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Join John Rush and his guests for a lively discussion on the latest media merger buzz as Paramount and Netflix go head-to-head in a bid for Warner Brothers. Explore the implications for consumers as these media giants collide and delve into the potential antitrust concerns arising from such a shake-up. John Rush, along with America’s Money Answer Man Jordan Goodman, provide expert insight into how these changes might transform the streaming landscape and what it means for Hollywood as a production hub.
SPEAKER 04 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 13 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes. With your host, John Rush. My advice to you is to do what your parents did. Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 13 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 12 :
And it is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Appreciate you all listening today, by the way. A little bit gloomy here on this Tuesday, but warmer out. So, Andy Pate, how are you today? I am doing well, sir. How are you? Always a joy. I’m doing great, by the way. We’ve got several things to talk about. Today we’ll show a little bit differently. We normally do, of course, three hours every day. Today we’ve got our Christmas party tonight here at Crawford Broadcasting, so we’ll shorten the show up an hour. So two hours, so you’ll still hear a full four-hour show, but you’ll hear the first two hours repeated. Are you a Christmas cheer kind of guy? I like Christmas. I mean, it’s not like my favorite of all time, but yeah, I like Christmas.
SPEAKER 05 :
What’s your favorite holiday?
SPEAKER 12 :
What is my favorite holiday? Fourth of July.
SPEAKER 05 :
See, I’m kind of like your son. I’m a Thanksgiving and all the football kind of guy.
SPEAKER 12 :
I just like Fourth of July because it’s the middle of summer. But that’s just me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
You like the heat. I like the summertime. So, yes. So, for me, yes, Fourth of July. And, again, I like Christmas. But, you know, is it my favorite? No, I just told you my favorite’s Fourth of July. Actually, it’s Valentine’s Day, Andy.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I’ve heard on Christmas, everywhere he goes, Jordan Goodman has some mistletoe that he hangs in the air in front of him.
SPEAKER 12 :
Is that true, Jordan?
SPEAKER 10 :
That is true.
SPEAKER 12 :
That is true?
SPEAKER 05 :
I was suspecting that, yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
Jordan, joining us again, Jordan Goodman, America’s Money Answer Man. I wish you Merry Christmas, Jordan.
SPEAKER 10 :
Merry Christmas to you.
SPEAKER 12 :
Our last show of the year. We’ll do more next year, of course, but our last show for this year.
SPEAKER 10 :
In quite a year. It’s been quite a year since I’ve done a lot of ups.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yep. Every year brings on different challenges and things and so on. So let’s get into it. One of the first things, Andy and I talked about this last week, although some things have changed since the Netflix announcement to take over Warner Brothers, because now there’s another, at least last I checked, there was another offer on the table that upped it to $77 billion. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 10 :
Even more than that. Paramount. Over $100.
SPEAKER 12 :
$100 now. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
$100 billion. Yeah, you’re always understating these things, John.
SPEAKER 12 :
I didn’t look at the news today.
SPEAKER 05 :
Jordan, isn’t Paramount offering about $30 a share and it’s all cash? So you don’t have to take any risk with Netflix on how Netflix is going to, you know, are they going to go up or are they going to go down?
SPEAKER 10 :
And they’re saying they may go higher. They’re not saying it’s their best and final offer. So they’re saying, you know, come into the tent at 30 and maybe we’ll go higher, because Netflix may have to respond. So Netflix is not going to buy all of Warner Brothers Discovery. They would spin off the cable channels, which is CNN, TBS, and TNT, onto a separate company, which would be a very small company. What they want is the Warner Brothers studios, both TV and film. And HBO is a big one there, too. Right. So combining HBO and Netflix is two of the largest streamers out there, and they just make them that much more powerful. So some people are saying it’s really an antitrust threat, and it’s going to take away outlets for creative people to sell to and mean less choice for consumers. Netflix is saying it’s going to make them stronger and allow them to create more content and make it a better experience for consumers. Paramount would buy the entire thing. They would buy CNN and TNT and TBS with it. So you’d combine CNN and CBS in the same company, for example. And they’re willing to pay all cash. I mean, they’re paying cash. They’re raising a lot of debt to do it, but they’re paying cash. And they felt they were not treated fairly during the whole process. So they’re basically suing, and now they’ve come with a solicitation, a so-called tender offer directly to the shareholders. So it’s going to be an extended battle. It might take a year or longer. But in the end, Warner Brothers Discovery is not going to be independent. We know that. We don’t know who they’re going to end up with, but it’s a major, major shakeup in the whole media landscape.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and also Paramount Skydance, what they can offer is very simply a much smoother path to getting all this to go through. In theory. Right, to getting it finalized. I mean, look, the fact is, you know, the current administration is going to be more favorable to them than to Netflix doing this. Yeah, Paramount Skydance.
SPEAKER 10 :
Trump likes the Ellison brothers a lot, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, yeah. But what I wanted to ask, though, is what if the Paramount Skydance one goes through and they buy everything? Does that mean that CNN and these various agencies are totally unaffected then, or do they still have to go through some sort of change?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I mean, if Paramount owns it, Paramount can do what they want editorially, and they have done that at CBS News. They put in this Barry Weiss, who ran something called… Freedom Watch or something like that. It was kind of a conservative website. And she put in all kinds of changes to CBS News, including laying off about 2,000 people very quickly and caused the resignation of the executive producer of 60 Minutes and even John Dickerson, the anchor of the CBS Evening News, was leaving at the end of the year because he didn’t like what Barry Weiss was doing. So Yes, when Paramount owns it, they do what they want, and they would probably change CNN a lot. Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I mean, is there a problem, though? Netflix is much larger than Paramount Skydance. I mean, their base value is several times what Paramount is, right? So don’t they just have more resources?
SPEAKER 10 :
Warner Brothers Discovery is much larger than Paramount. This is a mouse eating a lion here. Right, right. Yes. But so on the antitrust grounds, okay, on the Warner Brothers, Discovery, Paramount, you’d be combining two of the largest movie studios, Warner Brothers and Paramount. And you’d be combining two of the largest news services, CNN and CBS. So, I mean, there are potentially, you know, overlaps there that antitrust people could worry about. But Netflix, the real competition is in the streaming area, which obviously is where the growth is. And having HBO… and Netflix under one roof. And everything else that Warner Brothers brings to it. I mean, it brings sports, it brings just all kinds of things. So we’ll see. I mean, something’s going to go through, but it’s going to be… Let’s put it this way. The lawyers are going to get rich, as they always do on these things.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, no, that’s true. Yeah, good point. How does this, at the end of the day… Well, hang on, let me back up. Netflix, will they come back with a higher offer, or what are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER 10 :
I think they may have to. I mean, their current offer is, I think, $27… and 75 cents, of which 85% is cash and 15% is Netflix stock, which, of course, has done spectacularly well for a long time. It’s been one of the biggest winners of all time. Now, after the merger announcement was made, Netflix stock went down. So they have what’s called a collar. If it goes below a certain level, Netflix will make up the difference with cash. But it’s not all cash the way Paramount’s offer is. So if necessary, they have to sweeten it up. They’re going to have a vote to the shareholders, and when they tender to the shareholders, that means the shareholders can say, I’m going to take the Paramount offer of $30 a share cash instead of the Netflix offer, and that puts a lot of pressure on Netflix to raise their bid. So we’ve seen these before. This is the beginning, not the end of this process.
SPEAKER 12 :
At the end of the day, how does this help or change things for the consumer, or does it?
SPEAKER 10 :
I think it could change things for consumers a lot. One of the several constituencies are very worried about this. One of them is the theater owners. I mean, they’re very much worried that Netflix would take the movies that Warner Brothers is producing and not bring them to theaters, but put them on Netflix. Or maybe have very limited release. I mean, Netflix puts some films out in theaters briefly, a little bit. But, I mean, obviously, Warner Brothers is, I think, about 15% of the films that are shown every year. So that would be a big thing for them to even reduce it, never mind take it out altogether. So that would be a fact. There’s a big concern in the creative community and the people who are making films and everybody involved with it, scriptwriters and actors and all the technical people involved, that there would just be fewer productions. You’re combining, you know, two huge… production houses, which is Warner Brothers, HBO, with Netflix. Netflix spends about $18 billion a year on new content. Just huge. I think they’re probably the biggest. And obviously Warner Brothers and HBO do the same thing. So you’re probably not just going to add the two together and do that. They’ll probably end up producing less. So there’s a concern among the creative community Hollywood’s already in trouble as it is. Hollywood’s been having a really hard time producing movies that people really want to go see, and their production costs have gone up. Yeah, go woke, go broke.
SPEAKER 12 :
They haven’t quite figured that one out yet.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, and a lot of films are not being produced in Hollywood anymore. They’re being produced in Canada and all over the place. So Hollywood’s been having a hard time, and they just think this would make it even harder.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, Vancouver’s doing very well on the flip side, but they’re not in America.
SPEAKER 10 :
Other places are becoming a film because they’re just much cheaper, and they work just fine. So this is another blow from the Hollywood point of view. This is another blow to Hollywood.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, at that point, though, Jordan, that comes down to their governor. I’m serious. Okay. Newsom and the mayor and everybody in charge of the government there around Hollywood, they got to lower their taxes. They got to lower the cost. They got to lower the unionization of the workforce. They got to lower all the things that are driving the cost through the roof. I have seen producers basically say this. I can take the entire manpower that I use on my team, fly them all at first class, and put them up in the best accommodations anywhere around the world and film there for six months, okay, three to six months, whatever, and then come back and spend all that money, come back, and still spend less than filming in Hollywood. It’s just too expensive. They’ve got to cut costs.
SPEAKER 10 :
Not happening. Then they’re going to lose the industry. But they had that strike where basically the actors and writers won. It was a long strike. It was a very bitter strike. But they got big raises on it. I think it was 25% raise or something like that. So the costs are going up. And you say taxes, labor, regulations, cost of real estate and everything else, you know, They’re pricing themselves out of the market and moving a lot of productions to other places overseas because of it.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yep. All right, great segue. Real quick, though, before we go to break, Jordan, how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan at MoneyAnswers.com is my email. Always glad to get emails from your folks.
SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 12 :
And we are back, Jordan Goodman, America’s Money Answer Man with us today, myself, Andy Pate. All right, Venezuela, which I don’t think we’re going to end up with a war there. I don’t necessarily agree with what Trump is doing, although I think there’s just a lot of saber rattling going on, Jordan. I don’t see any ground issues ever happening, you know, ground wars happening there. I think it’s Trump’s way of making some things happen. And I said this even last week. that whole country needs a complete uplift. They’ve got, you know, just massive amounts of wealth as a country that are not being tapped into because of the corrupt government that’s there.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, that’s for sure. The question is how to get Maduro out of there. I mean, we’ve amassed quite a bunch of military assets there. We’ve got the Gerald Ford, we’ve got submarines, we’ve got destroyers, B-2 bombers, we’ve turned Puerto Rico into a military base. We’re ready to invade there. And, uh, It’s hard to believe all are just going to sit there and do nothing. We’re trying to do something. You don’t need that kind of firepower just to shoot fishing boats out of the water. You need a lot more than that. So we’ll see. I mean, President Trump has said he’s going to be a land port of this thing. So, I mean, it could go either way. It could be a quick… Maduro, he doesn’t have much public support at all. He lost the last election, like, 70-30. And maybe the army would turn on him, and it could be over with quickly. It would be like Assad. He could run off to Russia or something. That would be a good solution. The bad side is it could be a protracted war, and he’s got quite a military, and he brings in paramilitaries from Colombia and Bolivia and other places, and we have a new Vietnam on our hands. So I hope it doesn’t turn to that, but He’s going ahead and Trump’s going ahead and doing this without any congressional oversight or approval at all, which I don’t think is what the War Powers Act had in mind after Vietnam.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, personally, I don’t think it would stretch out very long at all. I think it would be over rather quickly. But do we really want to get in the regime change business?
SPEAKER 10 :
Supposedly, America First was not about that. But in this case, we’ve been doing so. I mean, Venezuela’s… It’s a very poor country now, but it has the potential to be very rich, because they have tremendous oil reserves there. I mean, it was doing really well for a long time, and then Chavez first, and then Maduro just ran it into the ground, nationalized all the oil facilities, all the smart people left town. They’ve had a lot of refugees. Sounds like a Mamdani approach. Sounds like a New York approach. It is. Mamdani North. Well, Mamdani is North. Venezuela York.
SPEAKER 12 :
Mamdani South. Venezuela York. Yeah. I’m sorry to laugh, but it just shows you over and over again that doesn’t work.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, they’re going to learn something in New York. See, they’re going to give everything away for free, and everybody will be happy, and he’ll get reelected.
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s the way it’s going to work in New York. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
You might be right, actually.
SPEAKER 12 :
We’ll see.
SPEAKER 10 :
They use the revenues from oil to give away a lot of stuff for free. and everybody was happy for a while, and then the oil revenues kind of ran out, and they ran into the ground. You know, Margaret Thatcher famously said, socialism and communism works very well until you run out of other people’s money to spend.
SPEAKER 11 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 10 :
And that’s the case in Venezuela. They ran out of money. So we’ll see, but I just don’t think we’re going to have the Gerald Ford and all these military assets just sitting there for years doing nothing.
SPEAKER 12 :
What does the market think?
SPEAKER 10 :
So the market is concerned about oil. I mean, the upside, if we do take them out, bring in, I mean, the new Nobel Peace Prize winner, I think her name is Maturo, is ready to go, and she would be very friendly to the United States, and pump more oil, which would be good, or lower the price of oil, which is already, like, 57. It’s already come down a good bit this year. So that would be positive for the markets. An extended Vietnam-like war would be bad for us. So we’ve already got a terrible war going on with Ukraine and Russia that’s using up our resources and Europeans. So I think that’s the way the market would look at it.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, I can’t disagree with any of that, and I’m more on Andy’s side. I don’t see anything. Honestly, if something happens on the ground, I’ll be shocked.
SPEAKER 05 :
Me too.
SPEAKER 12 :
I get it. There’s a lot of resources there, but those resources are someplace anyways. I mean, they’re out at sea no matter what. The reality is park them there, rattle that saber a little more, shake some things loose if need be, and off you go.
SPEAKER 10 :
Because if some ships are off, are you just going to resign and go to Russia or Cuba?
SPEAKER 12 :
I think he knows his days are numbered.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think the biggest problem, Jordan, for Maduro is the more of these boats we blow out of the water, that’s money not going back. Correct. And so that’s a lot less money for him to redistribute, especially into his own pocket. I think what we are doing already in the high seas is severely damaging him. That’s why I don’t see the need for an incursion. personally.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, it’s something, but I think most of the drugs, as I understand it, go over land. I mean, some go by sea, but not the majority.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, but we’re intercepting, I agree, but we’re intercepting a lot of that too. And our border has just become a lot tougher to get through.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, fentanyl comes mostly through Mexico, not through Venezuela, is my understanding.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, actually, a lot of it comes from China through places like Venezuela that then take the boats around and drop back off in the lower area of South America and run up above Panama and so on and run up that way. So believe me, our government knows exactly what they’re doing. And the guys like Chuck Schumer, who, by the way, is an absolute utter moron saying that this is liquid fish food. What an idiot that guy is.
SPEAKER 10 :
OK, well, we’ll see. Anyway, hopefully one way or the other, we’ll know. I just can’t believe we’re just going to have this huge military build up there and do nothing for a long time.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, honestly, I would believe it. And the reason is this. It’s Donald Trump. Donald Trump believes in building leverage, building off the threat. And one moment he’ll act on the threat and take out a nuke site in Iran. And the next moment he won’t. Act on it. And we also saw this, by the way, in all his tariff negotiations. There were so many things that he said he would do that he didn’t. And then so many that he said he would do that he did. The thing about Donald Trump. Well, yeah, but I this is something. Where I actually agree with Donald Trump a lot. And Jordan, there are times I don’t agree with him. I don’t like the idea of an incursion into that country. I don’t. Okay. But overall, I love his foreign policy. Why? Because it’s not so predictable. If you are a total interventionist or a total isolationist, the world can play you like a drum. Okay. But if they don’t know what you’re going to do and follow through on, then you’ve got leverage. And I think that’s what he’s doing right now.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I can’t disagree with that. Well, the leverage we’re trying to do is to get Maduro out, and I don’t think he’s going to go voluntarily. Maybe they’ll assassinate him or something, but he’s going to go down, unless it’s like Assad. I mean, Assad saw those fighting on the war, and he got out of Syria before they start tearing down his statues. Right. That is possible. He’s very, very unpopular. That’s what I’m looking at.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, I agree with that. All right, let’s move on to the economy and the report out of ADP and just other things that are happening when it comes to the job end of things. And this will dovetail, of course, into what the Fed actually does tomorrow. Let’s talk about that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. So we haven’t been getting our normal statistics because the government was shut down for 43 days. But ADP, which has all the payroll information, announced last week a loss of 32,000 jobs in November. The previous month in October, it had been a gain of 47,000 jobs. That’s the first job loss we’ve had in a very, very long time. So tomorrow, the Fed makes its decision. Everybody on Wall Street is expecting them to cut rates by a quarter point because of the weak job numbers to a large extent. They’re going to get another report for unemployment December 16th, a week from now after this is all decided. But the Fed’s going on kind of partial information here right now. It could be a very contentious board meeting. I mean, there might be five or six dissents either direction. There’s some people on the board that want to keep rates where they are, maybe even raise them. And there’s other people who think we should lower them. And some people think we should lower them more aggressively, even more than a quarter point, like Miron, the guy who was recently appointed by Trump. The most we’ve ever had was two dissents out of the 12 votes, and that was last October. We haven’t had any dissents like that in 30 years. This may be five or six dissents. Maybe it’s six-six, and maybe Powell will have to decide personally which way things go. That would be exciting.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, and in his case, he probably won’t do anything because he doesn’t want the economy doing anything.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think he’ll cut a quarter point, but that is basically doing far less than we should be doing right now. It should be cut more.
SPEAKER 10 :
I mean, look, inflation is still higher. I mean, inflation officially, the latest numbers was 2.8%, which is not 2%. And it’s not been going down. It’s been kind of hanging in there about 2.7, 2.8. And so their official target is 2%, and we’re not getting there lately.
SPEAKER 12 :
No, and that’s because of them. I’ve explained this a gazillion times, Jordan. You’re not going to see 2% when they keep rates where they’re at because all of those costs that businesses like myself incur, including the line of credits and so on, get passed on to the consumer. Right now, the Fed has as much to do with the interest rates being where they’re at or inflation being where it’s at because of their rates as anything else. And I don’t understand why they can’t figure that out. I’m a guy with no college education. I can figure that out, Jordan. Why can’t they?
SPEAKER 10 :
They’ve got a thousand PhD economists there, so it’s too much for them to figure out.
SPEAKER 12 :
They’re all morons. I’m sorry to say. I mean, I’m being very honest, Jordan. They’re morons. Do they not live in the real world like I do and see the same things I see? No, they don’t. They live in a bubble in Washington. And that is a problem.
SPEAKER 05 :
Jordan, I learned more economically just listening to you and John than I ever do listening to them. And I’ve seen many of them on TV talking about why they would not lower the rates as fast. Look, the bottom line is they’ve been wrong. They were predicting much higher inflation than this. They’re saying, well, it’s got to be 2%. Why? Why is 2% the magic number? The fact is it’s under 3%. It’s nowhere near it was during the Biden years. Right. And we are thriving, and what’s more important is wages are rising faster than inflation right now.
SPEAKER 12 :
And if they would get the housing market back up and at them, all of this would even be a different conversation, Jordan.
SPEAKER 10 :
But it’s going to take a while. I mean, even if they cut rates a quarter point and then continue to cut… I mean, mortgage rates are still like 6.5%. I mean, they’re still pretty high, not affordable for a lot of people on top of home price.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, you come down a full point. That’s why they need to do half-point cuts instead of quarter-point cuts, because they’re not doing that. That’s the problem.
SPEAKER 05 :
Every one of these cuts should have been a half-point.
SPEAKER 12 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, we’d be at a much—I mean, if they cut tomorrow, which is likely, that would be 1.75 points in the last year and a half, which is something. It would have been like— Four and a half, that’ll be in the three and a half range.
SPEAKER 12 :
And we ought to be at two and a half.
SPEAKER 10 :
The other uncertainty is tariffs. But, Jordan, that’s another one I’ll keep arguing on.
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s not uncertain. There’s been plenty of time to figure out exactly what’s happening, and the reality is all of the naysayers, the predictors that said we’d have runaway inflation from tariffs, it just hasn’t happened. And I’ve explained on this program many times why.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, but really quick here, Jordan. I’ve got a good friend. My wife and I hosted a party this weekend, okay? And a good friend of mine was there, and he sells Porsche. He sells Porsches here. He actually owns a dealership here. And he said, because obviously it’s a foreign car, they have a 25% tariff that has been imposed through Trump. And I said, okay, how much is the home company eating of that? And he said roughly 70%. And so, yeah. And he said they they are eating the lion’s share of the tariff through cutting. And they’re not the only.
SPEAKER 12 :
And by the way, they’re not the only company that’s that’s doing that. Jordan, I’ve explained again many times on this program whereby the majority of the exporters have done several different things to absorb those costs. And you just haven’t seen the price increases here in America that everybody predicted. And it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen, period.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, these companies have done that, and they’ve tried not to raise prices as much as possible, but I don’t know if they can keep eating that amount forever.
SPEAKER 12 :
They can, because a lot of them, Jordan, had absorbed, and this is my take on things, and I’m not against big business by any means. You know my take on things that way. I’m a capitalist through and through, but I’ll tell you right now, there has been a ton of price gouging throughout the years on a lot of these imports that have come in from other countries, and they have made a fortune, and it’s high time they started paying their fair share of And frankly, they are now. And the reality is they are because they’re absorbing a lot of those costs. It’s not getting passed on to the end consumer, nor will it be.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And by the way, with the Porsche dealer, he said they are going to continue eating that exact cost. He said that’s now baked in. That’s their decision. That’s what it’s going to stay at.
SPEAKER 10 :
So all of us could get upset over the next two or three weeks. when the Supreme Court comes out with a decision on whether these tariffs are legal in the first place. We talked about this last month a little bit, but we’re going to get closer. We’re not sure exactly when they’re going to come out with the decision, probably late December, early January, something like that. But this could upset the entire apple cart. President Trump has been doing these tariffs on what I would call whim. I mean, he likes them. They’re up, they’re down, they’re in, they’re out. It has nothing to do with Congress whatsoever. They’ve had no input from Congress on any of these tariffs at all. And the law that he is depending on to do this is the 1977 Emergency Act, which talks about sanctions but not tariffs. And the Supreme Court could very well decide he does not have the legal authority to do these things. This is something Congress should at least approve, if not negotiate. uh… and if they decide these tariffs are not legal which i think that’s the way it’s going to go that will upset the entire apple cart here because that’s been the major economic lever he’s been using to get the old domestically and internationally of all types and that his his tools going to be taken away and i don’t think it can be replaced i don’t get any of the law that allows them to do tariffs at whim just because he says it was an emergency so that’s about the change the entire world that happens in the next month or so
SPEAKER 12 :
Yep, time will tell, and we’ll see how that ends up playing out. All right, got more to talk about. Don’t go anywhere. Jordan, how do folks find you again?
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan at MoneyAnswers.com is my email.
SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
The best export we have is common sense.
SPEAKER 12 :
You’re listening to Rush to Reason. And we are back, Jordan Goodman, America’s Money Answer Man, with myself and Andy. All right, let’s talk about the stock market and AI. Jordan continues to be sort of a bone of contention, although in folks out there talking about it being a bubble, accountants arguing over how long chips last, which, by the way, is completely out of their expertise, but that’s what they do because people get involved in things at times that they shouldn’t. But at any rate, AI and the stock market, where are we at?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I mean, that’s been one of the big themes of 2025 is the artificial intelligence boom. Those stocks have been by far the best performers, anything related to AI. NVIDIA making the chips and Facebook and Google and Microsoft and all these companies involved directly and then indirectly, like the companies building the data centers and even the electric utilities feeding them power. I mean, this is an absolute boom that’s been going on here. And everybody’s worried it’s going to be a bust at some point, but there don’t seem to be signs of it quite yet. I mean, the most recent numbers from NVIDIA, their sales were up 62% in the latest quarter to $57 billion in a quarter alone. I mean, it’s just staggering kinds of numbers. There continue to be more and more investments announced. AI investments from Elon Musk’s XAI investment. is building a massive new data center in Saudi Arabia. Amazon said it’s going to add $50 billion in new AI data centers it didn’t have before. Gemini from Google has made a big splash, and OpenAI, which does chat GPT, came out with what they called Code Red, which is like, we’ve got to catch up to Gemini that puts out to Google. So there’s a big kind of space race going on here to build the most fastest, biggest AI. This is not only here, this is around the world. China’s putting a huge amount into it as well. Some of these are just ginormous. I mean, Elon Musk is building an AI data service center in Tennessee that is literally the size of Manhattan. That’s how big it is. It’s just amazing. So all filled with NVIDIA chips. So we’re just beginning to see the impact of this on our lives. It’s going to be major. So that’s been the theme of the stock market in 2025.
SPEAKER 05 :
Jordan, wouldn’t you say that one of the biggest impacts of that is the energy needs? Because the energy needs are so enormous for that, that from what I’m seeing, I think a lot of people are starting, even some on the left, are starting to look at green energy and basically say, let’s face facts. That’s not going to generate anywhere near the amount of energy we need for You know, this AI, it’s not going to come close. We need nuclear. We need coal. We need natural gas. These things generate amazing amounts of energy.
SPEAKER 10 :
The left is never going to say we need coal. They’re never going to say we need coal.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, no, no, no. But let’s just say people on the right who are smart will say we need coal because I’m on the right and I’m smart and I say we need coal, too. I say we need all three. I say we need nuclear, coal, natural gas, and all the green energies should be burned to the ground. I’m sorry, they’re just terrible. There’s no bang for the buck. But I’m just saying this. Don’t you think the incredible energy needs of the AI are switching how some people are thinking about getting the energy?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. I mean, utilities are really scrambling. to be able to provide the energy, because we’re at capacity in lots of different places, not only the generating, but the grid. The grid is old and not very flexible and not able to handle the huge amount of new power needed. So one of the investment themes has been upgrading the grid, and all the companies doing that as well. We are not prepared for this AI boom on the energy front alone. It is a combination. Now, nuclear, they’re talking about these kind of mini-nuclear plants, not these massive ones, but kind of modular, smaller ones. But they’ll still take a while to build something like that. And the real-life result today is that people’s electric bills have gone up sharply, you know, 50%, 70%, because the utilities need to raise rates to build the capital to build these new plants and upgrade the electrical grid. So that’s something people are feeling in their pocketbooks right now, and they’re not happy about paying extra on the electric bill to pay for AI, which they don’t particularly see a benefit of.
SPEAKER 12 :
Gotcha. One last thing. This news, I think, just came out here a little bit ago, and it’s not in my notes with you because this was after, I believe, you and I were talking this morning. Elon Musk is wanting to take SpaceX with an IPO, $30 billion. He wants to raise an initial public offering that would value the company at $1.5 trillion.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, it’s a really growing company. I mean, SpaceX is pretty much the only way we launch rockets these days. NASA doesn’t have its own, and it’s a very successful company. They do all the launches, and they bring the ships back down. They don’t destroy them each time. So I think it would have a huge valuation, yes.
SPEAKER 12 :
Meaning, and I’d have to do the math really quick, you can probably do this right off the top of your head, but if it does end up being a trillion and a half, and Elon owns 42%, how much does that raise his net worth?
SPEAKER 10 :
In the hundreds of billions. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s a lot. I mean, 42% of one and a half trillion. Is that 630 billion? Am I thinking right? Give or take a few hundred billion here or there, yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
I mean, that would raise his net worth to, what, 800 billion or something?
SPEAKER 10 :
But remember, he just got a raise that was agreed to by the Tesla shareholders for a trillion-dollar pay package if he hit certain benchmarks. And this would help him hit those benchmarks, because Tesla is far more than the cars these days. It’s XAI, it’s SpaceX, it’s all kinds of other things. Cars is almost an afterthought of Tesla these days. Robots, you know, they’re doing… Neuralink, they just do a lot of things. It’s amazing to have one individual to create such huge companies, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink. He has something called The Boring Company, which does drilling. He’s doing amazing things, he really is. He has a little time off this year to do Doge, but he kind of forgot about that. He won’t be talking about Doge anymore, I guess.
SPEAKER 12 :
Speaking of the cars and that end of things, and I did talk about this some last week, even on my Saturday car show, we talked about it, and that is the rolling back of the CAFE standards, which is huge. It’s going to be a big game changer when it comes to the manufacturing of automobiles for all the manufacturers. It’s going to, in my opinion, lower the price of automobiles for the consumer at the end of the day. That won’t happen overnight, of course, but it will be coming.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, Biden had put in very strict fuel efficiency standards that had to be phased in over time. The only way the car companies could meet those standards was by selling a lot more electric cars, which don’t have any gas usage at all. And that’s nice, but the public was not buying electric cars. Some, I think it was what, about 7% of the market, something like that. But the vast majority of people are buying either traditional combustion engines or hybrids. uh… so it was going to be very difficult for the car companies to meet those cafe standards without something changing a trumpet sub throwing the whole thing out but we’re going to emphasize fuel efficiency and if you want to buy electric car fine but we’re not going to force you to do it right though it was a major change for the auto industry yes
SPEAKER 05 :
Personally, I think it’s the greatest thing that’s ever been signed since the Ten Commandments. I’m sorry. I am so against these CAFE standards. Jordan, let me throw this quick question to both of you, then we can go to break.
SPEAKER 12 :
No, we don’t have a break. Keep going.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, good. Excellent. How do you think this will affect inflation for the car companies and so forth?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I mean, in theory, car prices should not go up as much, but it also means that you’re not going to have as high fuel efficiency as you would, so you’ll probably spend more on gas.
SPEAKER 12 :
If your fuel efficiency wasn’t going to go up to 40… Well, and gas is, you know, here in Colorado, when you’re under two bucks a gallon, Jordan, sorry to say, no one cares. I mean, I’m being very honest, literally. At the end of the day, I can’t tell you how many listeners keep sending me what the price of fuel is. And frankly, I don’t see it going up anytime soon. A regime change might change that, but currently it’s not doing anything but probably going down. Even our conversation earlier on Venezuela would do nothing but drive the price down. At the end of the day, people don’t care if they’re driving a 50-mile-to-the-gallon vehicle. In fact, they’re fine driving an SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon all day long. And my feeling is if that’s what they want, and even the Ford CEO Jim Farley said this, if that’s what they want, we’ll sell it.
SPEAKER 10 :
At current gas prices, right, if gas price went from $2 to $5 a gallon, people would have a different point of view. It’s not going to happen. Right now, I mean, this has been one of the benefits of the Trump presidency is is getting oil prices down. I mean, we’re below $60 a barrel. When he came in, it was about $80 or something like that. So that’s been a big benefit. And that works its way through the economy, because it means less transportation costs, and it puts money in people’s pockets. So that’s been a big, big win. OPEC is producing too much. If we can get Venezuela producing again, even more, we could get oil in the $40 barrel range or something like that, which would be very positive for the economy.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right, and not so much for the drillers, although those guys have ways of figuring things out and they can still make money. It’s too low, but they can, again, at the end of the day, they normally figure those things out. At the end of the day, Jordan, and again, this is me talking, I just, given everything we’re talking about and given some of the things that we’re going to even see come online, i.e. Venezuela, because it will come online in this particular administration, no offense, gas prices aren’t going up. We have a plethora of This whole idea years ago, people talking about peak oil and all the nonsense that went around that. These are the same people that predicted that we’d all be dead by now because the rising waters of the oceans and so on, the AOCs of the world. The reality is they’re all wrong. It’s all junk science. It’s all based upon fear-mongering so they can pull money out of one pocket and put it in somebody else’s. At the end of the day, oil, there’s so much of it out there that, yeah, no, we’re not going to go back to $5 a gallon gasoline anytime soon unless you live in California.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. Well, that’s all taxes and regulations, basically. Because there are a bunch of idiots that run that state. This has been a big boon to consumers, and hopefully it stays that way for a while. Do you think Trump could possibly… You know, earlier this year, we thought we were going to have a major war in the Middle East. Remember, oil prices spiked. For a day. When it looked like Iran and Israel were going to go at each other, and that didn’t last long, but… That’s always a threat out there is they cut off the Strait of Hormuz.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, and this is where, you know, again, going back to our conversation earlier about Venezuela, you turn that spigot back on, Jordan. Everything you just said is a nada. It makes no difference. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I agree. Venezuela has a huge amount of oil. They’ve not been producing that much because all the engineers left. That’s right.
SPEAKER 11 :
They all left.
SPEAKER 10 :
But if we can get a democratic organization in there and have us go, that would be very positive.
SPEAKER 12 :
You turn that spigot back on, all of the Middle East, OPEC, by the way. I hate to say, but those guys should probably look at other things because they’ve got a lot of mouths to feed. They like driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and if they’re not careful, they won’t be.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes. Well, maybe they could be a solar OPEC or something like that. They could monopolize. No, the Chinese have already done that.
SPEAKER 12 :
The Chinese did that, yeah. Let’s face it. They’ve tried all sorts of other things, and granted, they’ve offshoot into other different things, buying different businesses and so on, and they’re doing their best to diversify. But the reality, Jordan, is their eggs are still heavily involved in one basket called oil.
SPEAKER 10 :
And AI. They’ve been investing a lot in AI and sports teams as well. They call it what sports washing, I guess, makes their image look better if they have sports teams.
SPEAKER 12 :
Live golf, some of that stuff. Yes, absolutely. They’re doing their best to try to get into other things.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, instead of invading Venezuela, could Trump invade California, get some regime change?
SPEAKER 12 :
That’d be nice.
SPEAKER 05 :
A military overthrow, you know, and then fix L.A. and actually rebuild L.A. because it’s not being rebuilt and just do all that and then leave?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, the Marines are already there. We’ve already got a good… Yeah, good point.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good point. All right, talk to us about gold and silver.
SPEAKER 10 :
So gold’s up to over $4,200 an ounce. Silver’s about $50 an ounce. All-time record highs on both. And that’s been one of the big stories of this year, is how much gold has gone up. There’s tremendous demand for gold from global central banks and individuals and wealthy people. The dollar has been falling because all these other countries are trying to get out of the dollar, and the gold and silver is like an alternative to that. So I think gold, which has moved a lot, is going to go even higher. You can buy physical gold. You can buy gold exchange-traded funds like a GLD or an SLV for silver, gold mining shares. I’ve been saying all year I thought gold was going to do well, and in fact it’s done so.
SPEAKER 12 :
No, it’s done extremely well. The one thing I always have to caution people on is, you know, they look at that and they think, well, man, I’ve got this gold ring, necklace, whatever, gold coin even, and, you know, man, that thing just keeps going up and up in value. And it does, but I think the misconception, Jordan, is that they think $4,200 an ounce, well, this item is then worth that because it weighs an ounce. The problem is that $4,200 is based upon pure gold, and that’s a premium price, meaning you’re not going to get that typically if you go to resale.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, if you have an eagle, you would, but what you don’t get is numismatic. If you have something commemorating the Korean Olympics in 1988 or something, there’s a huge premium on it, and you’ll never get that back. So if you buy an American eagle or a Canadian maple leaf or something like that, that’s pretty much pure gold. That’s the way of doing it.
SPEAKER 05 :
What about silver again? What do you think about silver?
SPEAKER 10 :
It was about $50 an ounce now. Silver’s had a bigger surge than gold, actually, recently. Now, silver has industrial uses as well, and artificial intelligence, for example. All the chips use some silver. So there’s just a big shortage of silver right now and a huge demand for it. So percentage-wise, silver’s gone up a lot more than gold, and I think we’ll continue to.
SPEAKER 12 :
Had a big Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It was a huge jump, bigger than what most people predicted. Bottom line is the stock market, I think, was a little shocked at that.
SPEAKER 10 :
What’s interesting is the numbers on Consumer Conference keep going down. People say they feel bad, but then they go out and spend anyway. So it’s like a real disconnect, and people are worried about jobs at the time of government shutdown and all the partisanship in Washington, you know, inflation, all kinds of things. But they’re going out and spending, spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are much stronger than affected. And this will probably be quite a good holiday season when you get down to it. So I guess people are spending, I hope they’re not going into a lot of credit card debt to pay these things, because some people are still paying off the gifts from last year.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, no, you are correct on that. All right, one last time, Jordan, how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 10 :
They can always email me, jordan at moneyanswers.com. It’s been a great year to be with both of you, and looking forward to another exciting year next year.
SPEAKER 12 :
Awesome. Jordan, as always, appreciate you. Have a Merry Christmas, sir. All right. Thank you both. You’re very welcome. Have a great night as well. And Geno’s Auto Service is next. And again, anything you need when it comes to your vehicle, give Geno’s a call, genosautoservice.com.
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SPEAKER 06 :
Now back to Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Andy, we were talking during the break there about how the shopping season, up, consumer confidence as far as that goes was way up, and yet you hear report after report after report about people are scared about this, people are scared about that. You even heard Jordan talking about some of that. And personally, here’s my answer on why some of that is the way it is. The news media wants us to think things are a lot worse than it is, which, by the way, is strange because they want you to think it’s worse, and yet the Fed thinks it’s good, good enough to not have to lower rates. It’s almost like those two are battling one another, doing their very best to make the economy be what the media is talking about. And I’m here to tell you that just a few rate cuts. We get things down one point, and it will happen. It may not happen early in 26, but it’s going to happen in 26 with the new Fed chair. Things are going to light up. Yeah, I think so, too.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, look, John, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. First of all, spending is way up. Like I said, it was a 9%, 10% raise over the holiday weekend. And then you’ve got all these people saying affordability, affordability. Everybody is so worried about affordability. Then why are they spending so much more? It doesn’t make sense to me, John. Have they just been talked into thinking they are poorer and more miserable than they are?
SPEAKER 12 :
I think that’s part of it. And I do think there are some things. There are some, you know, groceries, for example, where, yes, there are more money today than they were a year ago. On the same token, there are some things that aren’t as much as they were a year ago, i.e. a gallon of gas. I mean, there’s a lot of things you’ve still got to put into perspective. And the reality, Andy, is if you watch too much, you know, CNN and nightly news on even Channel 9 or what have you, you’re not hearing all ends. No, you think you’re dying. Correct, because that’s exactly what they want you to hear. They’re not listening to us. Let’s just say that.
SPEAKER 05 :
I guess not.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, that’s it for this hour. We’ve got another full hour coming your way. Larry Behrens will be with us here in just one moment. Don’t go anywhere. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 13 :
The Average Guy’s Ordinary Average Guy.
