Saturday Broadcast 31

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news, 1/9 - 1/13.
✔️ More companies going from the carrot to the stick on RTO.
✔️The WEF will have its annual meeting next week, so I'm sure they'll come up with great solutions and truly help all of us peons.
✔️Jaime Dimon is on one. Grannies got taken in crypto? The economic hurricane he predicted is not gonna be so bad? Wut? 😐
✔️If we just keep using words like "soft" and "mild," perhaps you'll be lulled into a sense of security and no one will worry.

Links I discuss:


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/employees-managers-key-disagreement-one-120813345.html

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/ripple-effect-of-layoffs-questioned-5100657/

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jamie-dimon-retirees-grandmothers-lower-income-folks-have-been-hurt-by-crypto-223952501.html

https://fortune.com/2023/01/10/resistance-attrition-quiet-quitting-drop-diversity-forced-return-to-office-gleb-tsipursky/

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

Transcript

Hello Hello and thanks for tuning in. Today it is Monday January 9. Over on fortune not com we find Goldman Sachs layoffs are slated to hit within days and could target up to 4000 employees. The layoffs come on the heels of a major reorganization unveiled earlier this fall. The shipping firm that blocked the Suez Canal hands out bonuses worth more than four years of salary to employees. There's another shadow of OA. remember some of those fat cats and Wall Street tycoons that said, hey, we need that suite taxpayer money, we're just not going to make it if we don't get our hands on it. They handed out bonuses and incentives to and it's like, why would you do that? If you're broke and you're too big to fail? Then why are you taking taxpayer money and giving yourselves bonuses with it? California should Buckle up for a parade of cyclones as the historic storm battering the state is set to leave 10s of 1000s without power. That sounds horrible. And if you're not in the path of that, this is a good opportunity to reassess your preps and think about how would you make it in the event of a long term power outage, a grid down situation you couldn't heat your house? What are your options? Bob Iger just put his foot down and told Disney employees to come back into the office four days a week as the remote work wars rage on. I hate to do it, y'all. But I think I've got to Sarah was right yet again. Yep, yep. Yep, told you that was coming. Two days becomes three, three becomes four, and then four finally becomes all five. Now there may be some companies that in order to promote themselves, I'm trying to think of the right way to say it in order to make themselves look good and caring, then they may continue to allow you to have one remote day your puppy treat for the week, as you get to be at home one day out of the week. Some companies will probably do that and use it as a selling point. But I really do think plenty of others will do the two becomes three, three becomes four, four becomes all five. employees and managers have a key disagreement about one factor of remote work that affects productivity, you don't say. So when we click on that, here's, here's what we find. After almost three years of working from home managers are very much not on the same page as their workers when it comes to productivity. Simply put managers believe that working from home reduces productivity while employees think it massively increases it. Yeah, yes, yes. I remember talking to a hiring manager. And saying like, one of the best things that you can do is talk to your own employees really canvass them and do it in a non hostile, non threatening way. They have to really feel comfortable giving their honest to goodness feedback, design, meaning retaliation, nobody's going on a private list after they do this. They need to be able to speak freely and tell you what they are seeing in real time doing their job. I swear, it's like corporate America sometimes can't see the forest for the trees. But then you and I both know the real truth that in so many cases, they just don't care. It's not about productivity. In my opinion. It's about surveillance. It's about obedience, and it's about control. If it were really about productivity, then you would see a lot more results oriented managers, not these process oriented individuals that want to get all in your sandbox. I want to know how you dotted every i and crossed every T on this project. I just can't live without 5000 Zoom calls in a single month. Now those people would be washed out fast. And those of us left would be the ones who say I don't really care how you get it done. I trust you to be a professional until you show me otherwise, I trust you to be a professional and I trusted you to get the job done. It's not about productivity folks. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find 7000 New York City nurses go on strike startups still growing according to LinkedIn. What's the right way to do layoffs. Seeing something like that is it's a bad sign in so many regards. Lululemon sees profit sagging, grim outlook for corporate earnings, drugs and surgery for obese kids. Over 120,000 people are without power in California. 1200 arrested in Brazil riots earlier Today they had another headline ripple effect of layoffs question and I want to read that to you now. Layoffs buffeted the tech industry for much of 2022 and a cluster of high profile job cuts. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh. Right, a cluster of high profile job cuts. What that tells me is, in my opinion, the narrative here is being set in such a way that it suggests well, you're aware of these layoffs because they were high profile but like it's totally okay. Because it doesn't mean that layoffs are occurring in other industries in your mom and pop shops in your down home. Small town you don't have to worry about anything. Now. There have been high profile job cuts. But just because they've been given publicity, it really doesn't mean that you john and jane Q public need to be worried about anything. Right. Layoffs buffeted the tech industry for much of 2022 and a cluster of high profile job cuts are now impacting a wider variety of white collar workers. But as last year's interest rate rises seep more heavily into the economy. Questions are rising around whether layoffs will spread to blue collar industries, says the Wall Street Journal, there is some cause for optimism while demand for durable goods has cooled in recent months, it remains relatively robust overall, suggesting blue collar workers are better placed than in previous slowdowns. In quote, that's entirely possible. There may be blue collar jobs. And there will probably also be some lower paying hospitality and leisure jobs, fast food jobs that weather the storm. Then on the other hand, you have McDonald's saying that they're planning to do layoffs and launching that fully automated store in Fort Worth. In my opinion, I always tell you the same thing, I cannot give you advice, and I do not tell you what to do. In my opinion, just thinking out loud here. I think it's smart to rob to rough out your job loss survival plan. Regardless, regardless of your industry, your rank, the type of money, you're accustomed to making any of that I would much rather be prepared than scared. I wouldn't want to read hoopla and hokum and nonsense and think, Well, I'm probably going to be okay. Now a recession might happen to somebody else, it could hit my neighbor, it could hit my sister, it could hit my best friend, but it won't happen to me. Getting into that kind of a normalcy bias is a dangerous game, I think. And of course, the commentators who have responded to, to this story on LinkedIn, pretty much are just all of the same. Well, what recession we don't see a recession yet, which yet again, makes my eyes roll all the way back into my head. Today, it is Tuesday, January 10. on CNBC, we find Powell says Fed might have to make unpopular decisions to stabilize prices. Feds Bowman says there's a lot more work to do to bring down inflation. Stocks rise slightly as investors look to next inflation report and earnings season. Bed Bath and Beyond lays off more employees as it fights to survive coin base to cut jobs by 20%. California's endless onslaught of severe weather forces 1000s to flee their homes and leaves one dead. Over on LinkedIn news, it's a somewhat of a similar scene. More layoffs at Coinbase cuts 20% Biden proposes student loan overhaul expect a smaller tax refund this year. Ex Twitter workers balk at severance, eatery closures are food for thought. Not looking good today. I've said before from a mindset perspective, I think the best thing is to marry both the actions that you're doing with the mindset that you take having those preparations, having some kind of game plan roughed out whether it's a job last survival plan or whether it is what you would do if you freelance you own and operate your own business and you need to come up with another revenue stream wargame those strategies out ahead of time, if at all possible. That way. If something bad happens, you can revert to training, you can try out your plan and see if it works, rather than being blindsided because folks, some of these companies are not even on first round layoffs anymore. They're continuing to cut and cut and cut. And I think we're in for a bumpy road ahead. I hope I'm wrong. I just don't see any other way around it.
In terms of additional news, things that we might want to just you know, turn a little side eye to if you will On January 16, through the 20th, the World Economic Forum annual meeting, which will be titled apparently cooperation in a fragmented world, I will drop a link, you can go to this website read it all for yourself. Under the our impact section, we find that they're involved in agriculture, food and beverage, digital communications, climate change, stakeholder capitalism, and cybersecurity. On the board of trustees, let's take a look at some of the individuals who might be at this meeting the Board of Trustees. The forum is chaired by founder and executive chairman Professor Klaus Schwab is guided by a board of trustees exceptional individuals who act as guardians of its mission and values and oversee the forum's work in promoting true global citizenship. Now, this is not an exhaustive list. So go and look for yourself, but I'm going to hit a few highlight reels here. Our old friend Marc Benioff, the chair and CO Chief Executive Officer at Salesforce, well, he's on there too, who? I had no idea. Laurence Fink, the chairman and chief executive officer of Blackrock. Oh my gosh, you know, weren't we just talking about them? Wasn't he just meeting with Zelinsky to talk about rebuilding the Ukraine? Wow. Wow. I mean, what a shocker there. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF. We were also just talking about that in Monday's episode, old Al Gore. Let's see what he's up to. Now. Of course, he was the Veep, I guess. Now he's the chairman and co founder of generation Investment Management. Hmm. Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank. Randomly Yo Yo Ma the jealous. That feels super random to me, but you know, okay, I'm sure there's a reason for it. Mark Schneider, the Chief Executive Officer at Nestle, of course, we've got all Klaus Schwab there. Pictured on here is the Founder and Executive Chairman Jim Hagerman, Snape chairman at Siemens. Julie sweet, the chair and Chief Executive Officer of Accenture. Interesting, as I said, go take a look for yourself, you can see the cast of characters. The event highlights include why agricultural subsidies must be reformed to enable a regenerative food system. Lithium. Here's why Latin America is key to the global energy transition. Six ways to establish a robust digital economy in emerging countries. existing building tech from Norway to NYC is slashing emissions to tackle climate change. Here's how we can work together to bridge the digital divide. Why reducing food loss is key to a more sustainable future. How improving road safety can help tackle climate change the power of digitalization, how better use of data is helping drive the energy transition, how Investment Promotion agencies can help us reach the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Why smart siting of renewable energy is crucial for people and planet. Why we need to unlock health data to be disease. National AI strategies can move up the ranks using value networks. What will it take to scale sustainable aviation fuel in the next decade. Innovative Approaches to policymaking can speed climate progress. Tech innovators must upgrade humanitarian response for the 21st century farms to food markets, providing solutions and collective action for sustainable food systems, emerging risks for the planet and its people, what leaders must know now. Come to your own conclusions, as they're talking about these topics as you're looking at the program of speakers who all will be there because not everyone speaking is on this. Whatever it's called board of directors or Board of Trustees. There will be other guests there and you'll recognize a lot of them as prime ministers and heads of state along with these power brokers and individuals that are quite wealthy indeed, worth your time to check it out. So in my opinion, you can get a little sneak peek of what's yet to come. Today it is Wednesday, January 11. Over on Yahoo Finance. It is a strange and mixed bag of information, which in my opinion is indicative of the fact that we're in a transitional period. I've heard from higher Hiring managers that want to know where are all these people that have been laid off? They've got to be going somewhere, they've got to be desperate for work. And it's like, well, not yet. No, I hope nobody gets desperate for work. I hope that people have done what they needed to do to prepare, so that they have some money socked away, and they can be judicious and careful. They don't have to leap at the first possible job that comes along, even if it's complete and utter crap. I hope I hope that that doesn't happen to anybody. But we just don't have these throngs and throngs of people across industries, who are unemployed and desperate the way that we did during the Great Recession, and further back the Great Depression, I hope to God that we don't, I hope that things do not escalate to that point. But I do believe that we're in a transitional period where you still have some people that are willing to take a look at other options. They might job hop, they might not, but they are at least open minded to it. You have other people that have completely closed the door on that idea. And they're trying to just hunker down and survive, what direction will things ultimately go in? I don't know. I've not buried my thesis on this program and saying, I believe we're already in a recession. And I think by the time that some talking head or some politician comes out and says, Okay, we are now officially in a recession. Who knows how bad it will be at that point in time. I hope I'm wrong. But I'm just reading the tea leaves here when you click on CNBC or Yahoo Finance and the information is all over the place, and you can't really make sense of it. To me that says transitional period. these talking heads are, in my opinion, trying to get their story straight. They're trying to figure out what narrative they're supposed to be pushing. So it's a bit all over the place. You'll see what I mean. FTX finds over $5 billion in liquid assets, which is something of a surprise because it's like didn't they declare bankruptcy and say they didn't have anything left. But yet, they're finding $5 billion in liquid assets. Things that make you go hmm, flights resuming gradually following FAA system outage. Apparently, flights were grounded for two or three hours this morning. We're being told it didn't have anything to do with a cyber attack. It was just a good old fashioned software glitch. Who really knows. At some point, we may be allowed to know what actually was going on. But at this point, we just have to go with the wink wink. It was just a good old fashioned software glitch. Oh, okay. Sure. BlackRock plans to cut 500 workers after last year's market downturn. In the byline we read BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager will lay off about 500 employees or roughly 3% of its workforce, according to an internal email seen by Yahoo Finance, huh? Tuck in 30 Esna. So they, like so about that. They have the money and the resources and the ability to help Karina build back better, but they can't keep on 500 employees. This is another thing that makes you go moment. Bed Bath and Beyond shrinking footprint, why Thursday's us CPI report might kill the stock markets hope of inflation melting away. Well, because I haven't seen inflation abating. When I go to the grocery store, the prices are still outrageous. I mean, a lot of people are talking about dairy products in particular and how absurd it is to just go to the store and get a carton of eggs. Those little like miniature egg cartons where it's only a half dozen, I remember when you could go in the grocery store and get those for 50 cents. And then over the course of time, sort of the comfort point for that item was about 99 cents. The last time that I was in the grocery store. That little half dozen carton of eggs was 250 and I'm like for six eggs. It's It's It's insane. Right but Oh, supposedly inflation is abating. Now. It's not abating enough that the Fed will say Our job is done here and we must back off but it is abating. See I couldn't be my voice was cracking. I can't say that stuff with a straight face. I think we all know better. Fed Chair Jerome Powell goes quiet as bond markets see recession and rate cuts. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said nothing about rate hikes during his speech in Stockholm on Tuesday. His silence spoke volumes. Jamie Dimon says crypto hurt grandmothers and lower income folks.
Really? You know we got to click on that because what Jamie diamond says retirees grandmothers and lower income folks have been hurt by crypto. Okay, Chief Executive Jamie Dimon minces no words when it comes to his views on cryptocurrencies, the Wall Street boss, who in September famously called the Digital tokens, decentralized Ponzi schemes at a regulatory hearing, again reiterated his criticism of crypto assets during an interview with Fox Business Network. I called it a decentralized Ponzi scheme because people were just hyping it, hyping it and hyping it and they'll write tons of books on this the money that was stolen out of it what people knew and didn't know he's not wrong there. They definitely will. He said, When asked about what lessons were learned on crypto after the collapse of FTX. Diamond in the interview aired on Tuesday as well as in the past, differentiated his skepticism of crypto assets from his views. Okay, get ready for his views on blockchain technology as a form of expediting financial transactions. His bank has worked on building out its own custom blockchain and token jpm coin, which aims to facilitate climate client pardon me client payment transfers. Meanwhile, he said that cryptocurrencies have made people hysterical and that it was the government's responsibility to protect investors. Oh, there's so much we are we are really mining the gold out of this. A lot of people got hurt by crypto diamond said these were retirees grandmother's lower income folks. And it was a shame. The bankruptcy of fallen cryptocurrency exchange is estimated to have wiped out $9 billion worth of crypto investments. According to figures from blockchain analysis firm chainalysis, it should have immediately been put in some kind of regulatory framework so that there's some investor protection, he said, adding that regulators were starting to come up with safeguards. But now the barn door has opened for them to do so in quote. A couple of different well, more than a couple of different observations about this. I don't know any retirees, grandmas and low income folks that invested in crypto. To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying they're not out there. I just don't know any of them. I don't know any of them personally, and I don't know any of them anecdotally, either. I don't really see like, Baby Boomer retirees and whoever might still be left out of the greatest generation. Those retirees I don't really see them, like foaming at the mouth to try to invest in crypto. I don't even think that if we sat my grandmother's down and explain to them as basically as we could what cryptocurrency was, I don't think we would ever even get anywhere. I don't know of retirees and grandmas and then low income folks who bought into crypto. Now again, you know, okay, I mean, I don't know everybody in the world Lord knows that. But I just anecdotally or personally, I don't know, of any people in that category. He's saying a lot of them. And I'm like, really? To me, that seems a little bit suspicious. It doesn't quite pass the sniff test. In my opinion. I feel like there's something weird there. So I think we're getting this notion of these poor people, these little people got hurt by crypto. So there needs to be some kind of government intervention, there needs to be some kind of regulation on this. To make sure that the little people don't get hurt by something like this in the future. I think that's one angle here. Another interesting tidbit is that he's differentiating his skepticism of crypto from his views on blockchain. Hmm. Let's just sit here and stroke our imaginary devil beards thoughtfully. Wonder why that would be. Okay, so, crypto is not safe. It's some kind of digital Ponzi scheme, which let's be honest, it probably is. But somehow blockchain technology now that's great. That will allow you to expedite financial transactions if we make it so that money is all just digits on a screen. That's going to be better for you. If you've ever seen Avengers Age of Ultron, you may remember that scene where Ultron goes to buy Vibranium from Ulysses claw. And he says this Vibranium this Vibranium is worth billions that came at great personal cost. And Ultra sounds like well, now you're worth billions to and then you see all of these digits flying around on a screen and then his phone starts alerting him that all this money has been wired transferred to him. And Ultron is like finances so weird. It's the same thing. Let's put all of your money into blockchain technology, then we're going to tell you that it will expedite financial transactions. You don't have to wait for the good old fashioned cheque to clear the bank anymore. You won't have to wait for the bank to approve a transit Actually, there's a holding period of seven days before you can access this money even though it's your money. We're gonna make you wait before you take it back out of here again, if you need it for some reason, if we do all of this as digits on a screen, it will be better for you wonder why that would be? You know, I wonder, I'm sure I'm wrong here. But I wonder if that has anything to do with the promotion of the Si, si B, DC, not gonna say anything more about it, because you have to be really careful. But, you know, I just wonder if that has anything to do with the cbdc. Just wonder, overall on fortune.com, we'll switch gears a little bit. There was an article today kind of an op ed by glib superski. And generally speaking, I like his writing. I like his take on things. I just suspect that I'm a bit more pessimistic about corporate America than he is. So the article is titled resistance, attrition, quiet quitting and a drop in diversity meet the four horsemen of the forced return to the office. In this article we read, as increasing numbers of companies are requiring employees to return to the office for at least several days per week, which I told you that was going to come. They're running into challenges with resistance, attrition, quiet, quitting, and diversity, what one of my clients called The Four Horsemen of the return to Office. These issues all stem from the fact that workers who are able to work remotely prefer to do so most or all of the time. And August Gallup survey of remote capable worker shows that 34% of respondents want to work remotely full time. 60% want to work in a flexible hybrid schedule. I don't believe that, and only 6% want to work in a traditional office centric setting. But even in this survey, which could have a corporate sponsor, I'm not saying that it does. I'm just saying it could have a corporate sponsor behind it that wants it to come up with a very particular narrative. Even then, only 6% of the freakin respondents said they want to go back to the way things were. I've told you before, I have not met a single, solitary person. As I'm out in the job market doing my thing every day I have not come across a single solitary soul. Who said I really want are to want to go back. Don't call me unless it's a fully back. But insane in the office opportunity. I don't want to hear about remote, not as single person. In a September survey from the school of politics and economics at King's College reported that 25% of respondents would quit if forced to return to the office full time. So under the heading resistance, we have no wonder that workers facing return to Office mandates show resistance the first of the four horsemen, he goes on talk about Disney CEO wanting people back, GE the CEO of GM doing the same thing leadership at Apple under attrition. He talks about a National Bureau of Economic Research Paper about a study@trip.com one of the largest travel agencies in the world is a case in point. It randomly assigned some engineers, marketing workers and finance workers to work some of their time remotely and others in the same roles to full time in office work. Those who worked on a hybrid schedule had 35% better retention. Okay, so I feel like this is yet again pushing the idea of hybrid, the carrot and the stick. This is the carrot before the stick. Now some employers have just gone ahead and pulled out the stick. Excellent Case in point, Lord Ilan, come on back or it's your job. Oh, and you might want to bring your own TP to the office as well. It's just absurd. So think right now we're getting a lot of, in my opinion, government sponsored and or corporate sponsored, the two are one in the same why even differentiate anymore in play games. We're getting a lot of these sponsored surveys telling us hybrid workers, they're going to be the most productive, they're the most loyal, they're the most happy. That is, again, in my opinion, a seduction routine. It's the idea of well come on back two or three days out of the week, it's going to be okay. It's like the analogy of the frog in the boiling pot. Not every employer is just going to toss the frog into a pot of boiling water and then slam the lid on it. Not everyone is going to do that. Some of them are going to be more surreptitious than that. We'll come on back a couple of days a week, come on back three days a week. It's not gonna hurt you. You just come in here on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then we'll allow you to be at home on Tuesday and Thursday. Come on, take your medicine do what you need to do. Hybrid workers are the most productive and blahdy blah, blah, blah, even though it's been called the hell of half measures. Again, I will say I don't know everybody in the world. But I have also not come across anybody in my searching who has told me you know, hybrid is really good. I really liked this. I kind of feel like it's the best of both. both worlds, those people, when I get them on the phone are like, I just want to go back to being fully remote. I don't like this is a waste of my time it's a waste of my gasoline, we have to work out childcare on those days. If this. That's what I'm hearing in real time. So then we talk about quiet, quitting people just getting mentally disengaged, and how it can rot the company's culture from within a drop in diversity, which, you know, I've said before, there are plenty of companies, not all of them. To be clear. To be fair, there are a lot of companies out there, quite frankly, that they will trot out their dei initiatives, and they will talk about being supportive of the LGBTQ community when it's Pride Month. But it's just marketing, it's smoke and mirrors. And you see it so clearly. Because when they talk about how they are committed to diversity, they want to make sure they get the best person for the job, they're not going to discriminate on any basis whatsoever. And then their whole freakin team is comprised of straight white Wasp
men. Hello, oh, yeah, sure. You've got a big, big commitment to diversity here. So what is what is gloves solution here, okay, in working with my clients who wish to bring their employees back to the office and slay the four horsemen, I find a combination of strategies to be crucial before launching an office return, we consider compensation policies. Here we go. carrot and stick. A June 2022 survey by the Society for Human Resources reports that 48% of survey respondents will definitely look for a full time work from home job in their next search. I suspect it's more than that. To get them to stay at a full time job with a 30 minute commute, they would need a 20% pay raise. Holy Hell, I would need so much more than that. I'm not going to say I'd rather jump off the roof. I'm not going to be melodramatic and say I would rather die or anything like that. But God 20% wouldn't even come close. For a hybrid job with the same commute, they would only need a pay raise of 10%. Okay. Okay. So in my mind, what we're essentially being told here is buy them off. If you want them back button seat in the office, you're going to have to be willing to pay them for it. Is that realistic? In a recession with high unemployment? No. And I think corporate America knows that. Now, I'm not talking about the middle manager at Billy Bob's machine company where they only have 50 employees. I'm talking about the fat cats and the power brokers who really are involved in a lot of decisions that happen in this country. They know what's coming. And they're sort of sitting back waiting for the recession to hit hard enough that people are unemployed on mass. I don't think they're going to offer people some 20 or 30% pay raise to come on back to the office, I think a lot of them ultimately, will go from the carrot to the stick. Right now the carrot might be well, we'll give you a sign on bonus, or we'll help cover your gasoline. We'll do this and this and that. But eventually it's going to transition away from the carrot into the stick. It really will be throwing the frog into the boiling pot and slamming the lid down on it. I hope I'm wrong on this. But time will tell. Let's see whose predictions bear out to be accurate in the long run. Today, it is Thursday, January 12. It's been a weird day earlier, there was a tornado emergency issued in the state of Alabama. And I'm not even sure that I've seen anything like that before and I live in the Midwest. I'm in Tornado Alley. And I'm not sure that we've ever had a full on tornado emergency issued by the weather service before, let alone in January. This just feels so bizarre and strange to me. Speaking of bizarre and strange when when we hop over to Yahoo Finance we find Wall Street's split on CPI report favorable but underwhelming. December's Consumer Price Index showed prices rose at an annual 6.5% investors had hoped the reading would offer clarity on the direction of the Federal Reserve's policy but Wall Street's reaction was mixed. Okay. And then when you scoot right over to the next column, you find prices fall by point 1% in December as inflation cools for six straight month, right. Yeah, again, I'm not seeing it. When I go to the grocery store, I'm not like wow, I can really tell a big difference. We're still clipping coupons and looking at sales. If there's a BOGO sale at the grocery store, or they're running a special we try to take full advantage of that I I'm not seeing this suppose it inflation abatement or inflation cooling. And by their own statistic point 1% Given how much prices have skyrocketed over the past year, point 1%, and we're supposed to get giddy and intoxicated by this. Give me a break. I didn't steal funds, Sam Venkman freed says in an unusual post arrest blog post. All right. Tesla stock declines amid growing list of challenges. Bag prices soar nearly 60% Right, but you know, inflation is supposedly cooling by point. 1%. So I mean, quit your mullygrubbing about eggs being up 60% Because point 1% Were down. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Retail 2023 will be a return to normalcy. According to Rakuten. I guess we'll find out. The feds benchmark interest rate is expected to rise to over 5% in 2023. And recession fears persist. Megan and Harry will get the last laugh all the way to the bank. Oh, yeah. You know, there's a saying in Hollywood that even bad publicity is good publicity. Any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, I no comment on that. Zero. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find inflation cooled again in December. CEOs forecast a shallow recession. Ex Goldman staff react to layoffs are to mandate for Starbucks staff. I'll be blogging about that tomorrow. Essentially, we really are going from the carrot to the stick in so many situations now. Because what the Starbucks CEO says is, hey, I begged you guys, I was nice about this, ie I use the carrot, but not enough of you obeyed. You didn't come on back, like you were supposed to and sit but in seat in the office. So now it's going from the carrot to the stick. Instead of asking nicely, I'm just going to demand that you come on back. This will spread Mark my words. Sandwich a giant subway mold sale. That's another place where I'm like, I can't even remember the last time that we went to Subway and had sandwiches there, you know. And then there was all that hullabaloo about is the tuna actually tuna. You know what kind of DNA came up when this tuna sandwich was tested to find out if it actually was tuna? I can't even remember the last time that we went to Subway. And it seems like whenever I've driven by when we've been in town to run errands there's like nobody there except the employees. Is Gen Y the roommate generation. Well, possibly, how can they afford to be out on their own right now? I know that we're all supposed to get into generational clickbait. And we're supposed to give this forceful narrative that you need to just pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Quit drinking the morning latte and that five bucks a morning that you will save even if you this is assuming that you even go to a coffee house in the morning. A lot of people don't. But that five bucks per day that you save is somehow going to be enough to get you into a house on your own. It's so stupid. It's just It's laughable FinTech deal was a fraud says JP Morgan. Bitcoin surges after FTX is $5 billion was found. Microsoft adopts DTO. So PTO is paid time off you to is unpaid time off and DTO is like a discretionary time off. And it's sort of like the idea of unlimited PTO at your discretion. Instead of having to wait for accruals of your PTO at your discretion you can take a day off. I have heard more negative than positive things about unlimited PTO from candidates that I've spoken to employees that I've worked with at various times. I have heard more people say it's a ruse that I have people who have said you know what, it worked out really well. I was able to take off two weeks here and one one there and a day over here and nobody said anything to me. I can't speak for every company out there that has that as a policy. By and large from the people I've spoken to. It's been reported that it just doesn't seem to be that great sort of an all that glitters is not gold kind of thing. Today it is Friday the 13th Ma Ba ba ba Ah, over on CNBC we find s&p 500 gains on Friday heads for best week since November. US will hit its debt limit on Thursday. Start taking steps to avoid default Yellen warns Congress.
Brian Moynihan says Bank of America expects mild recession and is preparing for worse. What? Just that one contradictory statement could be the theme for this whole ball of wax if you ask me. mild recession now we're gonna go ahead and prepare for worse, but we want to make sure that you just think it's a mild recession. Right under that we find JP Morgan tops estimates for fourth quarter revenue but says mild recession is now central case. Oh, okay, sure. I'll be publishing a bonus episode on Monday about this contradictory narrative that we're getting because we saw it before. We saw it during the Great Recession slash global financial crisis, this idea of shush. You just hush, little baby. Don't you worry your pretty little head about any of it. Even if you hear bad news or media pessimism, you don't have to worry. You just take your medicine and you go night night and you don't think about it. We're going to handle it for you. Of course they will. Of course they will. Over on fortune.com we find the walls are closing in on corporate employees as CEOs at Disney and Starbucks demand that workers start returning to the office. I published a blog post about that earlier today. Carrot meat stick stick meat carrot. I told you all of this was coming. We asked you nicely which was the carrot and you didn't comply. So now let's demand it's the stick. You either come on back or it's your job. All Ilan did was kick the door wide open for other companies to follow suit. On a similar note, we find woman ordered to pay back employer for time theft. After computer software caught her slacking. I think back to the various tiktoks and Instagram posts that I saw of people playing games. Oh, look at me, I've got two or three laptops open at one time I'm I have a mouse jiggler set up to pretend that I'm working when I'm not and posting it on social media. And it's like unless all of this is a joke. And you're self employed or you're independently wealthy and you're not even working for a company. What on earth are you thinking doing something like that and posting it out on Front Street for anybody to find? I mean, it's like how could you not see this coming? But I think people get into this mentality of I think I can cheat the system. They don't want to believe that like in Vegas, the house always wins. corpo America has a lot more power than the average person. I hate to break it to you. But that's reality. On the side panel for LinkedIn, we find Carvana cuts staff as losses, Mount Goldman lost $3 billion on consumer unit. Big changes hit Wendy's C suite, Tesla offers price cut in the US. Baby Boomers won't save the economy. Interns aren't what they used to be. UPS workers want middle class jobs, spying spawns productivity hacks. Yeah. What an insane and bizarre mess that we find ourselves in these days. I always say I can't tell you what to do. I don't give advice. You have to make up your own mind make the best decision for yourself and your family. I personally would be very skeptical of anybody coming out in the media saying it's all going to be okay. mild recession. Don't worry about anything. Just go back to the cubicle, pretend it's 2019 Put on your VR headset and go into an alternate reality. You don't need to pay attention to the economy. You don't need to rough out a job loss survival plan because you're probably going to be okay. You don't need to put back any money in savings, because you're probably going to be okay. You can pay double for that overpriced house. What you want to do is marry the house but date the rate, everything's gonna be okay. In my opinion, if you're listening to stuff like that, I don't even know what to tell you anymore. I really don't. I've already warned you that they want your stuff. And authors like Jared Brock have been doing the same thing that these hyper elites are going to come and scoop up whatever the hell they want, when they crash the economy. In my mind, preparation is one of the smartest things that you can do. Paying attention, being aware, you don't have to be all consuming about it. The expression we use is I want to consume the news. I don't want the news to consume me. I want to stay aware of things that will have a direct impact on my life, the life of my family, etc. But I don't want to get paranoid about it. There is surely a middle path between Hush little baby and the sky is falling. We need to go to the bunker, everything is ruined. Only you can find that middle path for yourself. I just think it's very important to stay aware. Stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode.