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In the game of getting your message out, you wander into late May and you have a meeting over some Stille Sanka coffee and you go, this is what the outlook looks like, and then you blow it up ten times on the way to June thirty, two thousand whatever, Jeffrey Rosenberg set a record. They had to rewrite there bond quarterly here with the events going on something like fourteen times. Are you on speaking terms for the Rick reader or is it just forever broken?
Oh no, it's all good.
Yes, it's all good. In this report, how does different from where it would have been thirty days ago?
Yeah, that's I mean, so much has happened between you know where we were, you know sixty days ago, the and the and the tariffs and the concerns and bonds. You know, the outlook has had to change a lot, and you've seen it in terms of you know what you're talking about and in terms of the number of contributors to that piece and trying to get the trying to get the tone right.
But you know, the the.
Big issue there is is still that you know, it's relatively sanguine in terms of the rate range bound in terms of.
The biggest input impact.
And we talked about in fixed singcam out looked for the ten years, you know, not not as much volatility as what you've seen, say the equity market.
Paul's been great on this.
I mean, Paul's not the way on this, but but the bottom line, Paul is it's bringing duration.
Right, Yep.
Absolutely, I'm just looking at some something coming off the Bloomberg News desk.
The treasury market is wrapping up its best monthly return since February and its biggest first half stretch in five years.
So you guys, aren't I mean, people want to talk to you guys now right.
Yeah, you know, bonds have been, bounds have been okay. And the big story, and Rick's talked so much about this is the restoration of income. And you know part of that is just where the Fed is and the redsence to say even cut rates. But that you brought interest rates back up above the level of inflation. And for a very long time period you just didn't have that. You had very negative real interest rates and that was a penalty to fixed income because.
It propagated out the curve.
And so it's a very different environment and that you know over all, you know, in terms of interest rate moves, it's just the starting point. You know, fixed income is about yield, and yield is the driver of returns.
It's a little bit different than equities.
It's a little bit simpler that you're starting yield is your best predictor of your future return. And that's the big story, is that we've returned.
Holders hold exactly right, and then that's what buy them and hold them? How about credit risk here?
What are we doing on the credit side here?
So there's two sides of the credit risks story, which it's been for a long time, and that is you've got the pricing of credit risk, which is, you know, not particularly attractive in terms of is there an entry point here from timing, But again it comes back to the difference between price return and income, and the income piece is the bigger story from credit where yield plus spread is attractive. Spread on its own is a little bit less attractive in terms of like you're pricing in
you know, very very benign conditions. But newsflash, it is a very benign outlook in terms of what's going on in terms of fundamentals. Now that's what we've realized now going forward that may change. Markets are pricing in a very benign credit environment. So there's a little bit of asymmetric downside.
You see that.
You know most of the time in credit, it's a little bit exacerbated this time.
So you want to be kind.
Of more up in quality and a little bit more up in defensiveness just given the where the asymmetry is.
But credit has been the dog here that has embarked.
There's all these manufacturers products. I'm gonna say, folks are collared out and manipulated and maybe somebody makes a bigger fee just cut to the you know, fabose chase, the mark who it's chased does a sixty forty portfolio work here that.
Is definitely cutting to the chase, And you know, I think you have to rethink that idea and what made sixty forty really work for a very long period of time, very simple idea that we lived in an environment of too little inflation, and when you live in an environment of too little inflation, the FED has no constraint on its ability to be accommodative when you need them to be.
That's really important.
That cascades down into a thing we call the divine coincidence of monetary policy basically says when there isn't an inflation risk, the only thing the FED has to focus on.
Is growth, and that means it's really good for your equition.
Drinking the kool aid here of Allen Meltzer and Marvin Short, I mean, it's just so Carnegie Melon exactly.
I'm looking at the eye end. Go funk on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg Index browser. The best performance in US fixing come has been US corporate high yield. I mean, people don't mind taking the risk.
It seems like they don't.
And that again, that's because it's been a very benign environment for what we've seen realized in terms of in terms of corporations, of cash flows, default risk, and the pricing there got a little bit concerned around the April ninth, April second tariff piece, and so you had a big recovery from credit spread wides in every environment so far, it's been one where widening's have been you know, purchase
buying opportunities. Again, you got to take a little bit of a bigger picture there to remember, this is a credit cycle, and if all of these concerns around the economics slow down eventually manifest themselves, then you're going to see an uptick in defaults. But that's forward looking. I haven't seen any of that so far. That's why I've seen the really strong performance in corporate.
There's there forcing me, the media people are forcing me to rewrite my bio. And it's torture, folks, I can tell you. And it's about the conversation with Jeff Rosenberg and others. The first name I mentioned in the bio is Alan Meltzer, and one of yours in my heroes at Carnegie Mellon and Professor Meltzer told me aggregate data for America. Can we do that now? Jeff Rosenberg is a template at Blackrock, a glass half full in this wild Barbel America.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, your term is exactly right, you know, Barbel America, k shaped America.
The aggregation of data is.
Very problematic in that it masks over a lot of the really underlying issues inside the economy, and.
That's really important, especially.
When you're thinking about not kind of you know, the direction you a macro variable like the ten year interest rate really can kind of map to the aggregate. But when you talk about the corporate bond market or you talk about the equity market, where the cross section of performance is much more important, taking into account things like the distributional aspect underneath the economic data becomes much more important.
What's our feter reserve going to do here today this year?
I'm looking at the WRP function kind of pressing and maybe two, maybe a little bit more than two rate cuts this year. What do you think they should do?
So that's been where we've been for a while, around around two cuts. You know, I think they should be in a weight and see mode, as Powell has has discussed, because we're in this interim period where we don't really know what the impact to the macro data is going to be of the policy and policy uncertainty.
So far, it's been better.
Than feared, and we've had four or five in a row better than feared inflation reports.
This is the time, and you know, this is.
The week prior to payrolls, and so that becomes a really important input because we're starting to see some slow down. You can see in the Bloomberg that consensus for Friday, you know, slowing. I think it's around one to ten. You know, it's a significant slow down. But it's still a pretty strong market. So they've got the room to wait, and I think that's the right thing to do.
But wait for what?
Wait for whether or not you know, this inflation in terms of the tariffs really shows up in a more significant way. That's going to validate them holding off, or this slow down in jobs accelerates, and then the waiting will be proven wrong.
But they'll pivot, and I think that's.
The key, is that they'll pivot to the data.
Jeffrey, Thank you so much. Jeffrey Rosenberg. Now was a six point thirty view for Blackrock. You can run, but you can't hedge the bond markets. Warning shot. Get that from Blackrock. Please you protect the copyright of all of our guests.
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Henrietta Trey's has been just fabulous at Veda Partners. Henrietta, I just use Google Gemini because I'm hip and I do a and I typed in what is the vhotama? And it exploded.
The servers exploded at Google.
What in God's name, coach trace is voter rama?
Oh, it's so exciting. Gear up to watch. He's been two all day long. It will be nothing short of riveting. It's actually really cool. You know, the Senate is a highly scripted, very regimented body, and voter rama is like our free for all. So all amendments are germane. You can throw anything at the.
Wall here and they will be voting all day, all night, maybe even into tomorrow. So it's really exciting if you're into that kind of thing.
Are any important, Yes.
They're critically important.
There are millions of individuals at risk of losing Medicaid in this package. That will be a big amendment vote from Rick Scott, Republican in Florida that will need to pass otherwise it could risk as many as four Republican senators defecting away from this bill. However, if it is passed, it may fail in the House. So it's a very delicate balance that Republicans need to walk here.
The most important one is going to be.
A procedural change that fundamentally undermines and effectively removes the filibuster from the United States Senate for the rest of all time. This is a massive deficit increasing provision, and it authorizes the use of current policy baseline by overriding the parliamentarian our referee, and it will pave the way for increase in the deficit by four trillion dollars without paying for it in this package. So a lot is very heavy stuff on.
The line today.
Is there any political fallout for anybody, Henriette, for raising these deficits by I don't know the fourth trillion you just mentioned.
Yeah, I think that there are. You don't often see this without an election happening.
But Tom Tillis, for example, Republican of North Carolina, has decided this bill is so atrocious, who's quitting the entire it, And so he's going to vote against the package and he's moving on with his life, which is a shame. He's an excellent senator with some incredible staff that we've worked with and been lucky to work with now for years.
But this is real ramifications in real time. And the next time you hear someone say, you know, Rome died because of its deficits and debt, ask him how they voted on this bill.
President Trump is on one heck of a winning streak here.
Do the Democrats recognize this?
Is there any pushback, any sense of we want to get our message out?
What message?
I mean?
This bill is filled with literally trillions of dollars worth of messages, and the Republican package is so massive that they've sort of just been washed over by the flood of it. So if you follow an individual member's statements, you can catch you know where they stand on Medicaid and things along those lines. But it's really hard to
get a message through. I was actually with a doctor friend of mine this weekend, who you know, and I cover this now for the entire year, and I just learned that sixty five percent of births in Louisiana come from Medicaid patients. And this is cutting millions of people off of Medicaid nationwide, twelve million.
Though it's pretty substantial.
It's sixty thousand feet and I've got a nodding memory of this is this the pullback of the great society is what we're really talking here. I get into the maths forty and twenty sixty years on. We're slamming ourselves back to Pleasantville and Dwight David Eisenhower.
I mean, this is the end of caring about deficits.
This is the end of paying for legislation on a go forward basis. So, for example, any tax provision that you like right now that's on the books can be extended into perpetuity without ever paying for it ever. Again, So any short term provision you put in there, the salt cap, the IRA tax credits, the child tax credit, whatever it may be. These are hundreds of billions of dollars on a line by line basis.
But perhaps the biggest comp into this bill is the wealth transfer.
Think about the tariffs that have been put on by this Trump administration. I don't think that's a win, but the President has made it appear as though he's really, you know, strong army.
But it's four hundred billion dollars entire for revenue collection. The entirety of.
The president's campaign agenda, no taxes on tips, no taxes on you know, retirement payments and things like that is one hundred and sixty three hundred and sixty three billion dollars worth of this package, and the tariffs are four hundred billion dollars in revenue. So we are passing a massively regressive tax bill that does not return what the President is giving you on.
That at a time. How many pages will this legislation be?
I mean asking for John Tuckner.
He's going to read it at the beach.
It has already read aloud.
It took something like fifteen and a half hours and it's nine hundred and forty pages.
Forty okay, Henritta Trace.
Thank you so much.
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The patron out of Oxford University in Lbs, Ibrahim Abari joins this iconic city group with Villimbauder, Catherine Mann and others. Nathan Sheets and now with Absolute Strategy Research and working with Tina Fordham Fordham Global Foresight for a terrific brief. Yeah. Iber, First of all, your notes are way too long.
Can you cut it half?
I mean, just for starters.
The heritage of Rabari.
Economics and this plays off Villimbauder is an old world respect for the balance sheet. It's very non American to me. It's not foreign, it's just a different view across the water. The state of the American balance sheet or the guests on that balance sheet three or five years out.
Well, I think the state of the American balance sheet is a tailor's two stories, and I think that's what's allowed asset prices to continue to do so well as they continue even as we enter this week. Private sector balance heats are the best we've seen for decades, and that's given the public sector a bit of an excuse to maybe use.
That financial capital.
So our concerns, my concerns are predominantly about the health of the public sector balance heat to some degree, how we can keep the two together in a way that keeps the economy running and pumping. But if I'm honest with you, I am concerned. I do think we will run into a major point of tension in the next couple of years, and what we've heard from Congress over the last week or so probably adds to these concerns rather than reduce it them.
So given that backdrop here, at least in the near term, it feels like the market is expecting this Fed to cut rates, maybe not a lot, but on maybe a couple of times this year.
Does that seem reasonable to you?
It does? It does seem reasonable.
Now.
I should say I came into the year thinking the FED is going to cut a lot, and because it was facing going to face the perfect storm from much weaker growth than people expected, a very weak stock market, which of course at the beginning of the year we had, and one point that often comes up, the FED nominally is still very restrictive, so it's starting at a very high point.
Now.
Most of these things have played out, with one big exception, of course, which is that the stock market rebounded with a vengeance. As you're already remarked upon. Now, the reason why I think the FED is probably wise to cut at least from an insurance standpoint a little bit, is because the economy has been showing signs of signs of slowing more signs of slowing than we've seen for a while in some areas pretty concerning signs of slowing and
the label market and the housing market. So again, if you start from one one and a half points above neutral, you're probably better off cutting a little bit and then seeing where you are in a couple of months time.
So you know, I don't know the economy is slowing, but I think we've taken recession off the table. I haven't heard that discussed in the last four or five months. Inflation, I think surprisingly to most people, we've not seen that really create too much into the economy. So it seems like maybe the Fed's kind of got this continued soft landing.
I guess.
I think there's a narrow path, and I think your your remarks are very much on point that we're facing a bimode outlook for the US economy. For financial markets, what's maybe the single most interesting thing across financial markets right now is how differently equity markets and the bond market are looking at the economy.
And I don't just mean at.
The headline level, but the evolution of interest rates over the last couple of weeks versus how cyclicals have.
Done within equities. It's one of the bigger divergences.
And one of the reasons I highlight, other than that I think people haven't taken enough notice of it, is that that diversion does sometimes show up at cyclical inflection points. So it's not totally clear, but bonds on average or a better predictor of what happens at these inflection points.
So when I.
Hear you speak, I in my head, I'm playing through is this Goldilock scenario going to continue to play out? Or are we facing a scenario? Actually, we're facing a bit of a cliff not too far from now.
Extended conversation with Ibrahim Avari of Absolute Strategy Research. We welcome all of you on your commute here last day, the second quarter commute across America. Good morning, ninety nine one FM in Washington. Was Nathan in today?
I don't know, I mean, you know, yes?
He?
Oh, he was in today?
Okay, he darkened the door.
Nathan Hager at ninety nine one FM in Washington. On YouTube subscribe to Bloomberg Podcast. Absolutely humbled by the last six months of the YouTube buildout. I'm learning every day about this strange digital ballet. I want to go back to the FED, which I usually don't want to do, but I think it's so important, Ibraham. They are trapped in this cycnical inflection point and maybe bimodal a ambiguous outcome by having to justify a trend of rate cuts.
Why can't they just do one and done and the chairman come out and say, we're cutting interest rates at the next meeting. We're not sure where we're going, but we're just bringing it in for one. Where did that surgical view disappear to? Oh?
I think they should take your advice, to be quite frankly, And if you go back to the last two press conference, at least the perspective they had to defend and justify was not considering cutting not easy.
And I think that's.
Both because the way they've been communicating over the last six months is very different from how Chepaw used to communicate, including of course a year ago where they suddenly started cutting grades pretty pretty sharply. But I think the right thing to do would be exactly as you say, take restrict to rates and the slowing of the economy. Say I'm cutting now, but if we see inflation pickup, we can migrate again.
They where in our history do we blame John Taylor out at Stanford'll be where who do we blame for this idiocy that if we raise or cut we're establishing a trend. I just don't get it.
I don't I don't have the answer. But I've had that conversation with Central makers many times. I've had a very similar conversation with the ECB.
Philip Blaine's say, working with the guarded ECB.
I think at some level they are They're open to the idea of you can reverse when when the facts change, they can change their mind.
In practice, that does tend to come.
With a loss of credibility that they all fear were accused of flip flopping, of changing the narrative. I think it's the other way around again, maybe because of my tutor Lich with Villain, who was never shied to change his mind when the facts change. So I think that's what Chapwell would do. I think it would in fact improve his credibility, which I think has suffered a little bit because he has had difficulty to explain why the FED has been somewhat slow.
Right Bloomberg Dollar Index, it's down almost ten percent from its earlier earlier this year high, what's going on with the dollar.
So we had a perfect storm for the dollar early on the DA And again it's a similar story to what I said about the US economy and rates. You've started from a very high starting point, you had disruptive policy, and then investors globally just had to diversify into some degree re rate the riskiness of US investments. Now that's gone a fair amount of the way, and FX hedging has played its part.
Where we are now is a lot more what I would call.
Cross currents, because what you're actually see in the last couple of weeks of dollar weakening that's.
Been alongside US rates.
It's the bond market pricing in weaker growth in the US. It's no longer US equities underperforming global acuities. It's no longer the riskiness of the US that stands out. It's really the sick cyclical sole down And therefore again we're in.
A bimodel near term outlook.
I see dollar weakness, I would be a lot more selective in how I would express it within markets, and we'll learn a bit more this week, so I think that'll have an impact.
On the driver. I mean, Abrahm, I'm looking at a thirteen year dollar trend. Folks, you can do this on the Bloomberg Professional Service BBDXY Index, GPL Space M Space role than I say it too perfectly for those driving the answer is I got a strong dollar trend. I'm down one point five standard deviations off the trend back thirteen years. Have we finally broken the strong dollar trend?
That's my view right now, and I think, quoting Chair Powell, you have to be humble and nimble in a world where we wake up to news, you know, pretty pretty comedy. But my view is we have reached that inflection point in the dollar, and actually, depending on the measure that you use, we may have reached it in twenty twenty two or we reached it earlier this year. So I do think we're the big of a long term, significant downtrend. We probably have another ten percent or so to go
at least. The question is is that going to continue as consistently as it happened so far this year? I have my doubts, but over a longer period of time, I think there's a lot more to come.
How do you respond to stagflation or to a persistent higher nominal GDP?
So I I see a near term threat.
It's even you have to talk on radio.
We're toasted.
If there's silence continue.
I would say I see a near term threat, including what we may face in the US in the next six months. Again, the real side week inflation is going to pick up maybe half a percent, maybe a percent over the next year. As a durable phenomenon, I don't think it really it is likely to play out.
I think weaker growth will weigh on probus American exceptionalism. Is that a thing in the past.
I think in some ways yes, and I think it's for good reasons and for bad I think at this moment we should acknowledge that the impact it has had on the rest of the world. The administrations and the policy impacts have been partly benign. My own country Germany waking up to the need to upgrade its infrastructure to spend more on defense. So the changing balance of fiscal spending globally, I think that's an element of changing impacts on US exceptionalism.
What's the biggest challenge for this federal Reserve?
Right here?
Where's the mistake you think they could make here?
So the biggest mistake, from my point of view, is that they stay as data independent as they have been, and that they don't communicate why they operate differently from where they were in twenty twenty.
Four, and as a result, maybe act too late.
So Chapal's greatest fear throughout most of his tenure was that the FED would be too late in acting. I think they're at risk of that. Again, that's not to dismiss that we have in a bubbling inflation problem, but again they can address that by then reacting as they face more of it.
You're mentioning your Germany.
Your Germany has stepped up in a big way in terms of stated plans to invest in its military and in its infrastructure. Do you think other European countries can do the same. We have confidence that Germany can do it. How about some of the other countries in Europe it seems I don't know.
I think Germany, if I can use that word again, is a little exceptional in that regard, and that that's both because it faces a bigger.
Deficit, so it's underinvested in infrastructure.
And in defense, and it has a still healthier balance sheet even though it's a little flattered by You know, how we treat pension spending in Europe, so I think it's much more of a German story. When it comes to financial markets, it has its spillover so though it does mean that spreads between German bombs and the rest of the European bond market are going to continue to narrow, and it is a sea change in the European bondmarkt.
Help me with the dollars, then, Paul's got us in a trend of weaker dollars nine percent? Should we I mean, is it a harmonic average? Now we go down four point five percent? I mean, is is the trend in place?
I think the trend is in place in the short term.
I think we need to watch what happens with the US data to reinforce it. But also I see more opportunity in special places in the riskier part of the spectrum. If the world is okay, the dollar will sell off more against the Australian dollars.
We don't care what europe euro one twenty.
I think we'll see euro one twenty this year at this at this very moment, I would not buy euros.
I don't know.
I mean, tom word one spot one seven already happen to parody. I was looking for the Tom King parody there on the earth are looking for that.
Those tastes are over.
I think it has really changed. I mean, folks to look at the Bloomberg launch pad, the red and green blinking it is. I can assure you I had no concept the first week of January that we'll be looking at this now. Particular levels on Future sixty two hundred, YEP sixty two fifty on SPX forty four, three hundred and down twenty two thousand, eight hundred of six tenths of a ibrah Mravari, thank you so much. Just brilliant, absolute strategy at Research Ashure working at Fordham Global Foresay.
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A really important conversation. We are focused on capitalism. We are focused on all that we do in economics, finance and investment, and to have someone with a pedigree of Hampshire College in the New School in Lower Manhattan is important. Heather Boushe showed public service with President Biden, among others. She's president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
I can't say enough right now about the mystery of her Democratic Party on our website, how the econmic and political geography of the United States fuels right wing populism and what the Democratic Party can do about it. Heather, why are the Democrats silent in this June of twenty twenty five?
Democrats silent? Well, I hear a lot coming from Democrats right now. I mean, certainly, the thing that we have all been watching over the past week and of course NonStop all weekend is what the Republicans have been doing with their budget bill that is going to give massive tax cuts at the top and you know, strip income and benefits from folks you know, on the bottom half
of the income distribution. I know that, you know, for example, Check Schumer made them actually read that bill out loud and hopefully have to think about each and every action that they're doing. But you know, this is a huge, huge, huge moment for the country, huge moment for the US economy.
But Heather, what's so important to me here is does the Democratic Party witness Schumer's comments this weekend. Does it move to the left and liberal progressive or does it try to move to a Democratic Party center of old.
So here's the thing. When I look at what this legislation that the Republicans are jamming through the Senate right now will do. Let's say that this passes, we're going to be left with the world where not only have you stripped the federal government of enormous human capital and talent and capacity, but we will put the US economy on a long term trajectory of lack of competitiveness where we're going to see following and Democrats, Democrats, let me
just finish this point. Democrats are going to be faced with an economy that will be in many ways in shambles. And so I think that's where we need to start our conversation. What do we need to do? What will we need to do to get the economy back on track? And that's going to require thinking about some fundamental things. The crisis of climate change is not going going away.
I no, but Heather, you didn't answer my question. Should the Democrats witness the election in New York City for mayor should they move towards Mumdani in a liberal progressive Democratic party or do they need to refine the center.
They need to find a place where they can obviously get enough votes, but that is going to be going back to economic basics, making sure that we have an economy that thrives and delivers for the broad middle, which is exactly what won't be happening. So when you think about what they're going to need to do, We're going to need to make in significant investments in clean energy
for example. We're going to be needing to make significant investments in education and healthcare because right now we're about to throw somewhere between twelve and upwards maybe seventeen million people off of Medicaid. That's going to require significant public investment. That's what Democrats are going to be facing is they
confront the midterms and the twenty twenty eight election. So whether or not that is super ath inrist, that's where the party is going to need to be because this Republican budget bill puts the economy and the humans in this country on a downward spirral right, and so how we're going to reconfigure and come back from that that has to be job number one.
Heather what did you And let me put another head of the Democratic Party nationally in Washington, DC. View the Democratic primary here in New York City with mister mom Dominie having that surprising win over Governor Cuomo.
I mean, I wasn't following so much. I was really following closely what was happening with the budget bill. But I think that they see that as, or at least what I have read, they see that as an indication that, oh, you know, the Democrats are perhaps going too left. But here's the thing New York City is, you know, it's
an important Democratic constituency. The people in New York. One of the most exciting things that I saw coming out of that election was how many young people got out and voted, and how excited they were about a candidate that they could believe in. And he was focusing Mondamin was focusing on bread and butter, kitchen table issues, lowering the cost of housing, making sure that groceries are affordable,
making sure that childcare is accessible. These are exactly the kinds of things that we saw at the federal level in the last election. Well, President Trump ran wait, let me just finish. President Trump ran on a platform of lowering costs for Americans. Instead, what he is doing is making our healthcare mores more unaffordable. He's making it likely inaccessible for rural Americans to access healthcare at all, making
our energy costs up. And so I think that what you saw in New York City was those kitchen table bread and butter economic issues coming to the fore with an enthusiasm for a new candidate there.
Well, ha, there one final question. Quickly, will the rich people leave in New York City as the rich people are leaving the United Kingdom right now?
Well, it's uncleared me. Where those rich people are going to go? Manhattan is amazing. Now, here's the thing. If you are basically saying that people in a community need to accept no healthcare, no nutrition assistance for the poor, no good jobs, just so they can have some rich people in their community, what are those rich people doing for them? That is the question that we are asking. What are they giving back? Are they investing in good jobs in their community? Are they making sure that that
community has access to the things they need? So that is the question that I think all of us should be asking of America's wealthiest. We live in one of the richest countries of the world has ever seen. There are all of these billionaires, but are they actually doing anything that is good for the economy and improving middle class incomes?
Heather, thank you so much, suld Doctor Bische, of course, with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth through Public Service to the Biden In administration.
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The newspapers only Lisa Mateo can do it.
Lisa, good morning.
All right, we'll start with the Wall Street Journal. So they're talking about Halloween fans. They just can't wait till October. So there's this new holiday tradition. It starts this month. It's called Summer Ween. Okay, so it first started to catch on last summer.
It's grown even bigger.
But the thing is, retailers are really starting to cash in on this Summer Ween. So you have, for example, TJ max As decorations. It's Frankenstein on a beach chair skeletons. It's excuse to people to spend money in the retailers. They have blankets with like skeletons and bikinis, and towns are getting into it doing these summer ween Hola celebrations, like they're carving watermelons like jack O'Lanterns, They're having parades and people dressing up. So it's starting to become a thing.
I don't know, I haven't I've seen it in the stores.
I haven't seen it in that that are just so in the hot Halloween.
Yes, yes, they're fanatics. They're a huge following.
So they're saying this is going to start, you know, becoming something bigger. But they're also saying because of a certainty around tariffs and pricing, people want to buy these things earlier because they don't know how much the prices on some of these hallowing items are going to increase. That's another strategy they have, but it could be coming soon. This one, Paul, is up your alley because I know
you're a fan of the Cracker barrel. Okay listens the Wall Street Journal, you know, right, it's known for the old Country charm. People like it because they have the decor like you feel like you're in grandma's house. It's like the antiques and the bottles and the farming tools, all the chatch keys everywhere. But Cracker Bower are saying, you know what, we want to declutter and we want to make things different.
Yeah.
This photo they have there of the remodeled one in Tennessee, Holy cow, that's different going for a new budy. I don't know.
It's a good question. I mean, they're they're trying and maybe they're trying to attract a younger audience. I don't know if that's exactly exactly. Maybe that's what they're trying to do, but they're just saying that. It's a debate between workers and people go to the restaurant. They're saying they don't want it summer people saying, well, you know what, it cleans things up a bit, you know, makes things less cluttered.
And it does. I mean it looks good, but boy is it different.
But it's completely because I mean you walk into a Cracker barrel and you know, there's like clutter everywhere, like that's their thing.
Though people love it, but I'm guessing this is an audience that does not like change.
So see how this plays out.
Yes, exactly, exactly okay, and oh and they're getting rid of the rocking chairs and they're pudding. I next, and go there Squid Game. I don't know if either of you want.
In the offspring watch it?
Really?
Okay?
Okay, see my kids watch it too, and for me, yes, so I thought it was kind of violent.
But okay.
So this is the third season. So it premiered this past Friday. It topped like you know, global rankings on Netflix and all countries did great. But the thing is is that they had rankings about how the audience liked it, and the audience didn't like it as much for this season. So that's why you have Squid Game stocks. They're starting to sync, you know, like Artist Studio, South Korea based
firm Texter Dexter Studios. They're all sinking. But it's still I mean, it's still the most watch show of all time.
For Netflix into the summer. Does streaming have momentum.
Yes, it's just it's secular momentum. It's not seasonal. It's just secular change taking place, just like cable television, you know, displaced broadcast television to some degree, it's even more pronounced here with streaming versus kind of what most people grew up with was a basic cable and broadcast and all that kind of stuff.
So absolutely fast, yep.
I I have no idea where we are in five years now. We're doing the digital thing here, folks, and I've got an immense respect for people thinking as hard as they can, Like, what is the impact of YouTube about five years?
Yes?
Well, I mean podcast at least was saying squid games the biggest thing in normal, wouldn't I don't know what it is.
I mean generation you couldn't say that.
Ago a generation though, you couldn't say that whatever it was you know that was. It's just so dispersedpers Listen to Matato, Thank you so much.
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