Saturday Broadcast 30

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news, 1/2 - 1/6.
✔️ Old, rich white guys say you are a whiner who doesn't really know hardship. Hmm... I'm having a massive flashback to 2008 when Phil Gramm said the same thing! We know how that movie played out.
✔️If the NFL hadn't postponed the game after Damar Hamlin's injury, that would have been the last game I ever watched. You cannot expect players to play after a five-minute break not knowing if their teammate is alive. I normally expect that kind of cruelty from Corpo America.
✔️You owe yourself. What's being done to the economy sucks and it is not the fault of working class folks. At the same time: you still gotta deal with what's coming and it doesn't look good.
✔️If you have a realtor, broker, pay-cash-for-house place, etc., blowing up your phone and you want it to stop, get into a discussion with them about '08. They will lose your number hella fast!

Links I discuss:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-week-ahead-2023-new-year-jobs-report-114724649.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/things-were-way-tougher-charlie-150000169.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=5835269&page=1

https://fortune.com/2023/01/03/tech-layoffs-2022-pandemic-dotcom-bubble/

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shopify-axing-meetings-involving-more-171802803.html

https://tinyurl.com/ynf67hv8

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/04/old-rich-white-dudes-think-youre-a-bunch-of-whiners/

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/the-blog/  (Please bookmark my blog - do not rely on social media to tell you when I have published something new!)

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/remote-work-may-be-past-its-prime-6117210/

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

Transcript

0:06

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in today it is Monday, January 2. Today is also the day that we're officially observing New Year's Day. And I'm glad he was able to have an entire week off and have sort of a long weekend to boot. So this has been wonderful. And it has really highlighted to me the necessity of periodically taking some time off in between projects in between clients, it is really good if you can to hit the reset button a little bit and have some self care. i Yeah, I've been able to focus on working inside the business I got my will you survive the job market crash mini book published shameless plug, it's available on Amazon for only 99 cents. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can actually read it completely free of charge. It's a very quick read some quick and easy, simple strategies that you can do to formulate that job loss survival plan. I know it sounds pessimistic, but I really do think more and more people will need that information as we go further into 2023. So let's dip into the headlines. Tomorrow, I will be publishing a more comprehensive podcast episode about some of the important news that you missed. During the holiday week, while we were focused on the bomb cyclone, and that horrible storm that came through travelers being stranded. There were some interesting devils in the details, shall we say? So I'll be talking about that. In tomorrow's broadcast. On Thursday, I will also be drawing some pretty scary parallels between what we have seen in 2022. And what we saw during the great recession. And I really think I may do a series of episodes connected to that. Because you could be in the chair recording all day. If you really looked at the similarities, even though the talking heads want to tell you that we are not in 2008. And we could just never have a 2008 scenario ever play out again. Wink wink. When you look at the data, when you really look at the data and some of the same players like same poopoo different day, the same sets of names and the same sets of companies popping back up. I really think you'd have to be crazy to believe we could just move or you know, get real. Over on CNBC, we have headlines today such as Tesla reports 1.3 1 million deliveries in 2022. Growth of 40%. over last year, more social media regulation is coming in 2023 Members of Congress say on that note, whatever we may think about Lord Ilan, I have many opinions, and I'm not going to voice them on the air. If nothing else, I would really encourage you to read the Twitter files that were released to the public. I know that we're all supposed to focus on what Orange Man did. We're supposed to care about Trump and the mean tweets and all that I really don't. As I've said before, I try not to get political on this broadcast. I'm registered Independent. That's how I like it. I don't see a whole lot of difference between this party and that party. And it makes me sad when I hear people get into this mindset of well, it's bad now that when when our guys get in, they're going to turn it all around. When you look at history, nobody has turned it all around. So like, please get real. If you go and look at the Twitter files, and you get past all of the noise and the faux outrage about Orange Man bad mean tweets bad. And even the debate about is this professional? Should a US president be putting out mean tweets? Is that really the best use of his time? Get beyond all of that. And look at the government agencies involved with Twitter. If it doesn't scare you, maybe you've been lobotomized. Because when you really look at all of the fingers that are in the pies of social media, it should tell you a lot. There was a writer on medium that sort of asking this question of what even is the point of social media and I wrote a comment, which is that no interactions whatsoever. And they have been deleted by now who knows were suppressed in some way, I'm sure. Because I had the unmitigated gall to say you know it very well may be that social media was formed by our corporate masters to distract and entertain and foment conflict to push very certain particular narratives. No, can't delete that comment fast enough, right. Don't want to interact with that somebody got too close to the truth. Yeah, read the Twitter files. A highly immune evasive Omicron variant is quickly becoming dominant in us as it doubles weekly. Well, isn't that fantastic news. So on my long haul journey, certain things are doing better certain things have improved over the break, I developed what they're calling COVID toes, which is sort of like if rheumatoid arthritis and Athlete's Foot had a baby. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's terrible. So the joints in your toes swell and get irritated and there's pain, but then at the same time, there's quite a bit of itching and scaling. Like you get with athlete's foot. It's weird. So I tried a variety of medications, to try to figure out what was going to work the best and for me, I can't give you medical advice. Always talk to your own doctor or nurse. You know, call telehealth do what you need to do. But for me, what brought the most Relief has been calamine lotion. So the day that I went to a shop I don't normally go to and I saw calamine lotion on the shelf and thought, you know, that's a gap in my preps. We don't have any calamine lotion at the house. Well, lo and behold, it turns out that I needed it and it has helped quite a lot. So I'm not happy to hear about any disease going around the country. Believe me. NASDAQ closes out its first four quarter slump since the.com. Crash? Well, you know, there's another something we can go back to another stroll down memory lane of something that was not particularly fun to go through the.com boom and bust. Aerospace and Defense stocks took flight in 2022. Oh, imagine that. You know, I just can't hardly can't hardly believe that news. Retailers are bracing for tougher times and more frugal customers in 2023. Hmm. So that doesn't really sound like inflation is abating. People are starting to feel better consumer confidence is going back up. On the same light. Okay, what front we have 26 year old quit her job to ask strangers how much money they make. Now she's scoring six figure deals. Right? Yeah. So there's a good job loss survival plan for you just assume that you can go around and ask strangers how much money they make, and you too, will score six figure deals. This is starting to remind me a lot of lifestyles of the rich and famous. Some of y'all gonna be way too young to remember that but champagne wishes and caviar dreams. You know, Robin leach would go around and show these people with their yachts and their mansions. And it's like, you too, can one day have this yacht? You too. Can one day have a supermodel and be eating caviar on the south of France. Right? Yeah, sure. Companies can hire a virtual person for about 14k a year in China. Yeah. So here's another interjection I want to make. Having the time off during the holiday season allowed me to catch up with some friends that I hadn't spoken to in a little while. And one of those conversations I thought was particularly enlightening. Now this friend who lives in California, and he's a bit more on the, you know, I would probably say the conservative side of things, I think there's still some hope that he has that maybe someone some politician will come along that will help fix the mess. Or, you know, maybe if we get some better people in office, things will change. There's too many folks on the government, Dole and all that crap. I disagree with quite a few of his positions. But we can still be friends here. And here's a little life lesson for you. You don't have to agree with your platonic friends on everything. And you can still learn from individuals that you disagree with. I think this vitriolic environment we have now where it's like unless we are in an echo chamber, and you think exactly the same damn way that I do. I don't even want to know you anymore. That's insane. And then you have people crying that they can't make friends. Well, if you expect all of your friends to be robots are carbon copies of you, that could be part of the problem. So we were talking about the economy, we're talking about things that we had observed. And I actually tried to go buy a place like a little drive in Drive Thru place and get some drinks and could not even get help. I mean, it was like sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and they were clearly understaffed. It looked like there was one carhop going out to deliver the food and there was one person in the building, trying to both take the orders and make the food and the drinks. It was just crazy and chaotic. So I was relaying that story. And then he was also talking about how many places in California, he's still saying that are closing at weird times and putting up signs in the window saying we're closed early or we're closed for the Next week due to no staff, and things of that nature, now, I'm not seeing as much of that here in the Midwest, it seems like the mom and pop shops that have been able to hang on are doing okay, you know, knock on wood. But I'm not seeing as many places that are closing early or closing it weird times due to staffing shortages, it seems like places in the Midwest that went through that have already closed, they've either solved the problem and done what they needed to do, or they've already closed down. So he was telling me about what he's seen in California. And he said, You know, I get so frustrated by not being able to just go get a hamburger and something to drink in a drive thru not being able to go in a sit down restaurant, and be waited on or you go in, and there's one waiter, or one server in the whole place trying to manage all of these tables alone. And so the service you get is inattentive, and it's not the server's fault. They're just the only person that showed up, and they're doing the best that they can out of a bad situation. And he said, this is the point that I want to make here and the tie in and I see to this virtual person in China, he said, You know, I'm at the point now, where if all of these places want to automate, I'm fine with it. Before I felt bad about it, because I don't want people to lose their jobs. I don't want those jobs to go away and be taken over by robots and machines. But I'm at the point now where I'm tired of going in a place and I can't get service, or I'm tired of trying to go to a business and it's closed. And they say due to staffing shortages. This is how it happens. This is part of how it happens, in my opinion, you can make the noises at me and tell me I've got my tinfoil hat on. But that's really what I believe. I think that some of these staffing shortages and labor shortage, nobody wants to work blah, blah, blah, and creating these environments where people do get frustrated. I think that's part of how the powers that be are going to usher in more robotics and more automation. We've already seen that in that pilot McDonald's store. I think it's in Fort Worth, Texas, where I think maybe there's a human in the back somewhere. They say there's a human in the back somewhere. But for the most part, you're just dealing with machines, and the stuff comes out and there's like some empty counters for DoorDash people to get things. This is how it starts to get people frustrated to the point where someone who would normally say I don't want everything to get automated. I want people to have those jobs, if they want them, gets frustrated and says screw it. If the robots are going to take over and I can at least get my hamburger. I would rather do that. That's I don't see any way around it. I think that this so called labor shortage, and the bullcrap narrative of nobody wants to work. All Millennials have moved back home with grandma, all Gen Z kids are lazy. You know, I've said before we heard the same thing in the 80s and 90s. As as exercise where we're the slacker generation. We're spoiled. We haven't gone through the same tumult and stress the Sturm on drawing, if you will, that our parents and grandparents generations went through, we just don't have that same grit. We heard the same thing. In the 80s and 90s. That's just just more generational clickbait and generational conflicts. You is that being done to sort of break down the nuclear family, maybe you can certainly make an argument of that pit people against each other so that in the same way people have a whine and moan that they can't make friends anymore. You separate them from their families, too. How's that for some tinfoil hat for you? Yeah, but I do I think I think the so called labor shortage and all this, nobody wants to work anymore. And oh, my God, we've got all of these open service sector jobs and these lazy whatever's millennials, Gen Z ers whomever, they just don't take these jobs. So we had to resort to the robots, y'all. You left us with no choice. The only way that we could stay in business and flip our hamburgers was to have the robots do it. I mean, that's what I see coming. I really do. Now, am I telling you that the robots are coming for every job? Or that every single company will just have machines and counters? No, I'm not saying that. What I'm telling you is that I think something like the retail and fast food and the service sector hospitality type jobs. I think we'll see the revolution taking place there first, because it's the low hanging fruit No pun intended. It's fairly easy to go into a McDonald's automate everything and just say well, we'll have a couple of people in the back to be the the humanoids that watch over everything. But you know, the machines are going to cause a lot less problems for us. Oh, and they're reliable. So when you get desperate for that hamburger at three o'clock in the morning, you can come in here and get it and there's no muss, no fuss, we're not having to shut down because Billy didn't show up for his shift. After Sally called in sick. Over on Yahoo Finance we find the harsh reality for investors eyeing tech stocks in 2023 jobs data Fed minutes a fresh start. What to know this week? Oh, I'm sure that that's going to be a doozy. So when we click on it, we find the December jobs report in details from the Federal Reserve's last policy meeting of 2022 will headline a short opening week of 2023 for investors as Wall Street limps into a new year after its worst run since the global financial crisis. So right there, another easy parallel. The Labor Department will publish its jobs

report for December at 8: 15:44

30am. Eastern Time on Friday morning, and economists expect a payroll gain of 200,000 jobs last month per Bloomberg consensus estimates. Outside of the headline jobs data, three additional updates on the labor market will be on the docket for investors this week with the latest jolts report ADPs private payrolls data and the Challenger job cuts report all due out how long sigh the flurry of labor market releases the Fed will release a readout of its December policy meeting which investors will pour over for clues on the central bank's next move. Last month, the Fed raised interest rates by 50 basis points, bringing total increases to its benchmark policy rate of 4.25%. In 2022, in quote. I mean, any report that tells me that we gained 200,000 jobs last month, is automatically very sauce, in my mind, I just doesn't reflect what I saw. But hey, we're still getting hype and hoopla that all of these people are clamoring for RTO when they're not. I have not encountered a single soul not a single flipping person who has told me I really want to go back to the office, I'm done with work from home, it's over for me, the luster has worn off of it. So only call me for full in office opportunities. I've not found a single person who's told me that I'm not saying there's not that one person out of, I don't know, maybe one out of 1000 that has such a crap home life that they really need to escape. I'm sure there is I'm just not encountering those people. They're not the individuals that I talked to. All right, here we go. Here's something else that we should talk about another parallel by the way, to 2008. Things were way tougher. Charlie Munger has a blunt message for whiners worried about hardship. So we get a picture here of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, two old white rich dudes telling the rest of us plebs huh? Yeah, we're whiners. Hmm, it might be a new year, but not everyone is excited for what 2023 may bring. stocks are down. Economic growth seems to be slowing and inflation remains rampant. But Warren Buffett's right hand man Charlie Munger suggests that we should in fact, be more content with our current situation. We are so close to let them eat cake. We're like right there. We're right there just throwing some rotten potatoes. Let me cake as long as we're doing fine. They need to just shut the hell up. The power brokers are rich and we don't care. We're still going to our mez and Louie Vuitton so the plebs just need to Conor Corker. People are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher. Munger said earlier this year. It's weird for somebody my age because I was in the middle of the Great Depression when the hardship was unbelievable. Okay, fair point. I'm not going to sit here and say that the Great Depression wasn't horrible, and that people didn't have unbelievable hardship. I've told the story on the air more than once I think about Professor cows, Grandpa is hired hand, the guy left and rode the rails and went everywhere in the country for a year, came back and looked like he had aged 10 years in one year, still had only the clothes he left with and they were threadbare and worn and he looked haggard, and said I will come back. I will even just live in the barn as long as you will feed me and you will buy me a new pair of blue jeans because the ones that I have on are falling apart. If you'll do that I'll stay here and work for free through the rest of this crisis. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we're in the middle of something like that. I'm not telling you that the average person is out riding the rails and in the same pair of blue jeans that they've had had since the beginning of the economic crisis. I'm not going to sit here and say that No way. What I think is incredibly crappy about all of this is the let them eat cake attitude. And the idea that well, unless we're in the Great Depression, you need to just shut the hell up. Don't Don't sound any alarm bells. Don't complain about anything, you need to just go back to the office and sit down and shut up and stay in the cubicle. But here's the deal. We heard this same thing. In 2008. You may remember it you may not know I will drop a link to an article from ABC News, published on September 18. Of 2008. Who's whining now? Gram slammed by economist former McCain aides comments about a nation of whiners criticized by experts. In this we read, talk about words coming back to haunt you, Phil Gramm, John McCain's former economic adviser left the campaign in July, when he tried to counter criticism of the Republican candidates economic policies by asserting that the country had become a nation of whiners in a mental recession. Remember that? It wasn't a real recession. You guys are just a bunch of wine bags that have created a mental recession. You can't make this stuff up. If we were sitting here if you and I were sitting in a room and we had a marker board and we were just like, Okay, let's write a dystopian comedy. Let's write something like Idiocracy. We couldn't come up with more far fetched lunacy than what reality gives us. Even McCain came forward to say that he disagreed with Graham's remarks, adding that someone who'd lost their job isn't suffering from a mental recession. And Barack Obama is using Graham's comments and his support of deregulation, which prompted some of the risky lending that caused the current financial crisis in a new TV ad that questions McCain's ability to handle the economy. They think the economy is fundamentally strong in tones of voiceover in the ad. We know they're fundamentally wrong. Though Graham, a former Texas senator is no longer a member of McCain's close knit team, he still seems to be assisting the campaign. That's another thing we see quite often. People go from the corporate sector to the government, the government to the corporate sector and back around again, somebody gets fired and castigated publicly but then they come back privately on the down low. It was ever this last week, former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, says Graham who is a vice chairman of the investment banking division at UBS, what did I just flipping say? Corporate America and the government, the government, corporate America, six and one half dozen, the other called urge called to urge him to endorse McCain Graham also appeared in the audience at an Aspen Institute forum featuring McCain last month. Graham's comments seem all the more stark with the financial upheaval of the past few weeks, including the government takeover of mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the de facto takeover of largest insurer AIG. I will be talking in Thursday's episode about the collapse of AIG. We'll be talking about derivatives we'll be talking about risky loans and banks buying them up. Yeah. What a great time that was. This is a mentality that doesn't understand the nature of systemic risks and financial systems, says Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning winning economist and former chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, it's social Darwinism. economic experts say that Graham and others are to blame for the current crisis that is shaping Wall Street. Graham successful effort to pass banking reform laws in 1999, which reduced decades old regulations separately, separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities helped to create the current economic crisis and quote, but a, hey, it's a mental recession. You guys are a nation of whiners. So here we are, again, rich, old white dudes telling the rest of us that we're just whiners, we're worried about hardships well, by God, it was worse during the Depression. What have you got to bitch about? What have you got to bitch about? When was the last time that you missed a meal? When was the last time that you had to choose between keeping the lights on or taking care of a sick kid? When was the last time that you had to play credit card roulette over medical bills? These all white dudes are sitting up there complaining from their ivory tower that you are a nation of whiners. Okay, so maybe you you face some struggles during the Depression. And maybe we are to believe that you pulled yourself out by the bootstraps and you are completely self made. Maybe so. But I don't think you're suffering right now you probably have servants that have servants that have servants. So give me a break. Over on fortune.com we find the everything bubble has popped, and millennials may not like what happens next, who's gonna like it? You don't have to be a millennial to not like what happens next. Get ready for the mindset shift of retro capitalism. Millennials and our generational icon Bernie Sanders like to joke about the absurdities of late capitalism, but we'll be stuck with it for a long time to come. Well, I mean, look, I've said before, it's it's crony capitalism. And I also told you the quote, I heard that fascism can be when the government controls the corporations. And it can also be when the corporation's control the government, you talk, you still call it whatever you want to call it. I mean, that's where we're at. And I don't think it's really about well, millennials might not like what happens next. Nobody's gonna like it. A lot of us are going to be struggling. And generational clickbait is not really what it's about. COVID isn't just infecting you. It could be reactivating viruses that have been dormant in your body for years. That sounds great. Southwest Airlines passengers were threatened with arrest on Christmas for trespassing at the airport, they were stranded in Twitter employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work as Elon Musk keeps cutting costs like crazy. I wrote a blog post about that earlier today. If you're working in a place and they start to lack basic supplies, toilet paper, soap in the bathroom, coffee in the kitchen or the break room area, you start to see the office getting foul. You know, they're not vacuuming the carpets, the toilets are not getting scrubbed. Any hard surfaces just look like very they're covered with dust or if it's a place where people eat, they've got food stains on them. I've never seen a situation where that was a good sign a good omen of things to come. Today it is Tuesday, January 3, if you're back in the saddle today, back at it back at work, I feel you. That holiday break went by really fast and it felt like a blip on the radar. Over on fortune.com we find FTX is Sam Venkman, free pleads not guilty to criminal fraud charges. While the plea was not unexpected, it buys the 30 year old more time Legal experts say Wow, a recession is coming for most developed nations in 2023. And this is where economists predict the worst. A recession is coming. Yeah, as I've said before, pretty sure we're already in one right now and have been so what this recession that's coming is going to look like only God knows, may very well be a depression. I hope I am wrong on that. But the more that I dig into the parallels between what we're experiencing now and what happened in Oh 70809 It is scary. Truly, there's only one time tech layoffs have ever happened faster than right now. When we click on that we find the tech winter of 2022 is one of the most brutal the sector has seen. Last year, more than 150,000 tech workers lost their jobs. According to layoffs dot FYI, which tracks corporate layoffs and dismissals. That's more than 50% of all tech job losses since the start of the pandemic. And it's 10 times as many as 2021 According to data on the site. It's a brutal tally that brings the early days of the pandemic to mind. Between March and December 2020. Over 70,000 tech workers lost their jobs. But it still falls well short of the.com bubble. 2 million people were laid off in 2001, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal in quote. So I know Debbie downer, you know, I'm not trying to sound all pessimistic and sour and everything's terrible. It's not everything is not terrible. However, I very well remember the.com Boom, followed by the.com bust and what a mess that was. Likewise, I remember the great recession slash global financial crisis and what a mess that was, as well. So when you have on CBS News, the Fed saying, we need to cool off this job market, we need to see a million or two people unemployed. I mean, they just throw it out there like it's nothing a million or 2 million people unemployed. What will it really be? You know, I think it's a good rule of thumb at minimum to double it. So if they tell you that the unemployment rate is 3.5%, it might be more like seven. If we get to a day when they tell us at seven it's probably more like 14 So what should we really expect here? And could could there be another.com bubble.com Bust scenario where we see that many people without a job again in Silicon Valley? I hope not. I really, really, really hope not. But at the same time, I think we need to wargame out a strategy of what would it look like if that were true? Institutional homebuyer, yieldstreet slashes buying levels by 90% as it awaits a sharper home price correction. Here we go another shadow of Oh 708. And all those cocky realtors and brokers who told me we would never have another 2008 We were not in a housing bubble. As I've also told you many times, these power brokers and Wall Street fat cats, they want your stuff, they want to pick it up on the cheap and do whatever the hell they want to with it. This is coming. So of an institutional homebuyer is pulling back and saying, You know what, we're gonna wait, we really don't think this thing has bottomed out quite enough just yet. We think it's gonna get even worse. What does that tell you? Like I always say what they say out in the public to those of us that they consider to be the unwashed, uneducated, awful masses don't pay so much attention to that, but watch what they do. And so in my mind, if an institutional homebuyers saying, Oh, this hasn't bottomed out yet, it's going to get worse. I want to factor that into my decision making. As much as I still want to do an expansion and be able to rescue and rehabilitate more animals who need that. I can't go broke in the process. And to say that I'm disgusted with some of the options that are still floating around in my local market here in the Midwest, kind of an understatement. You still have sellers out here that have not gotten the memo yet. And over the holiday break. One of the news like noon day news reports had a special feature some local local realtor that you could tell really thought she was something and the advice that she was giving. I was just sitting here cringing literally not just how like the millennials and Gen Z kids say oh, that's so cringe. Like now I literally was cringing in my seat like, Oh, if somebody listens to this crap, and they believe her, can you imagine? Because she's on there with her fake nails and her bleached out hair telling everybody what you want to do is marry the house. But date the rate, you can always go back and do a refi later, you don't have to worry about it. And I'm like, wow. How do you sleep at night? I mean, I guess some people they're just well, okay, like that video, I saw of Dick folds saying I want to squeeze on people like that. I don't know what's happened to their soul. I don't know what's happened to their insides. I don't know where you have to go to be that mercenary. But clearly some people are and I don't ever want to be one of them. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn news, we find pandemic darlings lead layoffs. With that being said, please do not be naive. Do not think that because you're not in big tech or you're not in Silicon Valley or you're not at some pandemic darling startup that had its mo during 2020 that you're probably going to be safe. You don't need to rough out a job loss survival plan because somehow it will be sunshine and roses for you. I hope that it will be on the off chance that it won't be Do you have a job loss Survival Plan roughed out? Apple market cap sinks below $2 trillion dollars. rent prices finally hit a wall. More employers tell workers to RTO No, Sherlock. I'll publish a blog post later today a little bonus blog post basically to pat myself on the back and tell you, I told you so I told you when everybody else was out here and recruiting and HR and the corporate control mass media telling you that the great resignation was going to last forever. You could hippity hop across the market forever and always get higher wages. And if you wanted to work from home or work from anywhere, you'd be able to negotiate that and all these employers, they're just going to be so cool about it. Mm hmm. Who was here telling you the truth. I wasn't being a spin doctor. It does mean no pleasure to sit here and be like the economy's in the dumper and it's about to get worse. These employers are going to be rude and crude about demanding that you come back to the office and be as Scott Grayson wonderfully calls it a cubicle zombie. It does me no pleasure to sit here and tell you that As it does give me pleasure to tell you the truth, because I don't want to be an asshat. I don't want to sit here and tell you lies. That's just not for me. NFL halts game after player collapse. So that was awful. I was really looking forward to that bill's Bengals game. I'm a Bills fan. So we were like, This is a great way to cap off the holiday break, sit down, pop some popcorn, watch Monday Night Football and see how this game shakes out. And it was traumatizing. It was scary to watch what happened to Damar Hanlon, he got up, he seemed to be okay. But then it was just in a split second later, he was down and I had immediately wondered if it was a cardiac problem. I'm still going through my own long haul Rona debacle, trying to figure out precisely what my diagnosis looks like. And it's scary heart problems are very scary, even if it's temporary, if it's some infection or at some issue that you're dealing with, but the heart is healing, whatever the case may be, is really scary. And the last news that I heard is that he is in critical condition, but they were able to revive him or to get a pulse going again, get some kind of sinus rhythm in the heart happening there on the field. So my heart goes out to his family. And I just, I hope that everything there is going to be okay, it was it was a terrifying moment. And I had already made up my mind that if the NFL did not postpone that game, if they were going to try to make the players go out there after a five minute break, you don't even know if your teammate is alive or dead at that point. And you're gonna say, Well, you can have a five minute break to get warmed back up, and then you're gonna go out on that field. That's super corporate America, isn't it, you're going to sit down, you're going to shut up and you're going to get in that cube, same energy. So I've already decided if they don't call off this game and say, we're going to postpone it to some other time. I'm done. I will not sit and watch another NFL football game ever. I don't care how much I like the bills. I don't care how much you know, my version of bread and circus is watching a nice little football game and having some time to not think about the economy. I won't do it again. So I'm glad that they canceled it because that would have been absolutely heartless and cold to expect people to play after an incident like that. Shopify scraps, most meetings, Tesla misses 2022 delivery target and southwest cancels more flights. The messes keep on coming. I didn't have to bail out the airlines. At some point, it seems like that at one point, or maybe more than one point we've had to bail out the airlines. So I hope that's not where this is going. Oh, we don't get it. Well, Southwest is too big to fail y'all. And so they need some of your sweet taxpayer money because their system is all jacked up. And so we expect you to pay for it. Don't remember that Tom Petty song don't come around here. No more. I'm not interested in that. Today, it is Wednesday, January 4, over on Yahoo Finance, we find x Fed chief Greenspan says US recession is likely. There's another figure who factored prominently into the mess that we saw during the great recession. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Forget recession, the US is heading for a slow session that could last all year. Yet another attempt to just put a different name on the same concept. If we were writing our dystopian novel that would have to be part of it. Let's rebrand the idea of a recession as a slow session and see if the peons don't feel as threatened by it. In what I think maybe good news, but then at the same time I find kind of suspicious. Shopify is axing all meetings involving more than two people in a remote work calendar purge that the company itself calls fast and chaotic. Well, what could possibly go wrong with a fast and chaotic maneuver? That's first of all, the second thing is, is there something else that's behind this? I don't know. I'm just legitimately asking the question out loud. Is it a calendar purge that turns into a purge of something else, because we see that happening with other companies, layoffs are still very much occurring. And they're not just in big tech or Silicon Valley, and they're not just in the real estate market either. Things are getting dicey out there. And so I just wonder if this is going to be used as a catalyst for something that's not good. I loathe meetings. I really do. Especially anything that could have been an email. But I'm just wondering like what's behind this? When we click on the article we find we can either go slow and deliberate or fast and chaotic. We are going fast and chaotic. While we know this will feel chaotic. That's the point in tensional chaos is more than okay, it's part of working and thriving at Shopify. I don't even quite know what to say to that. Could this be a means of getting people out the door like Zuckerberg said, feel free to self select. If you don't like where this is going? Will people start to feel isolated? Like they're not kept in the loop at work anymore? It will be easier to kick them out. I don't know. Again, I am merely speculating. This is all my opinion just me opining for your entertainment only I don't know if that's what will happen. I just feel suspicious of it because I'm largely suspicious of any fat cats that try to tell us Oh, this is something good. You know, like a slow, slow session. I can't even say it. This is a slow session, not a recession. Okay. Stocks rise after economic data ahead of Fed minutes. GM reclaims US auto sales crown from Toyota. Salesforce cuts 10% of its workforce, we hired too many people. Over on fortune.com It's a similar scene. Salesforce cuts 10% of staff and layoffs as boss Marc Benioff holds his hands up for hiring too many people. In the byline, we find the software company will lay off around 8000 people after going on a wild hiring spree during the pandemic. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I believe the commentators who say that we were in an everything bubble or an omni bubble. And that included the FOMO and the Yolo of the housing market, as well as the FOMO and the yellow of the job market. And some of these companies, not just in big tech, and not just in Silicon Valley, went crazy. They wanted to try to over hire to account for attrition and to offset the great resignation. Maybe we really only need five engineers, but let's hire 10 on the assumption that half of them are going to wash out anyway. The thing is, what if they don't? What if those people stay? What if you have individuals who are looking around and feeling scared at this point, and they really want to keep those jobs. The only choice at that point is to conduct a layoff. I wish that I could tell you otherwise, but things are gonna get hairy. And not Harry and Megan. Okay. Also, we find employees are fighting hard to keep working remotely, but it can come at a high emotional cost. Told you that one too, predicted that months ago, that there would be some kind of transitional period of well, okay, you can continue to work from home, but it's going to cost you you're going to be isolated, you won't be able to get promotions, you won't make as much as your peers who were here being obedient button Seaton the cube farm. I really wanted to be wrong in the things that I told you about. But left and right, I'm being vindicated. And I'm not going to be shy about saying so I have decided that for me, 2023 is really going to be a year of raw honesty, and authenticity. Because I believe playtime is over with and it has been for a while. If you are looking for somebody to give you a nice warm bottle and put baby powder on your behind, you have come to the wrong place. If you have not put some muscle in your hustle, and you haven't wargame out a strategy of what you will do to try to survive what's coming. In my opinion, you've waited too late. You're already so far behind the eight ball at this point. I'm not sure if you could catch up. I understand that sounds pessimistic. I really do. I'm just trying to be real with you and tell you my viewpoint. It would be like in the midst of the Great Recession, if you waited for some talking head to come on the TV and say, Hey, sorry, gang, but we are in a recession. If you waited to connect the dots, you waited too late you meanwhile, we had idiots like Phil Gramm telling people that they were in a, quote, mental recession that America had turned into a nation of whiners and that we were in a mental recession. He said that in the same way. There's a mental depression. There's a mental recession. You can't make it up. I have I've published a blog post about it. I'll drop it. You can look you please, please go and read these articles for yourself. And you'll see I'm also in Thursday's broadcast. going to be talking about my first I have decided I'm going to do more than one episode because it just there's too many things going on. I can't consolidate it all into one show where it would go on for hours. I'll be talking about the same thing in the Thursday broadcast this idea of Being gaslighted so I say if you're waiting on some talking head to come and tell you that we're in a recession, you're gonna be waiting a really long time. And even then you're gonna hear this continued bullshit about well, it's gonna be mild. Well, it's not gonna last very long. Well, you just need to eat your lentils. And it was an awful, ghastly Bloomberg article from earlier it was like eat your lentils. Don't get treatment for your pets ride the bus. Yeah, it's, it's coming. And if you're not ready, if you haven't adequately prepared yourself if you don't have that job loss survival plan you haven't gotten with a financial advisor or a credit counselor if you needed to you haven't thought about what would I need to do to go into recession mode and live beneath my means maybe even well, beneath my means. I don't have anything to offer you. I don't. On that note, here we go. Another vindication another prediction come true. Something else that I have warned you about for months. Finally, going out into a mainstream news source on Business Insider. Earlier today. Some bosses are using the threat of a possible recession this year to give workers an ultimatum come back to the office or be fired. Told you so. Oh, Lord Elon got out there and kick the door wide open for everybody else to do the same thing. Zuckerberg telling his people, you know what, we're gonna make some changes around here. And if y'all don't like it, and some of y'all want to self select out the door with that, so okay. I told you that this was coming. It is that like Jed hill in the movie, malice, this is the here and the now welcome to the land of you don't have a choice. That's where this is going. I will read from this Business Insider article now. Employees at investment firm Vanguard told The Wall Street Journal's chip cutter that management threatened to fire workers without severance if they didn't comply with recent return to Office mandates. Vanguard in addition to companies like pay com have sent memos to employees in recent weeks, asking them to adhere to hybrid schedules or come into the office more. A Vanguard spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that working from the office is essential for both the experience of its clients and workers. I'm gonna butt in long enough to say that this again really comes down to the people that matter. In the eyes of corporate America. It's not you and it's not me, unless by some chance you're a billionaire hedge fund manager that's tuned in to this program is for all the rest of us, little people. It's not us, the investors, the shareholders, the board of directors, it's about very experienced, it's about their ability to exert control and to make sure that the peons are obedient. In my opinion, that's what all of this is about doesn't have anything to do. With the run of the mill client or the run of the mill worker. It's not going to be so easy to give up your job. Kathryn Wylde, Chief Executive of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit collective of nearly 300 CEOs told Reuters last month, that will probably mean that people are less resistant to the requirement. They're back in the office at least three days a week, which feels like where it is headed and quote. told you I've also been telling you repeatedly that these awful hybrid schedules for the most part will go away to two days in the office becomes three, three becomes four, four becomes skirt, let's just come in five days. Maybe you get to work from home during the holidays. Or if you're really lucky. If you really get a nice little puppy treat, then maybe you work for a company where every Friday, you get to work from home now you're still going to have to be buttoned seat from eight to five. But you get the luxury of being able to take the laptop home and sit in your home office. I just don't see any way around it. I mean, now you are being told by mainstream media sources, the Business Insider in the Wall Street Journal, this is what's coming. If you have been here with me if you've been tuning into the Saturday broadcast, if you've been reading my blog with any frequency especially if you tuned in from early on. Last year, you had a jumpstart on this. At least you were able to start thinking in this direction and getting some clarity ahead of time. This is why I always say by the time you're officially told something you have waited too late. I love to use the analogy of a blizzard. Are you the kind of person that you already have your preps and If you got snowed in for two weeks, it's frankly not a big deal. Are you the type of person that as soon as the meteorologist comes on and says we're going to have a blizzard in such and so days do you leave and go to the grocery store right then to get prepared? Or are you the kind of person who waits until an hour before the blizzard starts or you wait until snowflakes start coming out of the air to go to the grocery store, and then whine and moan and everybody else that they didn't leave anything on the shelves? All these people bought milk and bread and just damn them to hell? Which type? Are you? The prepper? Who's thought ahead of time? The person who will at least do something before the midnight hour or the person that waits until the snowflakes are falling? I yeah, I don't have any hopium to give you all like I said, this is the this is the year of raw honesty, and authenticity and I'm not playing games. No freakin way. No freakin way. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that. Okay, go ahead and rough everything out. Now, you're probably still gonna be okay. I think the window of opportunity. If you really wanted to get ahead of this mess, I think the window of opportunity for that has already closed. I'm sorry, I hope I'm wrong on that. I just don't think so. I think at this point, the main thing you could do would be damage control. You're going to have some idiots, who they're going to say, well, I won't. I won't rough out a job. Last survival plan. I won't connect with anybody in my network. I won't try to rough out an idea of how to handle this ahead of time. Once my company starts a first round layoff, I don't think that I'm going to be one of the people who gets the axe at the beginning. So I'm not going to really wait and do anything because I feel like I'll look foolish if I plan out a job loss survival plan and then it doesn't happen. Hey, I sit here and opine for your entertainment only I don't give advice. I don't tell you what to do. In my mind, approaching a recession, possibly a depression in that kind of mentality is crazy as hell. These fat cats want your stuff. They want to be able to scoop up what you have on the cheap when you lose it all. If you haven't connected the dots on that yet, or you're waiting for, I don't know like a meteorite. Are you are you waiting for like an aeroplane to come by with skywriting and say you need to get prepared now you need to be ready. I don't know, you may just be in that category of person who's just not gonna make it. I'm so sorry. I know that. That sounds really sad. It sounds really pessimistic and cynical. And I hate that because what is being done is wrong. It's morally wrong. It's financially wrong. It is terrible. It is evil. It is. It is and it is not the fault of poor people. It's not the fault of the working class. I really feel from a personal responsibility standpoint, you owe it to yourself. You remember a rocky you know, or he's griping out Polly is Polly's like friends Oh, you and you're my brother in law and you're supposed to be doing this and this and that for me. And he's like friends don't owe friends do because they want to do you owe yourself. You better be in that same kind of mentality, regardless of how much money you have in the bank right now. Whether you have $0, whether you're overdrawn or whether you've got 100, grand, free and clear that cheers. You owe yourself, you better be prepared to figure out what am I going to do for myself and my family, people that are near and dear to me that I'm going to be responsible for in an economic downturn. How are we going to make it through this? Other people don't Oh, you owe yourself to today it is Thursday, January 5, what a strange and bizarre clown world that we seem to find ourselves in recession slow session, not a recession. Oh, it's coming. But it's not here yet. The numbers are great. No, they're not. I don't like clickbait. But at the same time, I'm going to encourage you not to think it could get so bad. What, what, where even are we what phases this of the insanity? I don't? I don't quite know, but let's get into it. Over on CNBC, we find Dow falls nearly 400 points after strong jobs data signals fed likely to stay in hiking mode. Private payroll growth surged by 235,000 in December, well above estimate ADP reports. I'm not going to bury my thesis. I don't effing believe that at all. I don't I don't see any way that that was possible. Even when you had retailers saying typically we beef up during the holiday season. He's in we have part time jobs and temp work, we need the additional help. Not so much this year because we just don't see people coming into the stores to buy anything. How in the hell was their private payroll growth? Surging by over 200,000 jobs added in December? I didn't see it. And when I read off to you the roster of people laying off in January, I would hope you'd be skeptical of that too. Where are these suppose a jobs? long pause so you can figure it out? Because I sure don't know. Then Bath and Beyond shares plummet after company warns of potential bankruptcy. That's not looking good. And I think there will be other retailers that follow. I can't see any way around it. Stitch Fix plans 20%. job cuts as CEO steps down. New York Attorney General accuses former celcius CEO of defrauding hundreds of 1000s of crypto investors. Biden administration defends its student loan forgiveness plan to the Supreme Court. Wall Street executive says maybe we cried too much last year about theft. And it shows this super dystopian image of basically everything down an entire aisle being behind lock and key. And you have to press a button if you want an employee to show up to unlock those things for you. Turns out companies are deflating their public salary ranges, so you should still negotiate. Yeah, so we'll see how far that goes. Amazon's 18,000 job cuts don't go far enough. We expect more layoffs are on the horizon. Oh, yeah. No. Do you think you think in a bit of good news, Damar Hanlon, showing signs of remarkable improvement. The bill say, I want to interject quickly here. If you have the means to learn proper CPR and First Aid, I think it is an excellent investment of your time. Now I'm not talking about I learned from a guy who learned from a guy who learned from a guy somewhere in 1985, I'm talking about proper training for medical professionals go to the Red Cross or something similar, where you can get proper training that's up to date, and current. Having that skill set, it will help you sleep easier at night. And while you pray that you don't ever have to use it, you hope that no one around you ever has an emergency where you have to do the Heimlich maneuver where you have to give them CPR, you have to create a tourniquet and try to slow bleeding down until paramedics can show up. We all hope and pray that those things never be fall anyone, whether it's ourselves or a loved one. We hope that that doesn't happen. But in the event that it does, or any event that you're out somewhere in public and someone starts to choke or they need CPR. At least you have some skill set and you know how to use one of those AED devices. I think that they keep an instruction packet packet inside the machine. And then there's like, audio that plays put this patch here and everyone stands clear. But at least having that proper training can help so much it really can. I'm glad that we're hearing good news about his medical condition. And I hope that that inspires some people to learn proper life saving techniques. Again, not I learned from some guy who learned from some guy in the back of a McDonald's back in 1985. But proper education that's current and up to date. Over on Yahoo Finance stocks sink after strong labor market data surprises. What a joke What an absolute freaking joke. layoffs are sweeping corporate America to kick off 2023 Yeah, it's almost like somebody should have been on the airwaves months ago telling you that this was coming. I think, you know, I'll toot my own horn a little bit. I don't care right skirt. If you want to be, let's say four to six months ahead of what's going on. I feel like this is a good podcast to tune into. Because I have warned you about this for quite some time. I'm going to warn you about something else before I sign off for this part of the broadcast but I'll get there momentarily. Mortgage rates tick up to begin the year. Oh yeah, right. One great way I have found if you've got some, let's say unsavory realtor or broker or one of those pay cash for house places, calling you and bothering you. If blocking them is not enough if they just call you from another number and they want to keep on keep on keep on get into a good discussion with them about oh wait. You know, pick an argument. Do it just be like No, even though you're sitting there telling me that we could just never experience that, again, let me give you the data that I'm saying once they figure out that they can't just steamroll you, you're not a naive moron that's going to go along to get along. They will drop you from the list super quick, because they don't want to hear it. They don't want to face up to reality. Sort of reminds me of when Marlon Brando went on The Dick Cavett Show after the Oscar rejection, and they were talking about the poor reaction of the celebrities on Oscar night, and Dick Cavett used the analogy of desecrating the cathedral. How dare you go into this night when they kiss each other's behinds and have all of this celebration and desecrate the cathedral? You know, it's the same sort of thing. How dare you? I called you i solicited you, but HOW DARE YOU desecrate my cathedral with an injection of reality? Same thing. Over on fortune.com we find JP Morgan's chief us economist warns of job losses and higher unemployment ahead. We are expecting the economy to slip into a recession. Hopes for a Fed pivot are premature as Jay Powell has not succeeded yet in anchoring inflation expectations. This should not be a surprise to you. Even back when all of these other HR and recruiting yo Yos were telling you that the great resignation was going to last forever, and people could hippity hop all over the market and there had been some great sea change in corporate America. They hadn't really learned from their mistakes and they weren't gonna value the little guy now. Huh? No, no, sir. No, ma'am. I was the one out here telling you the truth. US inflation battle is not yet one says top IMF official. It's clear we haven't turned the corner yet. bosses at Britain's biggest companies have already been paid an average workers annual salary, and they did it even faster than in 2022. Huh. Yeah, well, of course. Of course. The fat cats profiteer. Why do you think Alright, let's let me just stroke my long imaginary devil beard thoughtfully here and we'll put on our tinfoil hats together. Why do you think that these markets get artificially manipulated? Why do you think that these boom and bust cycles happen? Why do you think that these crashes repeat themselves? Hmm, well, the average person gets steamrolled while the rich get richer, oh my God. Wow. God, it's almost like they happen on purpose. I mean, I'm sure that's not the case. Right? That's your sound so conspiracy theory of you Sarah, how dare you. I dare I told you 2023 was going to be the year of raw honesty, and authenticity. So if you're looking for somebody to powder you're behind and tell you that everything's gonna be alright, you are in the wrong spot. A, perhaps a better juxtaposition of the clown world that we find ourselves in can be found on today's side panel for LinkedIn news. So this is sort of like trying to figure out what data doesn't match. Amazon cuts 18,000 exceeds estimates, worries over surging auto loan debt, all button just long enough, I'll have to read this again, just so you can see the idiocy of it all. But the auto loan market is another place where I think some poop is going to really hit the fan. Because the same way that we had to FOMO in the Yolo in the job market and in the housing market, there are people buying vehicles for obscene prices. Now, I'm fortunate enough that I have paid my vehicle off. And I really don't ever want another car payment. Again, I think that I will be one of those people. My parents cringe a little bit as boomers whenever I say this, but I think I'm just gonna be one of those people that when one car dies, I'll just go and pay cash for a beater. I'll drive a jalopy until that jalopy falls apart, because I just I don't ever want to have another car payment. To me, it's a it's a silly investment for the most part because it depreciates so much the minute that you drive it off a lot. It's already worth less, significantly less than what you paid for it. And so in my mind, hearing these horror stories of people paying 700 900 $1,200 a month for a vehicle. I can't imagine that. It feels unreal to me. So when you've got that much money, let's say that you had somebody that really decided to go big or go home in the FOMO in the yellow last year. Can you imagine if they had some grossly inflated mortgage payment, and when by the way everything else has gone up to your insurance be that auto Oh, home health. You've got this huge vehicle payment, and then all of the insurance that's required to cover those. Can you imagine what somebody's living expenses, not counting the groceries, not counting the utilities, or anything else that you might need, you know, depending on whether or not you have animals and children that you take care of. I can't freakin imagine it. And I don't know how we won't see repose happening in the car world. I think I can't see any way around it. All right. So let's try to identify what information doesn't match here. And I'll try not to editorialize. Amazon cuts 18,000 exceeds estimates, worries over surging auto loan debt. Latest layoffs, companies making cuts, another round of layoffs at Compass. Salesforce announces big staff cuts. College scam mastermind sentenced Coinbase slapped with$100 million fine Public Schools lose 1 million students bankruptcy for Bed Bath and Beyond. payrolls growth strengthens ADP says. Yeah, yeah, of course it does. Sure. And you have these people are in I suppose it's not their fault. But I mean, you have these commentators, again on social media, and they're pretending as though that's real. And then like, Oh, good job market still do a pretty good and I'm out here like No, no, it's not even temp work, even contract work, even freelancing gigs. Some of those are getting fewer and farther between some of those the pay, right absolutely sucks. Someone who might have paid you let's say 60 bucks an hour to do something and 2021 now wants 30 for it because recession because economy because layoffs, they want to exploit individuals who are laid off and desperate who feel like some money is better than no money. Let's call a thing a thing. That's exactly what they're doing. They feel like they can get bargain basement rates from somebody that's desperate and scared. Oh, but Right. Yeah, sure. That job market is still doing great. Still red hot. The Fed has to keep on doing what they're doing in order to crash it. Yeah, I mean, you cannot you cannot make this stuff up. You know. And I was watching a video earlier today when I was having my lunch. And I'm gonna try to be careful here because I just I don't want to insult anybody involved it my goal is not to try to stir up conflict. My goal is to make a very important point. So as watching this video, I'm not gonna say who who just gonna leave that out of the equation here. And this guy was talking about how he's tired of internet clickbait. And he feels like there's too many people recording videos and putting infographics out, just to stir up fear, just to make people feel bad and to make them feel panicky. I agree with that sentiment. I've told you before I don't get into the clickbait bullshit of you've only got one more week, you've got less than 24 hours it once somebody starts that I'm done. Even if I have consumed their content pretty faithfully up until that point when they start doing that clickbait fearmonger crap, unsubscribe, delete, gone. It you're of no value to me anymore once I see you doing that kind of stuff. So what I'm about to say is not a defense of clickbait. What I want to say is, My God in heaven. Is there not some sensible middle path between complete and utter naivete, and this American exceptionalism that we are the first world and it would just never happen here. And clickbait doomsday clickbait you've only got one week left until them we're in the Thunderdome and you're living like Mad Max, and you better know how to kill deer out in the woods. Is there not a sensible middle path between those two things? I don't support clickbait. But in this video, is guys talking about one particular individual who he believed had made some clickbait and was talking about the housing market is going to collapse. It's going to be the worst thing we've seen in a generation, it will be worse than Oh 809. And I guess the graphic that the person had put up showed like a price reduction of 50% on a house. And this commentator was like, Well, I don't think that's going to happen to you know, he this is what he said that really just kind of twisted my guts around in a bad direction. He's like, Do you know how bad it would have to get for us to really see a 50% reduction in home prices. And I'm sitting out here, you know, eating my tuna sandwich and drinking some water thinking do you? Excuse me, sir? Do you know how bad it would have to get? Do you not think that the fat cats and the power brokers who are buying up entire subdivisions, entire neighborhoods, entire communities so that you vote on nothing on the UVB happy? Do you not think that it could get that bad? Say to me that shifts over from clickbait and doomsday prophesying over into way too much naivete. And this normalcy bias, and this pro America bias of, well, we would just never have that happen here. Now, that might happen in a place like Venezuela, it might happen in some third world nation. But it would just never happen to us. Really. I mean, you do know that the Great Depression did happen, right? That's not just something that somebody made up for a movie or a TV show, you are aware that that happened. You are aware of all of the nightmare scenarios that we went through during the great recession and the global financial crisis, but you are somehow going to sit with a straight face, and act as though that just couldn't happen again. Here's the other thing. Some of the houses and properties that I saw here in the Midwest, were so grossly overpriced, that a 50% price reduction, quite frankly, would not have been enough. Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that somebody's trying to sell a burned out myth trailer on 10 acres in the middle of nowhere? is worth half a million dollars? Are you serious? Of course it isn't. So if they reduced the price of said burned out myth trailer on 10 acres to a quarter million, okay, so they're gonna go down from half a mil and ask a quarter mil for it. Is it worth that? No. No, it isn't. I've seen places that, you know, probably, I don't know, in all actuality, I would say that we're probably somewhere between a 708 100k property. I'm talking about a large house and a significant amount of acreage to go along with it probably a seven 800k property in these here parts. And people trying to ask $2 million for them. So here's my point. If you're asking $2 million, for a place that let's split, the difference is probably worth three quarters of a mil. Even if you make that 50% price reduction, it's still overpriced. I can't tell you what to do. I don't give advice. I sit out here and I opine sometimes quite passionately, for your entertainment only. If it were me, I would want to be really careful about who I listened to. I'd want to be careful about normalcy bias. I'd want to be careful about American exceptionalism. IE, bad things happen in other countries, but they don't happen to us. We would just never ever, ever experienced another meltdown, like the Great Depression. That was a once in a millennium type thing. It would just never happen here. It would never happen again. Be very careful of that. You know, in the same way that I don't do that you've only got five days left. We're going to be in the Thunderdome. Zombies are going to eat your brains. We need to go with dough and tea and ride the Hale Bopp comet. No, I don't do that. But I also think it's really important not to go too far to the other side of the spectrum, and assume that naivete is going to help you. Hope is a great thing to have. We all need hope. We all need to believe in a brighter day. That just can't be the only thing that you're doing in my opinion. I've read you the headlines for today. And I showed you the lunacy in my opinion. That was the LinkedIn side panel. Here's all of this bad news. Here's all this information about layoffs and companies making cuts. But yet somehow, we're supposed to believe that the job market is on fire and it's robust and people are just hiring and people are still quitting willy nilly, and it's just just a good old time. No. I am loath to believe anything similar about the housing market. I can't tell you what to do. I would encourage you to do your own reading and your own research. I myself am going to steer clear as best I can. People who are overly naive, as well as the clickbait errs. Today it is Friday, January 6. Before I get into today's headlines, I want to do a little bit of housekeeping and ask a favor of you. At this point I am 99% sure that for all intents and purposes I'm shadow banned on a variety of platforms. That is an unfortunate though not surprising side effect of telling the truth. And I believe when you speak the truth as you see it. You'll know if you're hitting the nail on the head not only because your predictions bear out accurate, obvious Sleep, but you'll know it by how the algorithms punish you. If you're out there giving people hot air and hopium, or you have theories and ideas that are so far afield, you're not really exposing anything, then the algorithms feel no reason to lash out against you. So I say all this to say, if you are relying on social media to tell you when I have published a blog post, or a podcast episode, please don't do that. Wherever you enjoy consuming your content with podcast, please subscribe to this podcast. And I will also drop a link in the write up for this episode where you can go directly to the blog on my website, bookmark it on your phone or on your computer, wherever it is that you prefer to sit and read blog posts, I publish every single day, outside of holidays, I'm pretty good about telling you when I'm going to take a holiday break and have some time off to decompress. Generally speaking, I publish something on my blog on my website, every single day. So go there directly, bookmark it wherever you like to go and check in as often as you want to. But please do not rely on social media or some outside platform that I don't control to tell you when I have published something because it's frankly become unreliable. And I want to feather my nest in such a way that you know exactly where to find me. I'm actually working on some other things in that direction, just to make sure that I'm as findable as possible. And to make sure that people outside of maybe let's say the HR and recruiting or job market sphere of reference that could benefit from this content, are also able to find it. So if you would subscribe to this podcast, wherever it is that you prefer to consume the content and bookmark the link that I will give you to my blog so that anytime you want to go and see if I've published anything recent you can go there on your own and you're not dependent on social media. Over on CNBC, we find stocks stage first big rally of 2023. As hope grows, that inflation will ease Dow closes up 700 points. You know, I've said before hope is a great thing, I just don't know that you can really use it as a firm strategy to weather a storm. Hope is important. It just can't be the only thing that you're doing, in my opinion. McDonald's plans reorganization job cuts as it accelerates restaurant openings. I saw another article today where somebody I think they had taken a video at the automated McDonald's in Fort Worth to show what their experience was like. I can't help but to think that's going to be the wave of the future. I can't imagine that fast food restaurants wouldn't do more of that. And I've told you I really think this labor shortage no one wants to work. All of Gen Z is lazy Coco Coco. I think all of this parodying that we're getting from the media is being set up as a as a means to justify the end will nobody wanted to work. These young people are lazy. You know, it used to be that you could get young folks to show up and work fast food that was their first job blah, blah, blah. I don't want to do that anymore. So we had to do this heavy is the head that wears the crown. In order to be able to continue to give you fast food we had to bring in the robots. It's not our fault. It's your fault. That could be wrong, but that's kind of what I see coming. Macy's warns holiday quarter sales will come in light citing squeeze on shoppers wallets. Yeah. And yet we still had morons telling us that Black Friday was excellent. There were all these people shopping and if you didn't see them physically in the store, that's okay because they were all online. People were just buying and just feeling so good. Right. Amazon still fully committed to Alexa. Despite job cuts hardware chief says Solana prices fall and New York ag accuses celcius ex CEO of defrauding investors. Raphael Bostic says Fed needs to stay the course despite lower wage gains. Here's where the jobs are for December 2022 in one chart, and twas ever thus, it's the same thing that we've seen in this narrative of the Red Hot labor market. Healthcare, which always tends to be understaffed. They're all I mean, for years and years and years, we've been told there's a nursing shortage. Leisure and Hospitality is up. Of course, I would say a real glimmer of truth that I've seen on mainstream media earlier this evening on the CBS nightly news there was a commentator who said it appears that the high paid white collar jobs are shrinking well While the lower paid like fast food, leisure and hospitality jobs are the ones growing, and I'm like yes, yes. A complete and total no Sherlock moment. Yes. I just find it preposterous that someone thinks okay if if a person's standard of living has revolved around making 100 grand in a tech job, that they're just gonna say screw it, I won't try to find another 100 grand tech job. I'll just take a job making 20 bucks an hour and working at a fast food joint. Like that's supposed to solve the markets problems. Sure. Over on Yahoo Finance, it's a similar scene. Stock stage first big rally of 2023. To end the week higher. Salesforce aims to cut costs by three to 5 billion. According to Fortune. Macy C's holiday quarter sales at low end to forecast how Walgreens will convert pharmacy space for clinical trials. I don't know about you, I always say I am just opining for your entertainment only I cannot and will not tell you what to do. But I'm not sure if I would want to go into a pharmacy for a clinical trial seems to me like you know when you want to be at the hospital under the best possible medical care not that we even get that so much anymore. You have talked about some of my experiences just being awfully disappointed with what it's like if you have to go to an emergency room and first world America nowadays. economist says stay on guard despite strong jobs report. Another no Sherlock moment. December jobs report we're seeing robust job growth economist says this just gives me a headache like my third eye hurts. It does. You have one economist saying we're seeing robust job growth even though let's be real, it's minimum wage jobs, or leisure and hospitality jobs that don't pay a whole lot more than minimum wage. Then you have another economist on the same flipping website saying stay on guard despite strong jobs report. I mean, how kind of mush mouth? Can you be about it? More sellers dangle incentives to get home buyers? Well, I mean, I shouldn't wonder because who wants to buy right now. You know, as I told you the other day, the best way, if you want to get taken off somebody's list, start picking an argument with him about 2008 They'll drop you like a hot potato, if you're done talking to him. I'm still not seeing the kind of price reductions that would really piqued my interest. I'm not seeing anything for that matter that I find particularly interesting. Just a little outside my mileage range of where I've really been targeting in the search, there was a place that came on the market this week. And I would say it has potential, but they have priced that joint so far above normalcy, it definitely falls into the category of a place that would have to be reduced by more than 50% for it to be realistic. That's why you know, the other day when I watched that guy talking about hey, I don't like clickbait, but at the same time, do you know how bad it would have to get for prices to fall by 50%? And it's like yeah, do you and you understand the amount of greed and avarice that we saw in the midst of an in my opinion, artificially inflated market you cannot tell me that some of the prices people paid in 2021 were anywhere in the neighborhood no pun intended of something rational. Rage applying is the new quiet quitting and it's helping Gen Z and millennials land $30,000 raises in the byline we read firing off applications when you're passed over for a promotion might be the key to getting a huge salary bump work from home privileges and whatever else you're after. Sounds to me like you're after a lot of hot air and opium you know, good God right now. As I see it, we're in a transitional period meaning we still have some of the past and we still have that which yet which is yet to come we haven't completely gone into the next phase of this dystopian hellscape Yeah, I know that's not sunshine and roses but yeah, I don't I don't like living through recessions and global financial crises it's not fun it's just it's not it's tough on unit causes a lot of extra stress. In my mind these articles that are telling you that you should rage quit rage apply just shotgun blast your resume out all over town, you may be shotgun blasting your resume out all over town because you get fired or laid off. So I believe we're in a transitional period. Yes. There are still some companies that are remote work friendly. There are some companies that are doing what they feel is necessary to retain good talent. And there are some companies that have already switched over from the carrot to the stick. And in fact, at some companies, it's probably less of a stick and more of a red hot poker. Come on back are it's your job. We know what's on the horizon, we know what's about to happen. And you can either sit down, shut up and get back in the queue like a good op obedient servant. Or you can be out on the street with the unwashed masses. I saw an article earlier today, where someone was saying, Well, how come? All of these employees are not clamoring to come back to the office? How come they don't realize there's a recession? How come we don't have all of these unemployed hordes to choose from? I mean, first of all, that's how managers think that's how corporate America thinks. Please don't be naive. Okay, we could revisit the Wayne pack rats email from last March, if you need a refresher course. The thing of it is, we're not far enough in to whatever this economic poopoo storm is just yet. There aren't unemployed hordes of people out in the street. We're not yet at the point. I don't think any way of like Great Recession, global financial crisis, where it was just constant and constant stream of phone calls and walk ins of people desperate for work. We're just not there yet. I hope to God that we don't get there. I hope to God that I'm wrong about all of this. I really do. Nobody wants to go through that crap all over again. As I sat down doing my research and making up a list for the part two episode of This is not to throw over merch. Yet again. I mean, there were times when I almost felt sick to my stomach. I was like this. This bears out. So many resemblances to the last crash. I hope I am wrong. I really do. But rage applying and playing games with employers and leaving people with a sour taste in their mouths, ghosting them doing idiotic things in their hiring funnel just so you can try to get a pay bump. I think you're playing a dangerous game. I really do. I don't think this is the time to be playing games and goofing off and pissing off potential employers because what if you need them? On the employer side of things? No, there's not a horde of people that are knocking down your door begging to work at your company. I think during this transitional period, there's going to have to be some kind of give and take on both sides to be able to figure out what's workable for people. But no, we're not in the full on crap storm just yet. I do believe it's coming. I hope that I'm wrong. But I do believe that it's coming. But we're not there yet. No, there's not unemployed hordes of people beating the door down begging to work at your company just yet. And as we can see, we have a news outlet saying rage applying is the new quiet quitting, and it's helping Gen Z and millennials at $30,000 raises. Well, Hells Bells, if you are a young person, and you don't know any better yet, and you're reading something like that, and you think Well, shit, I could do that. I'd love to get a $30,000 payment. I guess I'll play head games on in the market too. It's hard to it's hard to make sense of all this, right? If you don't know any better. And I'm not I'm not trying to say that in a pejorative shitty way. I'm just trying to be realistic. I remember what it was like to, you know, be 21 years old and fairly stupid. Man, I look back on some of the stuff that I did when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. And I'm like, Oh my God. What on earth were you thinking? We've all been young and naive. We've all been young and stupid. At some point. I'm no better than anybody else. I'm just older. And salt here have lived through some stuff. I've seen some things, man. So if you're reading that and you don't know any better, and you think that you can just continue to hippity hop across the market and play games and the great resignation is going to last forever. It's difficult to reconcile that with somebody on the airwaves and on their blog desperately telling you Please prepare. Please make a job loss survival plan. Please reach out to your network. Do these things so that you can be prepared and not scared? I just think you know what, hey, tinfoil hat, whatever. I told y'all that this was going to be the year of raw honesty and authenticity for me. Point blank. Here you go. I think that the media is playing an important role in all of this. You know, one of the conversations that I had over the Christmas break with a friend of mine, you know, we were talking about celebrity gossip and Kim and Kanye and Harry and Megan and the Royals and all this Due to bullcrap, he said, you know, this is done by design, you have to keep people occupied with junk that doesn't matter, do whatever you're going to do behind the scenes and crash the economy, but keep them distracted, so that they're more worried about Harry and Megan than they are about their own job. I believe that to be the case. You know, if you put out hot air and hopium and you make it sound like if you sell your belly button went on Etsy, you're going to be a millionaire. If you sell your gas in a jar, you're going to be a millionaire. If you rent your pool out to people on the weekends, you're going to be a millionaire. If you relentlessly try to Job hop, or you play games, by applying for jobs you don't even want and you rage apply all over town, you're going to automatically get a$30,000 Raise. If you keep people busy reading that kind of, in my opinion, complete and utter bullshit and drivel, meaningless drivel. They're not focused on preparing they're not focused on doing anything that might actually help them might help them to keep their house in my health and to keep their car. It might help them to not default on loans or not default on credit card debt, it might save them from bankruptcy. And do you know why? Isn't it pretty obvious. I told you in the bonus episode, they want your stuff. These fat cats and corporate raiders and hucksters and billionaires that already have more money than you and I will ever see in this lifetime. They want your stuff. And they don't care. They don't care. So it's my hope it is my sincere and passionate hope that instead of worrying about celebrity gossip, and who's losing weight and who's getting married, oh, and who's getting divorced and who's on a reality show. Now, it's my sincere hope that you are roughing out a job loss survival plan. You know who those first five phone calls would go to? You have some sense of whether you're in an industry that's recession proof or not. In my mind, if you make a plan and you're prepared for Come What May in the economy, and then we do by some miracle, have a soft landing and everything comes together and it's peaches and cream, you've done yourself no harm. Whereas in my mind if you fail to do anything, and you just hope for the best and hope is the only strategy you have. I fear for you. I really do. Over on LinkedIn news, we find us payrolls jump at the end of 22. Oh, I'm sure remote work may be past its prime. We'll click on that don't worry. Party City preparing for bankruptcy. Pickleball craze pops in the US Walgreens backs off of theft concerns. Beauty Brand more closing US stores. Americans up their credit card spend. Imagine that? Yeah, as it turns out, maybe all of these people are not living in grandma's basement and flush with cash off of 2020 stimulus checks. Maybe just maybe that's the case. Southwest meltdown cost $825 million. I said it before and I'll say it again, I hope that we don't get asked to bail them out. I don't want to give them the sweet taxpayer moolah over their mistake. When we click on remote work, maybe past its prime we find in the EU in the current US job market, many employers have taken remote work arrangements off the table. Data from LinkedIn workforce report shows the rapid rise and fall of employers willingness to target remote candidates. In an analysis of over 60 million paid job postings on LinkedIn since January 2021. Researchers found the peak for Remote Jobs was in March 2022, with over 20% of all listings offering the option. But that spike gave way to an abrupt decline in November 2022, barely 14% of paid job openings, invited remote applicants. Yeah, I'll say I told you so. Sure did at a point in time, when everybody else was telling you that remote work was here to stay there, we would not see these RTO demands. I told you that this was coming. I couldn't see any way around it. And it kind of made me upset that these talking heads were just very clearly pushing a narrative. And I will say that some of the people who have responded to this article on LinkedIn have tried to call them out and say I believe you're pushing a narrative. I believe that you're pushing corporate sponsored Bs, and it does my heart good to see that. Now will that make any difference at all took corporate America's agenda? No, no. It's like that blog post that I published where someone said that they had withdrawn their application after they hadn't been treated very well. And another person responded like, Okay, that's all well and good, but corporate America doesn't care. And I'm like, Yeah, somebody needs to be preaching that word, for sure. In my opinion, the onus is on you to take care of yourself, to look out for yourself and your family, what whoever your loved ones may be. If you think that the people who created this mess are going to come in and save you that they really care about you. I don't I I do not know what planet you're on. That kind of naivete, I think is working against you. In the meantime, I know, I know, I know, this has not been sunshine roses. While I walk in the park on a sunny summer day, I get it. You know, we've been through hard times before we'll get through them again, I'm not sitting here telling you not to hope not to dream for a brighter day. In fact, I would say your mindset is going to matter now more than it ever has. It's not that difficult to keep some kind of optimism and a spirit of victory. In easy times, it's harder, to be optimistic and to keep a spirit of victory. When times are tough, and you're looking around and half the people you know, are getting laid off. And people are at food banks. And there's a line that wraps around the block two or three times because people are desperate and they're hungry. Mindset is going to matter now more than ever. And I feel like, especially as someone who has training and being a mindset coach, you have to marry both things. And what I mean by that is you have to marry the mindset and the emotional outlook that you're taking on this with your physical efforts.