Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the ongoing fallout from the Federal Reserve's recently announced 75 basis point increase in its rate and more generally its repeated raising of its rate this year, which now has many people more worried about the Fed's heavy handedness in trying to deal with inflation than the actual inflation that's going on itself.
And later on we're going to discuss Joe Biden doubling down on the cancer moonshot initiative that he relaunched earlier this year and consider whether this kind of approach is something that can actually move the ball forward in a meaningful way on cancer prevention and treatment.
Joining me today is our very own Atomic Dog Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, are you ready to lay out for the people? Why must I feel like that?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Only if I can chase the cancer.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: All right. All right.
Now recording this. On September 25, 2022 and this past week we saw the Fed raise its rate and aggressive 0.75 of 1%. And this raise itself was the third raise in the last three months.
And the stock market really took a hit following this. And you know, the hit is still ongoing. Now the Fed has said that it's going to do what it takes to try to bring inflation down and that includes doing things that it understands will raise unemployment or at least can raise unemployment, but likely will and possibly send us into a recession.
But many people are upset about this thinking that the Fed is being too heavy handed. And considering the fact that much of the inflation we are seeing may be supply side driven from things like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and residual effects from how countries have dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic. They think their concern is that the Fed is going to send us into a recession. Not necessarily so. Tunde, what is your reaction to how the Fed keeps raising its rates and its stated belief that increasing unemployment and a potential recession may actually be necessary to address the inflation that we're seeing?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Good question. I would say I'm unpopular in my answer in that I think this is healthy for the long term stability of kind of our overall economy.
I think the Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is doing the right thing in the way he's raising rates.
The reason is because we seem to not like the idea of going through through runaway inflation like we've heard about in countries, you know, whether it was 1930s Germany or more recently nations like Zimbabwe or Venezuela. So you know, the what I'm I guess what intrigues me, let me put it that way, is that all this information has been openly discussed and the Fed has been very transparent for well over a year. And we also see all the numbers, right? I mean the most recent numbers that just came out on inflation were that it's running at around 8 and a half percent in terms of over last year that followed, I think 8 point. Well, I think it was 8.3 the last month and the month before was 8.5. So bottom line is the Federal Reserve has to do something. Someone's got to get this under control. And we also are coming off the heels of almost a generation of abnormally low rates. People think about the great financial crisis, but really the low rate environment of this era began in 2003 when Alan Greenspan at the time, who was the Fed chair, lowered the fed funds rate to 1%, the first time it had been that low since the 1950s. And then five years later, after the 08 crash, the fed rate got lowered to zero. So it's been 19 years of this environment and you know, rates are normalizing and it's painful while we're adjusting to it.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: No, that makes sense. That makes sense. That's interesting. You said the Fed has to do something because I don't know, you know, I think without the benefit of hindsight, we won't know any of these things, whether it's the right move. But the Fed in the recent past, at least when it comes to fighting things like inflation, and I'd go back like 50 years maybe, it seems like the Fed is oftentimes undershot, undershot in its efforts to fulfill its mandate. Now remember the Fed mandate, it's a dual mandate. Maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long term interest rates. And so I think that the Fed is using the tools that it has or that it has at its disposal as far as monetary policy goes to try to address inflation.
And it's interesting that it's trying to do that because as you point out, we're accustomed to right now a very low interest rate environment. And so because we're accustomed to that, it's been so long, almost two decades, just raising the rates to places where historically speaking it would not may even be considered low. Where we're raising them to now is something. There's a real shock to everyone's system and saying, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. I'll discuss the kind of downstream effects that people are complaining about separately, but just the fact that they're raising rates and they're bringing them up right now. And again they're not to a place historically that would be considered high to me seems a lot like if you fly in an airplane, you understand that there's going to be some turbulence from time to time. You can't go in with the expectation that it's going to be smooth sailing all the time. And so this to me sounds like there seems like that where right now we're a custom we've been accustomed to. It's been very smooth, you know, it's been very, very smooth from an interest rates, not economy as a whole, but just from an interest rate standpoint. And so we've, we're used to that. And in fact, because it hasn't been that rates haven't been going up and down or they haven't been doing a lot to, to put interest rates on people, higher rates on people right now there seems like the reaction to the raising of the rates because of what we're used to may be more extreme. And again, I'll discuss, yeah, I'm going to kick it back to you, but I'll discuss whether I think they're doing, whether as far as they have to do something, whether the, what the answer to that is in the circumstances of what may be way or may or may not be driving inflation separately. But I do think there's an overreaction. We're too used to the smooth sailing from an interest rate standpoint. We're hitting a little turbulence which is we know when we get on an airplane is possibility and a likelihood if we fly off, if we spend enough hours in the air. And so now it's like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. We haven't had, we haven't dealt with this in so long. And so I think there's definitely an overreaction to this, which I think would lend more support to what you're saying that hey, they're doing what they have to do. You know, we can't stay in this, this low rate environment forever.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think, look, just like it's a great analogy of a plane, right. We all kind of understand anyone that's flown in a plane commercially understands that there's going to be some turbulence and that's to be expected. Now, turbulence doesn't mean that the plane falls out of the sky and everyone dies. So I think we understand there's a certain limitation of where one might be comfortable or not comfortable in terms of how much turbulence is in the plane. Also, the plane analogy is good. Sorry, audience, not everyone's an aviation expert, but most people understand that planes like a regular commercial jetliner can't go to space, right? Like there's a certain ceiling, if the plane goes too high, it actually stalls out and begins to fall to the earth and could crash if you don't have a good pilot to figure out how to get out of the stall. So we could take the same analogy to the economy and say that if the economy went too red hot and inflation went too high, I mean the economy literally could stall in a way that we wouldn't like. And that's why when we talk about countries like Venezuela or the Germany Wehrmacht Republic of the 30s or Zimbabwe in the 90s, no one seems to want to mirror those kind of outcomes. Right? So that's why I say that. And I want to be careful when I say this too because this is very painful. I recognize for a lot of people because they're exposed to the stock market right now and they're watching their money go down. So I'm not trying to be flipping and saying, oh, you know, this is normal and everyone should shut up. What I am saying though is that these cycles and these patterns is a good analogy use of the turbulence. Because the last time we had some real turbulence like this that we can remember is, is the great financial crisis of 14, 15 years ago. But people seem to forget, you know, the s and P500, we're recording this on Saturday 25th September and or sorry, Sunday and Friday's market close, the S and p was down 23% since its high on January 2, 2022. People seem to forget that the S and p was down 24% in the fourth quarter alone in 2018 not that long ago. And it's because the 10 year bond in a very short period of time went all the way up to 3.2% at the time from like 1% in a short period of time in a matter of months. And that just caused a knee jerk reaction of the market selling off. But that was the same downturn that we have now in terms of percentage wise. But it only, it happened in three months and that was scary. The difference is back then the Federal Reserve chairman said, oh, we're going to print more money and they had more stimulus and the market liked it. And the market rebounded within, you know, the stock market was rebounded within six months. By the end of the first quarter of 2019, the market was back to where it had been at the start of 4Q18. This time looks different, because this time the Fed and Jerome Powell have said they're not going to come save us with more money and printing more money and stimulus. So this is the real deal where we'll have to deal with a tightening of the money supply, which is what raising interest rates is. They want to slow down all this overheating. And we've heard a lot of people complain about things like housing prices getting too high too fast, the inability to afford, for young people to afford a lot of things, cars and homes. So what hopefully will happen in the long run with this interest rate rise is that it will bring, all of it, will stop that velocity of money through the system in terms of the increased rate of growth and will bring asset prices back down a bit so that they can then grow again without stalling everybody out.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the thing. The question Is, relative to 2008 or 2010 or 2018, whether the prices are reasonably valued now or maybe they're overvalued. And so if they're overvalued, then, you know, like, there's some pain involved in trying to get them back to be properly valued. And I'll say this, it's interesting like that. Yeah, I like the, the airplane analogy as well, because it's like I feel like a passenger, you know, like where I'm just like, okay, well, I hope the pilot knows what he's doing because.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Oh, we all do.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Because there's nothing I can do sitting here, you know, in, in 3C, like, all right, well, you know, hopefully it's all good. And I'll say this, you know, you, you brought up the, the, the, the example, you know, 2018, 2019 time period, to Joe Biden's credit or to his detriment. Well, again, with hindsight, we won't know till hindsight. He doesn't appear to be pressuring the Fed in ways we've seen in the past to try to, to try to deliver more immediate results, you know, and so we're let, we're letting the, the central bank do what it's supposed to do right now or what it believes it's supposed to do. And so we'll see how it plays out. They can get it wrong. They've got it wrong in the past. We hope that they're getting it right, that their prescription here, as far as what they think needs to be done. And I think with, to your, to your point, I think they are taking a longer view here and not simply just trying to win the next three months or the next six months or only accounting for what's happened in the last year or something like that. They do seem to be taking a longer arc view of okay, well here has been the trend over a decade, here's been the trend over two decades. What do we need to do to try to balance this thing out? Again, that doesn't go to say whether they looking all this came with the right prescription. That's just going to say I do appreciate the fact that it does seem like they're taking a bit a longer view here and really trying to push things in a direction that they think they will produce long term benefits for us. Because a lot of times so many decisions we see that are made from an economic standpoint in particular are really short term driven and that's not the best way necessarily for banking to operate. You know, like that's been part of the problem we've had in our economy, we've seen in the financial services sector has been the merging of traditional banking, lending and stuff like that with investment banking and which was illegal for a time and then it would, that bar was, was broken I believe under the, towards the end of the Clinton administration. And because of that, you know the investment banking is inherently about taking more risks and being more, you know, like you could just be a little faster and looser but you can make more money. Whereas that traditional lending and stuff like that is much supposed to be much more risk averse and you know, like, but you're, there's only so much you can make. And so the taking a longer view to try to rebalance things overall I think can be helpful and not a hey, let's play fast and loose, let's deliver results in six months and so forth. Because that I think has led to a lot of our booms and busts that we experienced in our country over the years.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is why to me the history of all this is very important. Why do we even have a Federal Reserve and a central bank? Because it's interesting, I said well before.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: You get into that, let me ask you this because I think you can get into that through this. Do you think we have and we're going to talk about monetary policy just briefly real quick, which is the Federal Reserve's domain. Do you think we have a warped perception either because of the last 18 years or just because of the last six months? And human beings memories are unreliable in terms of they remember that things unfolded. Is our, is our just our sense of monetary policy warped?
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I'd say first of all, most people don't really know or understand what monetary policy is as opposed to fiscal policy. So I mean, I think that's, that's a good question because I, I said something earlier in the show. I said the Fed has to do something and I need to maybe stop and correct myself. The Fed, like no one has to do anything. Right. The Fed could do nothing right now and let inflation go absolutely bonkers, out of control, and we'll be paying $30 for a loaf of bread in the year. So the point is, is that they're doing something for a reason. And so I think the question of.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Whether they have to do something is if they determine, for example, that 100% of the inflation was being driven by Russia invading Ukraine. And obviously that's not, it's not 100% of anything. But if they determine that, that then maybe the answer would be a fiscal policy, one of tax, one of trade, something like that. And not necessarily, maybe the Fed wouldn't, shouldn't be involved in. I'm not saying that's the case, but that's just what I mean on should they do something? First they have to determine, hey, are the causes of this something that we can address? Or at minimum are the tools. We have the right tools to address the causes type of thing. But, but your point is well taken though, but go ahead.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Well, that's the kind of point about the discussion of fiscal and monetary policy, because fiscal is really the role of Congress. That's legislation that's basically collecting revenues mostly through taxation and then deciding where the money spent for the country. And that's obviously the role of Congress who controls the budget. And they vote on laws. Right. I mean, that's, that's the role of.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Our government on budgets, laws, tax rates, all that stuff.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Correct. Fiscal policy, monetary policy is, is the realm of the Fed because they control not only interest rates, but dealing with the banking system. And the Federal Reserve System was created.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: And supply of money.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah, and the Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 for that specific reason because prior to that period we had probably one to two banking crisis every decade in this country. And the reason is exactly like you said, the supply of money.
You had banks, maybe in San Francisco. There would be some sort of event there, let's say maybe a natural disaster, maybe just a bad economy, and there's a run on the bank. There's actually the supply of money in the west coast of the United States might have dried up, and all of a sudden you have basically a depression in one part of this country. And there's no ability to have money flow in a certain way throughout the system. And the banks there would collapse. And just like what happened with Lehman Brothers in 08, then the other institutions that they may have had deals with in terms of loans out, whether, depending which direction they begin to default. And next thing you know, it's a wave that hits the country and the system has to reset. But it's very painful.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: So the role of the Federal Reserve was to try and smooth all that out, all that activity, that banking activity. And it's interesting because.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Let me add real quick.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Just for people who aren't familiar with it, the way they control interest rates, so to speak, it's control, quote, unquote. Because they set bank borrowing, bank to bank interest rates, which then filters out in other ways. And if I said that incorrectly, I mean, or if I didn't say that in a way it was clear, you know, please correct me, but it's bank to bank borrowing, particularly if you're borrowing money from them, you know, that allows, like you just said, if, if there's a problem on the west coast, you go to the central bank and they will allow you to smooth out your problem and it doesn't cause this cascade effect where everybody who you're in business with starts to, to, to have a problem and then everybody who they're in business with starts a problem all emanating out of one source there.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Correct. And, and look, that's what the Federal Reserve got it wrong in 1929 after the big crash of the market and the beginnings of the Depression. You know, the Depression wasn't necessarily caused by the crash of the market. A lot of people, I mean, that's the event that a lot of people believe, you know, from history class have been taught that triggered it. Really. What caused the actual deepness of the Depression was the Federal Reserve not doing what they did after 08, which was not doing exactly what you did, lowering the interest rate to the point. And I don't think in fairness to them, it was only, you know, 15 years old, maybe, you know, not even 20 years old, the Fed. So I don't know.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Well, the whole Keynesian approach didn't even really get kind of written about until after.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it took the Depression for.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Everybody to realize that.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah. To learn how this system needs to kind of be set up going forward. And so the long story short, you know, without getting too far into it, you're right for the audience that there's the Fed funds rate is the interest rate that the Federal Reserve sets for banks, their ability to borrow from the Fed when they need to. And so an example was.08, where the federal Reserve, to their credit, had begun to raise interest rates slightly to try and cool down the housing market at that time, the 2002 or 2006 period.
And what happened is after the great financial crisis really took hold by late 08, remember the TARP legislation, that 800 billion. The first time we heard numbers like that ever, what that really was was the Fed lowered the rates to zero so that banks could borrow from the Federal reserve at a 0% interest rate.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: So they could stay afloat.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Correct. Not only stay afloat, but then they could lend money out to us. Yeah, so we could stay afloat at a very low rate because again, the banks are in business to make money and they make it through a spread. So they'll borrow at zero from the Fed and they might lend us a mortgage at 3% and then they make that spread. That's, that's how they make money. So fast forward to today. What's happening now is we've had 14 years literally of this zero kind of rate environment. It started creeping up a bit up through 2020, but then again, the pandemic forced us to have to go back down.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Because we had the CARES act printing all that money. And again, the whole economy was closed in March of 2020. So the system needed liquidity, oil on gears for a machine. And that liquidity in our in money system is money. Right. And so.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: And low rates, low rates.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: And I say is, is the low rates is what allows again, the term velocity of money to, to increase the money to go through the system. Yeah. So all that happened is, you know, money was cheap and there was a lot of free money. I mean, let's be honest, right. It's not just people on welfare. Everybody. And not everybody, but a lot of people who had means took advantage of the PPP and EATER loans and in all honesty, yours truly here. Right. The government gave you money, man, free money. And then they forgave it right in the check.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: They told you up front they would forgive it. So it was like literally the kind of free money thing.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: But I mean, but, but that's my point is saying, so all of us, it was that kind of, it was the real thing that we all feared. Right. If you throw a lot of money at the system, it's inflationary.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: And so now that what they've done is this last week, the Fed raised the fed funds rate by 0.75% which gets the federal funds rate in total now at between three and three and a quarter percent. So we've gone from zero about a year ago to 3% on the Fed funds rate which has caused things like mortgages. Now like I said, if banks now have to borrow and pay the Fed 3%, they're going to have to increase things like mortgage rates. So mortgage rates have more than double.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well that's, yeah, across the board all type of, of borrowing from banks has gone up because as you point out, they build on top of whatever the Fed rate is to then so that they earn their spread. And yeah, I mean, so all that to say, I think you laid out the case to why right now, prisoners of the moment. But even if you take a decade long view or you know, 15 year long view, we have a warped sense of what's normal. I learned today, well, you know, past couple of days that a neutral rate is considered around two and a half, you know, and so because I'm like, you know, like where, where should we be or where. Because we've seen like in the 80s the rates were much higher, you know, for example, and you know, right now we've gone past what's considered a quote unquote and that's, this is like economists, you know, but what's considered a, a neutral rate of around two and a half. And I'm sure that's not an exact type of figure, but it's just around that to one that is more restrictive. But again we're trying to not get, we're not trying to balance things from where to put things to the place where it's neutral, so to speak. They're actually trying to slow down economic activity. And so because of that, you know, they've gone higher, they've gone. I think the speed at which they've gone has, may be the shocking thing more than anything though because it, the going up three quarters of a percentage point and then going, doing that again or you know, hitting that instead of, I was, I was reading something, it was like 0.75% is the new 0.25%. Like, you know, they're not incrementally taking it up in ways that, and what that allows basically is the system to kind of adjust more slowly because the shock to the system right now and if there is some kind of overshot, that may be what we end up pointing to in five years pointing back and say yeah, yeah, they went too fast. But what the Fed is the determination They've made. And this is why I use the analogy of an airplane and we're just sitting in, you know, seat 3C hoping that the pilot knows what they're doing. The Fed has determined, based on their analysis, that this speed of change is necessary to counteract what we're dealing with. Because, and this is why I don't think it's helpful to, to try to say, oh, it's 100 Russia or it's 100, you know, just what, whatever it Covid, you know, factory shut down in Shanghai or something like that. Because we do know that there were trillions of dollars that were printed and put onto the streets in the last few years due to Covid. And so, and that kind of thing would be inflationary, particularly how it was just give, it was just distributed, given to everybody and so forth. So, yeah, there are a lot of factors the Fed is trying to deal with. They're trying to see through the fog of war and figure out what's going on. So I'm not blaming them necessarily, but I'm also not taking the assumption that they're right. Like, I don't think we're. There are people that are saying they're going too fast, but they're going the right direction, but they're going too fast. So people are saying that they're doing that they shouldn't even be going this direction further than a neutral or whatever.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: But.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: And then there are people saying that they're doing the right thing. Nobody really knows, though, until we have the benefit of hindsight, because these things all are so interconnected that how things play out in our economy, particularly with. And the next topic we're going to talk about is how the Fed is only one hand. There are two hands that are supposed to be doing this stuff and that you, you alluded to that with the fiscal policy and the monetary policy. The Fed is only one hand here. And as we've complained about many times on recent shows and shows a long time ago, the other hand being operated by Congress isn't working right now. Like, Congress just is doing so little in terms of trying to create an economic environment that creates sustainable, a sustainable model that the Fed is almost left to wing it on its own with these things. And the Fed only has two tools.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: So if you're in Congress, you got to worry about getting reelected. They got to fundraise, man. They don't have time to work. Come on.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, so, so my question, I mean, well, it's not that they don't have time, but it seems like they don't have the inclination though, you know.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Like, because you got to go fundraise so you can win the next election. You know, you can't, you can't sit there worrying about fiscal policy.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: CRT man, forget fiscal policy is CRT time. But so do you think that the Fed is wielding its tools? I mean, and obviously this is the fog of war, but do you think they're wielding their tools effectively? And you know, like, do you think even the tools that they have, you know, and then comparing it to what Congress can do and so forth, are they, you know, like how big of a concern is it that they're trying to do this on their own basically? Because to a hammer everything looks like a nail. And so there is the concern there that, oh well, since those are the only two tools they have, they may bang them really hard and. Because they just can't do anything else.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: No, I think we're lucky this for this one that it's probably better to have Congress out of the way. I mean this is, this is one of those that, you know, Congress as.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: It presently is constituted.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Yes.
So because the Fed can, is the only one really that can control interest rates. And I think like the right now, right now I'm sure that one can argue that fiscal policy definitely matters and big long term decisions would have an effect on things like inflation and all that. And I think, you know, and I'll speak to that in a second here on the politics of it, but I think just to straight up answer this, meaning in the moment, right now, these.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Are the right tools to be used.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Meaning, and that's what I mean in the moment right now I'm not talking about over a 10 year period, the ideas that are legislated and all, of course they can affect things like inflation. I mean we just talked about the CARES act was legislation.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: And that, you know, created 5 to 7 trillion dollars of just new money that came out of nowhere. And that has an effect.
And, and you know, there's other things, you know, I had someone I was meeting with last week and they were all railing against all this stuff that's going on now in politics and saying how it's all causing, you know, the, the Inflation Reduction act is causing all the inflation. And you know, again, I'm not here to protect anybody. And I'm not here to protect President Biden or President Trump or Obama or President Bush or anybody. Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: No, you here to call it like you see it.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the thing is, is that yes. Do presidents and the decisions that are made under their watch have an effect? Yes, but usually those effects are very long term. So what I explained to this person was I got no idea. And like you said, hindsight will tell us whatever the Inflation Reduction act does in general. Cause I said, number one, if it was just passed into law like a month ago, like literally signed by a pen, that means the first checks of it haven't even been written yet.
And I said the second thing, when you hear these numbers like $600 billion bill, that's over 10 years. That's the, the General Accounting Office always does it over a 10 year period what that number is. So really we're talking $60 billion a year. This is what I explained to the guy. I said, you're Talking about a $60 billion a year infusion into a budget that the last fiscal, the 2021 fiscal budget was $6.2 trillion. I mean, the amount of money that we're spending is ridiculous. So I don't know where the current legislation will end up affecting things like inflation and all that down the road. But you know, we're dealing with things that presidents from five to 10 years, what we're dealing with now are things that were implemented, most likely, for the most part, under Obama and Trump, under that kind of five to ten years ago era. And the things that Biden's doing today will play out after he's out, you know, after 24, 24 or 2026, that, that time frame. So, so that's one thing I want to say to the audience because everything has become so polarized politically in our discourse that for the first time in my 21 year career, the last two years or so, I'm just seeing it from my clients, like people I've had, I've met with people in recent weeks that tell me that they're not going to do anything until after the midterm elections because as if that's.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Like if one. And I keep trying to explain to people, the stock market doesn't care about politics. It cares about interest rates and earnings, period. And I try and tell people, but of course you can't talk too much to people about this stuff. Right.
You know, politics is emotional.
This, this fiscal and, and financial stuff should not be.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: And so you shouldn't be making your investment decisions based on if you like the person in charge or not. And that's what I'm saying is I've never seen this like this before because I know a lot of people had strong feelings about both Obama and Trump. Right. But I never had clients back then really telling me to do something based on who was in power, what move. And it's just the first time in the last two years that tells me.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Well, but it tells you the messaging.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: You know, that's how they're saying ecosystems.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: But I want to say, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up because this is actually a similar direction I was going to go because, and we've touched on this like with elections and so forth, the politics of it and they, they do play a role. But as you pointed out, I think very correctly, the role they play in politics, whether it be the Congress or it be the, the executive branch, oftentimes plays out over a longer period of time. Like even if Congress raises tax rates or changes tax rates or whatever, you know, or the only thing they can do really that creates an instant boost is they start cutting checks right away like hey, let's go build a highway, we're gonna start writing a check that's going to help, you know, those companies right away and boost a segment of the economy. Space race or something like that. You can nearly boost up and that'll happen more quickly. But in general they're kind of structural moves that they make take a while to kind of filter through the system. Yeah, but they're, but the nature of our politics promotes short term thinking. And so it almost is this disconnect where people in politics are always, are only really interested in things that are going to not, I shouldn't say only they're biased towards because of the nature of the system. Things that do short term have short term effects. But their biggest, the biggest thing they can do are things that have long term effects. And so yeah like you're end up in a situation like right now were overly reliant on the Fed and its tools because they do seem to be the adult in the room and they do seem to have convictions and belief on how things seem to work. The other thing, the problem that we see with our politicians a lot of times is that there aren't a lot of coherent convictions that people have. People are in favor of debt spending if it's their party in charge and then they're against it if there are other parties in charge or so forth. And we see that play out on the right a little bit more because they complain about the deficit spending when it's not them in charge more. But even still, like there is a lot of double standards. And what about ISM that goes on in, in, in politics because they're always running, they're always campaigning. And so I know you had something else to say on this, so. But go ahead.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, because I was going to say if you look at history, you can see that again, this type of environment has happened before. So if you look at the period of 1966 to 1982, the Dow Jones basically ended up right back where it was 16 years later. So it's interesting, there was no net growth.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: It was up and down and up and down.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, you might have got some dividend growth, but yeah, really. So the, In January of 1966, the Dow hit, the index was at 983 points. And in October of 82, it closed at 991 points. Like literally for 16 years it was just a choppy sideways market. Now, as I was reading it, I thought it's still a good argument to stay invested long term because 40 years later, the Dow just closed on Friday over 29,000. So that's still a huge multiple if you just left your money in there.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: But I mean, for somebody that retired in 1982, though, as you were telling me offline, where you are in your personal investment cycle matters a lot for these types of things. Because if you're 50 years old right now, then this is something that's like, yeah, 20 years. I mean, yeah, but if you're 80 right now, or 75, it's like, oh, no, the house is on fire.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Literally, it's painful. And so what happens is in these periods, things just change because there's still economic activity. I mean, that's what I thought of even thinking preparing for the show. You and I are born during that period of time between 1966 and 82. Right. Like a lot of people alive today were alive back then. It's not like the world ended. It's not like no one had a job and there was no commerce going on. You just didn't have this cheap, easy money. And so where I'll finish and I'll pass it back is from a political standpoint, getting back to that, think about this. In 1966, the fed funds rate was 4.6%. Guess what it was in 1981.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Oh, man.
I know. It was very high. Teens, right?
[00:33:59] Speaker A: No, 20.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: 20.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Wow. Hit 20% because we had inflation from the oil embargo. Right. Interesting. High energy prices in the 70s. Right. Of course you had the embargo, which is what is a supply chain disruption. Then you had the kind of what they call the malaise of the 70s. You know, you had the post Vietnam War economy. So we had just spent a bunch of money fighting a war for whatever, you know, 11, 12 years. And, and then you had the same thing. You had to come this, this culture wars. Right. By the 70s, what did you just have? You, you had RFK and MLK were just killed. And, and, and, and you had the end of the Vietnam War, feminism. You had all the same culture war stuff you have today. And you know, you had a similar environment of rising rates.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: So.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Well, and as you pointed out to me offline, you know, that you didn't see Reagan beating up his Fed chair at that point.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: You know, because it was like it, this was just, this is how the economic system has to work. There's these different factors, there's different people with different roles and everything does it is it boiled down to partisan politics. And I think this is where we have to keep in mind of how our current political environment really does us a disservice. Because at its core, polarization is about avoiding accountability because you're tapping into tribalism. You're just saying, hey, support me regardless of what I'm doing, just because these other people are so bad. And so that actually leads you, if you're in Congress right now and your goal is to run on how bad, and if you're in the House of Representatives, you have to run every two years. So you're almost always in campaign mode and your goal is actually to do not that much, at least if you're at the pure cynical level. Now, we've seen things pass. We've seen like, so we've seen this isn't happening across the board. And I'm not meaning to draw any kind of equivalency across the political spectrum or anything, but I am calling out what we see in terms of there's an incentive to just say, hey, do nothing. All we want to do is run on the idea that these other people are bad or they're this or they're that. And so what we end up having is Congress just not working to do anything that will help us over the long term. Like if Congress was doing more instead of just the one place where we see stuff a lot of times is emergencies, emergency, emergency, emergency. But if that's the only time you act, then you never get ahead of and prepare for the next emergency. So I think that's where we got to really, as voters. It's on us. You know, it's on us to select better politicians. But the Thing is, and I find this to be fairly ironic, is that the, well, maybe, you know, maybe not even ironic, it may be just concerning is that Congress is the branch of government supposed to be most deliberative. You have so many people, it's the large sample size, so to speak, but each of your, each member of Congress who, when they go and get elected, they are least accountable in terms of relative to the a president or relative even to state houses because there's less people there.
The reason being though, they're only one vote out of 435 or out of 100 and so forth. So if things don't happen, they don't really catch blame themselves. And so we get this situation where people elect people to go to Congress and it's not even like they're judging them on what happens in Congress after that. It's just like, oh, is this my guy or is this not my guy? So structurally, you know, like we lean into this partisanship, this teams, you know, I'm just going to do everything team wise and it ends up not serving us. And in times like this, ideally we have not just the Fed doing this stuff, but we have Congress also taking honest looks, taking fair looks, good faith looks to try to address these issues moving forward as well because again, to a hammer everything looks like a nail. So the Fed is going to have a tendency to overuse its tools when it does decide to use them. We don't know if that's the case right now, but that tendency is going to be there. You know, and so if we, if we don't, can't diversify our arsenal, use all of the arrows in our quiver, we run a risk of the Fed overdoing it and any of these, and again, we won't know, I mean, they're doing something, I'm not going to fault them for doing something because it seems thought out, but we don't know and they always are at risk of overdoing it because the other hand that's supposed to be working here isn't doing anything.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, there's, there's, there's no way to really, like you said, until and until we, we get through this and can have the benefit of hindsight to really find out, you know, what, what, what moves were made at a given time, were they good or bad. I think that just the, the acuteness of this issue right now, there's not much for Congress to do. Now I think part of this is maybe this is us dealing with also Congress not having done Too much the last decade.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: That's what I mean.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: We're like, we're unprepared and until there's an emergency, they don't seem inclined to do something. So there's not a lot of foresight in terms of what's going.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: The danger we have is that, you know, because like you said, that the Congress has figured something out, which is by doing nothing they can, you know, the people that are currently there can stay in power by pointing fingers and all that goes back to that 1981. I mean, think about it. I'm pretty sure Ronald Reagan wasn't that happy that he just got inaugurated in January of 1981 and by the end of that year the Fed funds rates at 20%. You know, that doesn't feel too good, I'm sure, for a new president. But like you said, he wasn't sitting there bashing the Fed chair. You didn't have, you know, all these Americans being told that, you know, Ronald Reagan just didn't know what he was doing with economics and all that. There was a time when most people understood that the politicians are politicians and they do that stuff and then the whole economic and banking stuff is over here and that's those guys, you know what I mean? And that they're really separate from for good reason.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Because imagine if our banks were jammed up right now. Like, like Congress is. But go ahead.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Well, and, and, and, but it's also, you know, it's the bigger picture of our system and I think we don't appreciate it as Americans. Right. Meaning the Fed chair has a, has a, has a tenure similar to like the FBI director. It's supposed to overlap politics.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: You know, like the FBI director has a 10 year term. I think the Fed chair is something like six to eight years. And they're picked and they're picked not in years, a lot of times of a presidential election to make sure that they stagger. Maybe, you know, several different presidents.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: And that whole idea is kind of like we talked about with the British monarchy. The idea of, you know, the, the governing of the people and the politics, because that's emotional, is separate from certain things that need to just be on cruise control in a certain way. Like the justice system that shouldn't be politicized, which is again going back to the FBI stuff and all that. But I know that's not the topic of this show. And then in this case things like your central bank that those people. Because that's what it looks like in a third world country. What we would call banana republics. Right. Where the leader of the country, the dictator or the president gets their hands all up in the central bank and basically starts using it as their personal piggy bank. That, that's something.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And using it also to punish enemies and using it like or industry like, hey, you're going to go along with what I want to do or else I'm going to do this to your industry or whatever. So it becomes another means to wield power.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Correct. And so that's one of the things that has allowed the world to feel safe in investing in things like US Treasuries and all that. That yes. Some president isn't going to come along and say, you know what, this group of people that bought Treasuries, we're just not going to pay them back because I don't like them, but this group over here, I'll pay them back.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: I do want to wrap this up, but I think to your point on this, in terms of keeping it like our system does allow for ultimate accountability to them because they are they again, they have a term and it does end at a certain point, but it doesn't allow that immediate feedback of okay, well it doesn't, it doesn't work like that, so to speak, where there's immediate feedback. Most of the time it, this, I guess this was abused a little bit with the director of FBI a couple of years ago. But it doesn't allow for, it doesn't, it doesn't frowns upon oh, you don't like what I don't like what you did. Biden saying, I don't like what you did here, Powell, you're out.
That would chill Powell from doing what he thinks is best if pal being the Fed chair.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: And so that separation you could get into runaway inflation. Exactly.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: And, but that, that, that separation there where there is some level of accountability, those people aren't unchecked completely, but they also are allowed to operate as experts in their field, as you pointed out, allows us to build on people's expertise and not be reactive to the emotional whims of politics. So I do want to get out. I know you had one quick, quick thing to say before we move on now.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: I'm just saying that a lot of people, it's painful right now, I want to say, but this is again, as bad as it sounds, what I'm going to say. This is the normal course of things. When you have a rising interest rate environment, you have falling asset prices. And the reason, like I mentioned earlier a year ago, the average 30 year mortgage was like 3.3% and now it's 6.7%. So you're just looking at the cost to borrow money has doubled. And that's just like we've talked about on houses. But there's car loans, there's credit cards, there's this, that. So we should all be prepared that this is going to continue for, you know, the short term, you know, the force, the near term, future. But just like after the seven, that's why I said, like, you and I were born in the late 70s, somehow we survived. You know, our parents survived and still put food on the table. Like, that's, that's what I try and tell some of my clients sometimes without, because I'm a big fan of transparency information. But I tell a lot of people sometimes turn it off. You know, turn off the financial news, turn off that noise, because all it's going to do is drive you nuts short term. Yeah, yeah, this is, yeah, we got to get through it.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: But that goes to other things we've talked about, where you're watching it. That means that they need to keep your attention. And how they keep your attention is.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: By all personal responsibility then to just, you know, figure out how we're going to exist for the next, next. Because this is going to take another year to two years for the system to cycle through at minimum. And, and again, A reminder, right, 20 years ago, when the NASDAQ was overheated, it took two years from 2000, 2002 for it to lose 70% of its value. And bottom, that was painful, but we all survived.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: But the thing is also, though, I mean, and that because you don't want to, you don't want to be callous about this, you're saying that you're well to do, your clients are well to do. There are a lot of people on the lower end of the income spectrum in the financial world that this stuff hits them much harder. Like this does become decisions between bread or milk. And so ultimately, and that's again where we need Congress to come in and be able to do things to help us. Those aren't necessarily emergencies that you see like COVID pandemic or so forth, but there needs to be big picture thinking and people that can address all of the issues that come up. Because yes, most people are people that, I shouldn't say most people, people that are of a certain just financial capability will make it through. But then, but that's not all of our society. And so either things need to be done in a way to allow More people to get in to the area where they don't need help or help needs to be provided. Because, yeah, it's going to be rocky. And you know, we don't know if like, again, we're, we're in the airplane, we're all passengers and we hope that, you know, they get us here. But let me, let me, let's.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Well, but let me just say this. The good thing is that with falling asset prices, those people, you know, gasoline prices are falling, housing prices are falling. So that's why in the end it does adjust itself out well.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: And that's. Yeah, it's trying to get the inflation under control, which, the inflation is all that stuff going up. So it's trying to.
Because they would equally be like your, your employment prospects are hurt by what the, the, the Fed is doing. But if the Fed does nothing or, you know, nothing is something is required, then a loaf of bread, like you said, cost $20 and then that's going to hurt you also. So there's pain either way. Ideally, this is a way to try to create the least amount of pain and the most sustainable system. But the second topic we wanted to discuss today, cancer Moonshot, which was initially introduced 2016, something that Obama tapped Biden to do when he was vice president. It was the year after his son died. And Biden kind of reinvigorated it this past year. Earlier this year, they talked about relaunching and so forth, and he just did a speech on it. And it's about trying to have cancer deaths. It's about trying to really put all of our resources or put focus and intensity in terms of our effort into really addressing cancer and other chronic diseases where it fits. What's your thoughts on this? What do you think? This is something that is worthwhile to me. Hey, we just talk about how economically, you know, like, it's, it's, it's very concerning, you know, like the sky is falling in some respects. You know, is this a good time for. This is something that's a good goal, you know. What are your thoughts on the cancer? Moonshine?
[00:46:44] Speaker A: I mean, it's hard to be mad at the attempt to try and, you know, rid the world of cancer. So I don't have anything negative to say.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Never bad time for that.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Right. I lost my mom to bone cancer. So, you know, there's a personal touch there. And I'm not the only one, you know, I mean, I know millions of people die every year of cancer. And, you know, let's see this. This should be one of the few things that should be bipartisan, let's see how, how far it goes and then, you know, let's see how, how the people like Alex Joneses of the world, you know, disturb, you know, a percentage of this country that there's a huge conspiracy and oh, you know, that we're gonna have 5G nanobots in the vaccine cancer.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: And that's gonna be. Oh, the cure for cancer is. Yeah, nanobot that turns your body into an alien. Of course that's coming. So I mean, that's why decisions are not make decisions based on what those folks will do.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: No, I know, but that's why to me, it's, you know, there's not too much that I would scrutinize. I mean, obviously we got to see what they're going to do, right. But I think it's like when Kennedy announced going to the moon in 1961, it's just like, okay, it's a big, bold idea. And when Kennedy announced that, you know, they didn't know exactly what rockets were going to be on the launch pad and you know, all that stuff. Right. It was, it was an ambition, it was a goal. And hey, by the end of that decade, Neil Armstrong's putting his foot on the moon's surface.
Yeah. If you believe that. Right.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you.
[00:48:11] Speaker A: But that's what I'm saying. So I think it's an ambitious. Just to finish my thought. It's an ambitious goal, just like getting on the moon was. But it's, it's. That's what I mean, sometimes I think, you know, we need that as a nation. Right. Let's have a goal. Let's go get it now. It's, it's not as sexy and as fun as going to the moon because you can't really see cancer and it's blah, blah, blah. Right.
[00:48:29] Speaker B: But it may be more impactful for people's lives and in fact, it certainly would be more impactful for people's lives. I'm actually, I'm big, I'm a big fan of taking big swings, you know, like this. So, I mean, I, I think that you have to have big goals in order to achieve, achieve things. You know, like if you set, you know, very small goals, then, you know, like you, you don't even get into the realm of making big moves. And so I was, I'm very excited about this. The initiative, I'll quote here. The initiative aims to dramatically reduce national death rate from cancer as well as improve the experience of survivors and family members of Those living with the disease. And so to me now, the concern I have with this, by the way, and actually you've brought this up in recent shows several times, is when Michelle Obama a few years back wanted to try to cut sugar consumption and promote healthier eating and eating plants and less processed food and stuff, there was a big pushback and it was made partisan and it was made. It got nasty and stuff like that. And so one thing I'll distinguish here is that going to the moon probably is easier to get people on board with because there's not an industry or several industries that make money on not going to the moon, you know, but in this case, unhealthy lifestyle sustains and is very profitable for our food industry. There. There's argument to whether the drug industry likes to go more in towards things that, that keep you alive but don't necessarily cure you of things. And know that their incentive structures are, are set up to really help us solve these problems versus just kind of, you know, manage them. So he does. If he's going at this and going at this from an honest. And him, you know, science and so forth, if they're going from an honest standpoint, there's a lot of industry that can get involved and kind of, kind of change this and make it something different and make it something that may not be as helpful. So I'm very concerned about that. But I think it's very exciting, particularly on the heels of what we saw with COVID 19, where there was a concerted effort to develop a vaccine and something, and then they were able to develop something that worked reasonably well very quickly. So we've seen science set a very ambitious goal and hit it in a way that was meaningful very quickly, very recently. And so I think this isn't like we're coming out of, you know, like we just did. This is Henry Ford on the assembly line. And now we're like, yeah, yeah, we're about to have, you know, intercollegiate intercontinental ballistic missiles. Like, it's like we've seen technology and science be able to deliver something similar to this. But again, the concern with cancer is that some of it may be lifestyle. And if that's the case, then I don't know if we will be able to get everybody pulling in the same direction.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's. I mean, look, I just think let's hope that the partisanship doesn't happen, but it will.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: I'm not. Partisanship, yes, but I'm even saying industry, like where industry create partisanship because you're telling people, what if they say eating less processed foods will make it so you don't get cancer or don't stop eating processed foods. There'll be a bunch of companies that be like, oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, they'll jump in front of you.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: No, I think, I think, look, I think you're right and I think that's something, you know, hopefully Americans will be able to see through that. I doubt it because you're right. It'll come now. And I'm not saying that to bash my fellow Americans. What I'm saying is it's going to.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: Cut laughing at your hope.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: It'll be a well orchestrated propaganda campaign.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: And it will be emotional.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Exactly. And, and they'll be, you know, lobbying and lining, you know, people running for Congress and, and, and those who want to stay in power because remember, they're not going to be doing their fiscal policy, legislative work. They're going to be out there fundraising from these big old, big old food processing companies. So, you know, I'm glad that we see now we're back to economics. That's the whole nature of our system, but the revolving door of Congress and lobbying and multinational corporations. So. But I do think back to the serious topic here, you know, hopefully. Because I'm thinking of the space race again.
And you know, yeah, it's great that we got somebody to the moon. It's great that we got all that stuff going.
And on top of that, I'm not going to say, but I'm going to say and along with that, I think look at how many good things came out of that decade of the 60s and all that money spent in R D on space exploration and all that.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: All these offshoots for the, for the kind of private sector, the commercial sector. You know, I remember learning as a kid something like Velcro was created in the 60s to keep the astronauts stuck onto something because of the, you know, you know, stuck to the wall when they, when it was weightlessness. Remember the drink Tang that we had as kids? You know, all this stuff I remember by the 80s when we were kids was all kind of.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: Well, that's a. Yeah, but there's a lot of things that from a technological standpoint, additional economic activity was created from products that their, their root came from, you know, the space race and so forth. So.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's a.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying is I think that would be a positive from this, from a healthcare perspective. Imagine over a decade of trying to cure cancer. The amount of things that other positive offshoots that could come to us just as consumers and just to help us in our daily lives. So I think that's why to your point, taking an ambitious move and a swing like this, I don't see the downside of it.
[00:53:53] Speaker B: This is the point of government, really. Yes, it's great that they build the roads and we have fire departments and police cars. Yes, I agree that stuff is very important. That's that day to day stuff, you know, that we get, you know, water treatment or you know, things like that. But these bigger swings are really what us pooling our government is, us pooling our resources, pulling our intellect. Pooling our intellect. Excuse me. And these bigger swings are the things that really drive forward humanity. And so to me, it can't all be about the day to day stuff. There have to be some bigger swings that we have in the works at all times, really, because these are the things that we don't know yet how this can help us. And I think you made a good. That was a great point to make as far as the, all the things that they didn't anticipate, they didn't set out to do. But all this, all these additional businesses, all these additional things that came from the space race. The same kind of thing here, like all the different additional type of medicines or things to do.
[00:54:49] Speaker A: Remember, Remember the shoes ruse? Those kangaroo shoes with the Velcro?
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Without a space race, I wouldn't have had those grade. Yeah. They had a little pouch on the side of the shoe, remember? Yeah.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: Like a kangaroo. Exactly. So, but I think we can wrap from there, man. It's, but it's, it's definitely encouraging that because a lot of times you think you worry people get caught up in too much petty politics that this kind of stuff doesn't even come to mind, you know, because it's like, oh well, what good is this going to do us on the campaign trail? You know, like. And it's like tomorrow, if this doesn't help me tomorrow, then what's the point of doing it? And so it's good to see there'll.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: Be a new nanobot conspiracy.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: There's always a nanobot.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Let's see what other conspiracies come up with this anti cancer.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: But unfortunately. Unfortunately. And then like I said, there is an industry, like there was no, it wasn't like there were a bunch of automobile manufacturers saying oh crap, if they go to space, nobody's gonna buy cars anymore. Because I guarantee you, if that was the case, then they would have been really pushing against the space race. So that's really the concern, I think, is that it's going to be if this is going to, if people see this as potentially cutting into their bottom line, it's going to start, there's going to be a motive there to try to peel people away. And we know it's not. If you want to pull people away, if you want to divide people, there are certain there's you start tapping into ad emotion, start tapping into that polarization and you can do it pretty easily. So. But I think we can wrap from here, man.
It's an interesting move, though. And it gets another one of those things, though, that we won't really know without the benefit of hindsight, but we can talk about it as we see it.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: So we appreciate maybe President Biden can recruit former Presidents Obama and Trump to be like the spokesman. And that way, like, dude, it would be the ultimate conspiracy. Or they could at least keep everyone calm. One or the other.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: It'll be, yeah, man, you're still living in the 90s, man, when when former presidents would, would Shelby would put them their own egos aside and stand side shoulder to shoulder. So but now we can wrap from there, man. I, I we appreciate you for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, share it with your friends, and until next time, I'm James Keys.
All right, we'll talk to you next time.
