Saturday Broadcast 10

Key topics:
✔️ ICYMI news, 7/31 - 8/5.
✔️ Apparently, August 2nd was the day we were allowed to know that more people are relying on credit cards and debt is crazy-high. But hey: remember when we were constantly told that people are doing great and have plenty in savings!
✔️ Some companies learned nothing from The Great Resignation.
✔️ 3.5% unemployment rate! Wowee!


Links I mention in this episode:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/31/cramer-dont-get-fooled-by-the-bears-sometimes-good-news-is-actually-good.html

https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/70141-remember-this-jim-cramer-bear-stearns-is-fine-do-not-take-your-mon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1g0zJRncIk

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-chief-warns-bloated-staff-151416718.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/business/return-to-office-battles.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2021/08/25/exclusive-telehealth-startup-calibrate-notches-a-100-million-series-b-from-founders-fund-and-tiger-global/?sh=629c54aa3732

https://www.businessinsider.com/calibrate-mass-layoffs-zoom-call-healthcare-isabelle-kenyon-restructure-jobs-2022-7

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/4point2-million-people-quit-in-june-despite-recession-worries.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/03/these-charts-show-why-we-may-not-be-in-a-recession.html

https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/06/coinbase-layoffs

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-29/blackrock-s-kapito-says-scarcity-inflation-is-driving-economy

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-an-arkansas-town-could-provide-a-grim-road-map-for-america-if-car-repos-blow-up-11659549234?siteid=yhoof2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOfkpu6749w

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

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

0:06

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. I'm recording this portion of the broadcast on the evening of Sunday, July 31. It's kind of hard to believe that tomorrow will be the first day of August, even though I'm not looking forward to the remainder of the dog days of summer, especially now that we're back in the heat dome. I am glad that we are slowly marching towards the fall. I'm so ready for the towel season. I'm ready for Halloween. I'm ready for sweater weather. Like let's let's just kind of be done with this flash drought and heat dome. Okay. Oh, okay. I'm not going to give my full bird's eye view of the local Walmart because it would be like the same chapter, second verse, the same things that were either low in stock or completely gone last week exactly the same. The only new news that I can really add to it is that I had heard from people in other parts of the country where grocery stores and super centers had started putting the bread on sideways to make it look like there was more bread on the shelf than there actually was. That is finally happening in my local Walmart. I noticed that this weekend, and I was like, This is not a good sign. Seeing empty shelves, seeing things turned sideways finding items in weird random places to make it look like hey, there's something on the shelf here, even though it's not where it goes. To me, these are all troubling signs. It's it's not a signal of anything good in my opinion. Also, I just I feel like I'm caught in a time loop. I don't know if anybody else is feeling that way. I would imagine if you were an adult in the workforce with adult responsibilities during the Great Recession, you're probably feeling it too. Now I'll be talking about this more on my Patreon channel. Next Sunday. I'll also be publishing an article about this exact topic over on medium.com. I just feel like this is a time loop. I'm looking at the signs what's being said what's not being said. And I'm like, we're back in lead up to the Great Recession. Like isn't this all where it went wrong before? Isn't this the same kind of doodoo Poopoo. That was going on back then. I mean, have we learned nothing? I know I've asked that before but I'm still just rubbing my forehead like have we learned nothing. on CNBC earlier today, Jim Cramer publish an article titled Don't get fooled by the bears. Sometimes good news is just dot dot dot good. I'm resisting the temptation to be like medulla oblongata.dot.it, was published

today at 5: 2:33

14pm. Central time. Okay, and you can't read the whole article without being a member of this CNBC Investing Club, which I'm not going to do. The little snippet we can read says this weekend I read a host of negative articles assailing this market and the earnings reports from individual companies, the suggestion the numbers are all hiding something. And even companies like Amazon and Apple simply reported figures that exceeded lowball analyst estimates that were meant to generate upside and quote. Meanwhile, this is the same dude who said on March 11 of 2008, not to take your money out of Bear Stearns. The exact quote is, Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out. If there's one takeaway Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything, they're more likely to be taken over don't move your money from bear. That's just being silly. Don't be silly. And quote, you may remember that about five days after that was a stated Bear Stearns got bailed out at$2 a share. Wow. About a month ago Dave Ramsey released a video titled Why right now and right now is in all caps. Why right now is the best time to buy a house in parentheses don't wait. And this is an ironic it's not like he released it to be sarcastic or funny. Again, I'm just rubbing my forehead like what in the actual Hill is going on? One of the things that I'm going to talk about in the medium.com article is how Ben Bernanke said in 2007, that he didn't think the subprime mortgage woes would seriously hurt the economy. Okay, but then in November of 2008, he's kind of like, oh, sorry, my bad. He says, I think we erred in gauging the impact of the mortgage crisis. And it's like, I mean, what consequences do any of these people ever face whether it's talking heads and commentators on TV, whether it's politicians, whether it's business, big to dues, grand Pooh, Bahs, and CEOs of these companies, what actually happens? You know, if they make bad judgment calls out in the media and tell everybody, people are doing great, everything is fine. Don't you worry about it. You know, you just put your pacifier in your mouth like a good little bit. they'd been going back seat seat like, what? Whatever happens to them? There seems to be, in my opinion, no real consequences of getting out in the media and making crappy judgment calls and telling people everything's fine. Meanwhile, they're sort of like doing paper mache. It's like there's cracks in the foundations, but they're taking strips of newspaper with some glue on them and trying to glue over these cracks. Well, how long can you do that? How long can you try to run some sort of disguise before all of the wheels fly off? I don't have an answer to that. You know, I've said before, I'm not an economist, financial planner or advisor. I can't give anybody advice. I'm just sitting here opining. And right now I am in my home office just staring at the wall like where do we go from here? When When are the wheels going to fly off of this thing? When is the average like John Q Public, Jane Q Public going to wake up and be like, holy crap, we are in a mess? I don't know. I don't have the answer to that question. It's Monday, August 1. If you go over to the side panel on LinkedIn news, you will find dozens killed in Kentucky floods. Oracle begins layoffs in the US four day workweek trial. First findings? When is it time to leave your job? Google begins productivity sprint, housing market loses some steam. Did Artio already win in these places? Now if we go over to Yahoo Finance, we see a similar article. And I want to read from that one because it's a bit more to the point. It's titled, Google chief warns bloated staff have real concerns over productivity. Now. I'll read for you now, between slowing revenue growth and an increasingly murky outlook for tech companies in general. Google is tasking its employees to put in harder shifts at work. I'm going to stop just for a second to break in and say this is one of the reasons why I want people to be careful with the idea of quiet quitting. If you put up anything right now, whether it's a blog post or recording a YouTube video, whatever with quiet quitting, you will rack up views or downloads or whatever, in no time, there is very much an appetite in the market for quiet quitting. I'll just sit here I'll do the bare minimum. And I'll be just fine. Well, not necessarily. And here we go. I'll continue to read amid a larger market downturn. Over the past few months, the tech sector has arguably fared the worst. I'll again break into say remember when they told everybody just learned to code? If you felt like you were in an industry that was being phased out or you were being made redundant at work, just learn to code? Okay. I'll continue to read 1000s of tech companies employees have been laid off, and the chatter growing that an inevitable economic contraction is on the way more speculative stocks such as tech are bracing for the worst. At Google, one of the biggest tech players around today executives are urging employees to pick up the slack and quote, bump, bump bump. And apparently the CEO said that they should be more mission focused and more focused on products and more customer focus, minimize distractions and really raise the bar on both product excellence and productivity. Yep, I'm Warren Joel. And Warren Joel. You know my Patreon I'm talking about how gaming the system is not a recession plan, a recession survival plan, in my opinion, sitting back thinking, well just plug in button seeded the cube farm if that's what corporate America wants, but I'll do the bare minimum. I'll just coast I'll coast through the recession. I wouldn't bet the farm on that. If it were me, I really would not. Apparently, the LinkedIn article did Artio already when in these places references an article from the New York Times titled What remote work debate they've been back at the office for a while. The byline reads cubicles are largely empty in downtown San Francisco in midtown Manhattan. But workers in America's midsize and small cities are back to their commutes and quote, so I will read a bit of that article for you now. The competition for parking space is getting steeper commutes are inching longer. Workplace lounges are filling up with commotion as junior associates play cornhole. Okay, just Well, I remember I interviewed at a place and they made this big to do about how everybody got together and played cornhole and I was like, nope, nope, this sounds like introvert Hill. I'll continue to read. What returned to Office debate in some parts of the country. It's been settled. I know almost nobody in Columbus who is fully remote said grant Blosser 35, who works at a financial services firm. In October 2020, Mr. Blosser started going back into the office in Columbus, Ohio five days a week. He cracked jokes with the young analyst, one of whom recently dragged his team to hot yoga. It kicked our butts. He listened to his book club selection in the car currently a biography of Winston Churchill. That was a relief, he said, to feel the separation of church and state that came from leaving the house each day in quote. Yep, so I've talked about this before, you know, there are some people in the same way that I'm highly introverted. There are people on the other end of the spectrum, we think about like, glass and unbreakable. You know, for somebody who's a superhero that can never get injured. There's somebody else on the other side of the spectrum that's incredibly fragile. I get I get it, there's a yin and there's Yang. Okay. I understand. Okay, if you're highly extroverted, and the idea of playing cornhole and dragging your team to hot yoga, and you need to get out of the house to have a separation of church and state, you know what you do you boo, go ahead, go ahead. Where I get irate, are these company cultures where the loudest extrovert wins the day, the loudest extrovert and it's usually a loud, extroverted male? I'm just I'm putting it out there. You can send me hate mail if you want to, but it is usually a loud, extroverted man. And he is usually the one that wins the day. People that are of a more quiet nature, people that might have more of a reserved temperament people that might be more introverted people that might be neurodivergent. They may need some extra time to process their thoughts before they speak up and offer an opinion on something just get trampled. They get trampled by the loud extroverts of the group that are like, Yeah, we want to play cornhole. Let's all go to Hot Yoga. Let's all get back in this office. And it's like, just, oh, no, thanks. I don't miss that world at all. God, I don't miss it. Now, this individual adds a little bit more to his quotation here, and I'll read it for you now. Almost everybody I know is in an office most of the time here he said, The headlines that I read about as far as people dragging their feet, going back to the office are about select companies and select cities and quote, and the reason why I want to bring that up, you know, when we think back to Jamie Dimon talking about how he envision things getting back to the way that they were in 2019. And these offices not just sitting empty. We're not terribly far off from that period of time. It's August 1 Today, we will be in even though in some parts of the country, it may not feel like it we will be in the autumnal season soon enough. So it'll be interesting to see over the course of q3 and q4 how the RTO versus work from home debate plays out. But I do think that you, you shouldn't bury your head in the sand on this issue. You should not think well, my company would just never demand RTO they would just never listen to the loudest extrovert that wants to do hot yoga and cornhole, they would just never do that. Well, don't be so sure. Don't be so sure there are times in life when Ignorance is not bliss. Today, it is Tuesday, August 2. I wanted to hop on for a quick minute during my lunch break because there's something in particular that I wanted to highlight today on August 25 of 2021. So not quite one year ago, Forbes published an article titled exclusive telehealth startup calibrate notches a $100 million Series B from Founders Fund and Tiger global. In the introductory paragraph we read last June Isabel Kenyon took her telehealth startup calibrate out of stealth mode with a team of 10 and an ambitious goal. Kenyan wanted to disrupt. There's a corporate buzzword I hate Kenya and wanted to disrupt the $70 billion weight loss industry by focusing on holistic metabolic health instead of pounds on the scale. By January she raised a$22.5 million series A grown her team to 52 people and watched his calibrate customers started achieving real results on the program in quote. Yeah, so yesterday, not quite one year from when that glorious article was published over on Forbes on Business Insider we read. Healthcare startup calibrates CEO used a zoom call to announce layoffs affecting more than 150 staff. minutes later, their company laptops were automatically wiped. There's a little byline here that reads insider spoke to eight former calibrate workers about the layoffs. Some describe the actions of the digital health startup as callous and cruel and quote, yeah, so certainly this gives me a bad flashback to the better.com layoffs and whenever I was reading articles that allegedly that person had been calling his staff dumped dolphins and flying off the handle about what kinds of snacks and bottled water were kept in the offices, you know, and then to find out about the Zoom call layoff it's just like Tickity Tak, tak tak so tacky. You I hate zoom anyway, I don't bury my thesis. These video calls Video Chat platforms, they've been used as agents of discrimination and unconscious bias. They're not very friendly. Typically, for people that have some type of neuro divergence, they're not introvert friendly, most of the time either. Not everyone wants to LARP that they're on a reality show. Not everybody wants to be camera ready or asked to get on camera at any given moment in time, if you're highly extroverted, and that's your thing, go for it. But just know and understand that not all of us want to be on camera all the time. We just don't. And in my opinion, okay, this is my opinion, I could be wrong, in my opinion, using an outlet like zoom to do a mass firing or a mass layoff. Of course, it's going to come across as callous and cruel. It's going to feel impersonal. And as I've talked about before, I know like when especially during COVID People were social distancing, nobody wanted to travel I get it you're not going to fly in somebody like George Clooney and up in the air to sit down with each individual in close quarters you know, in a conference room and have a one on one chat face to face. I get it. But surely there has to be some happy medium between the close proximity face to face George Clooney sit down where he gives you some hot air speech about everyone failed. You could be the next Julius Caesar Ah, okay, whatever. There has to be a happy medium between that. Versus you're going to all get on a mandatory cowpoke round up zoom call. Oh, by the way, you don't work here anymore. Oh, by the way, your laptop's wiped down see when we see it, which is never mean. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. Another point I want to make and I know I get it must sound a broken record here. Please do not assume that just because you're working at a whatever company, you know, insert the adjective there a tech company and startup and unicorn, a place that was valued at a bazillion million trillion dollars last year. Don't assume that just because of that a layoff or a mass firing could just never happened to you. I still see too much of that bread and circuses mentality going on. We don't want to change our lifestyle. We don't want to cut back on the budget. We'll just keep using the credit cards will YOLO and will FOMO and everything will somehow work out. The great resignation will go on forever. We can constantly job hop and get a 20 or 30% raise each time we do economy be damned, that doesn't really matter. I will somehow cheat the system or beat the system. I can't give you advice. All I can say as if it were me. That is not the road that I would want to go down. If we look at today's headlines, it kind of seems like the picture is starting to change. And this is yet another reason why I tell you in my opinion, if you wait to be officially told oh kind of seems like the markets aren't doing so well. Kinda seems like the economy is maybe not doing so hot. Oops a daisy. You've waited to like, in my opinion, if you wait to be told, oh, sorry. You've waited too late. on Yahoo Finance, we read private equity is snapping up companies at record pace. Oh, golly, gee whiz. What a surprise. Private equity firms are snapping up cash strapped companies at a frenzied pace amid a washout in public equity markets this year that sent stock valuations plummeting. Hmm. I wonder if we'll see the same thing happening in the housing market. I mean, it's almost like some of these huge real estate companies and global conglomerates are buying up entire subdivisions and entire towns turn them into giant rental properties. It's almost like that's already happening. Americans are putting inflation on the credit card fed study shows. Americans just drove the biggest jump in credit card debt in 20 years as inflation gathered pace home. But remember, everybody is doing great. Remember that. Remember how we were told explicitly that people are not living on their credit cards, why they're flush with cash. Some of them are still living on those 2020 STEMI checks and they're hanging out in grandma's basement. They're doing fine. People have more money in their savings account than they ever have. Why? Oh, my goodness me this article that more people are putting things on credit cards. How can that possibly be? Meanwhile, if we scroll down we see another headline, US household debt tops$16 trillion amid rising inflation. Overall delinquency rates rose modestly to for all debt types, with delinquencies for credit cards and auto loans creeping up particularly in low income areas. Well, how on earth could that be? Why people were doing great they had all of this money in their savings account? Why? Why would we be seeing these headlines now? We hop over to CNBC we find Amazon warehouses face expanded probes into safety hazards as investigators visit three more sites. China ratchets up military and economic pressure on Taiwan as Pelosi begins her visit homeless suicidal down to last $1,000 Celsius investors beg bankruptcy judge for help. More stores are opening and closing despite recession fears. You know, that's really interesting to me, because if you go on YouTube, you'll see quite a few commentators walking around through places like shopping malls, shopping centers, strip malls, and they're vacant and a lot of places and some of them will have posters up that say this store is coming in May 2022 are June 2022. But you know, here we are, it's August and those stores never have opened just yet. But they're telling us that more stores are opening and closing. Yeah, until they're not okay. Here's another interesting headline 4.2 million people quit in June despite recession worries at paradox in our economy. I'll read some of that for you now. A cooldown in the job market is underway. The number of job openings dropped in June while near record numbers of people continued to quit and get hired into new roles. According to the Labor Department's latest job openings and labor turnover over summary, try to say that fast labor turnover summary. It's also called the jolts, let's makes it easier to read. The labor market posted 10 point 7 million new jobs in June, which is down from 11 point 3 million in May, but also much higher than a year ago, and a more than 50% increase from before the pandemic. Despite the drop there still. I can't so I'm sorry. Despite the drop, there are still roughly 1.8 open jobs for every person who is unemployed in quote. Okay, well, all right, we're down now from two open jobs for every one person to 1.8 open jobs for every one person. Scroll down and read a little bit more. I'm trying to keep it together. But gosh, sometimes you gotta laugh rather than cry. Okay. People may also be spooked by headlines of big name companies, especially ones across tech and housing sectors that saw COVID era growth, announcing layoffs, hiring freezes, and rescinded job offers in recent months. Bunker recognizes there are pockets of the economy and labor market going through turbulence, he says, but they're for the most part, concentrated pockets. I'm going to break in and say yeah, okay, sure. They're concentrated pockets until they're not. People are doing great. They've got a ton of money in savings, why they're not relying on their credit cards. Yeah, until you're officially officially told that they are. Wake up. Yeah, I'm gonna continue to read. These workers may also be to get be getting hired into new jobs pretty quickly. The national unemployment rate held steady at 3.6% in June. Looking ahead, bunker expects to see payroll growth and expanding employment in the jobs report out Friday. If you're thinking of switching jobs, it's still a good time, he says adding that job seekers may focus more on going to an industry sector or employer with a strong economic outlook and quote, yeah, look, I say all the time on this podcast, I'm not giving you advice. I can't I don't know your individual situation, what life is like for you and your family? what your priorities are. I just sit here and opine for your entertainment only. Now, maybe the person who was interviewed for this article does feel comfortable saying, Hey, if you think it's a good idea to switch jobs, it's still a good time. I'm not going to go on the record and say that. No, no, no, no, no, no. If it were me, I would want to really, really do some serious fact checking and a serious cost benefit analysis. Do I feel that I have stability and tenure in my current position? And do I feel that giving up that stability and tenure in order to make a move somewhere else would be worth it? I cannot make that decision for you. But I am not going to blow smoke up anybody's backside and say I still think it's a good time to be bebop and all over the market? No, I personally don't think that. Again, I cannot tell you to jump hop or not to jump hop I can only speak for myself. And speaking solely for myself. I would want to really make a judicious and well thought out decision. Under the little blurb here of a hiring slowdown doesn't indicate an inevitable recession. We read, in contrast with strong job numbers, economists and consumers alike are worried about a potential recession. Geez, it's still a potential recession. We have a paradox in our economy because of conflicting signals, says Andrew flowers a labor economist at AP caste and research director at recruit o nomics. For example, the share of people filing for unemployment insurance has ticked up in recent weeks. But according to the Labor Department's report, layoffs stayed just under 1% In June, near record lows. monger says inflation concerns are likely to blame but reasons for heightened concern about a recession have not fully materialized yet in quote, yeah, I'm gonna have to stop with this. Oh, Lord have mercy. I have a headache. No, actually, I'm going to soldier through because the last two little paragraphs of this are our deserving of going out on the air. Should people be worried right now it's unclear flower says My message to job seekers and workers is that it's not clear this economic slowdown will result will result in a material increase in unemployment. He adds, as the economy shifts to a lower gear of growth, which is the Feds intention. That doesn't mean we will suddenly have 10% unemployment and quote, yeah, of course not. Of course, it doesn't. I mean, we did have 10% unemployment during the Great Recession. At least that's what was reported. I suspect, it may have been a lot higher than that. But sure, sure, don't be worried. You know, you just keep doing you. You keep swiping those credit cards, you keep traveling and FOMO and Yolo. Go, go load up the back of your truck or your SUV with tons of overpriced fireworks and doodads and junk. Of course, you keep spending, you keep job hopping, you just keep doing whatever you want. And don't worry, because it's unclear. It is just unclear if we will have unemployment tick up. Why I mean, typically it does. When you're in a recession, or an economic depression. Typically it does tick up but why we just don't know. You don't want to make a premature decision and I don't know watch out for yourself and your family. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, play games if you want to play games if you want to. Today, it is Wednesday, August 3. on CNBC, we find stocks rally to reverse today slide surging on rosy earnings results and economic data. The confusing job market tech and finance brace for the worst travel can't hire fast enough. Below that we find these charts show why we may not be in a recession and the picture that goes with it shows a now hiring sign. If you click on that article, you will read. If the US economy is in a recession, someone forgot to tell the jobs market. The employment picture over the past six months is behaving nothing like an economy in a downturn. Instead creating jobs at a rapid pace of nearly 460,000 a month. The CNBC team looked at economic data going back to 1947. It indicated that when gross domestic product has been negative for six months, as is the case for 2022 payrolls followed by an average of a half a percentage point, but this year, the job count actually has increased by 1%. The latest data on the jobs picture comes out Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to report a payrolls gain of about 258,000 for July. According to Dow Jones estimates. BLS data earlier this week showed that the gap between job openings and available workers is still vast, but edging lower end quote. I'm not sure if you've pieced it together just yet. But allow me some leeway here. Just my opinion, and I could be wrong. But in my opinion, I believe that this jobs market is being inflated and propped up and Bs as evidence that we are not in a recession and people are doing just fine. At what point it will be officially admitted that all of this is smoke and mirrors. I don't know. I don't know. But I would not want to be caught off guard. Meanwhile, back in reality, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that the skincare company newskin had a layoff I think yesterday, Amazon cut its staff by almost 100,000 People in the June quarter. Robin Hood laid off about 23% of its staff, and apparently its CEO said that the cuts that Robin Hood made back in April just didn't go far enough. But sure, there are tons of open legitimate jobs out there. This labor market is healthy and people are doing great. Today we have made it to Thursday August the fourth. If you go over to CNBC, you will see headlines such as coin base shares soar in boost from meme traders and Black Rock crypto deal. Mill. Isn't that interesting? I seem to remember that along about mid June Coinbase laid off something like 18% of its staff, and over on a website called E financial careers.com. There's a very interesting article. It was published on June 14 2022. And the title is coin base layoffs. We have been led by children. Now we're going to read just a little bit of this article for you Now, naturally, I will drop a link to it so that you can find it for yourself in its entirety. When Coinbase published its second quarter shareholder letter in May 2022. CEO Brian Armstrong had no issues with its references to coin base is ambitious hiring plan to execute on product innovation, international expansion, platform scaling and reliability nor to its predicted increase in spending on stock based compensation from $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion dollars in 2022. And when Coinbase employees last week launched a petition to remove the CEO, the chief product officer and the chief people officer after job offers were rescinded. Brian retaliated with a Twitter tirade telling Coinbase people who'd signed it to quit and find a company to work out that you believe in accusing them of falling into a mental trap of negativity. Three days later, Brian has sent a memo saying that 18% of Coinbase staff are being cut off from the company systems with immediate effect. He's also admitted that quadrupling Coinbase, staff over an 18 month period amounted to growing too quickly, and acknowledge that our employee costs are too high to effectively manage this uncertain market and quote, wow, so much to unpack there so much, so much, so much. I'll just kind of freeform it here is another reason why I tell you if you wait to be officially told, Hey, we're in a recession, hey, it's kind of looking more like 1982. Sorry, unemployment, I hope that jobs market home goodness, if you're waiting to be officially told, in my opinion, you've waited too late. Here's a great case in point. You know, I've talked umpteen times about some of these zombie companies. And I'm not saying that coin base is one just to be clear. I'm talking about zombie companies in general. Some of these zombie companies that have been propped up by debt, hot air and VC money going under and yet still having jobs posted on the flipping website, the same day that they announced they're going defunct. And I just wonder at what point are certain people going to wake up? There's still the right fighters out there. You know, I talked about these folks and the people who are not going to make it in my opinion episode. The right fighters that want to tell you Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I have absolutely no expertise in the subject whatsoever. But I think the labor market is still hot. Oh, I think every help wanted sign that's in a window is totally legit. Oh, I think if a company has a posting out, they must be going to hire for it. And it's like, what do you even know about it? You're just talking out of your backside. And putting out misinformation in my opinion. And the average person that reads that may not know that that person doesn't have any expertise they may not know so again, hey, hey, if you wait to be officially told, in my opinion, you've waited too late. You've waited too late. I mean, here we are. This is this is such a great an excellent illustration of what I'm talking about. Okay. There's a shareholder letter that goes out in May of 2022. Where seemingly the CEO has no issues with the ambitious hiring plan. Oh, we're gonna keep scaling we're gonna up our stock based compensation by point 2 billion this year at home. Oopsy daisy, we grew too fast. Oh, we were like Icarus. We flew too close to the sun. We didn't resend it. Some job offers Oh, then we laid off 18%. And we acknowledge we grew too quickly ups are bad. What does that do? To the people that are on the receiving end of oops, are bad? And what in the hell do you think is going to happen with the economy overall? I'm just putting that out there as food for thought. Not trying to gloom and doom. Yeah, I'm not trying to eat or you. I'm trying to give you some food for thought. It's also worth mentioning, okay, there's this black rock crypto deal. Let's revisit the quote from not that long ago. Let's go back to the end of March when Black Rock President Rob capito, or capitalists and whoever you want warned that there's a younger generation, that they're not going to be able to go into a store and get exactly what they want. They're entitled they're spoiled and they have never had to sacrifice and interesting. Also on CNBC, the great unrest, how 2020 Change the economy's in ways we can't understand yet. So now it's just nebulous. It's just cloudy and there's just no way that we can understand it yet. weekly jobless claims rise to 260,000 ahead of non farm payrolls report, so they better get ready for what's gonna come down the pike tomorrow. And who knows? I mean, will it be accurate? Will it be honest? Who knows? Who knows? Will it still be hot air and, and a fluff piece basically, in my opinion? Who knows? Over on Yahoo Finance, we have Warner Brothers earnings what to expect amid rumored layoffs. Why risk of recession is getting higher and higher. Oil breaks$90 coin base soars. Major averages mixed US recession, odds are falling fast. JP Morgan trading model shows. There's also a headline from MarketWatch they've linked to titled Why an Arkansas town could provide a grim roadmap for America. If car repos blow up. And the little byline immediately underneath says they are designed for a default, says Mallory Sanders, a lawyer at Legal Aid of Arkansas in Springdale have car loans to hourly workers that led to repose in the past two years and quote, wow, man, wow. You know, I read a story like that. And I immediately think back to that song pink houses by Mellencamp. And I know, okay, there's a lot of millennials that want to trash baby boomer era rock and roll, even though I mean, it's like, hey, some of those Gen Xers grew up with that too. And I'm like, not all of this sort of baby boomer rock and roll that you're thinking of was lousy. So you need to kind of expand your mind a little bit. But think about that lyric in pink houses where he says something like there's people and more people, but what do they know, they go to work in some high rise and vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico. There's winners and there's losers. But that ain't no big deal, because it's the simple man baby who pays for the thrills and the bills and the pills that kill. That's it. That's it. That's it. That is it. I've been thinking a lot about doing an episode, just to make some theories and predictions. Again, I'm not a psychic, or at all seeing Oracle from ancient times. I don't know. But my spidey senses are sort of telling me whatever this is that's brewing up. Could be like, what if the 2008 great recession and the early 80s recession? I'm thinking about 1982? What if that? What if those two time periods got together and had a baby? Because I can see similarities brewing up right now with what was going on in the early 80s. But then also what was going on in the 2008 recession and who just turns my stomach, it really does. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find hiring drops for fourth straight month. Mega Millions tickets as tea leaves, CEOs crackdown on swag. Walmart is trimming corporate staff, apparently and anonymous source told The Wall Street Journal that around 200 People that are considered corporate employees at Walmart are going to be getting laid off. But hey, remember, everything is fine. Unemployment is low and people are doing great. We've made it hit last to Friday, August the fifth this is as per usual another Friday where I am so ready to hit the bed. So today we got the glorious July jobs report and one you know it my goodness gracious it is even better than what we expected. Why? We're not at a 3.6% unemployment rate. We're at a 3.5% unemployment rate and supposedly any type of employment related crisis that might have happened from the pandemic Well, it's over now. You can just draw like the heavens have opened up. Angels with soft white wings and beautiful robes are strumming on their heart and life is fantabulous don't, you know, don't you know? Over on CNBC, of course we have many jobs related headlines. Here's where the jobs are for July 2022. And one chart and on the little graphic we see leisure and hospitality plus 96,000 Professional Plus Business Services plus 89,000. Healthcare plus 70,000 construction plus 32,000 manufacturing plus 30,000 retail trade, plus 22,000. People are doing great. Now beneath all of those fuzzy fluffy numbers. Pay no attention to this Course, Fed rate hikes expected to be more aggressive after strong jobs report. I'm sure those two things are completely unrelated. payrolls increased 528,000 In July, much better than expected and a sign of strength for the jobs market. A shakeout among mortgage lenders is coming says bank CEO who left the business. Bed Bath and Beyond is discontinuing a private brand as it tries to reverse declining sales. Higher housing costs force more pet owners to surrender their dogs. There's a heartbreaking picture of a woman clutching her dog crying, but people are doing great. Over on Yahoo Finance we find the astounding labor market recovery from the pandemic is complete. I'm sure now you can see the heavens parting and those lovely angels strumming their harps. The US economy has recovered all of the job losses suffered during the pandemic in a little over two years. One of the fastest recoveries on record mixed messages Wall Street reacts to July jobs report why the jobs report could tank the stock market stock sink after shock. July jobs report. White House does victory lap after strong jobs report. unusually large US jobs number Stokes case for unusually large rate hike, the US Federal Reserve faces renewed pressure to deliver another 75 basis point interest rate hike, and its upcoming meeting in September as fresh data showed job gains unexpectedly. But I'm sure those two things are unrelated, sizzling US jobs data make case for bigger Fed rate increases. You know, if you haven't pieced it together yet, I'm not really sure what's going to do it for you. I'm really not the job market is being used as justification, in my opinion, for the Fed to do these rate hikes. It's also being used, in my opinion, to sort of puff everybody up well, things are not that bad. Look at how good the labor market is doing. Is it being used for political purposes? Of course it is. And I'm politically agnostic on here, you know, the most that I will tell you is I'm registered Independent. So I don't have a dog in the fight of either political party. And that's the way I like it. So you know how these things go, the Democrats will blame the Republicans, the Republicans will blame the Democrats, this guy in office will say it was the last guy's fault. And then he'll say it's this guy's fault. And on and on and on we go. But again, it comes back to the Mellencamp song pink houses, it's the little guy that's going to be the one on the hook. It's the average working person, that's going to be the one that has to pay for the thrills and the pills and the bills that kill. That's it. That's it. I will drop a link to the July jobs report so that you can check it out for yourself. And I would highly encourage you to take a look and make your own decisions. Over on my Patreon account, I talked about how sad it is to me that a majority of adult Americans do not read at a sixth grade level. I, I find that just staggering. I find that staggering. And I think that, unfortunately, there will be people who look at little snippets of headlines and they go, Well, things are doing great. I'm not going to sit and go through some boring jobs report, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to look at the headlines. And I'm like, if you're doing that, then you are doing it at your own peril. You know, this glowing jobs report for one thing doesn't really take into account the fact that there are people who are working more than one job, not only working more than one job, but working more than one full time job to try to make ends meet. So I mean, does that sound like the economy is doing great people are doing great, everything is fine. I mean, in my personal household economy, when every time you go to the grocery store, it's more expensive than it was the week before some of the shelves are starting to get barren. Some of the things that you need are out of stock. And if you really, really, really need it, then you might have to order it from online and God knows how much you're gonna pay, especially when you have to factor in the shipping. I mean, that doesn't sound great. The electric bill has double water, the water bill is up, although water rationing is in place. So it's like we're paying more to use less, which doesn't seem right. So yeah, of course. Okay, people are doing great. Now there's a treasure trove of things that we can pick apart in this jobs report. But there are a few things that I want to highlight for you and read to you. So here we go. The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons increased by 303,000 to 3.9 million in July. This rise reflected an increase in the number of persons whose hours were cut due to Slack work or business conditions. The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons is below its February 2020 level of 4.4 million. These individuals who would have preferred full time employment were working part time, because their hours had been reduced, or they were unable to find full time jobs and quote, I want to break in here and say, I'm already hearing from people in various parts of the country, I cannot disclose company names. If someone confides in me, I take that seriously. And so I don't want to expose anything that has not hit the news channels yet. Now, once it's out there, and it's fodder for public information, so be it. But I am hearing from individuals about certain companies that are cutting temps and cutting part time workers, or they're putting those people on a temporary furlough saying, we really don't want to let go of our full time permanent employees if we don't have to. Therefore, we're going to bear the brunt at first on part time, and temporary workers. So if you have this increase in people who are trying to work part time for economic reasons, what would happen if those jobs become scarce? What would happen if those people go on furloughs at various companies? This is a scary thing. In my opinion, I'll continue to read the number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was 5.9 million in July, little changed over the month. This measure is above its February 2020 level of 5 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed, because they were not actively looking for work during the four weeks preceding the survey, or were unavailable to take a job and quote, So yet again, we have 5.9 million people that have just been discarded. In the results of this report. I wonder how many more people that we don't know about seriously. I'll continue to read one more paragraph. Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of persons marginally attached to the labor force at 1.5 million was about unchanged in July. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but had not looked for a job. In the four weeks preceding the survey. discouraged workers a subset of the marginally attached who believe that no jobs were available for them. Number 424,000. In July, little change from the prior month and quote, we'll just eff those people, I guess, just forget about them. We're just going to sweep them under the rug and pretend they don't exist in this glowing wonderful jobs report. Wow. Well, he had again, pink houses. It's a simple man, baby. That little guy is going to be the one pays for all this right? Wow. Stay safe. Stay well keep your head on a swivel. Stay aware. Stay alert. Stay happy as best you can. I know. I know that all of this sounds like gloom and doom. I do. But in my opinion, you sleep a little bit better at night, if you have some sense of preparation. If you've said all right, I do have the sense that an economic poopoo storm is brewing up. I don't know what it's going to look like I really don't. But I'm going to try to do the best I can for myself and my family. If you have that sense of preparedness, then it also gives you a sense of ease. And then you can also do your mindset work. Come what may, we're going to make it come what may we're going to figure out a way to not only survive, but thrive. Stay well stay sane, and I'll see in the next episode.