12-9-25 America's Truckin' Network

we finally got our Christmas decorations up. And we thought we were kind of late in terms of doing that because we always, you know, driving around, you see people that have already had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving. I just don't I just don't buy into that. I'm not into this early celebration because then by the time Christmas comes around, you're pretty much tired of seeing the decorations.

A lot of people had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving, which I think is a little bit early, but with that weekend afterwards that generally when a lot of people put their decorations up. But we were running well what we thought was a little late. But then as we started seeing some of the reports and talking to people and listening and watching on Facebook, we're pretty much in line.

So don't feel too bad about getting our stuff up the way we got our stuff up, which was a lot of fun, big weekend as far as sports is concerned, And normally I don't talk a lot about sports on this program because after all, it is America's truck a network, and so we generally stick to economic news because as the reports from American Transportation Research Institute says that that is one of the main concerns of you out there on the road, that driving around and worrying about the economy.

And with my point has been along all along is that what we're hearing from the spoon fed regurgitators of the mainstream media is not what is going on, and that looking at some of these stories and reading between the lines and seeing the positives in there, the headlines

don't always match what the story says. And so my point on this program is to try to not try to but to get the truth out so that people know where the economy is, how strong the economy actually is despite all the negativity from the spoon federalc urgitators in the mainstream media. So again with that and said I don't normally talk a lot about sports, but it was very interesting weekends. Starting off from Friday, I almost hit the trifecta this weekend in terms of teams that

I thought were gonna win. Anyway, Friday night here in Cincinnati was a Crosstown shootout. Now, this is a game between University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, my alma mater, and Xavier won the Crosstown shootout. They were not expected to win. They were, you know, watching the pregame information and you know, they have the panel it was the show or the game was televised on TNT turna network television, and the four panelists we're talking about, well who you

choosing tonight? Who do you think is going to win? And all four of them thought, you see, was gonna win. And on paper it appeared as though that they had the stronger team, bigger team, better team, et cetera. However, that's why you play the game. And you know they were trying to downplay this, and you know, for those of you who are not familiar with us, I mean, this is a big game. And of course my alma mater,

Xavier on the Crosstown shootout. Now, just to kind of give you a little bit of background on this, Zavier University has a student body of six thousand students, you see has fifty thousand. We are separated there, separated by only three miles. A lot of these players in the past used to play in these summer leagues around the town and so the importance of this game was the bragging rights on those during those games during the summer league,

which is kind of faded by the wayside. Before Xavier University dropped football back in nineteen seventy three, that was referred to as the Crosstown Shootout for the Xavier U See football game every year and on par Xavier had a pretty good record against UC. It's one of those games kind of like the Ohio State Michigan game. It

really doesn't matter what the what the record is. When you go into that game because of the rivalry, people are playing a little bit better than what they normally would pay play with a lot more intensity because they're,

you know, just because it's a rival. And leading up to the game, Xavier's first year head coach head coach for the first year, Richard Patino, who is Rick Patino's son, they were interviewing him and they said, well, how are you know, because the city really gets into this and the of course the alumni that live in the city. The Xavier alumni and U SEE alumni. It's kind of a kind of a clash there type of thing. And they were interviewing him and said, well, what are you

preparation for the game? And we don't prepare any different for this game. Uh, it's just another game on this schedule. We don't make any more emphasis on it more than

anything else. And a lot of the people that have been here for a number of years and the sportscasters and whatever said, you know, it's funny every time a new coach comes in, whether it's for UC or Xavier, they always say the same thing until after the game and they say, I had no clue how big this game was and the intensity and the rivalry, especially in the student body and in the stands, and so from that aspect, I think there was a little bit of

a surprise as far as Richard Patino was concerned in terms of that. Now, what's interesting is that when I was watching the game, we call it the Crosstown Shootout. Now, the TNT sportscasters they were kept referring to it as the Crosstown Showdown. I guess they're probably being a little bit pc as far as that's concerned, a little politically politically correct. I mean, because you know you can't well you know, you can't have shots. You can't have shoot

it can't be a shootout for crying out loud. That kind of kind of gives some sort of other connotation to it, which is a load of crap, because if you're going to do that, well then maybe you should change some of the terms. You'd eliminate the shot clock, don't talk about the three point shots, you don't talk about the number of shots that a player made during the game, and all that sort of stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting, just kind of an

a side note. So anyway, as far as the game was concerned, Xavery won the game seventy seventy four, which was very interesting. Xavier beat the Bearcats for the eight sixth time in last seven meetings, which is very interesting. Again, the team usually is on bragging rights, which is based

on bragging rights around the city. Forward Trey Carroll scored a high career high thirty points as Xavier Musketeer has defeated since Santy Baracats seventy nine seventy four in the Crossdown shootout since at the Sintas Center of Friday Night, Beat you again, bait beat you see, And somewhere in here, I think I've got the note that Xavier has won. Actually you See has not, And this was a home game for Xavier, and the you See has not won on x U's home court since two thousand and one.

So this is like because it's usually you know, home and away. You know, one one year it's at you See, one year it's at Xavier, and flip back and forth and so on. So since two thousand and one, you See has not beat Xavier on their own home court. So that was interesting. It was bragging rights and so on. This Trey Carroll and again they tried to downplay the

significance of this game and everything. But I think the individual students themselves, even though some of them transferred in, and I think they said at the beginning of the game, only one player on either team had experienced the Crosstown shootout before. And I don't know what happened as far as Trey Trey Carroll is concerned, but he's a transfer student in and I think he's going going to be I think he's a senior, so he's only going to be here one year. But apparently he really got into

the motivation of this game again a career high. And at the end of the game, you could just see the excitement on his face and he was just so excited and just running around the court and you know, showing the Xavier shirt and everything. I mean, it was incredible. And then the interview afterwards, what a great young man. He said, well, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go out with your friends tonight? And he goes, no,

he isn't. Any point he turned around, he pointed, and he says, my family came in for the game, and my wife is up there because he got married in the off season, which is interesting. And he said, I'm gonna, you know, just go out to dinner with my family, get get some sleep tonight and go to bed early and so on. I'm not going to do anything stupid

and so on. But and the after game or after the postgame interview, a couple of the people on set, I can't remember the two, but apparently they had played college basketball before and they said, well, that is a remarkable young man because he said he's not going to go out and do anything stupid, which is certainly different than what we did when we were in school, so

it was kind of interesting from that aspect. Also, going into the weekend, we had the Indiana University OSU game, both teams being undefeated, Big Ten Championship and a big a whole lot on the line there, which was kind of interesting, kind of interesting as far as some of the backstory there, we'll pick that up on the other side. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred WLW, one

hundred WLW. I started at the beginning of the show saying, you know, I usually don't talk a lot about sports on this program, again because it is America's truck in Network, And if you missed any of that or missing their previous shows, make sure you hit up that iHeartRadio app

brought to you Buyer Friends at Rust Truck Centers. But this weekend was interesting from the standpoint that again we had the Crosstown Shootout x U versus UC University of Cincinnati, Miama Maters Avery University won that game seventy nine seventy four, which was an upset victory. Then on Saturday, we had the Big Ten Championship Indiana University High State University ranked one and two. A High State was ranked number one,

Indiana was ranked number two. Very interesting game the Big Ten championship and the national title on the line, and of course then on Sunday we had the Bengals versus the Bills. So but anyway, the Indiana game was it was very interesting. I grew up, I mentioned before, I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so I do have kind

of a soft spot in my heart for them. However, my dad went to Notre Dame, so we were big Notre Dame fans growing up, and not so much OSU only from the standpoint that you know, if OSU is playing any other team, I'm for OSU until they played Notre Dame or something along those lines. But you always want your hometown team or your home state team to do well, and so you know, it wasn't necessary a cheer for Ohio State, and of course I always want

them to beat Michigan and that type of thing. But this particular game against Indiana was unique in a lot of instances. The fact that they were able to win thirteen to ten, which was a low scoring game between these two teams, which is very interesting. It was the long. It was the longest, very long. I don't know if it was a record losing streak. Indiana had not beat OSU Ohio State University since nineteen eighty eight, thirty seven years.

They hadn't beaten them, and of course, you know, again according to statistics and according to the strength of schedule, and even though they were ranked number one and number two, I don't think anybody was really giving Indiana any chance of winning that game, simply because as an overpowering offense.

Now High State won the national championship last year. So kind of in heart of hearts, you know, living here in the living in the Tri state area around the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana corner there in southwest Ohio, you know, we do have some a little bit of an affiliation or so on with Indiana, and I was kind of hoping that Indiana would knock off OSU because they have

been getting a little cocky and so on. So I was actually pleased to watch it, even though I knew both teams were going to wind up in the playoffs at college playoffs, you know, having Indiana win. And the other thing too, is that Indiana has not won the big Ten championship since nineteen sixty seven, fifty eight years, Indiana has been one of these teams that has generally a pretty decent record, but they have probably one of

the worst. I think they were saying that Indiana, in terms of their record over the years, has one of the worst in the Big Ten. You know, it's kind of a so so program, never been very prominent and so on. But the last couple of years, the new coach there, his name escapes me now, but really built up the university there, built up the team, really made an effort here, and it was a It was an

exciting game, it was very interesting to watch. But the mere fact that they had not beat Ohio State in thirty seven years and had not won the Big Ten championship in fifty eight it was a huge day and a huge thing for Indiana IU Indiana University. Then we had the of course, we had the Bengals game, and then about six o'clock Sunday night, they did these college rankings and who was going to be in and who was going to be out of the college playoffs, which

to me wind up being an absolute joke. It's a twelve team field, and again I don't talk much about sports, but you know, these kind of things that's on my mind, these kind of things that are of interest to me. And I've found over the years that if I find something interesting, there's a whole lot of people out there that find it interesting as well. So well, anyway, it's interesting to me, and I thought that some of the

dynamics behind this. Now there's a twelve team that were selected and all during the Ohio State Michigan or Ohio State Indiana game and some of the other games. Let me see, it was BYU and off the top of my head, I can't remember off the top of my head who they played. But there were all these games that were coming down to some of these teams that were on the bubble whether they were going to get in or not. And it was interesting to see a couple of these teams actually got blown out and even

though that they were still high ranked. And during the game, they were showing all these people that were part of the selection committee and they were sitting there with their computers and their notes and everything, and they were making their determination. Team football field playoff was announced on Sunday and Notre Dame was left out and a couple of other teams that should have been in there were also

left out. The Fighting Irish to ten and to two were the first team left out of the field, and Miami ten and two received the last at large spot, moving up two spots to number ten after the twelve person CFP selection committee ultimately decided head had results. The Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish of course first game of the season, twenty seven to twenty four in their August thirty first opener, so they kind of made that the determining factor as to whether or not Notre Dame made

it in. But what was interesting is that if you go to the AP rankings, which is interesting, the AP did their rankings at the end of the season, and they had the number one, number two, number three team. As far as who was going to be ranked, and if you go through the top twelve, in my opinion for the college National Championship game, it should be the top twelve teams in the country, and you start off

with Indiana and then Georgia and Ohio State. But you have you know, at the end you had number twelve was BYU. Yet in the championship games, there's going to be and I don't know why they did this. I don't know the backstory behind this, but they put in these lower tier teams James Madison and Tulane. Now, as far as the college rankings, Tulane is number seventeen in

the country and James Madison is number nineteen. And so if you're trying to have an interesting playoff situation, wouldn't you want to put the people in there that have the best chance of winning the overall championship. And I'm you know, James Madison may be a good team. Tu Lane may be a good team, but they're probably going to get blown out and blown out big in terms of their individual game. And so it was interesting to

see how this played out. Who they moved ahead just remembered BYU wound up losing to Texas Tech thirty four to seven Saturday, and so that was a blowout. And in order to determine nowech Texas Tech made it into the playoffs and the fact that they blew out somebody by twenty seven points in a game that should have dropped them out, because again, how good are they if they were beaten by this team that is in the top ten by twenty seven points? So college football rankings

have always been kind of weird. It's been kind of a weird system. The way they had it set up, they thought that we're going to do something good as far as these playoffs were concerned, Add more games to the schedule and so on. So you don't have a situation where just the college football writers, the Writers Association or different AP of Associated Press did their rankings and people would argue about who was number one, who was

number two, and so on. The playoff system is good, but this time around it was I think screwed up. And I think they screwed up royally because again, the name of the game is number of eyes on the TV sets. How many people are going to be watching

these games? And if the college rankings mean anything at all, I mean, if the CFP college football people are going to make the determination and who's going to play in the tournament itself as opposed to you know, the college rankings itself, then why have the AP rankings on a weekly basis or even talk about that and just say, well, it's just going to be up to the CFP committee anyway.

That's that's my two cents worth in than that, And of course that's been devalued because they've stopped printing penny. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck in Network. Seven hundred WLW.

snow falls in the Northern Rockies. A clipper system bringing a period of snow across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region through Tuesday, while a stronger clipper system expected to bring heavy snow and high winds across the Upper Midwest Tuesday, continuing across the Great Lakes Wednesday.

for supporting the mission of Reese Across America. Also, the Saturday, Saturday, December the thirteenth is the day that the reef will be distributed to the individual cemeteries around the country. And again this is geared more towards the fallen soldiers in terms of these reefs. Now, if you have not joined yet, or if you've not entered or wanted to participate, or you want to participate in the ref laying ceremony, you can go to recacross America dot org and you can

check that out receacross America dot org. And on there you can register at a cemetery near you. It's pretty quick, it's pretty easy. It's Saturday morning. It's only about two three hour period of time out of your day to give honor to these fallen soldiers. And again, their motto is that or what they say is that a soldier dies twice once when they take their last breath and

the other when their name is no longer mentioned. And it's a beautiful cemetery ceremony taking these where hes, placing them on the tombs, and what is done is the wreath is laid and then that person's name is said out loud by the person laying the wreath, and it's really interesting. I'm not going to be able to participate in it this year. We will be down when my

wife and I will be down in Nashville. We are going to be attending the Tech Rodeo from Rush Truck Centers and it's going to be a very interesting event where they bring in all of the different technicians and bodywork and people from the Bodyshop and it's going to be this tech Rodeo that's going to be going on over the weekend down in Nashville, the twentieth anniversary of that three hundred and some thousand dollars in prizes, cash prizes,

and of course the overall trophy. So I'm really looking forward to being down there and it's going to be a very interesting event. Looking very forward to being there and broadcasting from down there and doing the show from down there. Of course, we'll have to record it because you know it's during the day, and then of course our show is at night, so I'm gonna have it looking forward to a lot of fun. So anyway, that's what's going on. I won't be there on Saturday, unfortunately.

I really wanted to really looking forward to being there at the event. But again, if you want to go to reescross America dot org, you can register, and I think there's still time to sponsor a wreath. Even so, anyway, continuing, it's gone on a little bit longer than I had expected, but there's I just have a whole lot of thoughts and so on about this that past weekend. As far as sports are concerned, I mean, look at it. We got college back, well college football, we got the overall

rankings in terms of this college football championship. In terms of playoffs series that begins, I think it's I think it begins this week. I don't know. I don't know when it begins. I think it's December the thirteenth, is what they said. So anyway, we got that going on. Of course, Sunday afternoon we had the Bengals Bills game, which you know, I again being you know, in the Cincinnati Greater Since a Northern Kentucky area, you want your team to do well. You want them to do, you know,

be good on the national stage and so on. And the Bengals it just this season. A lot of years, it's this build up of we've got this talent, we've got that talent, and every year it seems like they just figure out a way of breaking our hearts along the way. And yesterday it was no different. They started off the game just on fire and we're really doing

very well against the Bills. But then being the Bengals, it seemed like they kind of didn't quite finish the game, and the Bills stepped up their game, come from behind victory. I mean, it was incredible. They beat the Bengals thirty nine thirty four, which going into the last five minutes, I thought the Bengals had it sewn up. I mean, it looked like they were going to just absolutely go away with the victory. But again they broke our hearts

and that's unfortunate. But what was interesting though, is looking at the different headlines from the different cities. If you look at the headlines from the Cincinnati in choir, it says Joe Burrow, Bengals falter, late and snowy loss to Josh Allen and the Bills, and the coverage of that. As far as the Buffalo Bills were concerned, they met their headline. Josh Allen carries Buffalo Bills to huge win

over Cincinnati Bengals. Now, going into the game, the Bengals were four and eight, four wins, eight losses, and the Bills had the exact opposite eight wins, four losses, and so again, on paper, it appeared as though that it wasn't even going to be a close game. But the Bengals made a game out on the Bill's home turf, which was even more remarkable. But at the end, there were a couple of missteps, a couple of things that got screwed up. The Bengals kind of screwed up in

the end. Their defense didn't quite hold up, although there was a couple of really great plays on the part of the defense where they actually were able to prevent two touchdowns by fumbles. And then, of course Joe Burrow throwing a couple two interceptions probably didn't hurt help the game any either, especially when you throw it an interception

and it's run back for a touchdown. So again, but it was an interesting game, was interesting to watch as we were putting up Christmas decorations and doing all that sort of stuff. It was kind of an interesting thing to have that in the background and a little bit

of background noises we were going on. So anyway, that's pretty much my weekend, and I hope you enjoyed listening to that, and it's just something that was interesting to me and I wanted to talk about it over the Actually, last Friday we got the or actually it was it Thursday or Friday Friday, I believe it was, we got

the information the personal consumption expenditures key inflation measure. Now, of course, the Federal Reserve is set to start a meeting with their final meeting of the year starting today and into tomorrow, so tomorrow afternoon Wednesday afternoon is when they will have their press conference and determine or announce

whether or not they're raising or not raising. They're not going to raise, interesting whether they're going to hold interest rates steady or whether they're going to lower interest rates. And for all the talk that we've been hearing about the Federal Reserve that they're you know that they're watchdogs or stewards of the economy. That they have two mandates, one to make sure that the job market is strong,

the others to make sure that inflation is down. And they've set a target of two percent, even though inflation over the years on average has been above two percent except during the first term of the Trump administration. So they've set the bar, in my opinion, kind of high in terms of what their expectations are. But they've been

very stingy in terms of lowering interest rates. And the thing that is interesting is that I was looking at some headlines and so on, and I've been talking about this for a number of weeks, number of months, even that if you look at the overnight lending rate, which is what the Federal Reserve controls, this is the overnight borrowing that I certain banks need cash reserves or cash on hand to cash checks or to give to different

their customers. If they're having a big, big weekend, you know, transferring of money to like a you know, like a grocery store or any kind of a store over the weekend that is expecting a lot of cash transactions, they

have to have a lot of cash on hand. So this cash is available, but if the local bank doesn't have that, then they have to borrow that from another bank, And so they've got that overnight rate, which is that four point two five four point five percent, and so but as a result of that, that also controls and kind of starts affecting the credit card rate, what you pay on your credit cards, what you pay in our car loans, what you pay on your mortgage. Those interest

rates are all interconnected. You know, when one goes when the overnight rate from the Fed goes up, then some of these others go up. And of course your credit card interest rate goes up, new car loans go up.

And what we're seeing in the housing market, and over the last couple of last several months, I've been talking about how in the rest of the developed world, Canada, Europe and so on, that the interest rate is down around one and a half to two percent, and here we are at above four percent as far as our

overnight rate is concerned. And I think if you're trying to stimulate the economy, which everybody says that if interest rates are lower, people have more money in their pocket, they're more inclined to spend money, they're more inclined to expand the economy, and of course businesses tend to expand as well. So again hoping that the Federal Reserve gets in and through their thick skull to lower interest rates.

And by the way, there's some interesting well at least a couple of places I know of where the interest rate is a lot lower than what it is in the United States. I'm Kevin Gordon, America Struck a Network seven hundred Wlwright.

mortgage is, and so on. And it's interesting that mortgage rates over in the Netherlands are anywhere between three and a half to four and a half percent, and yet the interest rates here in the United States as of the other day that I checked, was about six point three six percent. It's almost twice what it is in the Netherlands. And if you're trying to spur the economy, if you're trying to spur people to buy equipment expand their business, then why are our interest rates so darn high?

And it's all because of lion Jerry Powell and his inability or ineptness as far as running the Federal Reserve in terms of not understanding supply side economics, the fact that he was too late and as Trump called him,

too late, I call him lion Jerry Powell. Trump calls him too late Jerry Powell, because when you look at the Federal Reserve's track record over the years, even back during Alan Greenspan and some of the other people who are in charge of the Fed, they always seem to be running a little bit behind what the normal what the economy is actually doing. And if they can't keep up, and if they're supposedly the so called experts. Why the

hell are they always so wrong? I mean, let's not forget that for the first year and a half of increasing inflation three percent, four percent, five percent thereabouts, which culminated in a nine point one percent inflation rate in June of twenty twenty two, the fact that they kept calling it transitory inflation, which meant that it was temporary. Oh, this is just a blip on the radar screen. It'll

come down, it'll come down, it'll come down. Well, when it got the nine point one percent, obviously it wasn't transitory. And in March before that happened, they started raising interest rates to kind of slow things down, kind of slowed things down, took them too long to slow things down.

So again, the Federal Reserve has always been behind in terms of reaction, and sometimes they react too much in one way or too much in the other way, whereas a lot of times if they just you know, mind, you know, just keep things steady instead of trying to control things, things would be a lot better. But anyway, that's again my opinion, and of course, as you know, I have an opinion, I'm not afraid to use it.

Can inflation measure was lower than expected in September. Commerce Department said Friday in a report delayed by the government shutdown that gives further green light to the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, indicated a point two percent monthly rise, while the annual rate was two

point eight percent. The monthly rate was in line with Dow Joon consensus, but the annual level was point one percentage points lower. The core annual rate edged down from two point nine percent in August. So again heading in

the right direction. Let's go back to Liberation Day, back on April to second, and back then when the tariffs were put into place, everybody was talking about this is not everybody, but there was a bunch of people that are talking about this is going to lead to a recession, this is going to lead to high inflation, this is going to do this, it's going to do that, and the economy is going to go in the tank. Well none of that came true, and yet they keep saying that, Well,

you know, it's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of time. You know, at some point in time you've got to look at what is instead of what you hope it to be. You know, when you have good economic your finger on the pulse, you should know what's going on instead of this hoping and wishing kind of stuff that we're seeing, and especially from the spoon fed reggitators in the mainstream media, because again, in my opinion, they have been always trying to manufacture recession.

In addition, the headline PCEE increase point three percent for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at two point eight percent. According to the Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, both range readings were in line with the expectations, though the annual rate was up only one point one tenth of a percentage point. But the core personal consumption expenditures is what the FED generally looks at. Now, again, you have the consumer Price Index, which takes a look at

everything in the economy, everything from avocados to zinc. Anything that's in there A to z is reflected in terms of what those prices have done over the period of time, and they base that as far as the consumer price index.

Personal consumption expenditures, on the other hand, is what you do in the day to day business you know, in the new day to day life, you buy gasoline, You go out and you buy food, you go out and buy clothing, you buy all these things that are necessities or the things that you do on a regular basis. You don't, you know, every week, you don't go out and buy a refrigerator. Every week. You don't go out and buy a car. Every week, you don't go out

and buy a air conditioner or whatever. So these major purchases are yes, they're part of the inflation rate, the consumer price index, but in terms of personal consumption, what you spend on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is what is contained in that personal consumption expenditures because that is the thing that people experience on a day to day basis terms of their own kitchen table discussions, their own kitchen table economy as to what is going on in

terms of their own individual budgets. So again that's why it's such an important number. Goods prices serge point five percent of the month, as they say, and here Trump's teriffs continuing to work their way through the economy. Service prices were up just two point two percent, food rows point four, while energy was up one point seven and

now those last two. If you're talking, I guess this is the numbers from September, because from September, when you look at October, November, and then so far this month, those prices have come down considerably. Food prices are down. I just saw the other day as far as our local store, eggs which had been up over three dollars for a dozen, are now being sold at a dollar forty nine. So that's basically in line with where they

were a couple of years ago. When you look at things like eggs, when you look at things like beef when they're subject to drought, when you're subject to a bird flew, like the eggs, and you have to kill off flocks of chickens, well, if you don't have the chickens, the eggs aren't going to be laid. And if you have drought conditions in certain parts of the world, certain parts of the air and the country, you're going to

have less cattle. As a matter of fact, I've mentioned this before, the size of the herds in the United States are now down at the level where they were back in nineteen fifty seven I believe it was, So it's back down to the level it was in the fifties. Our population has more than doubled since that period of time, so you've got more people seeking a smaller quantity, and

of course those prices are going to go up. So increasing the grazing, increasing the herds increasing, possibly the import of good beef from other areas around the country, around the world, are the things that are going to keep those prices down. Now again, those are the factors that

need to be looked at. You know, if you've gotten natural occurrences and you've got a disease that goes through, that should be factored in and have a weighted factor if you're talking about inflation and what that is doing. As far as the economy is concerned, personal income rose point four percent for the month, while spending was up point three percent. Income was point one percent percentage point

above the forecas. So again they predicted what it was going to be and it was a little bit better than that. Odds of a rate cut when the Fed convenes this week are at eighty seven percent. I've seen numbers around ninety percent. Now, of course, there's going to be a little bit of contention. This could be one of the most contentious Federal Reserve meetings, because there's a faction that says that interest rates should stay the same,

while there's others that say it should be cut. Kevin Gordon faction says it should be reduced at least a quarter percent, if not a full percentage point. And then of course they had the University. We may have to get into this tomorrow with the University of Michigan consumer survey.

Of course, they're down playing this. They keep talking about these consumer sentiment, consumer surveys and so on as to whether or not as far as the strength of the economy, well, it's interesting that they throw here a side note at the end, at the end of the story Consumer the Michigan University of Michigan, the consumer survey came in at fifty three point three, up four point five percent from November,

better than Wall Street's estimate of fifty two. So from that aspect in terms of these economy and what people are perceived as far as the economy is concerned, that's up. We're seeing a lot of good economic news. And I thought it was interesting in one of the stories that usually there is a chart a companying the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, which shows the personal consumption expenditures index from

twenty twenty one up until the current date. And it's interesting when you look at twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, when those numbers were above seven percent, the consumer personal consumption all above the four point range up until towards the tail end of twenty twenty three. So I guess with this narrative that we're now talking about affordability, I guess they want to forget what was done over the last four years and talk about that in terms

of affordability as opposed to what it actually is. Interestingly enough, in terms of affordability, taking a look at oil and gas prices is kind of interesting that oil is falling. But on a side note, I want to mention the fact that when you look at the national average for gasoline, national average is now below three percent or three dollars on across the board. Interesting in my neighborhood gas is at two dollars and sixty two cents, which the national average.

If you look at that, we are actually at one of the low ends, at least in our county in terms of the entire country. Well, just some very good economic news there. So anyway, folks, We're up against glockhair. Stay tuned for red Eye Radio, a top the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW