You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here.
It is a Friday morning, April eleventh. Today is footy Friday. Oh, I should do that Dodgers thing. Here we go Tonight, the Dodgers are back in LA to take on the Cubs.
First pitch at seven.
Listen to every play of every Dodgers game on AM five to seventy LA Sports live from the Gallpin Motors Broadcast Booth, and you can stream all games at HD on the iHeartRadio app. The keyword is AM five seventy LA Sports. All Right, we're looking at the doll right now, CNN and Fox. And by the time I say we're looking at the Dow, it is either up or down one hundred points.
It is going crazy.
Jared Dillion, who is a financial writer, best selling and who has been part of his care we are on Wall Street, an active investor, so he knows a lot what's going on. Jared, thank you for joining us, taking your time here on KFI.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Okay, now you're looking at we are looking at one hundred and twenty five percent tariffs on the United States from Beijing, and of course I think we're up to one hundred and forty five percent the other way, and beij Beijing says we're done. We're not going to do it anymore because at one hundred and twenty five percent, it makes it financially unfeasible for you to sell anything here anyway, so you know, you can go for wherever.
What does this really mean in terms of business, in terms of what we are actually going to pay because the administration is not telling us very much.
Yeah, there has been a communication problem out of the White House. And let me give you my best interpretation of what they're trying to do. China is an adversary, They're an enemy. I want to go back to Raygan in the eighties, and you know, Reagan is mythologized for getting into an arms race with the uss ARE and eventually bankrupting them, you know, using our own economic power, and the Berlin wallfell, and now there's an airport named after Reagan. Trump is trying to do the same thing
to China with tariffs. You know, we have one hundred and twenty five percent tariffs on China. China sells more goods into the US than we sell to them. It's totally asymmetrical. This hurts China more than it does US. China is playing poker. They're saying that, you know, they can raise tariffs and definitely, and you know, the reality is they can't. What Trump is trying to do is to weaken their economy and push them into a depression.
They're already in a recession. They've had a real estate crash, and they have terrible demographics and they have deflation, and Trump is trying to push them into a depression so that they're no longer a military power.
Okay.
With that being said, as you said that they have more to lose than we do. There's a political consideration here that I would like you to comment on, and that is she is not elected. I mean, he is now an autocrat and he doesn't have to talk to the electorate because there isn't one. For the most part, he doesn't report to anybody. And China has been known to play the long game ever since well forever, I mean,
that's just the way they operate. And so with that being said, and him saying, you know what, we're willing to tough it out, which they have before, who do you think is going to blink first.
I think China will blink first. I absolutely do. I think people in the US tend to, I guess over inflate China as a threat or as an economic power. The Chinese bureaucracy is very dysfunctional. Nothing really moves in that country without she saying so, it's sclerotic, it's bloated, it's corrupt, it's very slow. I am I am not too worried about if in a tariff war, in a trade war between the US in China, the US is
going to win. Having said that, you know, as a free trader, as somebody who believes in pre trade and believes that pre trade benefits everybody, I'm you know, I'm sort of skeptical that this is a good idea in the first place. But you know, you mentioned in the beginning that, you know, Trump hasn't really communicated the goal behind this, and this is sort of a bad marketing
job by the administration. If he said, look, we're all in this together, We're going to have to pay higher prices for goods, We're going to have to endure a little stock market volatility in the pursuit of this goal, then I think people would be on board. But he's done a terrible job selling him.
You know what, I have to tell you, I disagree because I think he's making it very clear now and he's doing a lot what Reagan did. When Reagan came in and said, hey, it's not going to be good for a while, guys, you're going to have to just suck it up. And he was very open about it, and he goes but in the end, it's going to come back, and it did. I mean, he was right on in terms of the financial world. And Trump has gone from of course, day one, I promise you the
economy is going to explode. I promise you price is going to be down day one. It's going to be a beautiful economy on January twentieth.
Okay, thank you.
With that being said, now he has already said there's a transition. We have to live through it a little bit. The question is how long can we live through it? Even believing that in the end the endgame is exactly what Trump wants, and that's manufacturing here, employment here, that we don't have to rely on foreign markets as much, manufacturing as much.
How long can we last?
I don't know. I haven't I haven't seen this before. I mean, you know, Scott Bessen, the Treasury secretary, he actually sold it a little bit. I mean he said, we're going to have to go through a period of detox, That's what he called it. And you know, Biden is in his term front loaded all the pleasure during the pandemic, with all the stimulus checks and PPP loans and stuff like that. And Trump is front loading all the pain
much like Reagan did. Just like you said. So you know, let's say cars start costing ten twenty thousand dollars more, food costs more, Walmart costs more. All this stuff. It causes people some pain. How long can we last? I don't know. I mean, the interesting thing is is that Trump's popularity. If you look at the polls, there's been some polls that if they re ran the election right now, even with all this economic chaos, Trump would have still beaten Kamala if the election were held today.
For the life of me, I don't get it, I really don't. As Trump said, prices have gone down. I went to the store about a dozen eggs, paid twelve bucks, walked to the clerk and they go it's twelve dollars. I go, no, no, prices have gone down. Oh no, no, it's still twelve bucks. No, no, you're wrong, prices have dropped. Don't you understand anyway, So we will see, by the way, real quickly.
Are you a fan, yes or no, of any of these tariffs?
I think the only I'm not a fan of the ten percent across the board tariffs. I don't think. Look, I mean, if the goal is to bring back manufacturing, there's two things. First of all, why do we want manufacturing jobs? Manufacturing jobs are stultifying and boring and tedious. Let other countries do it. So I don't think we really want manufacturing jobs. And manufacturing jobs have been going down for one hundred years, regardless of all the free
trade agreement. It's just a matter of automation. So that's part of it. And I lost my train of thought and I can't remember the other part.
Oh good, get a talk show. I get a talk show because this is what we do. Jared, thank you so much for being with us. You have a lot in explaining. All right, you take care. All right, I want to quickly talk about Karen Bass and a guy with named Steve Sobaroff.
Now I want to be fair to Karen Bass.
I've been very rough on her, and well, you know, I'm not a big fan of hers. I'm less of a fan now and I think she screwed the pooch even more. Yeah, I don't know how she's going to get re elected. I have no idea, but anyway. Steve soberof Soberoff is LA's fire Recovery zar by named by Karen Bass, and he's a civic leader and man, he just.
Shoots from the hip.
He does not mind saying things zill tell people to f off at press conferences.
He doesn't go.
He just doesn't stop. And he is a developer and very well known in the world real estate. And he was hired for a three month term to lead the Let's Fix the Palisades after the fires. Salary of five hundred thousand dollars for three months, by the way, not bad. And there was such an up where he goes, okay, I'll do this for free. He certainly doesn't need the money. Well, what he says is from the minute he was hired by Karen Bass, he was shut out. She just wasn't
interested in him doing his job. Now he still worked, but not what he was supposed to do. He ended up being a fixer, called people up. He was able to negotiate FEMA getting involved in helping by the way, his exclusion, according to him, came within two weeks after his appointment. For example, she opened the mayor opened palis ages to the public. According to Steve Soberoff, she didn't even tell him. He wasn't anywhere near the press conference.
And this is the guy who was supposed to take care of all this, and how was she How did she respond, Well, I have known Steve for years and years, and he's not going to be that far away anyway, in reference to him not being at the press conference, so he knows I'll stay in contact. And she said that Soberoff has laid a great foundation in his role.
I don't know what any of that means. This is political speak.
This is an accusation being thrown at a political figure who comes back and says, I believe in what I am doing for the benefit of the people in Los Angeles, and I am fixing the problems with the fires more so than anybody else, and we're doing it the greatest job we've ever done in history of fixing up a city. How about responding to the fact you didn't let Steve sober off anywhere near uh the fires or repair that you said you were going to.
I believe in Los Angeles.
I believe that we are going to fix this city as quickly as possible.
And her spokesperson said.
And no one has done a job the way she has done it, typical, typical political speech.
I'm not a fan.
I couldn't believe that Paul Caruso did not win that mayor's race.
Could not believe it. Rick Crusoe, that's him too, That's right, Rick Caruso.
I don't know why I have a They're brain all the time.
No, I don't know. It's a mental block I have. Who's Paul Crusoe.
I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea who Paul Caruso is.
As a matter of fact, he act.
Okay, I feel better, I feel like Eminem. Well, the real Paul Caruso, please stand up, Please.
Stand up as an actor. He died in two thousand and one.
Even better, all right. I have often said I am not an exceptionalist. And what do I mean by that? Well, it's in reference to people who say America is the greatest country in the world, and in many ways I agree with that. There is no question opportunity, certainly natural resources. Now there are some issues. For example, our medical system. You think that's broken. Are we the best in the
world in terms of our medical system? Really the number of people in prison more than any place else in the world, not only in terms of numbers, but per capita.
We are the greatest country in the world. Right, Well, you know we are in many many ways.
Now one of the things where we are maybe not the greatest country in the world homelessness. You think that's a problem. So let me tell you a story about what's going on in New York and homeless. There are New York homeless shelters, and about a third of the families that live in these shelters, not including migrants, by the way, have at least one adult who gets up, goes to work every day and they're living in homeless shelters. Some of them make up to fifty thousand dollars a
year and they're living in homeless shelters. How is that possible? Well, there are two reasons. And by the way, this is not the kind of homeless that we see that. They see people sleeping on subway cars or begging for change on street corners. I love it when you was some guy on a three corner, Hey, mister, do you have any change? And I look and I go, I have plenty,
and then I walk away. Or if I have a bunch of change in my pocket, I jingle it and say, yeah, lots of it, and then I walk Not big fan of people just begging for money on the street corner. But you've got people who are mentally ill or addicted. Okay, that's part of the homeless population.
Got it. But people who work full time? How is that possible?
Well, the cost of living in New York, the price of real estate in terms of rentals, are just out of control. You make fifty thousand dollars a year, all right, Then you're down to, after taxes, thirty five thousand dollars a year, and rent is twenty five hundred dollars a year. So you have a spendable income of thirty thousand dollars thirty five thousand, your rent is thirty thousand dollars.
And by the way, there are no places to rent.
So what ends up happening, Well, you have thousands of working people that end up in shelters, and that one just rips me to shreds. You go to other countries in the world. I just got back from Italy. You don't see homeless people on the street. You go to Amsterdam, you go to any of the Scandinavian countries, you go to Germany, you don't see homeless people on the street. Imagine you're in New York. Someone gets up, goes to work, even cops. Are you ready for this? Even police officers?
And what happens is these people don't admit it because I mean, how humiliating is that living in a shelter. Now, these are separate shelters that they are building. They are shelters for people to work. And there are small shelters people live two or three to There are dorm rooms, single beds, but there is a cafeteria there.
They give up bus tokens.
There are people to help people get jobs, all paid for by the city, because the number one employer of these people who get up and go to work is the city of New York. They're bus drivers, they work in the schools, they work on the subway, tackling those people that try to jump the line, go over the little gates. They work and they're janitors, but they work and they live in shelters. Ask them if America is the greatest country in the world. Now you ask me,
I live in a nice house. Yeah, America is the greatest country in the world. I can afford insurance, so I have great medical care. I mean, I pay for it, but I have great medical care. So I'll tell you all that level. America is the greatest country in the world. And then you have opportunity. I came here as an immigrant. I came here to the United States when I was five years old. Didn't speak a word of English, and
there was no English as a second language. There weren't many teachers that taught in Portuguese when I started going to school, so it was a baptism and fire.
But the opportunity was there.
You know, there are many countries in the world where you come to a country dirt poor. I mean, you know, I'm gonna tell you, Yeah, I walked to school of four miles in the snow uphill both ways here in southern California. Yeah, yeah, okay, fine, But my parents did come here with nothing, and you know, I was able to get a La City unified, great education.
That's when you could actually come out and be literate. And then I went to a state.
College, then I went to law school, and you know, all of it. That's opportunity. That's America in its best ways. Talk to those people who live in shelters in New York live who can't get a place to stay because of all the craziness. All right, coming up at the top of the hour, Neil Savager of Foodie Friday, and then ask handle anything fairly new segment where we have a good time and humili ate me for the most part. Okay, that's Justin. You're hearing Justin Worsham who used to be
on this show. And I was just talking to Justin. He was our board operator, Kono. Just want to let you know he was so far better than you could ever be good. Yeah, it could be that great. I don't work here.
And it's been almost it's been ten years.
Ten years, man, twenty fifteen. You know that's got to that weird. It doesn't feel like it. I'll be honest.
Now it feels like it. Well for me, yeah, wow, ten years. So anyway, Justin left us. Were you fired?
Or do you voluntarily leave?
You know, it's a little bit of both. I was fired because management at the time thought I made the show sound too FM and too silly, because I felt I was originally hired to make like do comedy bits because I was a comedian, and then so I was like, okay, and they wanted me to just be the board op no offense Steve and so anyway, I eventually I had to go in there and say I think I'm good. I think I'm out. And then they I said, but
go ahead and find somebody. I'll train them whatever. And that took like five months, and I go, hey, at the time, we're under hiring Freeze, and I said, do you need me to quit in order to hire somebody? And they were like yeah, So I said okay.
And by the way, for those people had never heard, do you do comedy? Still?
I don't because you are very funny. By the way, if you weren't, I would tell you that. I know, I know you would.
You're actually one of my the joys of my life was at my time here was making you laugh. To be an all sincerity. I know I got a lot of hell for laughing at you. That was another thing. I got in trouble because I thought you were funny and nobody else did.
Y's true.
I can't even begin to tell you how true. Hey, let's talk about real estate. You left, and you left for real estate, which was obviously a great decision for you.
And then this weekend you're going to do a program, yes, in real estate.
They're giving me an audition to do a show about southern California real estate. So's the way I'm describing it at this point is it's like the high school class everybody should have about buying a home. It's the information that everybody should know, and most people don't.
Shouldn't you talk about how you're not going to be able to buy a home? That's a big talkopic, Yeah, that is. I was talking to my daughter last night. I was with my daughter, Marjorie, and we were having dinner, and my daughter said, I'm never going to buy a house.
And Mom, when you know you bought your first house? She goes, two years after I started working. She goes, how is that possible? And how much was it?
And she said one hundred thousand dollars And we started talking about how much money she was making at the time, and she started her job at twenty five thousand dollars a year and was able to buy a one hundred thousand dollars home. That's a four to one ratio. Okay, let's say you make one hundred thousand dollars. If you make one hundred thousand dollars a year, which is not bad. By the way, you're talking about a four hundred thousand
dollars house. Where do you get that in southern California, especially.
Right out of college, when you're riddled with because college costs way more, so they're just strapped with student loans and debt.
I can't do it.
State of California is already we talked about it at the first show last week. Is sixteen percent affordability. So that means that sixteen percent of Californians can afford to pay the mortgage payment on a on the median price home of about nine hundred and fifty six thousand in the state of California, only sixteen percent.
And by the way, what is nine hundred and fifty six thousand dollars buy yout In.
Southern you can get a pretty nice condo.
I know, I look out the window and I know you live in Burbank, right, you're right around the corner.
I look out the window and I look at these.
Homes, huge homes, eleven hundred square feet, twelve hundred square feet. Right, they're ginormous, I know, you know, built in nineteen twenty two, you know, with yards basically smaller than the size of the studio.
And they're a million dollars million.
My house is eleven hundred square feed, three bedroom, one bath. Ten years ago I paid just under half a mill for it's now worth about one point one million dollars. That's insane, It's stupid. It's stupid.
So is that ever going to turn around? Or is La or Southern California completely crazy? Interest rates?
The interest rates were supposed to lower prices, right, They expected a five to ten percent drop in other markets around the country, absolutely at lower prices, some more than others. But in La County last year, eight percent appreciation, Orange County twenty one point seven percent appreciation with seven and a quarter interest rates.
Here's one last question I want to ask you. People are still thinking three percent money? They got to their heads. That's exactly what I say. When does that go away? When you were looking at six percent as a reasonable rate.
If you look back at the data, six percent was a good rate for a long time with good appreciation. It's just when you start hearing two or three and then it doubles in a year like that, that tits people's mental state and they're just not happy with it, and that's.
Going to disappear. You know, three percent people will die.
The other thing I've learned in preparation for these shows that I'm doing on is that we're one point four million unit housing units by twenty twenty nine behind. This is according to all of the counties in southern California getting together, and they can only legally build about four
hundred thousand. So what they're saying is one point four million would meet the demand and create a more balanced market where these housing prices would stop going up so much, but they can only build a third of that.
Crazy. Okay, When is the show?
By the way, two to four on Sundays, And they just extended me through the rest of the month. So things are looking good for this guy so far.
All right, And it's called Cleverly the Justin Worsham Show.
Yeah, you don't like that. It's brilliant we'll get luxury, we'll spitball the better ideas then yeah, all right. I tried Worsham Duel but they said it was taking out.
All right, that's two to four this Sunday, justin Worsham, and it's gonna be worth it because he's a very funny guy and he's actually very smart too.
Thanks manah No, And if you weren't, I would.
Tell you this is very uncomfortable to get compliments.
And I was just talking. I was what was it?
Amy was in this morning and we were talking about who looks good and done? I said, Amy d Liot, great today. And you've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.