-when-i-predicted-this/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/14/retail-earnings-preview-wmt-tgt-hd-to-report-q2-results.html
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/goldman-rate-relief-finally-coming-5731812/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/14/kraft-heinz-picks-new-ceo-carlos-abrams-rivera-to-replace-miguel-patricio.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/14/ubs-to-pay-1point4-billion-for-fraud-in-mortgage-backed-securities.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-plans-replace-nearly-8-174052360.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-broke-robert-kiyosaki-warns-155155342.html
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/regular-rich-are-feeling-poorer-5419505/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/15/fitch-warns-it-may-be-forced-to-downgrade-dozens-of-banks.html
https://tinyurl.com/yuhaypzh
https://tinyurl.com/2s4485n3
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-pre-pandemic-economy-may-never-come-back-morning-brief-100020697.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-resilient-us-consumer-could-complicate-the-feds-path-forward-093037908.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cracks-starting-show-kevin-oleary-161152429.html
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/us-economy-continues-to-surprise-6399234/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQIoWu19O5w
https://tinyurl.com/mrm6fdfz
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-challenge-for-homebuyers-more-investors-are-snapping-up-homes-and-40-of-them-are-using-cash-f979e772
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/investors-are-betting-its-1998-not-2007-morning-brief-123335648.html
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/savings-depletion-signals-slowdown-5413225/
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/fed-still-hawkish-on-inflation-5419529/
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/us-plans-imported-food-can-tariffs-5743324/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-how-4-retail-ceos-are-feeling-about-back-to-school-shopping-181742759.html
https://tinyurl.com/2xvcusd5
https://tinyurl.com/2s3wtj8p
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/goldman-sachs-no-longer-expects-us-home-prices-to-decline-in-2023-122047056.html
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/hotels-tours-feel-us-travel-slump-5739900/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/death-entire-financial-monetary-social-180841464.html

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

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

Transcript

Saturday Broadcast 61

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, year, money, economy, article, inflation, find, pay, point, pandemic, read, student loan payments, recession, great, rate, live, told, high, soft landing

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 Sunday, August 13. Getting started just a little bit earlier this week. This morning on CNBC, I saw when student loan payments resumed 56% of borrowers say they'll have to choose between their debt and buying groceries. Folks, this cannot be the sign of a resilient economy. People are doing great churning and burning. This is not a good indicator to me. In this we read federal student loan payments are coming back and they're going to wreak havoc on borrowers budgets. Interest accruals resume on September 1 and payments will be due in October for the first time in over three years. But over half of borrowers 56% say they will be forced to choose between making their loan payment or covering necessities like rent and groceries when the pandemic forbearance ends according to a new survey from Credit Karma. The finding is in line with what the Biden administration and many experts have long feared, though the brunt of the pandemic is in the rearview mirror, and inflation is down from his meteoric rise last year. Resuming student loan payments is likely going to hurt millions of households that had found some financial security over the past three years. cutting back on non essential spending will be the most typical way borrowers will adjust to make their student loan payments according to Credit Karma, but there are only so many expenses you can eliminate. And under this the heading is even higher earners will struggle when payments resumed. Nearly half of borrowers expect to go delinquent. Wow. But churning environment, people are doing great. I want you to think about this article as I go through the others that I'm going to point out in today's broadcast because I believe they're interwoven. on Yahoo Finance, we find young adults are more reliant on credit cards that ever before. Also, this cannot be a good sign. This to me doesn't scream churning and burning resilient economy, but a robust labor market. In this we read the countdown until the student loan payment pauses lifted in October is ticking. And some experts worry that once payments resume and a younger Americans will find it harder to dig themselves out of credit card debt. About 53% of millennials and 41% of Gen Z respondents said they were more reliant on credit cards than ever before this summer. According to a recent study by Quicken, Inc. The survey which consisted of 1002 credit card holders in June found that 38% Were using credit cards to make ends meet. Think about that more than a third of the respondents were using credit cards just to make ends meet. Another 35% of Americans said they believe they would max out at least one of their credit cards by the end of the year the study found regardless of their income level. The results are concerning what experts said especially with credit card interest rates hovering over 20% the end of the pandemic or a student loan forbearance this fall could worsen the financial stability of younger adults and quote, okay, keep keep holding these articles together got the student loan payment resumption coming up and 56% of respondents are saying they'll have to choose between paying off that debt or buying groceries and paying rent. You have young adults that are more reliant on credit cards than they ever have been 35% of the respondents saying they plan on maxing out one of their cards regardless of income level. Just keep all of these things in the back of your mind. Also on Yahoo Finance, we find Americans are still ransacking their retirement savings. The number of workers losing their retirement savings is escalating. In the second quarter, the tally of folks taking hardship withdrawals from their 401k was up 12% compared to the first three months of the year and leaped 36% year over year, according to a new survey from Bank of America, which tracks about 4 million 4 million clients Employee Benefits Program. Borrowing from retirement savings was also up the percentage of 401k participants who got a loan from their workplace workplace plan stash in the second quarter was 2.5% up from 1.9% in the first three months of the year. Experts are worried that people are beginning to treat these accounts as savings rather than retirement accounts, and may even be spurred to do more in the future due to a change in the law that could end up having the opposite effect that intended in quote, yeah, I don't know about that. Because again, keep all of these things in mind. student loan payments are going to resume, people are talking about having to choose between that, versus rent or groceries. But hey, there's only so many essential or non essential expenses you can cut before you've cut all the way down to the bone. Young adults are more reliant on credit cards than ever and 35% of people, regardless of income, say they're gonna max out at least one credit card, people are writing their 401 K. And even though there's this law that's supposed to encourage you to leave that money in your retirement account, it kind of like seems to be having the opposite effect, so that people are treating their retirement fund more like it's just a garden variety savings account. Mm hmm. I wonder what's up with that. On LinkedIn this morning, I saw Apple Maps looks to postcard future. In that we read Apple Maps is beginning to find its way. The much maligned app endured a bumpy launch in 2012 that had users frequently getting lost and forced the company to apologize and install Google Maps has the iPhones default map. Since then, the changes have been Stark, Apple toil to vastly improve accuracy and directions according to the Guardian. In fact, Apple may now have an edge over Google Maps on directions for cycling and public transportation. Yet Apple still has to improve maps when it comes to navigating areas beyond cities notes, The Guardian. Apple's focus on cycling and public transit mapping is deliberate. long pause there. Apple's focus on cycling and public transit mapping is deliberate. According to Eddy Cue Apple's Apple's Senior Vice President of services, most people think of maps as driving but they play a much bigger role than that Q says noting their outsized role in dining, cycling and air travel in quote. Okay, so let's let's think about all of these things. You might be wondering what is Apple Maps wanting everybody to just walk and cycle everywhere? Does that have to do with the the other things? Even though we're reading these articles on mainstream media news sources, if I get out here and I say you've unknotting a duvet be happy. That's just a conspiracy theory. You must be so stupid that you think the moon is made out of cheese. Okay, I want to revisit the article from Jared de Brock that I have talked about and probably linked to a bazillion times, if he's keeping track, he's probably like, Man, I'm getting a lot of referrals just from this one particular human. In his article, hyper elites are desperate for recession because they want to buy your assets for cheap, which I believe is the case here. In this we read interest rate hikes in particular have all sorts of wonderful benefits for the parasite class. It means we have to pay private banksters more money to service the national debt, which was largely created by corporatist politicians, and insurance banksters enjoy record profits from all that extra unearned interest they take off of us. It ensures we can afford to buy less which decreases purchasing demand, which counter intuitively is a good thing for corporations when they can't deliver in times of supply chain upheaval. Nevermind our health, safety and well being. It ensures that millions of people will lose their jobs as the economy contracts and small businesses shudder. This is great news for mega corporations who would otherwise see their stock price suffer due to paying real living wages. But with millions of people freshly out of work, laborers who are desperate for work will compete against each other, thus keeping wages lower than the cost of living. Best of all interest rate hikes ensure millions of people no longer qualify for loans and mortgages because there's no way they could pay back the elevated interest payments. All of this will have the great and glorious cumulative effect of plunging the nation into a brutal and prolonged recession.

Yeah, I agree. I'm gonna scoot down just a little bit more in this article and read again, the Fed will on your behalf, of course create trillions by buying securities from their bankster buddies and depositing the funds with their bankster buddies. Those banks will then do two things with all that money. One, they might buy up cheap assets, including your former home, typically in the form of mortgage backed securities, too. They will definitely loan money to their corporate buddies who will use it to buy up cheap assets, including your former home. The corporate controlled media will then kick into overdrive excitedly announcing that the economy is in recovery because stock prices are rising and house prices are rising. But you and I will know the truth and quote that is if you have ears to hear if you're listening if you are paying attention to hot air hopium and nonsense on social media. And this information is hitting you off guard. Wow. Just wow. We're continuing to see articles about people getting laid off and then saying, it took a lot longer to find something than I was expecting where I'm applying and applying and nobody's calling me back and I don't get it. Or people saying I just graduated from college and I can't find anything, even though I've applied for all of these dozens upon dozens of jobs. On the one hand, yes, I do have sympathy for people, because I understand the mainstream narrative 3.5% unemployment rate to open jobs for every one unemployed person. Nobody wants to work anymore. People are flush with cash from the stimulus, money, churning and burden doing great. At the same time, I don't have sympathy because it's like, I have been on the airwaves for over a year now. And I have been on my blogs for longer than that, trying to tell people cockadoodledoo here's your wake up call. And as I've said before, at this point, I'm not continuing to record the Saturday broadcast for people in the hopes that they will wake up in the hopes that they've been in la la land, they believe these mainstream narratives probably to their own detriment, and now they're looking around going, Oh, shit. I don't believe these narratives anymore. And I need some help. Maybe that one in a million person tunes in and that's great. But it's really more for those of us who already have an eye towards emergency preparedness. And we're trying as best we can together to just make sense to read the tea leaves and read between the lines and figure out what actually is going on here. What actually is true. What are the most likely scenarios not Mad Max in the Thunderdome? Not zombies eating your brains are all of Western civilization collapses on the same day, and we're instantaneously put back in the stone age. But what happens if we have a 2008? What happens if we have a 1982? What happens if we have a god? I hope not. And another Great Depression that goes on for the better part of a decade. What then? What if all of these geopolitical dust UPS turn into a full on world war three? Again, I hope not I pray not. But I'm here really to talk to people who are already at least somewhat tuned in to reality. My hope for people they're like we're due I just don't understand what's going on here. I don't understand why I don't have a 3.5% unemployment rate. I don't get it. Like, my sympathy for those people has waned. I know I'll get hate mail for saying that. Because in the current times, you're supposed to feel sorry for everybody all the time. Nobody is supposed to have any kind of personal responsibility, critical thinking or personal accountability. No matter how ridiculous and avoidable a predicament is, you're supposed to feel sorry for the person who didn't plan to hit you. Nowadays, the narrative is you should feel sorry for the grasshopper that saying all summer. Instead of prepping, you should just feel sorry for the people who didn't prep. I'm like, well, that only goes so far. So let's let's think about all of these things put together, you have student loan payments resuming at 56% of borrowers saying they're going to have to choose between paying that debt or taking care of necessities, you have young people saying they're more reliant on credit cards than they have been before. And 35% of the respondents saying they plan on maxing out at least one of the credit cards this year, regardless of their income level. You have people rating their retirement savings and treating that money that's supposed to help them get by and old age more like it's a garden variety savings account. To me, this is just further evidence of what Jared a broth is talking about in this article. Go ahead and drive yourself deeper and deeper in debt. Get yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. So that when the hyper elites come for your stuff, it's easy. It's like taking candy from a baby. It's easy for them to take your stuff. Then we have on LinkedIn, Apple Maps looks to a post car future and they openly say it is by design. We want you to focus on cycling and public transit. Yeah. So you know, I talked about the 15 Minute city. And I've also talked about the idea of a 15 second prison, where you live on one of the upper floors of the office building and then you just simply ride the elevator down. When it's time to go to work. You're not going to have any justification to quote work from home because you're in the building. I've talked about that before it oh, that's just a conspiracy theory. That's crazy. That's kooky. All of that stuff seems to To be crazy and cuckoo bird until it freakin happens. And I wrote about this, because on LinkedIn, they talked about Boston testing out an office conversion point where they would have, like, the conversion of commercial real estate space into something residential, so that you can have this Reza mercial mix of like a hybrid space, is it office? Is it an apartment is it both and I'm like, I freaking predicted this. It's it's not a conspiracy theory, if it's true, if it's real. Oh, like beating my head against my kneecap. But that see, that's what I'm saying. Trying to get people who are so far up, they're all behind whether they're Neo cons or Neo lives left as right as it doesn't really matter to me six, one half a dozen of the other, trying to get people out of their own partisan BS and trying to get the toxic positivity crowd to stop smoking hopium that they've read on social media. That's a fool's errand. It is. I know that sounds dystopian. I know that sounds bad. But I'm like, most people just don't care. Now, they will care down the road, if they lose their house, if they lose the apartment, they lose the car. And they do get put into a UVA nursing interview be happy situation where they're living in a pod and eating a cricket burger. But I really don't think they'll be unhappy for that long. I think after a certain adjustment period, it's going to be like, well, this is the reality now. Anywhere I need to go is walkable or bicycle bubble. And I can just pull up Apple Maps and find the nearest clinic or the nearest dental office, the nearest grocery store where I get an allotment of what I'm supposed to buy for the week. That's politically correct now. Judge for yourself. At the very least, I would ask you when you're seeing all of this information about people expecting to max out their credit card and being more reliant on credit than they ever have been people living in fear of their student loan payments resuming in October because they're going to have to make a choice about necessity items, people writing their 401k account and borrowing against their own retirement but not really kind of giving a shit that they're doing that. At the very least I want you to ask yourself. Do these signs tell me that we've got a resilient economy? Do these signs tell me that people are churning and burning and doing great?

Today it is Monday, August 14 on CNBC. Today we find four reasons why the consumer is so confusing. And what that may mean for retail earnings, high food prices, low unemployment, and eye popping spending on concert tickets and European trips. Retailers are chasing shoppers as they navigate contradictory dynamics like cooling inflation, rising interest rates, and Pandemic induced jolts to the way people live work and shop that has made it tricky to predict consumer spending. This swirl of confusing trends tees up a closely watched retail earning season that could offer more clarity about consumers and the economy. Home Depot Target and Walmart will kick it off this week, followed by other major retailers like Lowe's Best Buy and Macy's. The reports comments opinions about the economy have grown more optimistic. Economists at Bank of America and JP Morgan recently scrapped calls for a recession this year. Wall Street investors have rallied behind calls for a soft landing or a successful effort by the Federal Reserve to slow down the economy and higher prices by raising rates but without tipping the country into a sharp economic downturn. Yet, concerns linger. Credit Suisse's global equity strategist Andrew garthwaite predicted in a note to clients last week that the US economy will head into a recession next year and drag down stocks in quote. So one thing that's worth pointing out there is in a note to clients, so not necessarily something for the unwashed masses john and jane Q Public before actual clients of Credit Suisse, their global equity strategist is saying, hey, wink wink nudge nudge. The prediction for me is still that the US economy is going to head into a recession and it's gonna drag down stocks. Is this information really that confusing? Is it really that conflicting? Not necessarily, in my mind? No. We have always had people that are in the Yolo and FOMO mentality even before we had those terms in our vernacular, you always knew about the grasshopper that sang all summer. There are people that just they have it in their mind that it is owed to them. They are owed a summer Time vacation. And I've also said on the broadcast before, a lot of these people will blame it on the kids. Some of these people have kids that are the type that they play more with the box that the toy came in than they play with the toy. But yet, they'll look at the same kids and be like, well, they're going to be mad if we don't go to Disney, they're going to be mad if we don't get on an airplane and fly someplace fancy. Meanwhile, you know, it's the adults that are the ones that want to do that it's really not about the kids at all. It's about the adults pushing their own agenda yet using the kids as a, quote, reason to go do it. So yeah, you're gonna have people that will put expensive concert tickets or European trips on a credit card, and well, we'll pay it back somehow. I don't really know right now, but somehow we'll pay it back towards ever does. I don't really think that that's a surprise, especially during the summer months. Now, in an analogous article, in my opinion over on LinkedIn, we find Goldman says rate really finally coming. Now why do I say that that's an analogous article, because they're talking in this article on CNBC about successful effort by the Federal Reserve to slow down the economy and higher prices by raising rates. But without tipping the country into a sharp economic downturn. We're still supposed to think that the recession has been canceled, and we're in for a soft landing and it's all going to be alright, so here we go from the side panel of LinkedIn, Goldman rate really finally coming, the Federal Reserve will likely begin cutting US interest rates by the middle of next year. According to a note written by Goldman Sachs economists. The group's predictions suggest rates will begin their gradual decline in the second quarter of 2024. A consensus is developing that the Fed will likely hold rates next month after it lifted them again last month, in reaffirming its commitment to achieving a 2% annual rate of inflation. What a joke in my opinion. Similarly, a growing number of economists now anticipate that the US will escape a recession last month, raise up the US benchmark lending rate to between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highest level in 22 years and quote, so there you go. They cannot wait to get back to quantitative easing the age of easy money, fire up the printing press and want to be able to get you further in debt. If you somehow managed to make it through this shitstorm unscathed. We want to make sure that you're eager, you are ready to stick your hand out for that easy money when it comes back. We'll see. I have no crystal ball on this one. I don't know when they will get back to quantitative easing and cutting the interest rates. I'm also skeptical about if we're going to see prices come down in any substantial way. On the last Saturday broadcast, I talked about my struggle to buy hay. Because of the weather. We've had so many thunderstorms. It's so muddy, the ground is so saturated, we're in the opposite level of problems than we had last year when it was drought and the ground was literally splitting apart from the heat and the dryness. People are not lowering their prices. They're not saying well, hey, we've had plenty of rain, these hay meadows and hay stands are putting on grass almost faster than we can cut it. So we're in good shape. No, hell no. Some of these people are charging the same price they did during the drought. And some of these people don't wanted to curse there, but I'll keep it clean some of these people, some of these opportunities are charging more money this year. Why? Because they know you're going to pay it. They know you're going to pay it so I'm like, what prices will come down and what prices won't. Okay, on that note, let's go back to CNBC. Kraft Heinz picks new CEO as sales slump in the face of higher prices and the TLDR key points there and we find Kraft Heinz has tapped Carlos Abrams Rivera, the company's North American president as its next chief executive effective January 1, the food giant has seen demand for its product slump as budget conscious shoppers shy away from its higher prices. current CEO Miguel Patricio will stay on as chair of the board after stepping down in quote. So for some items, maybe they will come down out of necessity as a consumer saying we refuse to pay the price anymore. With something like hey, I mean, it is what it is. You might be able to deal with different suppliers, different sellers and you might be able to haggle with some of them. So if your supplier is being too greedy and you feel like you just can't afford their price you might be able to look elsewhere. But with something like cheese, for example, if you go in and say Something named brand is so expensive, you can't afford it. But something is off brand or store brand is within your price point. It's a no brainer. Also on CNBC, we find UBS to pay $1.4 billion over fraud in residential mortgage backed securities. Oh, there's some more flashback for you and like, oh 70809 in the TLDR key points, UBS will pay $1.4 billion settlement over legacy misconduct related to the bank's offer and sale of residential mortgage backed securities. federal prosecutor said it's the final case brought by prosecutors over misconduct by the big banks. The Justice Department alleged that the banks knew the mortgages underneath the securities were problematic or non compliant, but sold them anyway and quote. Welcome back to the Great Recession, y'all, you are alive and well you remember, on Yahoo Finance today, we find IBM plans to replace nearly 8000 jobs with AI. These jobs are the first to go broke.

In this we read IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced a hiring pause in May. But that's not all. Later that month. The CEO also stated The company plans to replace nearly 8000 jobs with AI. Krishna noted that back office functions specifically in the human resources sector will be the first to face these changes. In recent weeks, the company has opened up dozens of positions for AI based roles to help develop and maintain these systems. The transition will happen gradually over the next few years with machines potentially taking over up to 30% of non customer facing roles in the next five years. This means that workers and finance accounting HR and other areas will likely find themselves facing stiff competition from robots and algorithms and quote, one of the worst things that you can do, in my opinion, when you you see a headline like that, one of the worst things that you can do is to sit back with your arms crossed and say hello just never happened to me. That's an IBM that no just never happen to me. Even though I'm in accounting, or I'm in finance, or I'm in HR, I'm in a non customer facing role who doesn't love or I had a mansplain or actually, I had to know I'm thinking about there was one man splitter who was trying to write me a shop d'oeuvre about how he did not think that AI was an existential threat. And I'm like, what, what planet are you on? First of all, I don't care to have war and peace on this topic. But the second thing is what? What planet are you on? You must really live in some utopia in your mind. It must be a really fun place. I guess. I had another one that got mad at me because it was one of the articles I posted that quoted Noah Harare, where he's talking about the useless classes and people spending their time in the virtual world. Like, you're not going to have anything to do. And you would go mad with the boredom and the onwy. So you can go into virtual reality to escape everything. And this person was like, they didn't they didn't say that's just a conspiracy theory. It was more like, well, that's just overblown. I don't think that's ever gonna happen. I think that's looking at AI in the worst way possible. And yet again, I'm like, What planet are you on? Because in the article that I quoted, he says, people will say this is like crying wolf. But what you have to remember is that in that parable, the wolf actually does show up. They're not exactly concealing the agenda here of UVA nursing and UVB epi. Some people they're just gonna get steamrolled. I know that sounds rude. I know it sounds bad. I know it sounds dystopian. I'm just trying to frickin tell you what, what I see as the truth. Also on Yahoo Finance today, we find America is broke. Robert Kiyosaki warns that a crash landing is coming says the Fed has been smoking fantasy weed. Wow, that that might even be better than my analogy of smoking. hopium smoking fantasy weed. The US stock market showed impressive gains in 2023 and the latest gross domestic product figure exceeded expectations. But according to Rich Dad, Poor Dad, author Robert Kiyosaki the picture might not be as rosy as it appears. I'm gonna butt in and say you don't have to be Robert Kiyosaki to realize that the picture might not be as rosy as as it appears Okay. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. No, they know the stock market is up because Biden raise the debt ceiling. America's debt is going up. So stock market is going up. He wrote in a recent tweet America is broke. The author's concern about America's escalating debt was echoed by Fitch Ratings. Shortly after that tweet Fitch downgraded the United States long term foreign currency issuer default rating from its highest triple A rating to a plus. The credit rating agency pointed to expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years and a high and growing general government debt burden and an erosion of governance as reasons behind the decision. While some experts expect a soft landing for the US economy Kiyosaki is less optimistic for shoe to drop Fitch rating services downgrades us credit rating from triple A to double A plus brace for crash landing he tweeted, sorry for the bad news yet. I have been warning for over a year the Fed Treasury big corporate CEOs have been smoking fantasy weed. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. But I think you're, it's it's a good potential guidepost, if nothing else, the credit rating agency has said expect fiscal deterioration over the next three years at a bare minimum. If it were me, I don't give you advice. And I won't tell you what to do or what not to do. But if it were me, I would hear something like that. And I would think, okay, at a bare minimum, we're getting, like a nudge, nudge in the direction of be prepared for three years of shit. Be prepared for the Pope to hit the fan and have three years of an unpleasant go of it. I would much rather be ready than to be not ready. I don't sit out here with some delusion of grandeur. I don't. I was staffing and recruiting smeet. That's how I've made my bones for quite a while and I'm good at it. Nevertheless, does that mean that some companies wouldn't try to replace me with a bot? Of course they would. I may have to figure out some other way to earn a living besides this just like a lot of people. But I would sit around and go it just never occurred to me. I'm just special ever happened. Learn? No. And when I read something like this, I think okay, so this, this credit issuing agency is saying fiscal deterioration over the next three years government debt burden and erosion of governance. Damn, we may be in for three or four years of a nightmare. Not a complete nightmare. Okay, not zombies out in the street eating your brains Mad Max Thunderdome of Western society, collapsing overnight, et cetera, et cetera. But just a tough go of it something along the lines of a great recession 2.0 I would much rather plan for that. And then it doesn't happen than to not plan for it and to be left. On the side panel for LinkedIn today, we also find regular rich are feeling poor. Inflation and a growing perception that real wealth requires more money now have made many regular rich people such as doctors and lawyers feel poor. A Bloomberg survey of Americans who earn at least 175k A year found that 25% felt they were not well off, while half described themselves as merely comfortable. The dissatisfaction of the mass affluent might seem like a rich person's problem. But it hints at a potential breakdown at the heart of American capitalism writes Bloomberg, the desire to stretch incomes is driving many to relocate and continuing to fuel a movement out of cities that began during the pandemic. A comparison tool based on census bureau data shows how much further incomes can go in different parts of the country, unquote. Yeah, I don't know, man, I don't know. I'm trying to think if I want to put my tinfoil hat on here or not. It's not surprising that that half of these respondents would say 175k years what it takes to merely feel comfortable. For some people, I also think it depends on the size of your family, it's going to depend on how many children you have, what their age range is, are they at a point where they can have a part time job and kind of you can teach them that responsibility of how to budget their money, which, okay, I don't give you advice, I won't tell you what to do, just from from my personal parenting notions. That's really important. Because kids in school don't get the education that they ought to have about finances and economics and how to how to make sure that your bank account balances and how credit cards actually work. So I think it's good once they're once they're of age, and they're able to have a part time job and then to be responsible with that money. Yes, allow some leeway for them to do fun things or to be stupid with it here and there. Because we've we've all been there and done that. It's good for them to learn from those mistakes. But teach them give them that opportunity. So I think I think part of this depends on Well How many children do you have? Are they working by Are you helping them with their budget? Or are you just continuing to give them an allowance so that they can buy whatever the hell they want, then when they get out into the real world, they're going to think that the world owes that to them. What's the situation here? So there are things that are not necessarily being accounted for in the survey, we don't know all of the details. But I would agree with the overall idea that this dissatisfaction that somebody can have close to 200 grand a year, and either feel poor, or feel like they're barely making it, they're comfortable, but only just that tells you right there, how jacked up, the inflation is how much it costs just to live just to exist, it's absurd. If I were going to put on my tinfoil hat, I would say, so then what happens to the people that are left behind in those cities. If you have people that our middle class,

upper middle class, however, we want to label these folks that are making their exodus out of the cities, if they all wind up in the suburbs, and in rural areas, then you have working poor people that are left in the cities. Um, maybe I'll just put on my entire tinfoil hat and tinfoil suit and get in the tinfoil cave. I'm just wondering out loud does it then make it easier for the hyperlinks and the fat cats to do their 15 minute city, we are the people that are left behind, you don't really have any options here. You can't uproot yourself and go somewhere else. So you're going to have to be the guinea pigs for this 15 minute city. And we're going to tell you how wonderful it is. Everything will be a lot more economical, everything will be within your reach. But we're not going to tell you about any of the downsides of that. I think it's food for thought. Unfortunate calm today, there was a commentary article titled The Great reshuffle is over. Welcome to the Big stay. I'll be talking about that more on the job market journal this week, probably on Friday. But I'm like, Well, yeah. Do you think I've said it before, I will say it again, before I sign off on the segment. You've got to get strategic about who you're listening to. and for what reason. But even beyond that, as dour and sour and dystopian as this is going to sound. I think it's too late. For a lot of people if they have listened to the hot air and hopium crowd, if they really believe 3.5% unemployment rate to legit open jobs for everyone unemployed person, great resignation is going to last forever. You can hippity hop across that market YOLO and FOMO. And who cares, burn those bridges. If somebody listened to that, and they're only just now they're only just now today on August 14 of 2023. Looking at an article and going oh shit. You mean that's over with? You mean, I should think about actually planning routes and staying at a job? Wow. In my opinion, which could be wrong, in my opinion, somebody like that. They're effed. They're, they're so far behind other individuals who prepped and who saw this coming from a mile down the road. I'm not really sure what they could do at this point to meaningfully prepare. If that offends you. I'm sorry. Just speaking the truth as I see it. Today, it is Tuesday, August 15. This month is trucking right along. Not a complaint, mind you, merely an observation. I know that we're supposed to have some more 100 degree, like dog days of summer type days before it's finally done. But this morning, it was really great. It was in the 60s and it was merciful. It felt so good to be outside again. We typically along about maybe mid to late October, depending on how long that he really decides to hang on. Mendeley October is when we, in this part of the Midwest start to consistently see like 60 degree type days, 40 degree type nights, and it feels so good. You can go outside and put a jacket on, you can be outside for a prolonged period of time and you don't want to spontaneously combust. So this morning, it was like oh, yes, falling in. Please, please let us just get through the rest of the summer. I'm also finally beginning to hear some good news after sweating it out worrying and having some stress over it. I'm finally starting to hear some good news from the people I buy hay from. We're supposed to knock on one supposed to have a dry spell for we hope long enough for hay to get cut, bailed and delivered before the next round of rains come in. To be determined, of course but at least there's more of a game plan. Now we're starting to hear from the folks that do this work for us of when they intend to be here again if everything goes to plan. So that is a tremendous relief. I am I'm so ready for fall. And for that matter even though I'm having to prep for the winter. I'm a okay with the winter to at this point, nobody really knows in this part of the Midwest, we always wind up being like the no man's land or the battleground. Is it going to be cold? Is it going to be mild? Is it going to be warm? I know for Texas, they've been talking about snow storms ice storms, relentless cold. For us further up. I don't know. I'm really don't know what's going to happen. But obviously, when you are involved in agriculture, you have to plan for the worst case scenario. What if we had blizzards? What if we had snow schools? I have to be ready for that. And then if we don't have those things, it's okay. I would rather have more than enough than to be really struggling because then your animals suffer and for me, that's just not an option. So I'm I'm so glad that we're edging closer believe me. Over on CNBC today, we find downfalls nearly 300 points as banking sector concerns and weak China data overhang. Regional Banks slide after Feds Kashkari advocates significantly further capital regulation. We also find this little juicy tidbit, Fitch warns that may be forced to downgrade dozens of banks including JPMorgan Chase, what the what was like the scene in the movie where the record skips and everybody in the club looks around? Because we've heard all these stories about how profitable and how solvent JPMorgan Chase's they're doing great, huh. And the TLDR key points for this. We read Fitch Ratings cut its assessment of the banking industries held in June. A move that analysts Chris wolf said went largely unnoticed because it didn't trigger downgrades on banks. But another one notch downgrade of the industry score from double A minus to a plus would force Fitch to reevaluate, re evaluate ratings on each of the more than 70 US banks that covers wolf totes told CNBC. If we were to move it to a plus, then that would recalibrate all our financial measures and would probably translate into negative rating actions, we'll set a quote, went largely unnoticed. Imagine that. Whatever. Beyond totally getting the tinfoil hat on here, I need to be super careful about how I say this. Whenever there's some BS crisis, some overblown, something to be outraged. I'm using air quotes here outraged over, in my opinion, which could be wrong. You always have to think about what is it that's actually going on in the news cycle? What is it that's actually going on in the world that we're not supposed to know about? We're not supposed to pay attention to. So while people the Neo cons and the Neo lives were getting one another inflamed about some country song, and some movie, oh, they they're turning the air conditioner off in this movie, or they're messing with the lights and it's there to conspiracy against us. They don't want us to see this film. He was like, isn't that film about somebody that wasn't government agent? Don't you have to have like the permission of the government to tell stories about government agents? I'm just saying him high. Right. But yeah, okay. Sure. Well, you had the Neo cons and the Neo libs.

Trading jabs with one another about a country song and a movie. It's like Hello, banking downgrades, maybe even for a bank the size of JP Morgan Chase, not to mention all of the movement that's been put in towards CBDCs and fed now and digital currencies. But sure, spend your time arguing about a movie spend your time arguing about a country song and see how far that gets you. Just my opinion, which could be wrong. Unfortunate not calm. Today, we find the rich session is real. unemployment is rising for the six figure salary set Bank of America data shows I'm limited on how much of this I can see before I hit a paywall. And I'm not going to pay for the story. So the part that we can read is, by most measures, six figure earners are the elite of America's workforce. People making more than $100,000 a year were the most likely to survive the mass layoffs early in the pandemic and when weren't returned, most likely to be able to work remotely saving themselves exposure to COVID-19. And the time and money spent commuting and that's on top of the typically higher income security enjoyed by this income bracket equal as far as we can get without hitting the paywall. But is it surprising that unemployment would be going up for the six figure set? Not to me it isn't. I mean, if you look at that, just from a cold, calculating business mindset, the tallest blade of grass is the surest to get cut. Somebody that's making buku bucks is at times, not always, but at times more likely to be laid off than somebody who's working their tail off but they're not getting paid as much. I'm not telling you it's right. I'm not telling you it's fair. I'm just telling you that is the type of decision making that goes on in the business world. So again, I'm wanting to kind of hold these things together in your mind, a rich session, which I don't know that I necessarily buy into that nomenclature, but the idea of unemployment going up for the six figure salary set, that's entirely possible. Then we also have Fitch saying it may have to downgrade more banks, including one as big as JP Morgan Chase. Now, let's go over to something that may seem to be completely unrelated. on USA Today, we find Maui is not for sale survivors say developers want to buy land where their homes wants to read that headline to you again, Maui is not for sale survivors say developers want to buy land where their homes want stood. But see, if I remind you of UVA enough singer to be happy, a nation of renter's there's no need for you to own anything. You should just rent everything. Use your little digital tokens and just rent things. rent your refrigerator, rent your house, rent it all. Screw it, who cares? That's a conspiracy theory. If I point yet again, to Jared a Brock saying these hyper elites are jonesing for a recession because they want to get your assets. That's just a conspiracy theory. Right? Okay. But here are survivors of fire saying developers want to buy the land where their homes once were. Let's get into the article. Less than a week later, she said she got a Facebook message from someone in real estate residents have been warning each other on social media that developers may try to buy their land. These developers are coming for the land that has been decimated by these fires. And you might be thinking, Well, why why would they want that? Why would they want to do that? Huh? No, no, let's think about that. Many Maori residents are mourning the loss of their homes and adamantly pledging to stay put after the deadliest wildfires in US history in more than a century, destroyed neighborhoods across the island. They said they're worried if insurance payouts and government assistance don't come fast enough survivors may lose hope and sell to people who will drastically change their beloved but rapidly gentrifying community. In the days since the fires began, developers have reached out about acquiring the land they and their families have lived on for years, if not generations and quote, wow. Hmm. Right below that there's a headline will some property sales in Hawaii be banned after fires? In that little subheading, we find the government should just say no, you're not allowed to develop, say no, just flat out say no. But we live in my opinion in crony capitalism. I don't think the government is going to tell these developers they can't have that land. mean, just think about this paragraph for just a second. If the insurance payouts and government assistant don't, assistants don't come fast enough survivors may lose hope. What I would say is it's not about losing hope it's about need the money to live is so flipping expensive right now just to live. Okay, unemployment is rising for the six figure salary set. There are people remember the article I read. In an earlier segment, I recorded that people making 175k or more either feel poor or feel barely comfortable, like they're just getting by these individuals who are victims of this fire, they may not have the luxury of being able to wait around, they may not have the luxury of being able to make it a moral issue and dig their heels in they may have to take the money because that's the only option to not starve to not die. So I just want to ask the question. I'll put on my tinfoil hat, my tinfoil suit getting the tinfoil cave to do it. But like, is this accidental? long pause there isn't. Isn't you have nothing to do for be happy. developers want to get your assets they want your stuff and thinking again of Jared a Brock, they want to scoop your assets up on the cheap. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Whether we assume that all of this was accidental it was perpetrated by climate change whatever cause we want to assign to the wildfire. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Let's make sure that we get in there. And we snatch up that land so that we can do what we want to do with it. We're not going to worry about the residents who have been on that land for years. In some cases, generations, we're not going to worry about them rebuilding and going back to their traditional way of life. Screw them. We want the developers to have that land. Now what they intend to do with it once they've got it. I don't know. Maybe just hoard it, maybe turn it into a paradise For the rich people maybe use it for 15 minute cities. I don't know. I don't know what they plan on on doing it, turning it all into rental properties or God like Airbnb shit where it's like you can come to this part of Hawaii and pay through the nose to have vacation. I don't know they don't they don't pull me aside and tell me these things. I'm not part of the Bilderberg Group, and I don't sit on the web. I don't know what they plan to do. I'm just thinking like, you know, more and more, seems to me that jeredy Brock's prognostications are coming true. They want your stuff. But then if you try to warn people that that's what's going on. That's just a conspiracy theory. You must be so stupid. You think the moon is made on cheese? It's like, well, I mean, at the end of the day, this is about you. It's not about me. I feel like you know, and I could be wrong, but I tried to keep my head pulled out of my butt. I try. I tried to read the tea leaves and the preponderance of evidence and take a look at what I think is coming over the horizon. And it's just not looking good. I would love to sit here and be sunshine and roses. And yes, there are good people in the world. There are people that are doing everything they can in the midst of that crisis to help themselves out their community, really awesome stories of people, helping other people, not the government doing it. But people individual people helping one another through this crisis. There is still beauty in the world. I'm not saying it's all sour, it's all dour. What I am saying is that as it relates to these hyper elites of these banksters and the agenda that they have for the unwashed masses, it's not looking good.

Are you looking for more? Don't forget you can find Sara on her blogs at CauseyConsultingLLC.com and at SaraCausey.com. You can also read her content on Medium and Substack. On with the show.

Today it is Wednesday, August 16. Again, it is a weird strange mixed bag of tricks when it comes to mainstream media news stories, as it so often has been throughout 2023 on Yahoo Finance Today we find the pre pandemic economy may never come back. In this we read. The US economic story of the year was hammered home again on Tuesday with the July retail sales report showing consumer spending remains surprisingly resilient. Oh, there's one of those are words again, resilient. But it's important to remember that retail sales reports aren't the perfect consumer barometer as they generally underweight the biggest share of where consumer spending goes towards services rather than goods. Many readers will have seen this trend discussed as a consumer preference for experiences rather than things. During the pandemic. The predominance of services spending was challenged with travel and dining curtailed to prevent the spread of COVID while the housing market went gangbusters, indeed, all button long enough to say that I know on Scott Walters channel he's talked before about in his opinion the lunacy of declaring real estate agents essential workers to just keep that housing market churning and burning keep that bubble inflated just show houses buy video just do a video walkthrough don't even physically go and look at what you're buying. Just look at it on video, because that's always going to work out well Right. And commentary from executives at Home Depot on Tuesday suggest we may not be looking at a swift or eventual return to these pre pandemic habits. As Yahoo finance's Brooke dipalma reported Home Depot CEO Ted Decker told analysts the company doesn't know how quickly or further the share shift from goods to services in PCE will occur. And were spinning in home improvement in particular will settle in quote. And that was also something that happened during the pandemic. People took some of their money, whether it was stemming money or money that they had in savings, because initially we were told two weeks to flatten the curve. So there were people doing their honey do list there were people looking at house going, we finally need to fix that leaky faucet or we finally need to get a flower bed that looks decent. And there will be times where you would drive by Lowe's or Home Depot and it looked like you could not squeeze another human being into the store. But now when you're looking at these people saying they're gonna have to choose between repaying their student loans or buying their groceries repaying student loans or paying rent, or they're already behind on their rent because they got behind when there was the moratorium. All of a sudden things like the leaky faucet in the bathroom, or the flowerbed just don't seem that important. To me, it's like I don't understand why that's so difficult to figure out. Also on Yahoo Finance and also using one of the magical artworks here we go again, a resilient US consumer could calm placate the Feds path forward. July's retail sales report showed sales increased by nearly double what economists had expected, adding to a long list of data points that have shown a more resilient consumer than many had projected. I'm gonna run in and say who in the hell are these people? Who total Seinfeld moment here? Who are the thurible? Who are they? I don't know who they are. The other day on the morning news here on one of the local outlets, they were doing some trivia about back to school stuff. And they flashed up a statistic that the average American family spends $700 Just on back to school school supplies, not counting clothing, but just on school supplies. And I was like, holy cannoli is where, where are they buying? What are they buying? I mean, yes, things are expensive, but like pencils, pins, notebooks, a trapper keeper, we had back in the 80s. Like, Oh, what, how? And how many kids? Are these? These people have 20 children? I mean, what are they? Even the anchors were like, that's a lot of money. We don't spend that much just on the school supplies for the kids. So that that's crazy. I'm like, Who are these people? And where are these people? Where are these resilient consumers that are just churning and burn and doing great when we're hearing about people making six figures that are being impacted by layoffs, we hear about people that are at 175k or more reporting that they feel poor, or they feel like they're just barely getting by, they're just comfortable enough to be okay. And they're making like 200 grand a year. who and where are these people that are so resilient? I don't I don't get it. While the upbeat data has economists predicting the US economy won't contract over the next year as initially projected. It also has some fearing that too much exuberance may mean another Federal Reserve interest rate hike is on the horizon in an effort to keep inflation cooling. Oh, we're about to get another R word. Here we go. This robust increase won't comfort Fed officials and keeps the risk of tighter monetary policy very much on the table. Oxford Economics lead us economist wrote on Tuesday, Fed Chair Powell will likely strike a hawkish tone at the Jackson Hole economic symposium next week. Last month, Powell responded to a reporter's question over whether row robust spending could reinvigorate inflation or if it's good news. Here we go again, same old same old, the overall resilience of the economy, the fact that we've been able to achieve disinflation so far without any meaningful negative impact on the labor market. What was the strength of the economy overall? That's a good thing. Powell said on July 26, it's also you see consumer consumer confidence coming up and things like that, that will support activity going forward and quote, oh, my god, do you have a headache? I mean, it's like I do. I'm rubbing my third eye here. I'm just like, Oh, my God, this stuff they expect you to swallow. It hasn't had a meaningful negative impact on the labor market. Why don't you ask people that are in the labor market right now. If you go on a freelancing website right now, a lot of the gigs where people want to hire a recruiter, it's not brick and mortar companies. It's individual saying, I am trying to find a job and I'm having no luck. I want to hire a recruiter or do some kind of dangle the carrot offer you a commission. If you find me a job, I'll pay you some money. I need you to retool my resume and I need you to shop it around to people to see if anybody's interested because I'm trying on my own and I'm getting jack squat. You see a lot of that. I have had people that snubbed me in 2021 and 2022. Come back just over the past two weeks, and say, Oh, well, hey, oh, video, pal. I know that I snubbed you when you originally contacted me, but is there any way that you could? And I'm like, the job's gone. Somebody's in the job and they're happy and things are going well, you you missed the boat on that one pal. Hello. These are not signs of a robust job market. It's not signs of a resilient economy. The amount of gaslighting and the amount of just sheer nonsensical BS that you are expected to swallow. It boggles my mind it really does. Before we leave Yahoo Finance, we also find the cracks are starting to show Kevin O'Leary warns that energy food inflation isn't going away due to the trillions of dollars in printed money. Well, I don't think you have to be Kevin O'Leary like campaigning whatever I don't think you have to be. Kevin O'Leary to understand that the cracks are showing. I really don't. In this way read the US stock market saw robust growth in 2023. My God, with the s&p 500 index surging by 17% but according to Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The s&p 500 employees 40% of America he told Fox businesses Larry Kudlow in a recent interview, where the cracks are starting to show as in mainstream America, where the car loans have gone from five and a half percent to nine and a half percent and continue to go up. The US Federal Reserve has implemented aggressive interest rate hikes to combat rampant inflation. As a result, many borrowers now face substantially higher loan and mortgage payments. O'Leary noted that lending has slowed down and the cost of borrowing for small businesses has gone up. If you're a regional bank right now, you're not lending. I deal with this every day with small businesses. It's not good for small business, O'Leary said, adding that some cracks are starting to show in regional banks as well. And well. You don't have to be Kevin O'Leary, you don't have to be a billionaire. You don't have to be, as Dave Ramsey says a play a Silicon Valley player to understand what he's talking about in this article. If you have eyes and ears and you've been generally paying attention and trying to apply some common sense this should be fairly obvious. On the side panel for LinkedIn today, we find US economy continues to surprise instead of the recession long believed to be in the cards. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta expects economic growth to top 4% this quarter. The summers economic growth comes amid falling inflation, near record unemployment and strong wage gains. I'm looking around totally like the mean of John Travolta from Pulp Fiction. Where's this stuff at? Where's the falling inflation? Where's the near record unemployment and where are the strong wage gains?

It's a welcome surprise for business owners who had brace for a season of contraction writes The Washington Post. A plastic surgeon in Houston says his tally of cosmetic procedures doubled this year compared to pre COVID levels. While a motorcycle dealer in Jessup, Maryland is on track to sell a record 550 bikes in 2023. bookings for cruises are also at an all time high. While Taylor Swift's eras tour is set to be the first concert tour to gross $1 billion and quote, okay, all right. So a motorcycle dealer and a plastic surgeon are accommodating people who must have money to spend or they're willing to go into a crapload of debt to get their plastic surgery and their motorcycle. So people are doing great falling inflation near record unemployment and strong wage gains. Okay, sure. So then, meanwhile, over on the Yahoo Finance article, we've got Kevin O'Leary, saying, if you're a regional bank right now, you're not lending. I deal with this every day with small business. It's not good for small business. But then on the side panel for LinkedIn, you're being told that small business is breathing a sigh of relief, because they were ready for a season of contraction, but instead, people are getting plastic surgery, and they're buying motorcycles. Oh, they're also going on cruises and paying out the nose to go see Taylor Swift in concert. Okay. All righty then. Since I talked yesterday about the article that was in USA Today about the land grab developers trying to get land in Hawaii. I'm going to drop a link to a video on YouTube. And it's from K H O N two news. It's titled the realities of the scene on Front Street in Lahaina. And this is not coming from some fringe right fringe left some news outlet nobody ever heard of this is from a mainstream media news source. I will drop a link, you can go and take a look at this for yourself. Right around the three minute mark. They interview the governor of Hawaii, and he says I'm already thinking of ways for the state to acquire that land so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families or make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to the people who were lost. We want this to be something we remember after the pain passes as a magic place behind a wheel rebuilt. The tragedy right now is the loss of life and quote, yeah, it is tragic thing about the loss of life that's horrible. For the people that have have survived what's going to happen to their property. Notice he says workforce housing, but see if I get on here and I say 15 minutes 35th Jean second person live on the upper floor, work on the lower floor, then conspiracy theory. Sure it is. There's a story that is a little bit older, but it's making the rounds on British media for some reason, like the BBC had a story about it. And then the Guardian had a story about it from a couple of weeks ago, and it's about this family in Colorado that decided they wanted to live off grid, but they died in pursuit of doing this. I'll drop a link you can check it out for yourself. The headline reads, we tried to stop them us family found dead in forest wanted to live off grid. In the article from The Guardian we read a Colorado family whose partially mummified remains were discovered at a remote campsite were trying to live off grid and escaped civilization family said authorities have identified the bodies as those of sisters Christine Vance 41, and Rebecca Vance 42, as well as Rebecca's 14 year old son. The remains were recovered in and around a tent or a campsite in the Gunnison National Forest about nine miles from Ohio City, Colorado. Michael Barnes, the Gunnison county coroner said Tuesday, the women's stepsister Travaasa Jara told media that the family set off for the remote area last summer, seeking to escape the world. The sisters did not have survival experience and had only done research online and watched YouTube videos on the subject. I'm going to button right there and say, you know, I've warned you before the influencers can leave you broke. They don't care, they don't give a damn about what happens to you. In this situation, if you're talking about leaving a brick and mortar house behind or an apartment, you're gonna leave some type of structure behind and you're gonna go out in the woods and live in a tent to try to escape society. You better know what the hell you're doing. And in the article, we're being told they did not have survival experience. They had only done research online and watched YouTube videos. We don't know what they were watching. We don't know how credible I'm sorry, using air quotes. You're credible. The sources were but that's that's not going to be enough. That's not going to be enough to survive out in the woods for the rest of your life. We tried to stop them. Gera told the Gazette, but they wouldn't listen Their minds were made up. A hiker came across the remains earlier this month spotting a body outside the family's tent. Two more were found inside and deputies began investigating the site to identify the roommates. Authorities found empty food cans books and a restroom area at the campsite Barnes said suggesting that the group survived off canned goods. Their bodies showed signs of malnourishment. Investigators are waiting for toxicology reports to be processed and have not yet determined a cause of death. But suspect the group may have succumb to starvation, freezing temperatures or carbon monoxide poisoning from trying to make a fire to stay warm barn said authorities did not find any vehicle or firearms at the campsite with the bodies. Barnes told the Colorado sun that exposure to the elements and especially harsh winter likely contributed to the family's demise. It was a significantly harsh winter for us this year. And it always is here barn said we did have more snow than we have had in the past couple of winters. The three likely started camping late last summer and died sometime over the winter. It appeared that they had begun to build a lean to type shelter but not finished. By the time last year's harsh winter began. He said wonder if Winter came on quickly. And suddenly they were just in survival mode in the tent barn said they had a lot of literature with them about outdoor survival and foraging and stuff like that. But it looked like they supplied at a grocery store and quote, yeah, yep, yep. Yep. You know, one of the reasons why I bring this up. We hear a lot especially within the emergency preparedness community. You hear these people, I'm just gonna get a bug out bag. And I'm gonna go live in the woods. Not saying that that's precisely what these people did. I don't know that. I'm just talking about the people that you hear on social media yackety yakking about what they're going to do. I'll just go and eat deer. I'll go and eat rabbits. Although and eat squirrels. I'll just go live in the woods if it gets too bad. And there really is this zombie eating your brain societal collapse. I'll just go live in the woods. And I'm sitting here like, No, you're not going to do that. That's not going to work out for you. All these people supposedly are going to be living in the woods, eating the deer. How many deer Do you think there are in comparison to the human population? And how many people do you think would really make it once they got out there? They've been watching too many Mad Max Movies. They think that they're going to be Katniss Everdeen. From the Hunger Games, they're going to get out there and they're going to automatically know what animals to hunt and how to hunt them how to how to dress and butcher the meat. They're somehow going to know how to feed forage, which plants are toxic and which ones are not, they're gonna be able to take care of their own medical needs out in the middle of nowhere. And I'm like, That's absurd. The reality is, you're going to have to do the best that you can, with the resources that you've got. That's one of the things that the videos that I've watched from city prepper on on his channel, again, I don't know the guy have not watched every video he's ever made, or every video he will make in the future. But to me, he seems to be practical. Like, hey, I live in a city, I live in a neighborhood, I'm just going to have to do the best I can what I've got, I'm gonna have to play the hand I was dealt. I have a lot more respect for that, than these people that get on social media. And I'll just go live in the woods. I will light my cigar the fires of the apocalypse. And it's like, yeah, huh. I'm real sure that that's going to happen for you. When you're thinking about emergency preparedness, you're thinking about what you would do in a poop hits the fan situation, in my opinion, which could be wrong, I think that you have to consider options other than we're going to watch some YouTube videos, and then we're going to get a tent and go live in the woods and hope it works out. I mean, there's an underage child who died in the situation, not an adult that really had the right to consent and say I am a consenting adult who's choosing to do this for better or worse. A child has died in this situation. That's terrible, absolutely terrible. Think your preps through, plan these things out in a way that has common sense. The idea of I'm going to be a grocery store survivalist doesn't even make sense to me. Because like, at some point, your store of canned goods is going to run out. And so then what are you going to do? And if you're not supplementing that with some kind of fresh produce, you're not getting adequate vitamins and minerals and macronutrients?

I mean, you could you get very very ill use common sense. Please. Use good critical thinking use good judgment. And when you hear these people on social media LARPing and playing games about how they're going to be Mad Max in the Thunderdome. They're just going to go live in the woods. I would just humbly ask that you view that through a lens of skepticism. Does this person have any survival skills at all? Have they ever really had to do that? Or are they just blowing a lot of smoke? Today it is Thursday, August 17. on Yahoo Finance we find mortgage rates top 7% Hitting 21 year high. In an analogous article over on Market Watch we read another challenge for homebuyers more investors are snapping up homes and 40% of them are using cash. In the byline we read as mortgage rates surge and rattle homebuyers. Some investors have stayed more active than ever this summer. CoreLogic says, You don't say? Isn't that just a coincidence? Isn't that just something? Wow. Because, you know, for some other segments in this broadcast, we've been reading articles about how developers and investors and maybe even the government want to go on a land grab in Hawaii. Hmm. Isn't that something? isn't. I mean, to me, you know, slipping on my tinfoil hat. That sounds a lot like you've built on nothing and you would be happy. You'll just be a nation of renter's, but you're not going to own anything anymore. Hmm. Well, but you know, that's just the conspiracy theory. Also, on Yahoo Finance, we find investors are betting it's 1998, not 2007. And that makes me think like, yeah, that's kind of what's wrong here. Nobody wants to believe that the party is over. Nobody wants to believe that a boom cycle is going to end and a bust cycle is going to begin. Everybody wants to think the band is just going to keep playing on. In this we read stocks dropped on Wednesday, adding to August's losses after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting reveal officials still see upside risks to inflation, suggesting more rate hikes might be needed. Nevertheless, a survey of investors with over half a trillion dollars in assets under management are overwhelmingly pricing a different situation for next year. rate cuts. There you go. They want to get back to quantitative easing. They want the printing press to fire up they want that easy money. They want to go out and speculate and do what they want to do. Bottom line. The latest Bank of America global fund manager survey published Wednesday revealed that it's been nearly 15 years, November 2008, just after Lehman Brothers failed since investors were this convinced interest rate cuts would interest rates would be cut over the next 12 months. Wow. Over the last four decades, there have been just three instances in which the Fed cut rates without the economy falling into a recession 2019 You sure about that? 2019 1998 and 1995. And the bet from investors today is essentially that 2024 will mark the fourth instance. Elsewhere in the survey, we find that 65% of respondents expect to see a soft landing in which inflation slows, but the economy avoids recession in quote, oh my god, man people and they're hoping they're hot air and they're hoping them The struggle is real. on CNBC today, we find here's why Americans can't stop living paycheck to paycheck. Hmm, hmm. You know, that's kind of like investors snapping up real estate. More land grabs. I wonder so much. I feel like the church lady, huh? Yeah, um, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that we live in crony capitalism. In my opinion, I have to say that, in my opinion, we live in crony capitalism, and all these little piggies feed from the same trough. It couldn't be that the system is really rigged against the little guy couldn't be that. For many Americans, payday can't come soon enough. As of June 61% of adults are living paycheck to paycheck according to a Lending Club report. In other words, they rely on his regular paychecks to meet essential living expenses with little to no money leftover, all but in and say, but yet you still have people LARPing nationwide strike against RTO. All these bosses regret their RTO edicts and they're gonna eat crow over it and all of that, sure, almost three quarters 72% of Americans say they aren't financially secure given their current financial standing. And more than a quarter say they will likely never be financially secure. According to a survey by bank rate. There are actually millions of people struggling said Ida Rademacher, Vice President at the Aspen Institute, it's not something that people want to talk about. But if you are in a place where your financial security feels super precarious, you're not alone. And quote, yeah, you're definitely not alone. What I think is interesting about this quote, it's not something that people want to talk about. I think one of the things that social media has done to people is it has really stirred up the FOMO and the Yolo. And it's taken people who probably would have been the type anyway to want to keep up with the Joneses. Oh, look, the neighbors have a boat. Oh, look, they just got a new car. Oh, look at how she's dressed. It's taken those people who maybe had those tendencies anyway, and like, amplified it all and put it on steroids. And then I think it's also taken people who maybe wouldn't pay that much attention. But it's in their face, it's on their timeline. It's on their feed all the time. This fake nonsense, like I saw a meme the other night of a guy who had a toilet seat lid thing, and a picture of the sky in the background. And he's like, here's how you can make it look like you're on an airplane flying for vacation when you're not. I thought that was so funny. But people can be I saw another one to where it was like a couple in a sandbox in like she had on a bathing suit. And then the guy had on his trunks. And they were pretending that they were at the beach. But really, they were just like in a kid sandbox. I mean, that's the absurdity of how this stuff is. But instead of of people wanting to come to that reality about their finances, they would rather well I have to take a vacation, I have to keep up with the Joneses. I have to look a certain way I have to buy certain brand names. And it's like really you don't. You don't. If you read that book, The Millionaire Next Door. I mean, it talks a lot about people in that circumstance not being brand conscious at all, unless it's for cheap stuff. Hello. We also read here, this struggle is nothing new Principal Financial Group found in 2010 that 75% of workers were concerned about their financial futures. But think about the timeframe. That was we were slowly but surely trying to dig our way out of the Great Recession. Thinking back I don't really remember feeling the tension start to abate until 2011 Going into 2012 things started to get better around that time. But Oh 809 2010 That was not a good time. What's more since 1979 wages for the bottom 90% of earners had grown just 15% compared with 138% for the top 1%, who mentioned that, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report, but there's now a renewed focus on wage earner anxiety amid higher inflation and rising interest rates and quote, I was reading earlier about the misery index because I intend to publish a blog post maybe sometime this weekend. So you've got economists saying we're gonna have like a full employment stagflation period, because in their mind, all of these baby boomers are going to retire and leave the workforce. And that will create such a gap that it'll be okay. Like there will be enough people exiting the top of the funnel that more people can be coming in, the younger workers can be coming in at the bottom of the funnel and working their way up and it'll be fine. I'm super skeptical of that. Because you have plenty of people that are unretiring and you have plenty of exercise like myself who are smart enough to know from the get go that a traditional retirement was not going to be in the cards for us. So I'm like young completely by this idea of a quote, full employment stagflation scenario, we could see something along the lines of a 1970s stagflation scenario with high inflation and high unemployment, and that would be awful. I hope to God we don't see that. But look, as I've said before, you have to look at the preponderance of evidence and you think about the bell curve, you're not looking at, in my opinion, Mad Max Thunderdome. zombies eat your brains, but you're also not in toxic positivity law, and that, oh, I can just think about economy way. I don't have to pay attention to the web. I don't have to know about agenda 2030 I don't have to know anything about Noah Harare, I can just ignore these things. Because if I ignore them, then they just will go away. And it's like,

if you say so. So in thinking again, about that bell curve, like could we have a 1970s period of high inflation and high unemployment? Yes, we could. And when I was looking at that misery index, it was quite high, quite high around this period of time that they're talking about what's more, since 1979, the misery index is quite high. And another thing that gets pointed out over on Investopedia, is that you also saw a decrease in labor union jobs, which led to a decrease in wages. Am I do you think that's coincidental? What is it going to take for some people to wake up and to understand that in politics, these things do not happen by accident. They don't. These boom bust cycles, recessions, quantitative easing, quantitative tightening. None of this crap happens on accident, it is orchestrated. On the side panel for LinkedIn, we find savings depletion signals slowdown, a drop in savings accumulated by Americans amid the pandemic points to slower spending and growth ahead. New data show, so called excess savings will thank God that at least it so called so called excess savings. The amount of household savings above past recessionary trends has fallen more than expected. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the new aggregate estimate of $190 billion could be depleted by the end of the third quarter. This extra cushion of money has been supporting consumer spending and growth in recent years helping the economy defy expectations of a downturn. The Fit part, if you hear noise in the Rams, hold on a second, I'm gonna have to hit the pause button because they're trying to tear the glass door down. These hooligans Okay, the Fed earlier this year, estimated aggregate excess savings of $500 billion following a peak of $2.1 trillion in August 2021. And quote, yeah, I never bought into the Mitch McConnell narrative that people were flushed with cash. They just had tons and tons of STEMI money. Nobody wants to work because they all got their stimulus checks. Nobody wants to work because they all got their stimulus checks, and they're just flush with cash. Uh huh. Sure. But at least now, you're being told that a savings depletion is signaling a slowdown. I don't know how much good that's going to do you because if you haven't been prepared, if this news is new to you, I'm not really sure what to tell you. Fed still hawkish on inflation. In this we read Federal Reserve officials maintain a hawkish stance at their last meeting. Sharing concerns that persistent inflation would require further interest rate increases minute show, the Fed ultimately decided to raise the target for its key rate by 25 basis points to between 5.25 and five and a half percent, the highest level in 22 years. The minutes of the July 25 or 26th Meeting show that while some participants expressed concern about inadvertent over tightening of policy, most continued to see significant upside risks to inflation. The remarks also reflected optimism about the US economy as the Feds outlook shifted from recessionary to one of continued growth with a small increase in the unemployment right? Oh. Right, of course. Sure. We also find us plans imported food care on tariffs, the Biden administration is slated to announce new tariffs on food canned metal from China, Germany and Canada on Thursday reports the Wall Street Journal, the Commerce Department said that steel makers from those three countries sold their template in the US at unfairly low prices. China will take the biggest hit facing a tariff of 122.52% of a product's import value. That numbers partly motivated by US China Economic tensions, an anonymous administration official told the journal more food companies argue the levies which would not be officially approved until January could raise the prices of canned goods by up to 30%. Hmm. Weren't about that on a previous broadcast until I told you. China accounts for 14% of us tinplate imports, Germany and Canada together about 30% And most of the rest come from the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the UK. iquote. Yep, so now it's going to be even more difficult for you if you were planning to put some canned goods in your pantry and say at least we'll have some extra. Now I don't recommend you do like those gals I was talking about yesterday go off to the woods, to live in a tent with nothing that canned goods and wing in a prayer. If you're planning to put some extra canned goods on the shelf and say, All right, if we have a layoff if we have a lean time, at least we'll have soup. At least we'll have some vegetables, at least we'll have some canned fruit, we'll have something. There will be some food in the house. Let's go get more expensive now too. Huh? All right, just I guess I'm going to put on my entire tinfoil suit again and go back into the tinfoil cave. It seems to me that the powers that be really don't want you to prepare. They really don't want you to exercise good foresight and forethought. And to plan ahead. Why is that? Well, in my opinion, which could be wrong, in my opinion. It's exactly what Jared brought talked about the hyper elites are jonesing for a recession because they want to take your assets on the cheap these hyper leads these fat cats these power brokers, they don't care they don't give a damn about me and you it's nothing to them to take your house. It's nothing to them to take your vehicle. It's not they don't they don't care. They do not give a damn your your digits on a screen your numbers on a piece of paper. That's it. In a more, let's say diabolical narrative, you're just part of the surplus population. So get in your tiny, tiny apartment in your 15 Minute city and eat your Cricut burger and go into virtual reality. Because that's all you're worth. But that's just a conspiracy theory, right? Even though we're seeing investors buying up property and going on land grabs and people are maxing out credit cards, they're depleting their savings and their 401 K people are doing great. You're supposed to be so into this gaslighting mentality that you just believe whatever you're told wholesale. People are doing great, soft landing recession has been canceled. It's not even gonna rise from the mist anymore. It's just cancelled where there is no recession. And if you say there is when you're just crazy, okay. Today is Friday, August 18. TGIF. As per usual, on fortune not calm today, we find legendary investor Jeremy Grantham warns a recession is coming. And the Feds rosy forecast is almost guaranteed to be wrong. I don't think you have to be a legendary investor to get that. In the byline we read it's almost guaranteed to be wrong. The GMO co founder told Bloomberg of the Feds soft landing forecast Thursday. They have never called a recession in quote. Meanwhile, I stand by what I've said all this time. I feel like we're in a recession as we have been for quite some time now. And they're just for whatever reason, choosing to gaslight everybody, and paper mache over the cracks in the foundation. It's crazy. Also unfortunate, not calm. Millennials are so worried about their finances that they're falling into a depression. Hmm. So which is it? Is it that people are doing great churning and burning consumers or keeping the economy going everybody and their dog and their brother and their cat and their aunt and uncle everybody is going to Disney World, and they are going on airplanes, and they're going to Taylor Swift eras concerts, which isn't? Because to me, the idea that people I don't even think it has to be of a younger generation, but the idea of people being so concerned about their finances, that they're in a depressive episode, that, to me seems more realistic than the idea of churn and burn and robust and resilient people do and great. Yeah. And on that note, even though we were just told in an earlier segment of this broadcast, that people are indeed hippity hop and all over the country, they're traveling, they're going to Europe, they're going to Taylor Swift today on the side panel for length Then we find hotels and tours feel us travel slump. Hmm. But which is it? Everybody's traveling people are spending 1000s of dollars to go to concerts and events. They're staying in hotels, they're flying on airplanes or not.