The Fed Should Cut Already (EP.348)

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23:26I think one of the reasons you're having a hard time with the time dilation thing, what was it called, time dilation, dilution, is because you're bald. Go on. You can't tell that you're getting older. How long have you had your head shaved for? uh has it been like a decade now 10 years yeah so it's hard for you to tell that you're getting older so here's how i can tell here's how i see the passage of time first of all my kids is an easy one like you see your kids getting older my oldest daughter is going to be 10 in two months and that boggles on whatever tom cruise i saw a recent interview with tom cruise and i just watched magnolia again for the first time in a while that's like 1999 i think i never saw magnolia It's a really long one.

24:08Great. It's mostly the, it's a lot of the cast from Boogie Nights plus Tom Cruise. It's a good one. Really long. But looking at Tom Cruise then, and I saw him in an interview now, like I'm seeing the passage of time through Tom Cruise. Like it was the first time in my life I go, oh my gosh, Tom Cruise is getting older. How is that possible? Tom Cruise has wrinkles. He's starting to look, look his age a little bit. And that's how I can tell that the passage of time has happened through Tom Cruise. There you go. You can't tell because you're, you're a bald. Listen, Ben, I appreciate you carrying me on this podcast today because I feel my energy is quite low.

24:39I don't know. I've got a bug. I've got something. You do look a little under the weather. It's okay. It happens. I'm not feeling great. I have been thinking a lot about just like aging in life, like a lot. I'm not sure why, but I kind of feel like it's over. And I'm not even depressed about it. I feel like I'm going to blink and my kids are going to be out of the house. I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot with my kids too. On the trip, I've been trying to be more in like, God, this sounds so stupid and like, but it's true. Yes. But just like. I've given up on being present. It's not going to happen for me.

25:16But my kids want to hang out with me now and like me to do stuff with them. And I keep hearing, I hear it all the time from parents who say, just wait till they get old and they don't want to spend time with you. Or they turn teenagers and they're going with their friends. And so as much as I can, I don't want to be like nostalgic for this period in 10 years and be like, oh man. Remember when the kids used to love hanging out with me and like I was the, like they looked up to me and now they don't anymore. They hate me or they, they just don't want anything to do with me because they hate their parents.

25:40So I've been trying to like have that nostalgia now, if that makes sense. I'm trying to have it in the moment. Anyway, I'm working on it. My daughter's going to be a teenager soon. And you sent me this one, Wall Street Journal. These teenagers know more about investing than you do. Now I looked at the headline and I thought, oh gosh, here we go. There's going to be my favorite Wall Street Journal quotes in here. I came away relatively impressed by this piece and the people that they interviewed. What did you think? Oh, me too. Me too. I wasn't sure if we were going to disagree on this. So there's a chart, custodial accounts at Chuck Schwab, ages 13 through 19.

26:17And there was 100 ,000 accounts, 120 ,000 accounts pre-pandemic. And now there's 330 ,000 accounts. So from the article, almost two-thirds of Gen Z investors said they first started learning about investing in high school or middle school. That's incredible. Compare with 38 % of millennials. So here's a quote from 17-year-old. I literally did not know what the stock market was until I was maybe a senior in college. Like, had never thought of it once. Like, you hear these stories of people, like, I was investing in stocks in the dot-com bubble in high school, and that was not, I knew nothing about anything until basically after college.

26:56Yeah. So Rachel Kim, 17-year-old from Orange County, she said she invested in AMC, made a 300 % profit. Quote, for a little while, I got addicted to that adrenaline. But as I began researching more, I realized it was highly unlikely to continue that aggressive profit. Stocks go up and down. It's fine. It just happens. That's another quote. Since we're young, we have the privilege of seeing our investment compound. The biggest lesson would be to start early. Incredible. The kids are going to be okay, right? The kids are, yeah, the kids are going to be great. And I think some could read this and say, oh, they're gambling.

27:33Okay, that's how everybody starts. Everybody starts off, except for Ben, everybody starts off gambling in the stock market. And the earlier they start, the better off. I was extremely encouraged from this. I think this is fantastic. Yeah, and there are so many, I mean, listen, there's ways of finding charlatans and really bad advice these days. But if you look, you can find good advice, and it's easier than ever to find this stuff now. And I think that that's been a good thing. Okay, this kind of blew my mind. Triple Net Investor. This is absolutely unreal. Abercrombie & Fitch has risen another 15 % over the last few weeks and is now eight times in less than 18 months.

28:07It's up eight times. It's the best performing stock in the S &P 1500 index, even outperforming Nvidia by a huge margin. Absolutely no one could have predicted this epic turnaround for a brand that was largely outdated. How? I was never a really big Abercrombie guy back in the past. Oh, that's surprising to me. I guess I was always American Eagle. Maybe that's because I was, Abercrombie was too expensive for my taste. Yeah, no, you're a price-conscious shopper. Yeah, so I did American Eagle, which is like the poor man's version of Abercrombie. So I said - Wait, so this chart looks like Super Microcomputer.

28:39What's happening? I have no, so I decided, I'm like, I haven't thought about Abercrombie since, I don't know, 1997 maybe. So I went and looked and I looked on there and I tried to figure out like, what's the story here? If you look at there, it looks like the gap now. like the Gap used to. It's, they're, apparently they're big with like 30 something moms and they've moved up. It's not like TD Bopper stuff anymore. It's, I don't, it looks to me like Gap or Abercrombie did or not Abercrombie, Banana did back in the day. And I guess they're just - Wait, what do you mean? You went into a store? You did some channel checks?

29:11No, I looked online. No, I went online. Come on, I'm not going to the mall anymore. That's not going to happen. I just went on their website and you know, back in the day it was shirtless bros in six packs and it's not that anymore. Okay, it's still called and Fitch. So this is, I guess this is, remember how Domino's for a while was like, hey, Domino's is outperforming Google. And that was like the crazy retail stock. So Abercrombie is that now, I guess. I can't explain it though. Yeah, like a lot of athleisure stuff. Right? I mean, it looks like a regular it's, I don't know. Hang on. I'm going to compare this to Gap.

29:49So Gap has gone nowhere for or Gap is at the same price that first hit in 1998 right now. Oof. Okay. I don't know. All right. You know, one of my favorite Jerry Seinfeld bits is the newspaper thing where he says it's crazy that if you just take all the news from one day, it fits in those 16 pages or whatever. Jeremy Herpedal, which is one of my favorite econ myth busters on Twitter, looks at spending on food per family, and he says families spend less on food today than any point in the past. and it was like 44 % of a family budget went to food in 1900. It fell to 20 % by 1960 and it's 9 % today.

30:29And it's crazy that this was even, this didn't really go up that much higher. So 2021, it was 9.5%, 2022 is 9.9%. I know that we have a lot of other categories to spend on these days, but it's not like families spend less on food now and so they just save more money. It's that they spend less on food and they spend more on other things. is the family budget just the Jerry Seinfeld newspaper bit. That something gets way cheaper, but we fill that vacuum and that void with spending on something else. Like iPhones become a necessity, and computers, and internet, all this other stuff that we never paid for before fills the gap.

31:08Saving, spending, investing. That's it. Those are the three things you do. But I'm saying if one category, if we solved the energy thing tomorrow, like there was a, what's the rock in Avatar? The rock in Avatar. Ubiquium or something, whatever the name is. It's a cool name, I can't think of it. Whatever they're mining in Avatar. If we found on a meteor somewhere that hit the earth that like we don't need oil anymore, we don't need any energy sources, energy is solved, no one has to spend money on energy anymore, we would spend that money on something else. Yes. Is what I'm saying. Yeah. You save what you save and you spend the rest.

31:50I mean, I know that's like incredibly obvious. There's only so many things you could do with it. But yeah, you find a way to spend the money. Yes. I think that's what I'm saying. Okay. So it sounds like the UK and Japan are basically headed for a recession. Joey Politano broke it down by country. US, Canada, Italy, France, it's all the G7 countries. Britain just saw a decrease in GDP. Japan did too in the fourth quarter. U.S. is still way higher growth than anywhere else. Is the Fed getting too cute here? I know, yeah, inflation came in a little higher than expected last year, but if the rest of the world is slowing down and rolling over and potentially going into a recession, isn't it time to just cut rates already?

32:30Everyone keeps worrying about inflation re-accelerating and things getting... If the rest of the world is going into a recession, I don't know. Isn't that a bigger worry than, like, let's wait until September to cut or June or just cut already. What are they waiting for? I feel like that's a bigger risk to me than inflation reaccelerating and seeing the 1970s. Interesting. I know it's only one month, but we did just see consumer prices, producer prices go up. You're not worried about that? You think they should cut in March? I think this is probably going to be a blip without having any foresight into what inflation is going to look like going forward.

33:10But again, if the rest of the world is slowing, what is going to cause inflation? Is it just people keep spending money and wages are higher than inflation and that's what it is? I don't know. I think the Fed is to try not to get too cute here and just cut rates already and not mess around. And I feel like they're going to blow a tire on the landing here or something potentially. I think that's a bigger worry for me than inflation re-accelerating. So, Ben, you think that you have an article in here where you say everything is bad news. Explain yourself. All right. Someone sent this to me. Young adults are getting used to living on a financial cliff.

33:51Millennials and Gen Zers are pulling in bigger paychecks, but much of their spending power is fueling short-term purchases like groceries and vacations. That saves. Okay. Young adults' wealth is growing. Short-term purchases? I've never heard that phrase before. I know. Let me read this for you. Young adults' wealth is growing, but they're still living and spending in the here and now. Many feel they don't have a choice. The net worth of Americans 18 to 39 surged 80 % since the start of 2019. You and I talked about this, like the young people have seen the biggest increase of any age group. But much of the gains are from investments that climbed alongside stock markets and largely don't translate into disposable incomes.

34:22So while young people are pulling in bigger paychecks, they're still pumping that cash into pricier everyday expenses from essentials like rent. Of course, they're still spending on rent, literally have to regardless of the economy, to luxuries like leisure travel. I just feel like no one ever looks for a silver lining anymore. Like what's the opposite of a silver lining? You know, that's what people do these days is everything has to be bad news. And I think people just, I know there's part of it is the doom porn where people, more people will click and talk about this stuff. But I feel like some people just want to be miserable and they just can't accept good news for what it is.

34:53I think you're getting caught up in the news cycle. Like you're seeing articles. Articles are always pessimistic and they've been that way forever and ever and ever and ever. I feel like they're worse now than ever though. So that's the problem. I feel like the news media is beating us over the head with negativity. And for a certain subset of people, it's working. And it's making them more negative about everything. That's what I don't like. Just report the news. Don't give me your opinion on why you think it's bad every time, even though it's objectively good. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like it's always been that way.

35:22Maybe it's worse now than ever, but. I think it's worse now. Well, listen, I personally was not reading the news in the 1970s, so I don't know. Well, that's the thing. We didn't have as much access to news back then. There wasn't as much spin or analysis or opinion. All right. Fred Kruger. Is this a real Fred Kruger? Tweeted. He quote tweeted Matt Hogan. So Matt Hogan from Bitwise announced that their ETF crossed a billion dollars. And he said, Bitcoin ETF from small fund no one had ever heard of until a month ago. Scoops up$1 billion in assets in 30 days with eight other competitors in the mix.

36:00That's a good point. Obviously, we know who Bitwise is, but they're not a household brand, you know? No. The fact that they were able to get a billion dollars is pretty impressive. So I was underwhelmed by the Bitcoin ETF launch. You said I was being too pessimistic. I'm not going to say I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong, but I think the strength of the money still pouring in means that maybe I was too pessimistic at first. So iShares 1 now is$6 billion. Fidelity, Bitcoin ETF has$3.8 billion. Bitwise has$1.1 and ARK has$1.1. so those four big ones have over 10 billion now i'm impressed with the strength so i was underwhelmed at first and now i'm like i'm whelmed you're whelmed like well whelmed outflows into gbtc are slowing and flows into the etfs are still coming in so i'm i'm impressed with the continued strength of the flows that that this is more impressive to me than the initial burst of money that came in yeah i agree with that we'll never know for sure but i really don't think that a lot of the money, what is it,$8 billion?

37:03I don't know how much came out of GBTC since the ETF launch. I really don't think that most of that money is going into ETFs because unless it's in a retirement account, not a single person is dumb enough to pay capital gains in order to save 100 basis points or whatever it is. Yeah, and there was also a lot of people who were just making that trade for the arbitrage, and I feel like those people already closed it, right? For them, it was, I'll pay the taxes because I got a 40 % return on this in six months or whatever it is. And that, I think that that's done. Yeah, so it's impossible to, I'm gonna guess, I don't know, 10 to 15 % left GBTC and went into one of the ETFs.

37:47Yeah, so anyway, the continuous strength of the money going in is, that's impressive to me. And maybe it will get to, what did we say 20 billion was the line in the sand for us between right or wrong by the end of the year? I can't remember. I feel like there was a lot of goalposts movings. Will Clemente tweeted, roughly 70 % of Bitcoin supply still hasn't moved in at least a year, while ETFs are seeing$500 million of inflows a day. Don't need it to be an economics PhD to know what's set up to happen next. And that's more or less my thesis on Bitcoin. Yeah. Part of me thinks, though, that the 70 % of stuff that hasn't moved just never moves.

38:19So why does that ever matter? Yeah, that's fair. Right? So obviously it's going to be – that's why the margin is always going to move the price in this. But if that piece has literally never moved because all these people who got in earlier are just never going to sell, then the price is always set on the margin regardless. So, all right. We got an email. I would like to share my experience yesterday doing an$11 ,000 emergency transfer with Bitcoin with my experience doing international wire transfers. Done many wires over the years living in Southeast Asia as an American. Okay. Okay, so Bitcoin, copied and pasted one address, paid$2.38 in fees.

38:58Total time from my wallet to father-in-law's bank account was 90 minutes. That actually sounds kind of long, no? I'd be freaking out. Yeah, that's, yeah. Still quicker than wire transfer and such. He said, to be clear, the Bitcoin part took about 20 minutes while lightning is under one second. I'm not exactly sure what that means. Address is saved so I could send from a bookmark if I need to send again. wire transfer cannot initiate on evenings weekends or holidays yesterday was president's day and this is a life or death situation related to his heart need name of bank need a swift bic code which verifies the correct bank is being sent to but in my experience some weird holding companies okay uh need account number full name of account holder full address of account holder there's zero updates even if you call the banks they could sometimes see that a wire is in process but beyond that you get no status updates that's true too bank calls me to verify before beginning the wiring process.

39:51From my account to the other account takes from 24 to 96 hours. Oh, shit. Okay. I have to go through the whole thing again in full except maybe the bank. Okay. That's a lot. He said there are very few apps that cross any borders, Venmo, Cash App, et cetera. And there is zero that cross from the US to communist authoritarian-run nations. Not to mention spending limits through apps and moving to and from bank accounts. But Bitcoin still doesn't have a use case. That's obviously tongue-in-cheek. Hopefully someone will figure out something besides speculation with his pet rock. Shoulder shrug emoji.

40:21Well, interestingly enough, Citigroup just put out a report bringing traditional assets to digital networks, exploring tokenization of private markets. I do think that, I wrote a piece about this, that in order for crypto to really take it to the next level, it's got to do something other than just go up in price. Yes. Still waiting, but I agree. The whole transfer thing, that's always been the biggest use case to me, is like we're going to fix the rails of the financial system. It's like it's just will the financial system allow that to happen? Will the banks allow that to happen? Yeah. That makes the most sense to me.

40:58Okay. Redfin put out a story about housing demographics. The typical U.S. homeowner has spent 12 years in their home up from six and a half years two decades ago. Ben, what do you think is the reason for this? They have a great chart. Homeowner tenure has doubled since 2005. Yeah. Oh, I think a lot of it was back then people were flipping homes faster. So that was part of the bubble thing. And to me, a lot of people saying this is a bad thing because it reduces housing supply, which it does. But to me, this is a great thing. People are staying on houses longer. From an investment perspective, you're not paying those fees to switch your house all the time.

41:39The fees are egregious, the frictions to sell your home, realtor fees and closing costs. and it's expensive to sell your home. There's a lot of frictions involved. So people staying in their house longer is actually a good thing to me. I think it makes a lot of sense. The 3 % thing obviously is part of it, but this number has been going up since way before 3 % mortgages. So the article says that nearly 80 % of boomers own their home, nearly 80%. And if that's the case, and it is a case, what do you think about this statement? There won't be a retirement crisis. I tend to agree. A lot of people say, well, there's a lot of these people don't have retirement savings.

42:17But if you take the wealth they've made in their home and Social Security. Yeah, but tap that equity. Yes. There's going to be a need for a lot of equity tapping in the years ahead. Because that's the biggest asset for most people. 40 % of boomers have lived in their home for at least 20 years. Another 16 have lived for 10 to 19 years. For Gen Xers, more than one third have lived in the same home for at least 10 years. So I think for millennials, it's going to be different. I think they're going to be hopping around more. I don't think they're going to be happy. Oh, you do? What do you think? Do you think millennials are going to stick in their house?

42:49You're part of the problem, spreading this negativity. It's not negativity. I think millennials aren't going to be – I drove through an older part of town. My kids wanted to go to a park on President's Day that has these enormous slides, and it's far away. And I drove through an old neighborhood in Grand Rapids that is probably 1950s homes. And I just can't see millennials being okay staying in an older home for that long, I think their tastes are just different. I think a lot of baby boomers didn't grow up in the HETV era where they felt they need to always have the newest and best thing for their house.

43:26I think young people are going to have that mentality. How long are you going to stay in your farm style? What's the name of that house called? Oh, Modern Farmhouse? How long are you going to stay in that house? At least until the kids are in high school or out of high school, out of the house. But I have a 3 % mortgage. I'm not going to give that up. Yeah. And I have, yeah, no reason to change. This is Torsen's lock too. The share of U.S. population that has moved in the previous year was as high as 20 % in the mid-80s. And now down to 8%, call it. People are moving less. Again, I think that people say that that's a bad thing for the dynamism of the economy.

44:06But I think you could make the case that this will remain lower because people are going to stay in their houses longer. and because of the work for home trend. People don't need to move to a different city anymore to get a better job. So I think this number is going to stay low. All right, I can't imagine what the bearish case would be for housing because if 8 % mortgages after a 50 % increase in three years didn't do it, I don't know what will. Kevin Oakley tweeted this. Website traffic for home builders hits an all-time new high post-Super Bowl. Conversions are still lagging, but this is people on the hunt for a new place to call home.

44:41All-time high. Again, maybe the boomers selling their houses in 2030s will have an impact, but I think for the foreseeable future, call it three to five to seven years, even a recession, I don't know if that's going to put a dent in the housing market. Is that too rose-colored? What would be the reason to be bearish on housing? Unless mortgage rates stayed at 8 % for five years. I have no reason to be bearish on housing in the U.S. The price of housing. Maybe that sounds, throw it in my face in the future if you want. I see no reason to be bearish. The price of housing. But 66 % of people already own a home.

45:18No, I'm asking you. Bearish on price? Yeah, if you're bearish on prices. What would cause you to be bearish on prices? If 8 % mortgages didn't do it, what's going to? No, house prices are not going down. So I like the Wall Street Journal's real estate section. And they had this, I think it's good anecdotal evidence of the housing market. So they had this piece on this neighborhood in Beverly Hills called Beverlywood. Sorry, I couldn't get it out there. I needed like a change of battery there. So they interviewed, they said over the last 10 years, this Beverlywood neighborhood has blown up. And the guy, this realtor says, 10 to 15 years ago, you used to be able to buy a house for$200 ,000 to$300 ,000.

46:00Today, you can't buy land on any of the prime streets for less than$3 million. $3 million buys you a 6 ,500-square-foot lot. And I'm sure there's a little bit of exaggeration here. There's no way that stuff went from$200 ,000 to$300 ,000 to$3 million for a lot. But they're basically saying a$2 million home now attracts a circus in most cases. If you price conservatively, you're looking at 10 to 20 offers of houses going$100 ,000 or more than asking. Isn't it crazy how all of a sudden a market will just wake up to the new realities of, I don't know, 10 years ago, you could have bought an affordable house in this neighborhood.

46:33Now, good luck. It's never going to happen again probably. It's just like markets just kind of wake up to this new reality. Like there's a flip that just switched those flipped. Driving around Fort Lauderdale, all of these houses on the water with yachts in the backyard. Where is all this money coming from? I pulled up the real estate prices for the keys where we were to. All these houses are seven million bucks. Look at the Zillow one I put in here. And my wife and I were talking. So we've talked in the recent weeks about Florida home insurance and how expensive it is. They don't seem to care because driving through the Keys, it's so tiny.

47:12If a hurricane came through there, it's just, it's gone, basically. It's like - They got hurricanes now. That's what I'm saying. If a hurricane came through, there's no protection there. But I guess people just don't seem to care. Is it just the simple fact that baby boomers are retiring? We said 4 million baby boomers retiring every year. Is that the thing that's just propping up Florida housing prices? Like, they just don't care? Listen, I'm retiring. I don't care if there's a hurricane that comes through. I want to live on the beach. I don't care if housing insurance is high. I have money. I'm moving to Florida.

47:44You're going to pay higher prices. Also, side note, is Florida the worst state for driving of any state in the United States? Oh, my Lord, they're bad drivers there. And I don't think it's the old people. We drove from Miami to the Keys on our trip. and just like the left lane people and the going way slower than the speed, people are in like cutting across lanes and I don't think it's even old people. I think it's mostly like tourists and people from different states. I think it's the cultural problems that you have people from all different driving cultures. Florida has to be, this is recency bias maybe, they have to have the worst drivers ever of any state.

48:17How is the drive to the kids? It's a fun drive that you'd want to do maybe once in your life. Why? Because it's like a two lane road the whole way. It's very slow. It's like one road going the whole way down there. So here's another thing about, you saw this story about in Dana Point, California, how there's like these huge$15 million mansions that are about to fall in the water. I did not see that story. Okay, look at this picture. That picture is wild. Wow. Okay. That would keep me up at night. So they're saying, the funniest quote tweet on Twitter was, it's like, this is a$16 million home that's about to fall in the water because of a mudslide.

48:53And the person said, I don't think that$16 million reflects true market value anymore, which is kind of funny. But look at how close they built these houses to the cliff. This is rich person overconfidence. Only a rich person would look at this cliff and say, let's build six inches to the edge. We'll be fine. Only a rich person would do this. Like an obscenely rich person would look at this and say, yeah, that looks safe. We live in the state on a huge fault line with earthquakes all the time and mudslides. Let's build right up to the edge of the cliff. Yeah, what's the insurance for that house?

49:26So anyway, that's another thing with Florida, why people keep just paying the high prices. I think it's rich person overconfidence. Here we go. Americans are bad at the economy. Round two survey. Two thirds of Americans believe the economy is worse than the media makes it out rather than better. So it's not just the media that's negative. It's people. 82 % of Republicans and 66 % of independents believe the economy is worse than the media's portrayal. And nearly half of Democrats also said the media viewed the economy too favorably. I've been hitting on media for causing too much negatively. People say it's actually worse.

50:0075 % of those polled wrongfully believe that wages aren't keeping up with inflation. That view is held by the majority of Republicans, independents, and Democrats. In August, the unemployment rate was 3.8%, close to a 50-year low. The poll found that 51 % wrongly believe unemployment is at a 50-year high. Oh, boy. Once again, Americans are bad at the economy. I rest my case. And I don't think it's going to get better. I don't know what's going to help. Oh, maybe prices continue to moderate? I think the echo chamber of social media, and I think it's too far gone. All right. The journal did a piece on Dave Ramsey.

50:45The title was, Dave Ramsey tells millions what to do with their money. people under 40 say he's wrong. On their own, for the first time, young professionals are craving sound financial advice. They just don't want to hear from Dave Ramsey. The well-known and intensely followed 63-year-old conservative Christian radio host has 4.4 million Instagram followers and 1.9 million TikTok followers. Wow. And Lege is more who listened to his radio show and podcast. His message is brutal and direct. Avoid debt at all costs. Pay for everything in cash. Embrace frugality. This is kind of wild. A University of Copenhagen researcher conducted a study that found that when Ramsey's radio show entered a new market between 2004 and 2019, households in those cities decreased their monthly expenditures by at least 5.4%.

51:29It sounds almost impossible, but - I don't believe that. There's no way. Yeah. Somebody tweeted, I can't remember who's - did this. Somebody tweeted, Dave Ramsey is a walking recession. That's not bad. But plenty of 20 and 30-year-olds are pushing back largely on TikTok. The hashtag Dave Ramsey wouldn't approve has 66 million views. Many say they don't want to eat rice and beans every night, a popular Ramsey trope, or hold down multiple jobs to pay off a loan. They also say Ramsey is out of touch with reality, with their reality. Yeah, that's probably about right. So here's – I have two thoughts on this.

52:04One is it's okay to put context around financial advice. And Dave Ramsey has a very hard line on stuff. and I think it's okay to put context around it and say his advice might work for some people but not everyone, that's fine. I don't think, I don't like the idea of young people pushing back and saying, I'm going to be screwed financially because woe is me, I'm just going to doom spend and whatever, I'm not going to plan ahead for my future. That I don't like. If that's what they're pushing back on, that's the wrong strategy to take. Yeah, I agree. I'm not a board of that. I also think this doom spending culture to the extent that it even exists and it's not something the media made up, But I mean, that's something young people, that's not a forever thing, right?

52:41No. But you also know that, listen, young people who can't afford a house right now have the highest incomes they've ever had, and they also are richer than they've ever been. What else are they supposed to spend their money on? Of course, they're going to blow their money on stuff. I feel like we said this last week. Every young person feels like homeownership is out of reach. Yes. Now, it's true that homeownership today is super unaffordable, but it's always been that way. Maybe not always. But as a young person, the idea that you're going to be able to save up enough for a mortgage or a down payment seems – has probably forever seemed – And yet young people are still on track versus older generations.

53:15All right. You read this piece about the woman who is a business reporter and got scammed out of$50 ,000? No. Bring me up to speed. Okay. You're out of touch, man. I've unblocked. I've unblocked. Okay. So there's this – there was this piece going on, and she's a business reporter. she got a call from Amazon and they put her in touch with someone who claimed to be part of the CIA. I'm yada-yada-ing over a bunch of the details, but she handed someone over a box of$50 ,000 in cash through her window in a shoebox. Got scammed. These people said, we're part of the CIA. You can't tell your husband. You can't tell a lawyer.

53:49Give us 50 grand and we're going to give you 50 grand back tomorrow and it's going to solve all your problems. And she got scammed. And her whole point was like, listen, I'm not the person who can fall for a scam. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. And of course, everyone dunked on this saying, no, you're just an idiot. What do you, what's wrong with you? But here's my take though. People are going to get scammed out of so much money from AI. Like you say, there's going to be no retirement crisis from the boomers. Think about how many baby boomers are going to get scammed by AI scams in the years ahead.

54:19There is going to be a wave of financial scams on like anything we've ever seen as AI comes and it's the new, new thing that people aren't paying attention for yet. People are going to get scammed out of so much money. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. All right. Recommendations. i have you ever seen the good shepherd i saw it in the theater and i hated it you saw it in the theater that's all i remember yes it was matt damon and angeline jolly who else is in it de niro it has an incredible cast let's see so it came out in 2006 it did 100 million dollars at the box office which that would never happen today never ever it was just it was it was not good and i never watched it again listen to this cast matt damon he's really the main character Bobby D, Angelina Jolie Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt Billy Crudup Eddie Redmayne he's the guy that played Stephen Hawking I think in that movie Michael Gambon who played Dumbledore, John Turturro I mean just a wildly good cast and yeah the movie kind of sucked I mean I didn't hate it like it just it was probably like a 6.4 Just not great.

55:33How do we still have airplanes without a screen on the seat in front of you? I feel like the last four planes I've taken have no screen. Ooh. I only fly Delta. I flew American for some reason. What else did I watch? Oh, American Assassin is on Netflix. You ever see that one? No, what's that? It's just garbage. It's a garbage action movie. Michael Keaton? Would I like it or not? do you like garbage action movies? My son would like it, I guess. No, I don't know. It's not for him. It's very violent. Okay. It was fun. What else? Oh, I already mentioned 22 Jump Street. I heard you talking about True Detective with Duncan.

56:15So, the ending was not good. We agree? Yeah. So, it turns out that, like, there really wasn't anything supernatural going on? Yeah, it was just... So, but I have an unusual take, I think. I didn't like the ending. How could you? I didn't like hate watching the show. Outside of episode four, I had like a decent time watching it, even though I didn't like it. Does that make sense? I was just confused. So I do, I don't read as much as I used to in the past. So I read a lot on planes now since I don't have a screen in front of me. So there's this new book by this guy called Ed Zwick. It's called Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions.

56:54He is a director, a producer, a writer of glory, Shakespeare in Love, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, My So-Called Life, like really plugged in guy. And he he he tells a bunch of Hollywood stories. And in between this chapter, he gives creative advice he's learned from directors, producers, actors, actresses over the years. And he put in here from Cindy Pollack. He said, listen, kid, plot is the rotting meat the burglar throws to the dog so we can climb over the fence and get the jewels, which are the characters. and I thought of that as I read that quote I thought of this show like the plot was okay like the twist ending was actually okay but I didn't care about one character in the whole show because they made them all so unlikable yeah they didn't give me anything with the characters right I don't remember I don't even remember the plot from season one of True Detective but I loved McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's characters so much that's what was so good about it so yeah it wasn't it was disappointing it was disappointing All right.

57:54So I, and the character thing is what draws me in. So I started Mr. and Mrs. Smith last night on Amazon. It's Donald Glover and Maya Erksine who was in the, remember that plus one rom-com someone gave us on this? Oh, I like that. Yeah, she's in this. It's like 10 minutes into the show. It's like, I'm in. Really? It's like the way that, it's a spy. I'm really into spy stuff lately, apparently. So the last two episodes of Slow Horses was just two of the best episodes of an action spy thing I've ever seen. It was so good. But Mr. and Mrs. Smith... You do love counterterrorism. It was very good. But Mr.

58:27and Mrs. Smith is... It's a take on the movie, but they take it in a different direction. And just the first five minutes of the show, you're either in or you're out. And I was completely in. I watched one episode, and I think it's going to be really good. I'm in on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It's on Amazon Prime. I was listening to the rewatchables, the Forrest Gump rewatchables. Where do you stand in Forrest Gump? I mean it's one of the greatest movies ever okay I just was making sure of it they can poke holes in if you want yeah I mean certainly a lot of nits to pick but there were they played a line from that maybe you could be like it's like the people who hate friends are also people who hate Forrest Gump like come on how do you hate Forrest Gump but I was I cried listening to a clip that they played I can't remember which one it was but what a what an amazing movie I saw that twice in the theater Really?

59:18What year was that? 94? Something like that, yeah. Great movie. You need to go out and get some sun. It'll make you feel better. Sit by the pool, get some sun. How many times a day are you putting sunscreen on? Six? Yeah, I'm not sure what's... I don't know if it's in my head. I don't feel good. I physically don't feel good. Thank you for carrying me during this episode. Go have three beers by the pool and pass out for an hour. No, no, no, no, no, no. That'll totally help. You can't get a hangover in the sun. It's true. Wait, what?

59:50But doesn't that feel like it? You don't get as bad of hangovers when you're in a nice place. I think that's science. Test it out for me. The sun is like my kryptonite. All right. Animal Spirits at thecompoundnews.com. See you next time.

1:00:16We'll be right back.