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America's Trucking Network 1-1-26

Jan 01, 202637 min
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Episode description

Kevin explains the 12 Days of Christmas. He also looks at the evolution of New Year's celebrations. Kevin looks at what 2026 holds for the economy with Phil Flynn of Market Insights.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

This is America's Truncking Network with Kevin Gordon.

Speaker 2

Welcome aboard, thanks for tuning in. Happy New Year, January first, twenty twenty six. It's also the eighth day of Christmas. I want to start off thanking all you truckers out there on the highway tonight, not being at home with your families, not being able to celebrate the coming.

Speaker 1

Of the new year, the New Year's Eve.

Speaker 2

Celebrations and so on, because you are busy out there keeping the wheels of this economy rolling. Also first responders, everybody that's on the clock.

Speaker 1

Thank you to the police and.

Speaker 2

Fire, hospital workers, people that are there taking care of patients, food service employees all around the area, across the nation, Hotel, motel workers, what people are traveling, You've got to be taken care of. You've got to make sure that the people in the hotels are there. Store clerks, convenience store employees. As you're out there driving around and stopping by gas stations, take the time to say thank you to.

Speaker 1

Those people, to those people that.

Speaker 2

Are working and thank that just say thank you for being here. I mentioned this is the eighth to day of Christmas. Again, if you've been listening to the program of beginning. Well, I've talked about on Christmas Day, the fact that there's a misconception that the twelve days of Christmas are actually the twelve days before Christmas, that is, actually the days before Christmas is what is referred to well in Christian circles as the ads the advent period.

It is the fourth Sunday you go back for Sundays before Christmas, and that is the gearing up and preparation for Advent than the twelve days of Christmas.

Speaker 1

Then begin.

Speaker 2

December fifth or twenty fifth, rather Christmas Day, and then go for twelve days until the twelfth night of January the fifth, and then on January the sixth is the celebration of the Epiphany, which is traditionally or through biblical accounts, when the Majei the three Wise Men visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And so that has to do with the actual Christmas season itself and is kind of a misconception.

And by the way, we've talked about this several times over the last week, So if you missed any part of that or missed any of our shows, make sure you hit up that iHeartRadio app and everything's right there, of course, brought to you by our friends at Rush Truck Centers. Now, as far as New Year's is concerned, the New Year Day itself, I love digging into some of these traditions and kind of a lighthearted type of thing, kind of light loosen things up or lighting things up.

Today looking at the traditions and how this formulation, I'm always fascinated by how things develop, why things are the way they are, how certain words came together, what their meanings are, where they first appeared, and so on.

Speaker 1

This is something that just always fascinates me.

Speaker 2

Sivils civilizations around the world celebrating the start of each new year, or at least have been doing this for at least for millennia four thousand years.

Speaker 1

Today.

Speaker 2

Most New Year's celebrations begin, of course, last night to some of the thirty first New Year's Eve and the last day of the Georgian calendar, and continue for the early hours of January the first, So people are still out there having a great time reveling in the new year while we're here talking to each other here on the radio. Common traditions include attending parties, eating special New Year's foods, making resolutions for the new year and watching

fire works displays. Now going back in history, the earliest recorded festivities in honor of new Year's date back more than four thousand years to the ancient Babylon. For the Babylonians, the first moon following the vernal equinox the day in

late March and again in March, not January. In March, when an equal amount of sunlight and darkness heralded the start of a new year, they marked the occasion with massive religious festival called a key to, derived from the Samarian word for barley, which was cut in the spring

and involved the traditional ritual for last about eleven days. Again, you know, festivities back then lasted for a long period of time in order for to realign the Roman calendar throughout the anti Let me skip getting ahead of myself here. Throughout antiquity, civilization around the world developed increasingly sophisticated calendars, typically pinning the first day of the year to the agri culture or astronomical event.

Speaker 1

In Egypt, for instance, the year.

Speaker 2

Began with the annual flooding of the Nile, which coincided with the rising of the stars serious the first.

Speaker 1

Day of the lunar new year.

Speaker 2

Meanwhile, occurred with the second new moon after the winter solstice. So going back to even Egypt, they had a different way of determining when the new year was after the centuries the calendar.

Speaker 1

Let me see early. I'm sorry, let's go here.

Speaker 2

The early Roman calendar consisted of ten months and three hundred and four days, with each new year beginning in the vernal equinox. According to tradition, it was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century. Over the centuries, calendars fell out of sync these old calendars with the sun.

Speaker 1

In sync with the sun, and in.

Speaker 2

Forty six BC, Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem. By consulting with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time, he introduced the Julian calendar, which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most countries around.

Speaker 1

The world use today.

Speaker 2

As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January first is the first day of the year, and that is pretty much caught on in terms of the celebrations. Tod of the month's name Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allow him to look back in the past and forward to the future. Now New Year's traditions and celebrations around the world previously mentioned going on for four

thousand years. Revelers enjoy snacks for good luck. In Spain several other Spanish speaking countries, people bolt down a dozen grapes, symbolizing their hopes of the months ahead right before midnight. In many parts of the world, traditional New Year's dishes feature legoomes, which are thought to resemble coins and herald future financial success. Now I land to look this up, excuse me. Legomes basically include lentils. In Italy, black eyed

peas and southern states. Also beans, peas, chickpeas, and soybeans are considered these legomes, so they resemble coins and are supposed to be doing with wealth.

Speaker 1

I found this fascinating.

Speaker 2

Because pigs represent progress and prosperity in some cultures. Pork appears on the New Year's eve table in Cuba, Austria, Hungary, Portugal and other countries. Now I thought that was kind of weird in terms of pigs being symbol of progress, But it goes back to if you look at chickens, if you look at cows and horses, how they scratch

the earth. They are always doing it in a backwards motion pigs because the way they root, they actually put their snoot down and actually push forward to scratch the earth, and so a symbol of progress going forward instead of backwards. Of course, ring shaped cakes, pastries sign of the year, continuing.

Speaker 1

As far as what Mexico and elsewhere.

Speaker 2

In Sweden and Norway. Meanwhile, rice pudding with almond inside is served. Whoever finds that almonds can expect twelve months of good luck. Let's see what other things other customers are coming around the world. Of course, watching fireworks, all lang sign the all traditions that we do here in the United States, and so a lot of traditions. And I always, again, like I said, I always geek out

on these kind of things. I always find it fascinating how traditions begin, how they evolve over the period of time, why they started in the first place, and just you know, how things happen and evolved. I just always find that very interesting. Coming up, we're going to be speaking with Phil Flynn. Of course, he is Price Futures Group.

Speaker 1

We quote him very often on this program.

Speaker 2

And he is the author of the Energy Report. He is a frequent contributor to Fox Business News as well as once in a while on the Fox Weather Channel. So looking forward to talking with him, talking about some of the things going on in the economy and kind of gear up for what we can expect in the new year. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck In Network seven hundred WLW.

Speaker 1

I want to.

Speaker 2

Welcome back to the program Phil Flynn. He is the senior analyst Price Futures Group, author of the Energy Report, and a contributor to Fox Business News. And I've actually seen him on the Fox Weather Channel. Phil, Welcome to the program, or welcome back to the program.

Speaker 3

Hey kick, Hey, thank you Kevin. So this is day five of Christmas. Do I get five golden rings for being here?

Speaker 1

Yes? Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2

Good.

Speaker 3

With the way the gold prices are going today, that's going to be pretty good. But oh man, I've been watching the sewer market for the last twenty Oh my gosh, it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. I mean, we hit a record high last night eighty four dollars. We fallowed ten dollars and ounce, and even with that volatility, we're still cheap compared to gold. So the precious metals have been unbelievable.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. Well, by the way, how is your Christmas?

Speaker 3

It was wonderful. I must have got on the nice list. Thanks for whatever you did.

Speaker 2

Well, it was because of all your fantastic reporting and all of the stuff that you talk about in terms of your energy report and the economy.

Speaker 1

I'll tell you what, this economy is on fire.

Speaker 2

And what I'm seeing is that the only in my opinion, the only thing holding it back are these interest rates that I think people are sitting on the sidelines and saying, gee, do I make this investment? Do I do this so I incur that amount of money with a return on investment and so on. But I mean, you look at I mean, every time we turn around, there's a report that comes out, retail sales higher than expected, unemployment lower

than expect. We had that jobs report on well, I guess it was Wednesday day early, the initial job is claims less than expected. And yet we have this drum beat from the spoon feder regurgitators in the mainstream media that we're actually on the precipice of a recession, and in my opinion, they're trying to manufacture a recession.

Speaker 4

You know, I think you're right.

Speaker 3

You know, a lot of times, you know, the mainstream press. You know, it's amazing some of the people that they have on the mainstream press really don't understand the economics. And I think you see that more and more when you see the type of questions you get. For example, one of the things that bothered me is when the mainstream press is saying, no, as soon as Donald Trump puts on sanctions, we're going to go on through a recession and an inflation is going to go through the roof.

And of course that hasn't happened, you know, if you look at the historically inflationary Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, and credit to you, and then credit to my economics professor. Way back in the day when I was at Xavier University. One of the things that was talked about the tariffs were the main driving force of income to the United States and it was only in the period of after the war World War two that tariffs on our goods going into the other countries kind of a protectionism mechanism for them. But the tariffs necessarily

don't lead to inflation. And I think you was that Kevin O'Leary, Larry Kudlow and a couple of people in Fox business are some of the only people that I have heard other than you know, you and me saying that tariffs don't lead to inflation. It's out of control government spending.

Speaker 4

It's absolutely correct. That's in fact, that's the only way that cause inflation. And listen, when.

Speaker 3

There's tariffs to some prices go up. They absolutely do. But I can give you for every price increase, I can give you a price decrease as well. And we saw that for example, you know, in the price of grains. You know, the farmers don't like to hear that, obviously, but that's the truth. And grain prices went down when we had tariffs. So yeah, for every increase, there's a decrease.

And what we're finding right now is that it's actually lowering inflation because when we take in more money to the government, it reduces our deficit, and when we have a smaller deficit, the government has to borrow less money. We're already seeing that. And when we borrow less money, we don't have to tax people as much to pay for it, and we don't have to print as much money to pay our bills.

Speaker 4

So you get into it, you're going to have to that's amazing.

Speaker 2

You're going to have to talk slower because there's a lot of my frontemies that listen to this program and they're liberals, so they may not understand that real quick.

Speaker 1

So not just.

Speaker 2

You know, they don't understand as you said, they don't understand economic and so the things that you just said, you would think it would be common sense, but apparently not.

Speaker 3

Well, the news is, I think liberals are still sleepy, most of them at the tower. I don't know for sure, that could be a guest. No, No, I think you're right, you know, and and it's it's hard to you know, I you know, I think sometimes I think when you hear you know, people on the other side when they talk about uh economics, it's about emotional economics, It's like, okay, well you know that, you know, they're you know, Elion Musk is a billionaire.

Speaker 4

You know, everything's wrong with the economy.

Speaker 3

He or you know, it's like, okay, this guy, you know, invented a rocket to go to Mars. You know, he invented electric car industry, which wouldn't exist if if if it wasn't for his genius, you know. And but then of course they want to tell everybody to buy electric cars, enforcing to buy cars. U listen, I mean the whole thing when you look at the emotional side of economics.

I think we have to try to remove the politics from thatomics, which is really hard to do because I think a lot of these politicians on the other side, you know, keep trying to tell us, hey, the economy's bad, the economy's bad, you know when and it's all Trump's fault, you know, when you know the previous administration, you know, was there for four years and ran up, you know, some of the biggest debt and inflation numbers in history.

So you know, yeah, they blamed COVID, but you know, we know what really caused it, and that's out of control spending.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

I mean, we had the Inflation Reduction Act that added billions of actually trillions of dollars to the deficit. We had the government subsidies that that latest round of well, we had the what was it the what was it the Green New Steel Bill that went through that it was was it the Inflation Reduction Act or something else that was supposed to be all this but it was all this green technology that they wanted to fund and a slush fund for them, which was out of control spending.

But when you look at what has gone on, I mean, when Trump left office, inflation was at one point four percent, the thirty year fixed rate was somewhere around two point eight seven thereabouts, and people were making money, people wages were higher, was out pacing inflation. And then the first year of the Biden administration, boom. We're up to two point five, two point six, up to nine point one

percent in June of twenty twenty two. Gasoline prices up to five dollars a gallon, and all of a sudden, the guys that broke the system, they're going to tell us how to fix it.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's pretty amazing, right, It pretty is, you know. I mean, and when you think about, you know, some of the things that President Trump said when it came into office, one of them was energy. Right, We're going to make gasoline prices cheap. And people say you can't do that, you know, but President Trump did it. And I think it's a combination of smart economic policy, smart drill baby drill policy.

Speaker 4

But also politics.

Speaker 3

Right by neutralizing Iran, you know, by showing strength against Venezuela, by you know, really getting control of the geopolitical picture. You know, even the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine wherever they go anywhere or not. All of this has reduced the risk premium to oil. And I can't tell you what leadership means when you talk to a barrel oil. When the market's confident that we have a leader in place that is not going to allow you know, major

oil price disruption. You know, a president that is not going to sit back and allow Hooti rebels to start taking over oil tankers. You know, that's a huge change to the market and that shows up in the price. And I think that's one of the unheralded successes when it comes to these low oil prices.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that war premium that you were talking about, a risk premium that has been one of the major considerations. I mean, every time there was some sort of disruption, the Huti rebels trying to choke off the straits and form those seeking ships in the Red Sea and so on, oil tankers and such and trying to choke trade. That is a risk premium. And when you don't have that

risk premium, the free flow of trade. And we're not talking about just well, we're talking about free trade, but we're also talking about fair trade as opposed to these talking about these tariffs. It kind of gives everything a more level playing field. And I think what people.

Speaker 3

Are go ahead, Yeah, no, I'm gonna Figu're absolutely right now. I think you know, when we get back to the level of pay. Listen, I'm a free market guy.

Speaker 4

You know that, Kevin.

Speaker 3

I would love a world with no tariffs, right, you know, and I would love a war with peace and love and rock and roll and all that stuff, you know. But you know, we've got to face reality. I mean, in the real world, you know, every other country had tariffs on us, and we were trying to be the nice guy, right, and by being the nice guy, we gave up so many jobs, so many factories, you know, we lost so many industries overseas. Right, And so now we're going back to a policy that stands up to

that in the real world. Right, when you stand up to you know, countries like China that steal our intellectual property or steal our businesses or steal you know that kind of thing, and people say, oh my gosh, well you know what's going to happen.

Speaker 4

You know, all the goods we're getting from China. People are going to you know, we're going to you know, they're going to cost so much more.

Speaker 3

And it's like there's so many goods from China that we buy that the only reason we buy them is because they're so darn cheap. And the reason why they're so cheap, you know, they're using cheap labor, they're using you know, cheap you know, materials, and if they try to raise the prices on those things, nobody's going to buy it. People are going to buy you know, name brand goods as opposed to Chinese knockoffs.

Speaker 1

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

I mean when you look at the average what is it, the average salary in the United States factory workers, et cetera. Is somewhere around thirty seven dollars per hour when you add in the benefits and so on. And then you go over to China, they have no benefits whatsoever, and average hourly wages five to seven dollars. There's no vacation time,

there's none of the employee benefits. Of course, the wages are going to be cheaper, and yet there's this big gap between what they manufacture and then what they sell, and of course that can be eaten into.

Speaker 1

By these as.

Speaker 2

I think you pointed out in your energy report that the tariffs are absorbed by the manufacturer, the import or the exporter, the importer, the wholesaler, and in some cases the retailer. So there's all these levels where those tariffs can be absorbed that it doesn't hit us at the level at the consumer level. And we've seen that as far as inflation is concerned.

Speaker 3

No, you're absolutely right. And listen, you're going to hear from some buyers of Chinese goods saying, hey, we're going to have to raise prices because of tariffs, right, I mean, yeah, that's going to happen to a certain degree. But what you're also going to see on the flip side of that, other goods are going to go down in price, right because they have to move goods, and you know, and and then you're going to see alternatives become more competitive.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 3

So you know, for example, I think everybody was outraged because we were going to put a tariff on you know, European pastas. Oh my gosh, we can't get we can't get our pastas from you know, and it's like wait a second, you know, it's how do you make pasta like flour and water, you know, don't we have companies in America because they can figure out how to do that. You know, we really need it from Italy.

Speaker 4

I mean, yeah, it.

Speaker 3

Looks kind of nice and the boxes are pretty, but I think we make as good as pasta in America.

Speaker 4

I say, buy America a positive.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and we didn't see a click break. Can you hang with us through the break and we'll pick up on the other side, all right? I guess is also I should have mentioned that several times during this segment, but I apologize for Phil Flint, Price Futures Group and author of the Energy Report. I'm Kevin Gordon, America struck In Network seven hundred w L, continuing our conversation with Phil Flynn. He is senior market analyst Price Futures Group,

author of the Energy Report, and contributed to Fox Business Net. Phil, thanks for hanging with us through the break. When we were talking earlier about inflation and where we're seeing that, I thought it was interesting and again, being a recovering accountant, I just have to dig into the numbers and when I see some of these reports come out, and it was a few months ago or a couple months ago

when inflation ticked up. But when you got behind the numbers, one of the largest increases was in the service sector and was the fees being charged by brokers. And it's a good thing, but a bad thing because the market was so good, many people were coming into the market, but then the fees on that were increasing because there were so many more fees collected, not higher amounts, but more people. And that was a factor for the inflation.

But nobody is really talking about. You know, when you had ups contracts, the railroad contracts, the UAW contracts, who else am I missing here?

Speaker 1

Up?

Speaker 2

Anyway, all these the east coast, West coast ports, they got big boosts in terms of their wages. That's got to affect our economy and that's got to be causing a little bit of inflation.

Speaker 3

It is, there's no doubt about that. And you know, when the economy grows, demand goes and that's it. And we had what the incredible four point three growth number in the US, which was blue away expectations right exactly, and that you know, should put the naysayers to bed.

Speaker 1

But no, it won't, No, it won't.

Speaker 3

But yeah, I mean the economy is doing great in so many cylinderies now.

Speaker 4

Listen.

Speaker 3

I know there's a lot of people listening today and say, well, wait a second, Phil, don't you eat do you go to the grocery store? I mean, those prices are still high, and people are right, I mean, but there are some prices in the grocery stores that are going to come down, but there are some that are hot going to remain high, not because of just inflation, just because of cycles.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 3

For example, we had the smallest cattle crop we've had, you know.

Speaker 4

In a hundred years, right.

Speaker 3

Because of drought and other issues. You know, so those prices it's going to take longer to rebuild that herd, you know. But if you look on the flip side of that, grain prices are historically low, so you're going to have you know, lower food costs there. You're seeing. You remember, everybody was worried about aiding prices. Aid prices are coming down, you know. So it's going to be bumpy on the food side here for a little bit. But we see the trend is going to be down.

Speaker 4

There's going to be.

Speaker 3

Certain certain commodities that aren't going.

Speaker 4

To get cheap soon.

Speaker 3

It's going to take a long time, but you're going to start finding more value at the grocery store over the next year, you know, except for a.

Speaker 2

Are starting to see it a little bit. I mean where I live, of course, we experience or we luck out. And the fact that we've got like five different grocery store chains that are in the area, so they compete hot and heavy with each other. And I noticed that there are certain prices. If you look at their flyers and their ads, there are certain prices. Every three weeks, this price is down. Like coffee. Coffee I drink is usually fourteen ninety nine a can, but when it's on sale,

it's nine to ninety nine, so you buy it. When it's nine to ninety nine, you buy two cans if you're gonna you know. So I you know the grocery prices. I think there's ways around them. I mean I noticed my wife was telling me the other day she was in the store and they had milk on sale for a dollar thirty nine for a half a half a gallon, and the gallons were over three dollars and people were coming in grabbing the gallons. They were coming in and

grabbing this instead of paying attention to prices. It's is grab and go mentality, I think where people are getting hurt on their grocery prices.

Speaker 3

But yeah, I listen, I think that's true. I think that's true. I mean listen.

Speaker 2

I mean I only got about a minute.

Speaker 1

I gotta get going here.

Speaker 3

But well, I want my potato chip bags as big as it used to be. Well, yeah, I think the trends are getting better. There'll be a few things, you know, like coffee. You know, they had a terrible drought, worst crop, coco, same thing. But they're coming back, so we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1

Phil.

Speaker 2

Thank you so much for spending time with us again. Aren't my guest, Phil Flynn, Senior market analysts, Price Futures Group. If you don't get his energy report, you got to. I mean a lot of information in there, and a lot of good economic data.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Kevin. The Happy New Year to you. I'm everybody listening.

Speaker 2

Phil again, Thank you so much for spending time with us. I certainly appreciate it. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck In Network seven hundred w LW is to Phil Flynn for joining us. Always enjoy talking to him. I'd love to have him on the program and talk about things because once, as I mentioned before, he and I aren sync years ago.

Speaker 1

A couple of years ago.

Speaker 2

Actually I started reading some different articles and he was quoted, and so I figured, I got to get a hold of this guy and you know, get together and talk to him and have him on the program and talk about some of the things going on in the economy and thereabouts. So again my appreciation of Phil for being with us yesterday. We got ahead of the normal Thursday jobless claims that came out.

Speaker 1

Early because of the New Year holiday.

Speaker 2

And it was interesting looking at the different headlines. And again, as I mentioned several times before, when I see these different headlines, it's interesting that how the headline sometimes doesn't match the story, or the headline tries to downplay what is actually going on.

Speaker 1

Just give you an example.

Speaker 2

According to Action four x US, initial jobless claims fall to one ninety nine versus expected two fifteen. Not a bad headline. Reuters US weekly job as claims fall to one month low. That's kind of so so good headline. I saw jobless claims declined for third straight weeks, a sign of steady labor market. That is actually from MarketWatch dot com seeking alpha. Initial jobless claims surprise with another drop this week and another very good headline from Investing

dot Com. Initial jobs claims dip, beating forecast and previous figures. Let's dig into some of the numbers here and interesting how this is being covered, how they decide to cover this, and some of the comments that they make throughout.

Speaker 1

So let's just dig into the numbers here.

Speaker 2

How about that initial jobs claim is the number of people who apply for state unemployment fell by sixteen thousand to a seasonally adjusted one hundred and ninety nine thousand in the weekend in December, The twenty seventh Favorite Department said on Wednesday. The report came out early due to the New Year holiday. It is the third straight week decline in new claims and the seventh week in the

past eighth. While claims were often volatile during the holiday period, economists say the record low level of claims is a sign of a relatively steady labor market conditions. So what have we been hearing. We've been hearing from Lion Jerry Powell and the Federal Reserve that the job market is weak. We have been hearing claims in terms of what the unemployment.

Speaker 1

Rate is that we'll be talking about here shortly.

Speaker 2

All we hear about is the job market not being as strong, but indications of what we're getting from initial jobless claims, continuing jobless claims. It all points to something that is not what people are being told by the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media.

Speaker 1

What's ahead for let me see, let's see here we go.

Speaker 2

Economists pulled by the Wall Street Journal had estimated new claims would rise to two hundred and twenty thousand from the initial estimate last week of two hundred and fourteen.

Speaker 1

They were off by ten percent.

Speaker 2

And when I say economists, let's not forget one of the phrases that was done by lords J.

Speaker 1

Peter.

Speaker 2

He's a Peter principal where people rise to their level of incompetence, a comment that was made years ago. And economists is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. And so many times we see these estimates and these expectations from economists that never really pan out.

Speaker 1

Some of the key details.

Speaker 2

A number of people already collecting unemployment benefits known as continuing claims fell by forty seven thousand to one point eighty seven million in the week ending December twentieth. Continuing claims have risen in recent years, and I want to repeat years, because this is one of the first times I've.

Speaker 1

Heard them put this in an article.

Speaker 2

Because they keep talking about continuing jobless claims increasing over this past year to indicate that the soft unemployment, of the soft employment number and a weak jobs market to claim to bolster their narrative.

Speaker 1

So where were these reports.

Speaker 2

In recent years about unemployment going or unemployment claims continuing to go up? Apparently they didn't want us to know that during the last few years or recent years, as they say here in the article The.

Speaker 1

Big Picture, although relieves that.

Speaker 2

Claims are low, many economists again the word economists, worry about the slow pace of hiring, especial especially since the summer. The unemployment rate rose to four point six percent in November, the highest rate since this September twenty twenty one. Now I doubt that number, seriously, I am not buying that.

Nothing I see supports that when you have initial jobless claims all being within that range of two hundred and ten thousand, and again, this is below two hundred and ten thousand this week, down to one hundred ninety nine thousand. But things have been going in that range of between two hundred and ten thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand on a weekly basis for the last several years,

so that number hasn't been going up. Now that people continuing to collect unemployment, it has risen, but there's also more people coming into the job market on a regular basis. So I'm not sure. I can't wait to see when these numbers are revised, because again they're going to be I think the date that that's supposed to come out is, Yeah, the December number on the unemployment rate will be out

on January of the ninth. Now, on this other article that I saw a number of Americans filing applications, jobless benefits fell unexpectedly last week. Now, again this goes back to things I've been saying. How many times have we seen the word unexpectedly in twenty twenty five? In this case, jobless benefits fell unexpectedly, retail sales, home sales up unexpectedly.

Every time we turn around, you pick up a story having to do with the economy, and things are unexpectedly in the good direction and unexpectedly low in the bad direction. So again I wonder where these people are coming from. Misial job as claims again stated that they come in at one hundred and ninety nine thousand. They had forecasted two hundred and twenty. Again they were off by ten percent.

Let's see. Though the economy remains resilient, with gross domestic product increasing at its fastest pace in two years in the third quarter, the labor market has almost stalled. Labor demand and supply have been impacted by import terriffs and

immigration crackdown. According to Economous Again, economists, while off their recent peak, continuing claims are higher than they were at this time last year, and that elevated level aligned with the survey from the Conference Board last week showing consumer perceptions of the labor market deteriorated this month to levels

last scene in twenty twenty one. Rick sand Telly I mentioned him a few times, Rick Santelly back during the housing crisis, when the housing market bottom fell out back in two thousand and eight.

Speaker 1

Two thousand and nine, he was on.

Speaker 2

The floor of the New York Stock Exchange and when it came out that this subprime loans had gotten out of control, and how they things happened, that this was something that should never have happened in terms of the housing price or housing bubble busting.

Speaker 1

And he was there and he was very frustrated.

Speaker 2

He said, you know what we need in this country is another tea party. And that's what formulated people saying, you know what, He's right, let's go ahead and start these tea party organizations to where you know, all these politicians that kept telling us that, hey, don't worry about this, we got it handled. All these people, both sides of the don't worry about things, you know, just elect us. We'll fix things or we'll keep things going on and

everything's will be okay. Then out of the blue, we get these these numbers the tank the housing market where houses lost about forty some percent, and so people started going to meetings and going to city commissioners and starting being active in politics, asking questions and saying.

Speaker 1

You know, you told us you had our backs.

Speaker 3

Well.

Speaker 2

Rick Antelly the other day was talking about what's going on as far as the economy is concerned, and he said, I'm going to paraphrase here, he said, you can take all these opinion polls and all these things on surveys as far as consumer confidence and whatnot. And you can take a big shovel and shove them in the trash can, because the well has been poisoned by as he called it, main street media, as I call them, the spoon fed

regurgitators in the mainstream media. They keep talking down the economy, as I've been talking about for months. They have been trying to manufacture a recession, and of course because of that, that has soured the opinions of people. And as Rick Santelli said, take those opinion polls, take a big shovel to them, and throw them in the garbage. Well, folks, we're up against clock here. Stay tuned for Red Eye

Radio at the top the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck and Network seven hundred WLW

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