Your summer pocket knife of information. It's the only way to stay in for him. Fifty five ARC the talk station at five the fifty five k RCD talk station. It's Monday, regular listeners, No, it's that time of week we talk money with all Worth Financials. Brian James, Welcome back, my friend. It's always pleasure to have you on. Thanks to Aalworth for loaning out every Monday at this time.
Good morning, mister Thomas, hope you had another good weekend.
Fantastic weekend and a special shout out to my friends in Westchester where the Hoodie memorial. Corey Hood died in a tragic parachuting incident. He was a Golden Knight and he was a huge, huge supporter of Westchester and Lakota High School everywhere he went around the world as a Golden Knight, he promoted the community and his love for the community. And so they've honored his memory, and this
is the tenth year for the fundraiser. They've established some scholarships in his name, and they had me out every year to speak a few words and kind of facilitate it. And it was just a glorious, glorious of it. It always is one of those things that reminds you that there's so much good going on in the world in spite of the fact that we deal with a bunch of crap each and every day in the news.
Yeah, that's my neck of the ones.
And yeah, it is wonderful that that that story has gotten out there, and it seems to be growing every single year.
You know.
The silver lining of it is, well, now his story is out there, the kind of person he was and what he stood for.
Oh yeah, yeah, and the fact that he's I mean, these are twenty two five hundred dollars scholarships that they now they've got the scholarship fully funded. They've been so successful with the fundraising efforts they don't have to add another dime to that. The return on investment will cover the annual scholarship. So they have two other scholarships that they're working to get to that point. But great people
out there. They're just so fun and welcoming, and again is one of those I really needed this event kind of moment is the way I feel every year about it. It's like, because here I am surrounded by bad news and you know, division and intolerance and beat downs, and you show up and something like that. You know what, the world is still sane. The world is still a great place.
There are people out there who aren't in conflict and arguing with each other at all times.
That's what I get out of the event. So that'll carry me now for a month or maybe two, and then I'll be back to filling blue and misery.
You mean, like for the next ten to fifteen minutes.
Yes, yeah, all right, let's pivot over. Donald Trump has been having a real problem with each FED chair Jerome Powell. He's been screaming and clamoring for Powell to lower the interest right, and of course the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Mouth Committee is ed. Think you used to call it, held the rates at where they are, which is what four point five percent? So no lowering of the rates and what the last five times they met, they've kept it the same.
Yeah, that's pretty much right. We're the FED does not move quickly. We don't want to spook anything. You don't want to spook the herd. That's always been the way the FED has thought. And so they stepped lightly. Like we've talked about a couple times in these airwaves. The you know, the President apparently has established the ability to change his mind on a dime. Today, we're putting tariffs against a certain country at a certain percentage. Tomorrow, Yeah,
we're gonna hold off on that. Federal Reserve chairs do not have that luxury. They cannot spook the market like that. That's going to cause more problems than it solves. So they're not moving fast enough anyway, although I don't believe any FED chair will be able to move fast enough to keep President Trump happy.
But in this case, there's also behind this. There's just a difference in philosophy.
Trump feels an interest rates should have been on the you know, months, if not years ago, and fedshair Pale is feeling a little differently about that in terms of his face is on this. So he has to be the one making the right decisions.
Well, it's not his unilateral decision. It is made up of a board of governors. I think. What there are seven members that make up the Federal Board, and don't they all sort of say and is it a majority opinion on whether to raise or lower rates? Yes, it is, so.
Yeah, there's a board of governors out there, and two of them recently came out last week and said that they felt like it's time to start lower interest rates. And that's not too shocking either, because you know that the numbers are starting to come out. We're going to talk about that a little bit themselves, of course, but they are starting to come out in favor of what
ter Powell. Chair Powell wants to act on more evidence in general, so he's a little bit slower than some have been in the past, but those numbers are coming out. It's looking more and more like we're going to see a rad cut here in September. So we may we looks like we may very well get what the president is is it has been asking for in what some of the political population believe as well.
It's just not happening fast enough to keep everybody happy.
But they can only raise or lower rates at these Federal Open Market Committees meetings, and they only have those.
How often once a month, so once a month, so and they yeah, they can't really go off psyche. Well that's not chilly, So they've done it in the past, but both real references not to uh, the preference is not to do that because again, it just tends to rattle things too much.
Well, like Trump's tariffs. You know, if if they're on one day and off the next, you can't adjust for that. But at least I suppose knowing that one month from the last meeting, you're going to get another meeting where the option is there could be the lower rates or raised and we're keeping the same there's only, like I guess, one month worth of stability. So it's really not that much.
Yeah, in what we're trying to do with these kinds of things, remember what businesses have to make decisions. You know, there's a business out there that wants to build a
factory or something like that and create jobs. And I'm sort of making this up as hypothetical example, but somebody out there is sitting in a conference room right now trying to decide do we execute this loan with this bank right now or do we wait six weeks in this end of September and see what the Federal Reserve is going to do because we could get a better
interest rate out of the deal. So you know, there are this is something there has to be some predictability to it, where if I'm trying to make a decision that's going to employ hundreds of thousands of people, you know, build build some factories, as the President is wanting here, Well, then I need to know what my bank financing terms are going to be.
And a lot of that comes right out of the Fed.
So I need to be able to understand what they're going to do and the timing of when they're going to do it, not this afternoon is different from tomorrow morning.
Well, we've had this conversation with the subject of mortgages. It's a kind of a cosmic crabshoot are they going to go up or are they going to go down? And you know, when we bought our first home, there was really big question mark as with the direction they were going to go. So lock it in, but recognize you could always refinance at some point in the future.
I mean businesses can do that. I suppose the interest rate is really more about the federal government and the interest they pay on the T bills.
Yes, absolutely so.
Yeah, So interest rates are manipulated two ways, directly from the Federal from the Fed, and whatever the market wants to do. The market has its own opinions and it will drive bonds up and down, and that has an effect on interest rates itself. So both of those two things result in what a might a company might sign off on, or an individual on a mortgage. Both of those impact exactly what those numbers are that appear on that contract.
All right, Since I know we're gonna be talk about viuera labor statistics and the Donald Trump's rather his reaction to the statistics that we're handed out. What are the various statistics just generally speaking, that the FED looks at in making a determination. Obviously labor rates are one of them, but what are the others? So the FED is look get CPI. The FED has a dual mandate.
Their job is to keep employment at full employment, which is never one hundred percent.
That makes no sense when we have one hundred percent employment or near it.
That's when you see companies like McDonald's offering signing bonuses because they can simply can't find workers. So full employment is more like ninety five percent employment. And they want to keep prices under control. That is their primary role. There's a million statistics and reports and all kinds of things that they look at, but it basically has to do with employment and CPI. Those are the two things. If we keep those under control, keep those where we
want them. We want employment around ninety five percent ish and we want inflation around two to two and a quarter something like that. We're a little bit higher than that now, but we are well off our nine percent crazy highs from a few summers ago.
So we're definitely training in the right direction.
We just haven't actually ticked the box that would give a green light to Jerome Pale in his own thinking.
Well, and going back to the Board of Governors, I understand Governor Adrianna Kugler stepped down early. It was reported. I thought I recalled reading and correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, it's we have you here for She was angry that they didn't lower the rate, so she stepped down off the Board of Governors. Have I got the background on that one, right? Yeah? There was.
So she announced in August.
Just the other day that she was going to step down, but she was supposed to be around till January thirty. First, she didn't really give a clear reason in her letter, her resignation letter, but she did state her she does want to go back to academia and all those kinds of things. This is coming alongside that, you can kind of conclude that perhaps she didn't want to deal with the pressure that's going on between the President and Jerome Powell.
She didn't even go to the meeting most recently. So, you know, all of this is speculation. It's not fair to guess what's in somebody's head, but you know you can. I think you can kind of infer from the lack of information that she shared about her decision that whatever it was probably would have caused more conflict and she was trying to avoid that too.
Well, it's just the border of governors are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate. I can only imagine Donald Trump will get a an interest rate cut hawk in the you for this. How quickly can this turn around before the next vote.
That's something I'm not sure to be able to be quite honest on that. Yeah, I'm not going to claim to be a civics expert. However, yes, I would say that President Trump definitely has and he's not the only one. Lots of presidents, of course want people to align with their thinking. He's just been the loudest about it. So yeah, I would be fairly confidence saying whoever gets nominated is going to be pretty well in support of Donald Trump's
different perspective now. At the same time, remember he put Jerome Palell in this position too, so we'll see if it lasts throughout this person's term.
I'm glad you made that point because I had forgotten. Yeah, this is a product of his own making in many respects. But you can't read the future. You have no idea if you're going to come to blows with your appointees. Down the road more with Brian James from all Worth Financial, we're going to talk about labor statistics, something else that's kind of the skin of Donald Trump, and job loss. A job loss is a consequence of it. First, though,
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Cincinnata KRCD Talk station. By the time of week, we talked money and it's money money with Brian James, and speaking of money matters, Brian completely unrelated to the labor stats that we're going to talk about here in a moment. Obviously, everyone in the community, across the entire country included, is talking about that beat down that Saturday and the woman
Holly who got punched in the face. Somebody sent me a link to the gives Send Go campaign, which is where you can contribute to help her deal with her medical issues and everything. Three hundred and forty thousand, nine hundred dollars has been raised so far the last several days. That is absolutely amazing.
Yeah, I think that was a huge attention to get her for our for our city here, and I think we'll get through it like we've gotten passed everything through everything in the past.
You know, it's never smooth.
But at the same time, yeah, I think this one is there's some obvious changes that are pretty much screaming out there, and I would say, have three hundred and forty thousand votes that would agree with.
Me, there you go. And these are all pretty small contributions. Ten bucks here, fifteen bucks there. It's like every little bit counts much in the same way every little bit you put towards your retirement counts. You're going to get a compounding interest and return on that, so it's the right thing to do. Start planning for your future. They're
a little plug for getting a financial plan. Excellent segue there, miss, I thought you might like that, all right, Moving back to one of the statistics that the FED does calculate and determined or look at into determining whether or not to raise or lower maintain interest rates where they are labor statistics. I understand Donald Trump fired the label Labor Statistics Commissioner because he wasn't happy over what he described
as the biggest miscalculation in over fifty years. What's the story on this one, Brian, Well, yes, we all know.
When you don't like the news, what do you do?
You shoot the messenger because obviously that's the solution to these types of things. So anyway, yeah, so, as President Trump just did something no modern president has ever done. Nobody has ever fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics head right after a report comes out.
You know, I'm not in love with this.
I'm okay with some of the things we've done to you know, to change our standing and you know, for example, force other countries to pay their fair share for NATO support and even up on tariffs all that stuff. I've been feeling like overdue moves, but stuff like this to me, just completely undermines his legacy. He's reacting to the July report showed only seventy three thousand new jobs. That was far below expectations. But the bigger point, Remember the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. What they do is they gather surveys. They literally ask companies how many people did you hire this month? And companies will respond, And of course, just like any other survey you get via email, sometimes you respond right away, usually you don't, but anyway, it takes a long time. Over the over the ensuing three months of sending that out, they will continue to receive responses.
To this survey.
Yep, that's where those revisions come from. It's not the Bureau of Labor Statistics screwing things up. It's companies just not responding in a timely manner to government surveys, which you know you can't do that anyway. But the news here as the revision was downward by over a quarter million jobs. That is a really really big miss. And rather than deal with the headlines of possible slowing economy, President Trump just decided that that I was wrong.
Well, and let me get this straight. If they came out with a number that was accurate, Let's say, you know, there's a you know, a gazillion jobs out there and the unemployment rate went down, that would result in the Fed not wanting to lower interest rates. Right, So didn't her initial number sort of bolster the argument for lowering interest rates or if I if I might confuse.
On this, Brian, No, And that's the slightly frustrating part, Like we were talking about earlier this morning. You know, the FED chair pal definitely wants He's had a history and most of the FED chairs have a history of wanting to rely on data and not gut feel when
it comes to making these huge interest rates decisions. So yes, the the the actual numbers that were coming out, even these revisions are speaking toward Yeah, it's probably time to lower interest rates because the economy is definitely slowing and whoops, it may be slowing a little faster. Were stomping on the brain a little fashion that we wanted to. That is a recipe for Yep, it's time to lower interest rates.
And that's why I feel pretty confident that September is going to involve a rate cut.
But it also speaks to I think it's the it's the trajectory.
It's how quickly those revisions came down That angered the president because it makes it feel like the economy is going over a cliff as opposed to just slowing down.
Well, and that's bad for politics. Goodness great, that is bad visibility, bad optics. First, great, job numbers would result are good for your politics. See my plot, my plan, my economic policy. Everything's working. Look at the numbers. But then you start screaming about lowering interest rates. That flies in the face of the success you're having and the opportunity for interest for inflation.
So yeah, this president is not very tolerant of really any negative headlines at all. So fortunately the market seems to see through at the The market came down a little bit on Friday, and as we're sitting here right now, futures are up about a half point or so.
So the market does tend to see through this, but.
It won't tolerate it very long. The market absolutely hates the overall stock market is wonderful at sniffing out baloney, and it will come through there. If we're really trying to tout that the economy is wonderful, but we're hemorrhaging jobs left and right.
You will see it in the stock market a right.
But the late Burea Labor Statistics Commissioner Eric Macintarfer's calculations which resulted in her firing. It's regularly, I mean you said it. It's want to sort of emphasize it. It's normal for them to provide revised figures, maybe a little bit after, maybe a long after, but they always look back and correct the record based upon the actual evidence when it finally comes in. So this is not unusual, No.
Not at all.
And in fact, I went back to the past couple of presidents. So the Trump's first administration for twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, the average revision was an average increase of seventy three thousand jobs. That sounds like a big number on an absolute terms, but it's relatively small when you're talking about three hundred million people in this country.
Right.
But when during those revisions at that time, generally speaking, the bias was up. Those revisions usually or positive. Under Biden from twenty one to twenty four, the more recent ones about one hundred thousand jobs on average, and usually they were in a more downward direction, and Obama was kind of somewhere in the middle.
But anyway, the point is not the numbers.
The point is that these revisions have happened, and do happen, and always will happen. The head of the BLS gets two days to do whatever he or she is going to do with the data. They don't get to audit it, and all that has to come out as basically as soon as it as soon as it appears, so there's not much chance that she would have had to manipulate it.
I'm gonna go ahead and throw out there that there's a zero chance that Trump gave any time to look for the data, to look for any evidence that this is an accurate assertion of his that the data is wrong.
He simply didn't like the numbers.
Fair enough, Brian James. One more and this, I think this is a rhetorical question. Should high schoolers have to take a personal finance course? I'm all in for that.
Yeah, we said segment Brian, it's been a good morning. We're just gonna call that a guess.
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It is a thirty here fifty five car cud talk station. What more with anybody? Is Brian James and in a very very important topic, and I'm surprised that schools are not already required to require high schoolers to take a personal finance course. In a basic budget management for the home, you know, small scale microeconomics. You learn how to balance your checkbook otherwise not spend more money than you take in.
You have an appreciation not over spending. And then by learning that knowledge, you can then criticize government and its runaway spending and it's deficit spending and appreciate that I can't run my home that way? How is it that politicians can run our government that way? Turning everybody into a fiscal conservative? Brian James, this is Is there any opposition to this concept of requiring the some just a semester of a basic home economics kind of thing for finance.
I don't think anybody stands in the way of it. I think it's the opposite.
I think there's a lot of people who aren't in power and don't make thesecisians who would really really like to see it out there. I saw a meme floating around. I've seen it like five times. Maybe you run across it too. Where As the guy says me, how do I balance my checkbook? Public school shut up in square dance, and that brings me perfect memories. I remember square dancing and wondering why I was square dancing, you know, back
in the day. But yeah, so remember we don't have a Department of Education anymore, so there's no there isn't a federal mandate, nor will there be a federal mandate. But there are a lot of states out there who are doing this, So this is not a you know, the article we stumbled across with the Colorado's you know, is putting something in place.
They are the twenty eighth state.
So there's more than half the country, half the states in the country out there that do have some kind of requirements for financial literacy around budgeting, saving, how do you deal with credit and debt, leasing versus buying all those kinds of things. And I do know some of the schools that I've had direct experience with through my own family actually do have some pretty strong programs in place. So despite the headlines, I think there's more financial education
out there that is happening. It's just kind of hitting the headlines a little more as more and more states get on on board. But there never will be a federal mandate on this because we just dismantled the entire Department of Education, so we will not have a voice from the federal.
L I'd like to read the Constitution for what it says, and there's no Dick Todd in the federal Constitution that says it's supposed to tell us locally here in whatever school board what we are supposed to teach. That's a local issue and it's a state driven issue.
But square dancing is federally managed.
There you go. You know why, because people take federal dollars in federal government always put strings attached on those dollars. So it doesn't bother me that the federal government isn't mandating something. But this is clearly bipartisan in terms of how much sense it makes.
It is yet really nobody can argue against this, and Ohio has something in place too, So we've got a situation here in this state where we've already made these decisions. So Ohio does require that this goes from July first twenty two is when it started. But all public the students who are in grade nine and beyond have to earn a half a credit in financial literacy can be an elective or a math credit or whatever, but it
can't be part of their social studies. Graduation requirements to be part of the of the finance and that represents about sixty hours of instruction under law. So we do have some rules and standards and there I have seen some of the things that are coming out of the schools, and I'm actually from my perch here as a financial advisor.
I like what they're talking about.
Could I anticipated it'll change conversations I had with young people in the next ten years.
Oh, that's wonderful news. Now it kind of bothers me. This article of California Colorado Education Association, and this goes back to your square dancing. If you have time to teach square dancing, and question mark why you would allocate scarce time in the school teaching square dancing and not like reading, writing, and arithmetic. Colorado Education Association had concerns that this requirement would increase workload for teachers and staff.
Oh boo hoo, Well, just take away the DEI training and workload and your training and social issues and focus on something that's valuable to every single student in the classroom.
Yeah, and then there's something to be said for that. I remember, and I had, I had a great educational experience. So I don't mean, I don't mean to come down in any of it, But the things that I look back on, I remember examples such as when we first got computers. When computers were very first a thing, the teachers wanted nothing to do with them. I mean, I'm talking this is back, this is back before the days of Oregon Express or Oregon Trail or whatever that thing was.
But they didn't want to touch it at all.
They simply wanted to get us in the room so that the computer expert would would basically take over.
For that half hour forty minutes.
So yeah, I think I think we are in a situation with this stuff where it can be tough to pull, you know, a teacher.
Out of what their background is.
Maybe they know history, maybe they know mathematics, but they don't know the personal finance side themselves. Remember, I have a job for a reason. Not a lot of people know how to put the puzzle pieces together. So throwing them in and asking them to teach this curriculum can be a challenge. Well I'll take that at face value. But they're adults, and they have their own families, and they make a salary annually. I would like to think that they have the basic skill sets to manage teaching.
You know, ignorant wide eyed youths, some basic financial strategy. I mean, it's not like it's rocket science.
You know it's not.
But there's also a lot of ignorant, white eyed adult Again, that's why I have a job.
I love what I do.
But yeah, that happened, and they're teaching your children or not, as the case may be. Brian James, thanks to get all were financial for load and yet I always appreciate our conversations. I'll look forward to next month in another edition. I hope you have a fantastic week, my friend.
Back at you, Brian. We'll talk to you next week.
Donovan's Cares that's the website, Donovan's Cares chr S and they do Dale Donovan and the team. We're gonna hear from Dane Donovan about the car giveaway. They have a car, it's been fully repaired, ready to hit the ground running for someone in need, out in the community. We're gonna learn from Dane about this in the next segment. I hope you can stick around. This is fifty five karc an iHeartRadio station.