Showdown
Showdown Episode 81 6-12-24
[ Music ] >> Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark Casein, and this is Wednesday, June 12th. And Merrick Garland is in contempt of Congress. And by the way, I am sure that he feels contemptuous of Congress as he should. But when you get down to it, both sides have really done something that really unfortunate. And that is when subpoenas are issued, everybody's ignoring them. The right ignored them when the Democrats were in control of the House, and all those people who ignored them, or at least a bunch, were found to be in contempt of Congress. And now, Merrick Garland has ignored the Republicans, and he's being held in contempt. And one of the questions that I would have for you is, who cares? They don't care. Neither side cares. They're in contempt, and like I said, yes. They are contemptuous of what is being done here, and certainly from my standpoint anyway, I understand everybody's got their viewpoint, I would say appropriately so. You know, here's what this is about today, if you have any idea if you don't, here it is. There was, obviously, an investigation of the President, Joe Biden. They investigated when he had the documents that he brought home with him, which were in the garage. After he found out they were in the garage or after somebody at least said, we know they were in the garage, and can you give them back? He gave them right back immediately. No conversation. Just quickly gave the documents back. So now, here we come a couple of years later, and we get an investigation of Joe Biden to find out what he actually did and if it were something that rose to the level of being illegal, requiring some prosecution. And the investigator said, no, not in this case. It is not. He gave it back. He didn't argue. There was no problem. However, he went a little bit further, and he said that there were some comments made by Joe Biden that seemed slow, whatever that means. Slow, off-kilter, somehow not all together there. I mean, there are all kinds of insinuations from the investigator, her, it's his name, insinuations about Joe Biden's inability to think straight. Now, in order to find out the truth of all of this, there was a document given to the Congress, which was the complete information on everything that was said, transcript. It was given to Congress. They've got it. They know every single word that was said by Joe Biden in response to the questioning. But see, they're not happy with that, because his responses look credible. They look credible. They look sane. It appears, if you read the transcript, which I have, that there's nothing wrong. That Joe Biden was fine. He responded to everything. And the special counsel said, "No charges." But you see, a group of Republicans in the House have come to the conclusion that there may be something in the actual recording of the conversations that will show that Joe Biden is operating with a bunch of screws loose. And so they want the recording. And Merrick Garland said, "I'm not giving you the recording, because all you want to do is make a circus out of this, and we're not going to have it. And you've got all of the responses. You've got every word. It's all in writing. Sit down and read it. There's nothing wrong. But Congress wants it for various reasons. And one of the reasons probably has to do with something that I talked about yesterday, and that is that there are some tapes out here right now, which if you look at them, they seem to give the impression that Joe Biden is in trouble. They can't think straight, can't talk straight, can't walk straight. He's got real problems. And this is all on tape. This was from his recent trip to Europe. But here's the problem. It's all been doctored. It's all fake. And they know it is, because it was carefully reviewed and given to experts by the Washington Post. Now, you realize that the moment I said Washington Post, there are people out here who are laughing and thinking to themselves, well, the Washington Post, of course, they'll defend the president. But no, that's not how it works. It's not at all. The Washington Post is a credible news organization in the United States of America, which can be relied upon in all situations. And the only thing that can go wrong is they could make a mistake and then they would come back and they would say, you know, we made a mistake and we need to let you know about it, because this is a credible news organization. And we tell Washington Post tells on themselves the New York Times tells on itself. So does the Wall Street Journal, for that matter. And so does NBC, CBS, ABC, you know, all of the credible news sources tell on themselves when they make a mistake. They always have and hopefully they always will. But they do. And the bottom line is that Merrick Garland didn't want to give anybody a chance to get their hands on some tapes that they could doctor and then send back to the public and say, this man can't think straight because he's fine. Now, how do I know he's fine? Well, it's like this. I can't prove it. This is one of those things you can't prove. So I can tell you in this way that in 15 days, that's just one day over two weeks on the 27th of June, you are going to watch Joe Biden toe to toe with Donald Trump. And then you're going to get a pretty good idea of which one of those guys is where. And they've made accommodations for the fact that Donald Trump is out of control, unhinged. And the accommodation is that when he's through talking, S is the same thing with Joe Biden. When each one of them is through talking, they have to turn their microphone off. Now, not them, the people, the journalists, the engineers, the producers, whoever is in charge of those microphones is supposed to turn them off as soon as the candidate is through speaking. So that's what I'm telling you. You're going to watch it live, and you're going to see it in 15 days. And then come back and say, the man is not thinking straight. He's in serious trouble. We've got to do something about it. Yes, that'll be fine. If that's true. And on the other hand, if Donald Trump goes to this debate talking about shark attacks, electric batteries and boats that are going to electrocute you, all that crazy talk that's coming out of his mouth right now, well, then you'll be able to think about that. So the bottom line is here, you're going to have a pretty good idea of which one of these guys is operating with a screw loose in 15 days. So I wouldn't get Ben out of shape right now. Either way, OK, they're throwing a fit and holding Merrick, Ireland, and contempt, which is going to mean nothing to him. Absolutely nothing. He'll look at them. They'll look at him, and everybody'll say, OK, you're contemptuous of us. And he'll say, yes, and everybody'll go home. It's going to mean nothing. Nobody's putting the attorney general in jail for not sending that second part of the transcript, the actual tape. No one's going to do anything to him. He's just going to be in contempt. And that's going to be the end of it. This wouldn't be the first time that an attorney general has been held in contempt, but it's the first time that it's happened in a way that is sort of gratuitous. And I can tell you right now, it happened during Obama's presidency, but ultimately, it doesn't mean too much. Now, on the other hand, we know who's going to jail on July 1 for exactly this contempt of Congress, and that is Steve Bannon. He's been to trial. He's been found guilty. And he's been sentenced to four months in jail. And he was held out of jail briefly, but now he's been told report to jail on July 1. And he's doing everything he can to save himself from it, but it's not working. So knock yourself out, guys. You can be crazy if you want to, but this is not going anywhere as far as the Democratic parties, political leaders, either in the executive branch or anywhere else. If they want to play with some tapes, if they can get their hands on them and talk to them, they're going to be reported to the New York Times, Washington Post, and possibly even the Wall Street Journal, anybody else, this is not going to work well for the Republican Party. They really should knock this off because they're really hurting themselves. This all comes out, and people know about it. The stories are being told everywhere, and everybody's going to see the debate on the 27th. So that's going to be the end of that. If Joe Biden comes in on the 27th going, you know, if he does that, he'll no longer be the candidate for President of the United States, and the Democrats will handle that. And then you'll watch it, and you'll say, I saw him do it, and that'll be the end. But it's not going to happen. He's going to come in, and he's going to be the same way that he was at the State of the Union address, in Europe, everywhere. Press conferences that he does, everything he does, he looks perfectly OK. But if you doctor the tapes, sure, you can come up with something. But you have to doctor them. And then everybody looks at it and figures it out, and then you're called out for it. And if you can get away with it with your base-- yeah, that's the whole story-- then that's fine. The base isn't going anywhere, anyhow. The base, 35%, that's all it is. The base was there for Joe McCarthy in 1954, in 1954 when Attorney Welch turned to Joe McCarthy and said, have you no shame. That was the end of McCarthy. He was disgraced, and he was gone. However, this was June of 1954, and a poll was done by Gallup. And even though this man was completely disgraced on his way to dying, he died shortly afterwards. Congress censured him, all kinds of things. But still, 35% in the Gallup poll supported Joe McCarthy. I mean, today you say Joe McCarthy. People know what McCarthyism was. They know it was a horrible period in American history, and that's fine. But there's still 35% that support the vestiges of that, which, of course, is Donald Trump. And don't think I'm just saying it, because it's all connected through Roy Cohn, who worked for both McCarthy and for Donald Trump. And, of course, Trump's father. And, of course, Trump runs around yelling, where is his Roy Cohn? That's words. You can find him. It's all on Google. And that's what he wants, because he identifies with all of that. And that's hardly a surprise, given the fact that he is describing his presidency, his administration, as the unified Reich. Oh, I know. Nobody wants to hear me saying that. Especially because, after Trump did it, then he sort of ran away from it, which is what he does all the time. But you know, you can't let him get away with it, because he's telling you what he's going to do, gives you a wink, and then runs the other way, and says, I never heard of it. Well, that's fine. That's how he operates. And if you don't call him out on it, then he'll walk away and get away with it. So I will personally call him out on it, and I wish that other people would, too. Some people are afraid to do it. They're afraid that if they do that, that they'll be playing into his hands, and that he'll make them all look stupid. But you know what? Just don't be stupid, and you'll be fine. But at least call him out. Now, of course, what they are doing, which is good, is they're calling him out for being a convicted felon, which he is, and so all the time, they are calling him a convicted felon. And that's what he is. He is a criminal. He is. That's by definition. This guy who is running for President of the United States is a criminal. He's been found to be a criminal, former president, a criminal by the jury. The jury of his peers found him to be a criminal. And a story. Another jury said that he was liable for, they described it, the words they used, was sexual assault. And I have to laugh, because the judge said it was rape, and he said, look, the jury found it to be rape, but we call it New York sexual assault, but it was exactly what everybody knows as rape. Go look it up, Washington Post. But here's the thing. According to people in the Republican Party, if you sexually assault a woman, apparently it's okay. Because if you don't call it rape, and you just call it sexual assault, then somehow someone thinks that's okay. But again, women are not stupid. They've had the vote since 1919. It's 105 years. Women are quite educated. And they know what sexual assault is. They know what it is, and they don't want it done to them. And if you want to sit around and dissect exactly what Trump did and what the jury said he did, but you can do that somewhere else, because I'm sure not doing it. And no one is, because it's unnecessary. We all know what sexual assault is, number one. And number two, Donald said it. We've got them on tape saying, I can do it. And they want me to. It's all on tape. We've all seen it. Now I understand there are people who walk away from that and say, doesn't bother me. Well, that's okay. There's an election coming, and we're gonna find out who is bothered and who is not. It talked yesterday about the fact that in Poland, it was the one place in Europe where they stood up to the right wing crazies and beat them. So they beat back the neo-Nazis, which is what they are, just like Trump, who is a neo-Nazi. They beat them back and they won in Poland. Now, Macron in France is going to attempt to do the same thing. It's a very dangerous thing for him to do, because he could find himself kicked out of his position as president of France. This could be a big loss for Emmanuel Macron. And the reason it would be a big loss is because he's got three years right now to sit in that office and be left alone. But he's calling a snap election on the heels of this election that they've already had in the EU where the neo-Nazis did awfully well. And so Macron is saying, I'm gonna push back. He wants to take it to the French people and get the French people to say, we don't support Vichy. You know, Vichy is? I mean, hopefully you do. Vichy were, those were the leaders in France during the days of the Nazis. They were the collaborators with Hitler, who ran France, Vichy. And he was, of course, they were thrown out by Charles de Gaulle, who was the leader of the underground in France. Do you know any of this? You ought to, why? Just because you should. That's why. I mean, you ought to know the history of World War II. Not every battle, but you know, it helps to know who Quizzling was in Norway and Vichy in France. And, you know, there's certain things that you ought to know. And, you know, at one point people would say, well, why? That was 80 years ago. Well, it's coming back. It's right in front of you. That's why, because if you know what they did, in Germany, in France, in Norway, and all through Europe, in 1941, two, three, and four, if you know it, then maybe you can look up and see Donald Trump reading the speeches of Adolf Hitler. And then you'll know that you don't want to go there. I understand. You know, you don't want to do that because you'd rather rail against the second wife who told everybody, not just lately, some time ago, that this guy was reading the speeches of Adolf Hitler before he went to sleep. So again, you know, it's not me. I'm just telling you what she says. She was there. I was not, thankfully. Yeah, that's not a place I would've liked to have been. But at any rate, that's where we are. And we've got a neo-Nazi problem, and Emmanuel Macron is pushing back against it in the best way possible. We think of it sort of as profiles and courage, and it's a good thing. Okay. So let's also talk about a couple of other things going on here. I'm gonna do a quick one. And then we'll go to, you know, we'll go get something to eat in Chesterfield. And then we'll come back and talk about some other things. But, you know, come back here to St. Louis in terms of thinking about the Nazis. You know, we've got a problem in Missouri, in Wensville, in St. Charles. And these are places where the school districts have pushed back against blackness. Anything black, they wanna shut it down. Now they call it DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, because that is the name for the program. But it's black, that's all it is. It's anti-black. They're anti-black in St. Charles. They're anti-black in Wensville. They're anti-black throughout much of Missouri. You know, people remember, maybe, know the stories about the sundown cities where black people had to be out by sundown. Well, here's the thing. They're blocking books that are written by black people, by famous black people, blocking them in schools and pulling them out of the libraries. And now, and this was in Saturday's post-Dispatch, now they're getting ready to shut down libraries in St. Charles, and it's all part of this business. This is, you know, I always call it book burning, but they'll say, oh no, we haven't burned any books. This is book banning. Okay. Excuse me, they're only banning the books, they're not burning them. But, you know, I'll call it what I want. And the point is, it's all part of this neo-Nazi business in the United States. And of course, when we think of neo-Nazis, we think of Jews, but in the case of Donald, who swears these, the greatest thing that ever happened to a black person in America, may be greater than Abraham Lincoln, he's not sure. But, you know what, black people are not stupid, and they're not voting for Donald Trump. I know there are some polls that show that some black men will do that. But I'll tell you this, and we'll see, again, it's coming in November, and I say 8%, that's what Donald will get from black people. That's what Republicans get, and that's what Donald's going to get. 8%, if it's 9, sue me. If it's 7, don't be shocked, because believe me, black people are not stupid. They're being told by their leadership exactly the things that are coming out of Trump's mouth when maybe they're not hearing it. You can go to YouTube anytime this afternoon, tomorrow, the next day, anytime you want, and look it up, where he said that the blood of America is being poisoned by black people coming from Africa. Check it out. It's there. You think it's not you if you're black? Huh, trust me. There were Jews who said that in Germany. Oh, we're Germans, it's not us, it's the Polish Jews, it's somebody else, it's not us. Of course, as it turned out, it was them. Yeah, they were absolutely in the crosshairs, and Donald's out here playing the same game. This time led by his puppet master Vladimir Putin. Think I'm wrong? Just wait, because every single thing that was printed in the Mueller report has surfaced in one way or the other, all the way down the line, and people don't want to say it, that is on the right, the same people who say 75% of the American people who say that crime is at an all time, 50 year high. That's in the Gallup poll, there's only one problem. It's actually at a 50 year low. Crime is down, down nationally, down in St. Louis, down in Missouri, it's just down. Crime is down and dropping. The same people who will tell you that you're being destroyed by inflation. They're gonna tell you the crimes in an all time high, but it's not, it's at a low. Okay, I could say it in say it 100 times. I could show it on the screen. All you're gonna say is that you don't believe in the Bureau of Labor Statistics or something like that. I'm just not even thinking about it. But we're gonna come back and talk some economics in a minute because they haven't banned our commercials. Not yet, anyway. Are you hungry? Wenties is an 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road and that's in the Valley and the food is terrific. We talk about it every night and all I can tell you is that if you don't get an image of this food and think about going to Wenties, something wrong with you because it's all good. Great food. People love, love wings, it's not my thing. I don't know why they love wings, but they do. You know, and I think about this all the time. I'll give you an example. People love thin crust pizza that they get at emos. I hate it. I like the nice thick pizza, but people like it. Same way, people love wings. I don't, but nobody's running around saying we're gonna do what Kason says for good reason. You don't need to eat what I'm eating, but you can go to Wenties and get the greatest food that you can imagine. And I mean wings that you're gonna love. I don't know why, but you're gonna love 'em. And then you're gonna get pizza, really good pizza. Not that thin junk. Not a really good pizza. And you're gonna get other things too. You're gonna get hamburgers, cheeseburgers. You're gonna get really excellent patty melts. I mean, you can't wreck a patty melt. They're good. They, Wenties, they got patty melts. I love it. They got baby back ribs. That's what I love. And then of course on top of that, I love the onion rings. Anybody that wrecks onion rings or something wrong with ya. And the onion rings at Wenties are top of the line. So look, go to Wenties, go through the menu. It's all great. Order the food, enjoy the drinks. Get some salad, terrific environment. You'll love it. That's Wenties at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road. And don't forget, you can get the same great food in Defiance, Missouri. Wenties Roadhouse in Defiance, same excellence there and here in the Valley. Enjoy it, it's Wenties. Now I'm gonna take you to get some jewelry at Jules on Hampton. And yes, it's pretty apparent. They're on Hampton. 4506 Hampton and that is Jules on Hampton and their jewelry is terrific. They've got cases filled with jewelry in this store, filled with it. All throughout this giant area where you can walk through and just look at all the different jewelry and you can go to Al and you can talk about changing designs, you can talk about their creative designs, you can talk about your ideas, you name it. The jewelry is perfect at Jules on Hampton. It's exactly why you go there and they do buy and sell coins in jewelry at really excellent prices for the consumer who goes to 4506 Hampton. And on top of all of this, if you find yourself in possession of a really excellent watch, then what you need to do if it's broken is take it to Jules on Hampton and they'll fix it for you because they're really excellent when it comes to repairing watches too. This is a fine jewelry store. They do everything you can imagine for a jewelry store and they're at 4506 Hampton. Go see Al and AJ, they are the best. Now, if you're looking for a suit or a $5 tie that looks like it's $50, $50, then you're gonna wanna go to the St. Louis suit company and that is on the corner of Forsyth and Central in Clayton. They've got suits, they've got ties for $5, silk ties. Beautiful designs. Everything that you would ever want. People look at those ties and they go, wow, where can I get one for $5? They can't believe it, but believe it, 29 years, they're not playing games. That's the St. Louis suit company. They've got shirts, they've got ties, they've got shoes, not chucks, but everything else. No, they're really good shoes. I like my chucks, but you can go and get shoes, dress shoes. I used to get dress shoes. It's sort of out of fashion now. People wear chucks, not everybody, but I do. My students love it. In fact, they love when I wear the mismatched chucks. One red, one black, it's all good. But at the St. Louis suit company, they've got the real good stuff. And on top of that, if you're getting married, they handle wedding attire for lots of weddings, all over St. Louis, it's a big place for weddings. So if you're going to a wedding, if you're getting married, also go to the St. Louis suit company and they'll take care of you there, 29 years. That's no joke. On the corner of Central and Forsyth, St. Louis suit company in Clayton. Okay. So we've taken care of some different neo-Nazis that are out here. And I'm gonna talk to you a little about some economics. And there are several reasons to do that. One reason is because there was an inflation report that came out this morning. And it was considered to be very good, mainly because the numbers were better than everybody had anticipated. So it was supposed to be like 3.3%. I think it was and it came to 3.2. One of the other, man, it might've been 3.4, they were looking for and it came in at 3.3. But it was 0.1 better than what they thought it would be. Still, not good enough to get the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. They're not doing that. And in fact, when the Federal Reserve came out and talked about the results of their meeting from the last two days, the markets weren't real excited about the result. Interest rates, which had gone down early in the day, sort of blipped back up again a little bit. But for the most part, interest rates have pulled back from the highs that they've reached during this cycle by a little bit, not because of the Fed, just because of the market. And so those rates sort of pulled back down a little bit and that was a little bit celebrated in the market today. In fact, the S&P 500 went to another new all-time high. There's only one problem. In the last three days, as the S&P has marched on up to brand new highs, it's all been Apple Computer. And just so you understand what happened with Apple, 'cause it's kind of an interesting situation. Everybody loves Apple and Apple has bounced back and forth a few times from around 195 down to about 170, back to 195, back and forth. And then when the big meeting came a few days ago, they reported the new AI materials that would be available through Apple. And a lot of people looked at it and said, "Really? "This isn't so great." And the first thing that happened was that Apple dropped $4 a share on a day when the rest of the market was up. Dropped from 195 to 191. However, since then, Apple has rocketed from $191 a share to a new all-time high for Apple. As high today, I believe it was up to $216 per share. So $25 higher over three days and that propelled the S&P to another new all-time high. On the other hand, the New York composite, all the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange are in that New York composite, is not at a new all-time high. In fact, it's been lagging for months. The Russell 2000, that's 2000 stocks, all little companies that sort of the heart of America because these little companies, lots of people are employed by these small cap companies. And they're very important for our economy and they've been lagging tremendously. Now they were up today, but way behind that high that was made a couple of months, two, three months ago. So it's only the S&P that's running. And earlier, it was running because of Microsoft and then it got some help from, of course, Nvidia. And now it's getting a lot of help from Apple. But one, two, three stocks, I've said this before, that is not healthy. And, you know, back in the 1960s, you know, they had a time where there were about 50, what they called glamour companies. They were technology, the technology wasn't anything like what we've got, but it was technology and those glamour stocks, which they called the Nifty 50, they did this and there were a small group within that that propelled the market higher and higher and higher. And of course, the rest of the market lagged and naturally the result was a gigantic bear market because that's how this works. And we're in one of these periods where almost no companies are leading the way, except for Apple. Nvidia, a little bit of Microsoft, you know, those are, you know, three trillion dollar companies and they're leading the way. AI is the big story. Everybody wants AI and that's great. And I'm sure down the line, AI will do lots of phenomenal things, but in the meantime, these stories often get far ahead of themselves. So one of the indicators that this is not working out the way it should right now, in addition to what I've just told you about the narrow character of the market is the high yield bond index, which is dropping. So while the S&P is going up, the high yield index is going down. I showed all this on the screen a couple of days ago and you can look it up. You can put in the symbol, if you've got a computer that'll let you do this, HYI. Put it in, it'll come right up and you can watch for the last three months going down while the markets are going up. And the reason that that's a problem is because high yield bonds are more or less equivalent to stocks. They're bonds, but they act more like equities, more like stocks, and they are definitely an indicator when they are diverging from the market. And they are right now. They're diverging in a very, very significant way. In fact, one of the biggest divergences I've seen in many years. So again, not good. So keep your eye on that because everything's going up, sort of, not really, but sort of. And the economy is doing great. That is true. In fact, the economy is doing so well that the World Bank today came out and said that the dynamism in the US economy is so outstanding that it is carrying the rest of the world. I understand. I say World Bank and you go flipping through, you know, Donald Trump's playbook to see if he says that the World Bank is no good, and I'm sure he does. So trust me, you can talk yourself out of this meaning anything. But the World Bank says that the United States is the economy of the world right now that is performing the very best with the lowest inflation out and out the best results that you could find. And if you want to see it, if you want to read it, if you want to understand it, you know, wsj.com. That's the Wall Street Journal. nytimes.com, New York Times. It's in all the newspapers, Washington Post.com. It's in there. I mean, everybody's got it. Look at it up on Google. You'll see it. The whole story from the World Bank about how the United States is leading the way. Now, just so you understand, there are people who are being polled. It's again, this business where people don't know what they're looking at when they're looking right at it. They're being polled and these people, they're Trumpers, and they're all saying that we're in a recession. But everything's going down and this is the worst of the worst economies because Joe Biden is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, the World Bank says it's not true. Check it out. And it's not true. I mean, the numbers are being reported by the United States government. I know you don't trust the United States government. I get it, go call Vladimir Putin. He'll tell you all about it. He'll explain it to you. I'm sure they've published the whole thing in Proveda. So you believe Proveda and I'll read the New York Times and we'll see who knows actually what's going on. Okay. So there's another problem that we've got. And this problem, which I've mentioned, is what we call the yield curve. And for almost 500 days, it's a long time. It's not two years, but getting there. For almost 500 days, our yield curve has been inverted. That means the long end of the yield curve is trading at a lower rate than the short end. And that's the opposite of what it should be. And so it's inverted. And an inverted yield curve where the high rates are on the short end, that's where the pressure is being put on the economy. That's why people are so surprised, including the Fed, at the fact that the jobs refuse to go down. Because that's what they want. They would like to bring down job growth so that inflation will come down the rest of the way with it. I say the rest of the way, because we know inflation is sitting around 3.2, 3.3%, which is a lot better than when it hit 9% for a minute. And of course, the United States has been most successful in bringing down inflation compared to any other country in the world, in the industrialized world. So I'm just going to ask a question. You know, this is like what we call a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer it. In this period of time where the United States is doing so fabulously, according to the World Bank, and where inflation is being brought down better than any other country in the world, I'm just going to ask this question. Who is the president of the United States? I'm not even going to answer it. It's not necessary. You know who it is. I'll just assure you, it's not Donald Trump. So anyway, all this great success is coming under some guy named Biden, not Hunter Biden. No, he's the guy with the laptop and all that junk. But Joe Biden, yes. He's done a great job. According to all the top economists in the world, not Stephen Moore, the quack who you can find over on Fox, no, that's, I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the top economists on Earth. Now, if you know some better ones on Mars, check with them. But the top ones on Earth say that the United States is doing a phenomenal job, and so we are. Now, there is an additional problem, maybe, maybe. And I don't even know the answer to this one. Nobody does, because we've never had this problem before. But you know that when inflation for 10 years was really low, and we were afraid that growth was going to disappear, the Federal Reserve stepped up and began what we call quantitative easing, which means they bought bonds. And they kept buying them, and every month they bought more. And as they bought more bonds, those bonds are placed on what we call the Fed's balance sheet, which shows what they own. And their balance sheet went from under a trillion to over four trillion dollars. That's enormous. That's the biggest move up in the balance sheet. I believe in history, but you'd have to check it, but I'm pretty sure it is. And this was an idea that was concocted by Ben Bernanke, one of the famous chairman of the Federal Reserve, and everybody has called him a financial genius and hero for what he did. And understand this, as he bought those bonds by the Federal Reserve, the Fed was buying the bonds, and as they were pumping those bonds into their balance sheet, that forced money into the economy, because they were buying the bonds, and then when they paid for it, that money would go into the banking system. Four trillion dollars they put into the banking system. It worked, it did a great job. And after ten years there was no inflation, but eventually we ended up with some inflation. Three percent instead of two percent, so don't get yourself crazy. But, you know, I understand there are people who will get crazy, but don't get crazy because you can sit here and think that you're spending eleven thousand dollars more to take care of a family of four to feed them this year over last, but again, as I pointed out the other day, improved impossible, couldn't have happened, and it didn't happen. But at any rate, the Fed is now doing something different. They're now selling the bonds. And understand this, when they bought the bonds, month after month after month, the price of the bonds went up, and as the price of the bonds went up, that meant that interest rates were falling. And every time the price of those bonds went up, every bond that had been purchased by the Federal Reserve went up in value. So, in effect, what the Fed did is they piled all these bonds onto their balance sheet, and then they increased the value of everything because they kept buying more bonds, and that pushed the prices of these bonds higher. So, here's the deal. Now, they're selling. So, this is quantitative tightening, and what they're doing is trying to put downward pressure on our economy in order to bring down inflation. But our economy is so powerful that everything that the Fed has done to slow the rate of job growth has just failed. Job growth has continued, and the Fed is trying to make it happen. They're trying to bring it down, and that's why we haven't inverted yield curve, and that's why, undoubtedly, the stock market is narrowing in the way it has, and that's why we probably will find our way into our recession. And, of course, the question is, when will that happen? If it doesn't happen in five months, Joe Biden will march into the election with a great economy, and no one will recognize it, because they've talked themselves into the fact that Donald Trump knows something when the truth is he's busy out right now talking about shark attacks, electric batteries in boats, and getting electrocuted when you're out in the ocean in these boats. I don't know what that means, and neither does anybody else, and frankly, neither does Donald. But he's saying it, and his people will believe anything, and as a number of experts are saying, it's the perfect definition of a cult. Dear leader tells you things which you know aren't true, and you say, I believe it. Okay, that's fine, but you're part of a cult, just so you know. Maybe you like that. I'm sure Vladimir Putin wants you in that cult, because this is what he's counting on, so he can take over ownership of the United States in a way that the Soviet Union was never able to do. It's another story for another day, but I just bring up this point, the interest rates are up, the Fed has been selling these bonds, and the Fed is losing money. They used to be making money, now they're losing it. But here's the thing, nobody is sure that it hurts anything for the Fed to actually lose the money. Nobody is sure of it at all. It's never been done before, so we don't know. So at least there's something we don't know, and we can admit it. I know this, you can get great suits at the St. Louis Suit Company, you can get great food at WENTIES. You can get great jewelry at 4506 Hampton, that's Jules on Hampton. And meanwhile, this is showdown. I'm Mark Casein, good night.