KLZ 560 AM DENVER'S CONSERVATIVE HOME STATION
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In this enlightening episode of ‘Rush to Reason,’ host John Rush is joined by Jay Bieber, Executive Director of Policy at the National Motorist Association, as they delve into the complexities surrounding the Electric Vehicle (EV) market. They candidly discuss how government mandates and market dynamics are impacting EV adoption. The conversation reveals the reality that while subsidized, electric cars are not meeting the often optimistic expectations. With a focus on the practicalities of EV ownership, Jay and John break down who truly benefits and who does not in this rapidly changing landscape.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is Rush to Reason. 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.
SPEAKER 10 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did!
SPEAKER 14 :
Get a job, Turk! You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 12 :
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 14 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind? It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right. Hour three, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Jay Bieber joining us now, Executive Director of Policy at the National Motorist Association. Welcome back, Jay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Pleasure to be back with you.
SPEAKER 15 :
I was reading today, and I know this is going to be our topic anyways, but I was reading today that in California and across the country, the government, whether it’s locally or nationally, has spent billions of dollars and yet have very few charge stations installed.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. That is true. Are you shocked at that, by the way? No. Do I sound shocked? No, not at all. That the government actually didn’t do something efficiently? No. I’m shocked. Shocked that there’s gambling going on.
SPEAKER 15 :
And, you know, these mandates. The other thing I was reading today is that, you know, Newsom is really having a hard time now with some of his California, you know, EV mandates. They’re backpedaling on some of those things because the reality is, and it’s our topic today, the reality is the demand for electric vehicles, shockingly, is not there.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. That’s absolutely true. I mean, here’s the thing. No matter how much the government tries to mandate something or tries to muck up the market, the market’s going to do what the market does. And if people don’t want to buy something and it doesn’t work for the majority of people, they’re not going to buy it.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 04 :
They’re just not going to. And the market for this has already been saturated. Yeah, really quick, Jay.
SPEAKER 15 :
For those of you listening, as we all know, Jay, there are in every industry and every type of product, there’s what we call early adopters that want to go out. They’ve got the money. They can have the high tech and so on. Or they’re curious about that particular technology. Or, you know, in my case where I wanted to learn about them so I could talk intelligently on air about them on the different programs that I have. Right. Bottom line, Jay, is there are those people that will adopt early. And in some cases, I hate to say this, but in some cases may give a false premise of, hey, these things are really taking off and they’re going to do well. You probably ought to sit back for a moment and wait and see how that pans out, because there’s always this bell curve of early adopters and then things fall off. And guess where we’re at, Jay?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it is exactly right, and that’s exactly what has happened with the EV market, because what we’re seeing is that the initial market for EVs overwhelmingly composed of upper-income liberals. That’s who bought the initials. So, California EV registrations overwhelmingly concentrated in the wealthiest episodes. The UC Berkeley study showed that close to half of EVs registered nationally over the last decade were clustered in the top 10% of the most Democratic counties nationally, over a third in the top 5%. And here’s the thing. Here’s what everybody should be really angry about. Not that those people bought cars. They were all subsidized.
SPEAKER 15 :
I was just going to say, they all got help.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. They got your tax dollars to help wealthy people feel good about themselves that they were saving the environment, which a lot of people don’t necessarily do. Right. And you should be really angry that your tax dollars went to rich people, liberal or not, who want to, you know… who want to buy a new car that works for them or that they think works for them and make them feel good about driving around with an electric vehicle.
SPEAKER 15 :
Absolutely. No, you are spot on. Things that we’ve talked about on this program for some time, and I’ve had conversation after conversation, again, being somebody, Jay, that’s owned one since 2020, and I did that early on just so that I could – I really wanted to be able to talk intelligently, you know, as a talk show host and as a conservative and as somebody that has an actual, you know, call in drive radio, we call it an actual call in car show. I wanted to be able to talk intelligently about things which I felt at the time no one on either side of the aisle was doing, you know. The left wasn’t doing it well. The right wasn’t doing it well. They were both wrong in some of the things that they were talking about with EVs. So I wanted to buy one and actually own it and know, okay, here are the realities of what this is like and what it entails and so on. And I’ll say, Jay, that for some people, key word, for some people, they work extremely well. Are they something that 100% of the driving population can own? Absolutely not.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, and I mean, just the reality of it, just logically thinking about it. I mean, I don’t know where you live, but for people who have their own home and can have a charger there, can charge overnight, that’s really helpful. That really makes that much less burdensome. But let’s say you live in an apartment building with a whole bunch of apartments. Not going to work. Everybody has an EV. How is that going to work? It’s just impossible. And who is going to be living in apartments? For the most part, people who can’t necessarily own their own home. So the poor people, the ones who are subsidizing this through tax dollars, and the people who can own homes and can be subsidized with the cars and the chargers, those are the people that are using the tax dollars. And here’s the thing. You said it exactly. It works great for some people. I don’t know how many cars you own, but for a lot of people, it’s a great second car. For some people, it’s their first car.
SPEAKER 15 :
I’m a car addict, so more than I need. Let’s just say that.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s like one of whatever your collection is.
SPEAKER 15 :
I’m an enthusiast. Well, but really, and I’ve said this many times, and it’s not to brag. I just need simple facts of, Jay, I’m a guy that is, of course, further along in life. I’ve owned multiple businesses over the years in real estate and so on. And I’ve got my own home with my own garage with… the fact that I’m handy enough to even install my own charge station, so I didn’t have to pay the big bucks to actually have that done. I mean, I am sort of one of those owners where everything fits perfectly. I drive roughly 30 miles each way to work, and on and on we go. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s about as ideal as it gets, but I’m not the typical car owner.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s true, but you also have other options for when you need something different. Absolutely. And that’s why the free market should work for people who want it, and it’s whatever, first car, second car, third car, fifteenth car, I don’t know. You know, if that works for them, great. People should be free to buy whatever kind of car they want. It shouldn’t be the government cramming it down.
SPEAKER 15 :
By the way, Jay, this includes even, you know, the fleet operators, which, you know, I am one of and so on. I mean, this includes those types of individuals as well. If they feel like for their fleet, it works well and they can. possibly save time and money and so on. At the end of the day, they have to do the math and figure that out on their own, but they should not be either A, incentivized to buy and or forced to.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. And here’s the thing. When people have a choice, we can see what their choices are. I was traveling over the holidays, so I was talking to a guy at a Hertz rental, and he was telling me, they can’t get rid of most of their EVs because people didn’t want to rent them. I mean, that just shows you what the market is. You take them, you put them out there, you give people an opportunity to rent them, they choose something else. That just tells you what the demand is.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah. No, Oh, and you’re exactly right. And on the other side of the Hertz thing, I had the opportunity at the Barrett-Jackson auto auction last year to sit next to some of those same executives, by the way, just ironically, and was asking them a little bit about some of those things. And that was a combination of not only what was in the rental fleet, but they did some big leases to a lot of companies whereby those companies thought, hey, this will be great for us. It’ll save us money. Well, fact of the matter is, Jay, it didn’t. And as you know, and the rest of the folks out there know Hertz ended up having to take a lot of those back and then figure out what they’re going to do with them. And in turn, it costs them a boatload of money.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yep, exactly. And part of the reason is because repairs on an EV are more expensive than a regular car. Tires. The tires, the batteries, long-term maybe are going to be more expensive. Look, I still have my 94 Celica. It’s running fine. I just rebuilt the rack and pinion on it. And it’s a 94 Celica. It’s a gas engine. I don’t have to worry about replacing the battery battery. But not the electric battery on it. And that car will last another 30 or 40 years.
SPEAKER 15 :
You just stated something a moment ago, too, that there’s a misconception of. And by the way, one of the biggest complaints that I have had is because most of the folks involved with EVs, whether it be press or even the guy at the dealership selling it. aren’t informing people well enough of actually what they’re buying. The reality is they are not maintenance-free. There are things that you have to do on them. They do even have fluids and things like that that you still have to monitor, maintain, and take care of. And yes, things still break, and there’s accidents and so on. At the end of the day, it’s not as rosy red as what everybody says. And Jay, to me, that’s where a lot of consumers have done a disservice because the folks selling them aren’t trained well enough in even the things you and I are talking about.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s exactly right. And this is why about 46% of EV purchasers said they weren’t going to go back to an internal combustion vehicle. I mean, that’s just, again, that’s what’s telling about what this thing is. And look, I understand that there are those in government who have this aspirational idea that we’re going to save the planet by everybody buying an electric vehicle. But I’m going to tell you a little secret here, which is the really hardcore environmentalists They don’t see electric vehicles as the, you know, the savior of the environment. They see you not driving and having a car as the savior of the environment.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s right. You and your car are the things that need to be eliminated, not going to an EV.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s exactly right. Internally, they talk about this all the time. Yeah, EVs are harder for people to get around. Maybe they’ll drive less or whatever. But really, the goal is for you not to get in your car. You take public transit, get on a bicycle, walk somewhere, don’t consume as much. We hate consumerism. We hate capitalism. You know, we hate the free market. You know, everybody has to be part of the collective. That’s right. And that’s the way they want everybody to live their lives. Look, they want to live their lives like that and live in a commune. God bless them. Let them go. That’s not me, though. Don’t tell us that.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s exactly right. Jay Bieber, again, executive director of policy at the National Motors Association. Jay, how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 04 :
We are at motorist.org. Right now we’re in our fundraising campaign for the year. We are a 501c3, so your donations are tax-deductible. So think about us when you’re thinking about your year-end contributions. We’d love to have you as a member. We have you as a member. We’d love to have more of your audience members as a member. Again, $42 a year, really, really inexpensive to be part of the fight.
SPEAKER 15 :
It is a great buy, folks. You get newsletters on a routine basis. I just got one today. So, Jay, thank you for all of what you guys are doing. Absolutely. Anytime. You betcha, man. Appreciate you very much. By the way, Merry Christmas. Thank you for what you do, sir. Same here. You bet. Take care. Again, we’ll be right back. Mike, hang tight. I know you want to talk about the post office. I’ll give you time to do that. Flesh Law is coming up next. Criminal, civil, whatever it is, if you need some representation, give Kevin a call today, 303-806-8886.
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SPEAKER 15 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 15 :
We are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Mike, you are next. Go ahead, sir.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, John. I, uh… I retired last July, a year ago July, from the post office. So you’re one of those liabilities now. Yeah, I am. And they took my machine away. I started out as a clerk sorting the mail on a machine, and then I moved into the maintenance side and worked on the magazine machine that put… that in sequence order and because it didn’t work right good enough for them they got rid of it after 10 years so at a million dollars a piece for each machine they trashed all 110 flat sorters wow i am sure and i’m only guessing mike that you can give story after story of some of the waste and inefficiencies that you saw over your career am i correct Oh, yeah. I mean, when I first started there, you had to be a citizen for five years, and you had to speak English. Now we have people coming in here from Africa or the Middle East that are in-country a year, and they put them into supervision.
SPEAKER 15 :
Okay. Is that not a security risk?
SPEAKER 06 :
You would think. I mean, when they had the… what, anthrax?
SPEAKER 16 :
Right, right.
SPEAKER 06 :
They put in these big sorters to sniff for anthrax, and the thing about that, even if it picks it up, you won’t find out for two hours because it has to be changed out every two hours.
SPEAKER 15 :
I see.
SPEAKER 06 :
And then they’ll shut down the plant, and everybody’s already been subjected to it.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right, right.
SPEAKER 06 :
I always thought that We should, as a country, just for instance, we’ll use me. If I started working today, my Social Security should, 50% would go for my private retirement. Can’t touch it until I get to X age. But that way, it would be there and the government couldn’t take it. And then, The other one, 25% would be for those like me that are already on it until we all go away.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right.
SPEAKER 06 :
And then 25% would be for… Future. Catastrophic.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oh, I see. Okay. Sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER 06 :
But that way, the biggest thing is to get it out from under… the thieves in Washington.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right, right. What are your thoughts since you’ve been in the postal end of things, and this talk has happened, and I know that for the, you know, technically the post office is private, although it’s a, it’s kind of a quasi-government slash private organization. What if the post office went totally private?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, they’d have to, the problem with that is they don’t get rid of the dead weight when that happens. I think it would work really well if you got some people in there that are there to get the mail out. But you have people, I had supervisors that would just go sit in the office for half the night. I worked graveyard. And you wouldn’t see them until 4 o’clock when day shift came in.
SPEAKER 15 :
So, dumb question, what were they doing during that time?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, let’s see. One was watching a basketball game or a football game, and the other one was… The other two were playing video games.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah. So basically proving the point of what Joe and I were talking about earlier.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, yeah. It needs a healthy God through. And I feel sorry for the people. My carrier I have, she’s only been with the post office eight years. And I feel real sorry for her because I don’t know that we’ll be around that much longer.
SPEAKER 15 :
Got it. Got it. Yeah, and for those of you listening, I have a great mail carrier. We are, I guess you could say, friends to a large extent. Mike, we’ll do something for him for Christmas and so on, and we love our mail carriers, and it’s not those guys that I feel animosity towards. It’s the folks that you’re talking about and just the inefficiencies and the fact that we as taxpayers have to subsidize that thing every single year. It’s ridiculous. Shouldn’t have to.
SPEAKER 06 :
They can’t even keep new hires in the post office they work for especially on the street they work for a week maybe a month maybe two and they just say to hell with it and they leave If you go by any post office, you’ll see signs up that says, we’re hiring now.
SPEAKER 15 :
You’re right. No, you’re right. And I’ve had family members that have worked for the post office, so I know some of what you’re talking about from the inside out, like you’re saying, and you are not the only one like you that’s ever said this. So reality is I’ve heard this story many times.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’ve kind of given the post office a nickname. I call it the United States Refugee Employment Service. Because they always, wherever we screw up a war, they bring those people in and put them into the post office. And it’s been going on since Korea. Wow.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s some things I did not know. I mean, I guess I should have known that, but I’ve never had anybody directly say that before like you are.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, I had people when I was testing couldn’t speak English, so they had one of their – buddies who are Vietnamese translating to her, and they didn’t kick them out during the test like they’re supposed to because they had to translate.
SPEAKER 15 :
Interesting. Wow. I’m learning a lot. Again, Mike, just more proof that that thing needs a revamp, complete revamp.
SPEAKER 06 :
I always said that the post office should have an ad out there that says nobody goes where we go for the price we do anywhere in the world. But they never advertise like that because they don’t want to piss off FedEx and UPS and all that.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right, right. No, you’re right, though. You’re correct. Absolutely. I can’t argue with that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Mike, I’ll let you go.
SPEAKER 15 :
No, appreciate that. Thank you for the update. Again, every time I talk to somebody that’s internal like that, I learn something new. All right, one other thing I want to talk about before we go to Scott Garlis, and we’ll do that here in just a few minutes. So hang tight. We’ll get to Scott, and he’s got some updates for us on what’s happening on Wall Street, I should say. So you may have seen the news today, something we’ve talked about here a few times in the past because I never felt like the Kroger merger with Albertsons. I never felt like it should have had the scrutiny the FTC was giving it. It’s ridiculous, actually. And I’ve talked about that. I’ve had interviews along those lines. And I’m not really in the grocery world any way, shape, or form, but I felt like that would have been a good merger. Let it go. Move on. Be done with it. Well, Albertsons has now backed out. They are suing Kroger for failing to win approval of their proposed merger. Now, I don’t think that suit’s going to go anywhere, frankly. And who knows, this merger under Trump might be able to be saved and rectified, and you may still see this happen later in 2025 or maybe even early in 2025. I don’t know. I’m not privy to any of that inside knowledge. I would be hard-pressed to believe that Albertsons could win anything over Kroger, given the fact that this isn’t Kroger’s doing. This is a Joe Biden FTC that made this happen. And FTC, by the way, that has stopped numerous mergers, but yet have allowed some to take place. Sort of whatever they feel like should happen versus shouldn’t happen. Not what’s best for the consumer. It’s more of what do they feel should be happening. And again, in the case of Kroger, we’ve even got our own stupid AG here in Colorado. And yes, I’ll call Phil that. Phil Weiser. Guy’s a moron. Tool, basically, has never tried a case in his life, and yet he’s the AG of Colorado because enough stupid voters in Colorado voted for that clown. He’s another one that got involved and spent Colorado tax dollars fighting this merger. Stupid. Have no business doing it at all. But yet our AG office in Colorado, I guess, just feels like money is endless, and why not spend the taxpayer money on this? He did. He did. and now really at this point, really wasted money because Albertsons has now pulled out because of what nationally the FTC, you know, what the feds did. Again, why we don’t have more accountability, this goes back to even the whole post office conversation we just had a moment ago with Mike and then Joe earlier, why we don’t have more accountability along these lines is, to where somebody like a Phil Weiser spending Colorado taxpayer dollars fighting something he has no business sticking his nose into, none, and yet did, and spent, I’d have to go look at what the total is, and that I hope would be a public record that we could go and see exactly how much money Phil wasted. on fighting the kroger merger here in colorado i don’t know what that answer is maybe one of you out there who have a lot more time on your hands than i do maybe you could find out for me how much money we’ve wasted as a state fighting this which now literally just, I guess, goes away. We’ll end up seeing what happens again under the Trump administration. I would be shocked to not see this get resurrected under Donald Trump. And I think Albertsons, by the way, they’re posturing with some of this, I believe. They’re probably trying to get a little more value out of this when it’s all said and done, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know what their their whole slant would be on this and why they’re going this direction, because if they were smart, they just sort of kick back, sit back, I should say, wait and see what happens. And most likely under Donald Trump and a new FTC chair, which we will get. you most likely would see all of this go away and that merger would take place. So I think Albertson’s number one is being very premature. I don’t really know what their angle is here in all of this. I guess time will tell. But I believe, again, wholeheartedly that they’re being very premature in this. And again, do I have a dog in the fight in this? No, I don’t care one way or the other. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me whether they merge or not. I think that typically in the I do know this in the grocery business. We’ve talked to Joe from Jersey about this many times. Their margins are thin. Anytime they can figure out a way to, you know, tighten things up, consolidate even and get more efficiencies in what they’re doing. Yeah, they can actually make that work. And Kroger, being as large as they are, has the ability to help that out and even help some of the Albertsons slash Safeway stores do so. And I think they already had some agreements out there to where they were going to go ahead and take certain stores off and sell them to somebody else and make all that work in regards to the FTC complaints and so on. And I understand all of that. But again, at the end of the day, Albertson’s pulling out now because they feel somehow slighted, I guess you could say, on the Kroger end of things. And, again, I think they’re very wrong in doing this. They should have just sat back and waited a little bit and figured things out. But they didn’t do that. So, at any rate. If you haven’t seen that news, it’s, again, because of some of the fights we’ve had as a state locally, that’s been pretty, you know, in the news pretty much here in Colorado, and I’m surprised you didn’t see that. So, Charlie, I’m going to go ahead and do these live because we’re struggling on our tech side. So high-five plumbing guys is next, and I’ll do these live as much as I can here. But high-five again. You guys hear me say it all the time. Literally, we’ll do anything you need when it comes to plumbing and now electrical. So whether it’s things that you’ve got going on inside of your home, you’re looking to do some remodeling, you need somebody to help you out with something, you’ve got a drain that’s clogged, including even the main line coming into your house or, by the way, your smaller commercial building. They don’t do huge commercial projects, but if you’ve got some smaller commercial projects, they’ve done some work for me. In the past, and even some of my clients, they’re very equipped to handle some of those plumbing things going on. Now also the electrical side of it. So if you’ve got a commercial building, you’re a business owner, you’ve got some things at home that you need to get taken care of, whatever it happens to be, they can take care of that. And as we get into these colder months to where the nighttime temperatures drop, And we are known to have below zero weather. If you don’t have things dialed in plumbing-wise, get that done today. And, again, you can always call 877-WE-HIGH-5. Again, 877-WE-HIGH-5, and they can take care of whatever needs you’ve got. Again, that’s plumbing or electrical, either one they can do. Now, moving on to Roof Savers of Colorado, Dave Hart. And I’ve had several conversations here of late with friends and even clients of mine. And what Dave can do at Roof Savers is, A, in between these storms, he can still do things with your roof. It doesn’t matter what it is. 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SPEAKER 14 :
Now, back to Rush to Reason, presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right. That time of the week, Scott Garlis joining us now and his company, Bent Pine Capital. Scott, welcome. How are you, sir?
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, John, I’m well. How are you?
SPEAKER 15 :
Doing very well. Appreciate you joining us. Hopefully we’re not interrupting you. Sorry we got a little bit behind tonight, but I appreciate you joining us. All right, I saw today, and of course the news media gets all hyped up over inflation numbers, which I know you and I have talked about numerous times, and we’ve even gone into how they manipulate these numbers around and what the actual true numbers are. But explain for those listening, because there’s a lot of hype around it today.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so what happened today was annualized CPI data came out. They showed 2.7% growth year over year. Now, that’s actually up over the last three months from, geez, I want to say it was like 2.2%, 2.4%. Right. It was 2.4% just a few months ago. So what’s really interesting to these numbers, to me anyway, is So the media is really locked into the accelerating growth, but they’re not looking at the sort of the forward-looking projections of what these numbers are telling you. We’re losing these really easy comparisons from late last year right now, and we’re hanging on to these really difficult comparisons from the beginning of 24. But as we start to go out into March, and maybe April, we’ll drop those numbers. And all of a sudden what it looks like right now is we could see inflation growth sub 1%, you know, within the next six months.
SPEAKER 15 :
Okay. So a lot of the hype, and I read some of these stories today, you know, oh, we’re really doing our best to try to fight inflation, but it’s not working. It’s just, you know, it’s just this number that just won’t come down no matter what we do. And I’m like, oh, there’s so many other factors in that. You guys have no idea what you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, exactly. It’s really a big deal. Yes, it is starting to come down. And look, I think a big part of it, and we’ve talked about this a bit too, that inflation has proven to be transitory like the Fed originally said it would be. It’s just taken longer to get there because, I mean, you know, we threw $2.1 trillion worth of stimulus at the economy.
SPEAKER 15 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 05 :
We did that.
SPEAKER 15 :
We also had, as you know, and they’ve started to trickle down ever so slightly of late. And I think once Trump gets in office, they’ll even come down more. But, you know, oil prices were not, you know, in our favor as far as some of this goes. And any time oil prices are up, so is everything else.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and then think about, you know, Russia has dealt with all these crippling sanctions since 2014 when they took the Crimean Peninsula. If Trump can negotiate some sort of deal between Russia and Ukraine, Russia’s not going to take a deal unless all those sanctions go away. True. If that happens, you know, what’s Russia’s number one export? Oil. Oil. And natural gas.
SPEAKER 15 :
Oil and gas, yeah. Oil and gas.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and not to mention, let’s not forget about what… aluminum is another big thing. And so, you know, what’s Russia going to do? It’s going to try to sell all that stuff on the open market that it can. And that’s just going to drive those prices down a bit more and help inflation ease further. Now, I point that out for a couple of reasons. One, you know, there’s this big thing like, oh, my God, if Trump goes after China and introduces tariffs, it could drive headline inflation up by 0.6 to 0.9 percent. Well, If inflation’s running sub-1% right now… Who cares? Yeah, and we drive it back up by 0.6 to 0.9, it’s still below the Fed’s 2% target.
SPEAKER 16 :
Right, right.
SPEAKER 05 :
So that’s also important because not only that, but that also tells us, you know, the Fed funds rates around 4.7% right now, I think is the overnight rate.
SPEAKER 15 :
I think that’s right, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so… You know, to come back to neutral, which the Fed is talking about, let’s say we put this 1% on for Trump tariffs, we’re 2%. They can still cut by 270 basis points before they get to neutral.
SPEAKER 15 :
True. Good point.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s a lot of economic growth. And so if I’m an investor… That doesn’t mean the Fed’s going to immediately cut by 270 basis points, but they have the ability to. So if the economy were to slow down at all, there’s tons of room to help it out. If I’m an investor, I like that. Because that means the stock market can keep going for a while.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right, right. And I mean, you know my feelings on that, and I do think they’ve got room. I think also one of the things the Fed never looks at, but yet we in business, small, medium-sized businesses especially, because we don’t get the same deals that the big guys get, borrowing costs, whether it be on equipment, whether it be your line of credit, the reality is they’re higher now than they were before. And because of that, and, of course, also the cost of labor is also up, those two things alone create inflation. Those are things that, again, Scott, I just – I mean, I get it. The Fed is the Fed, and these guys think they’re smarter than the rest of us. But the reality is they’re not because they never look at the things I just said as a part of inflation.
SPEAKER 05 :
So to reaffirm and support exactly what you just said is if you look at the real federal funds rate, which again is overnight borrowing costs minus inflation, and that’s where you get that 200 basis points worth of room to cut rates. Well, if we go back and look at that historically, I’ve run these numbers. If you look at it from 2000 to 2020, sort of pre-pandemic and pre-crazy stimulus numbers, the typical real rate of interest based on CPI was negative 0.3%. That’s massively different. And so, again, if you think of the Fed as trying to run interest rates at neutral, and this, I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds, but the Fed really looks at PCE, which is personal consumption expenditures. It’s a little bit different way to measure inflation. You know, the average… real Fed funds rate based on PCE on that same timeframe was negative 0.3%, so effectively zero. So again, the Fed has a lot of room to cut interest rates, and that’s not a great story for CNBC to tell you, but that’s what’s going on. That’s what can happen. Even if Trump does introduce these tariffs and they drive inflation up by 1%, 0.6%, whichever, you know, they still have a lot of room to cut.
SPEAKER 15 :
I agree. And we talked about this a little bit throughout the week, a little bit yesterday, even, Scott, when it comes to some of the tariffs and so on. And you and I have talked, and I’m a big one on most, not all, but most people that are anti-tariff are globalists. They look at things way different than even… You and I do. They are naysayers when it comes that they would not if they had their way about it, there wouldn’t be any terrorists anywhere. And they could care less whether, you know, China runs rip shot over us or not. I know you know me. There is no love lost between me and China whatsoever. They have been a intelligent, you know, a thief. of our intelligence for 50-plus years now, and the reality is they are not our friend. Anything we can do to, in my opinion, cripple them and their economy, go for it. I’ll take a little bit higher price here if that’s what it means.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, China’s out for China. That’s right.
SPEAKER 15 :
They don’t care about us or our people, any way, shape, or form.
SPEAKER 05 :
They don’t. And the President of China, Xi Jinping, he doesn’t have to worry about an election every four years. Xi Jinping’s there for as long as he wants to be, more or less. And look, China’s playing a long game. They’re not playing a short game here. If they have one guy in there for 50 years, I doubt he’d be there that long. But he can affect these policies that stay around for a long time. Yes, and taking intellectual property, stealing it from people, and then building products not having spent the money on the R&D, and then going and crushing somebody else’s property. That’s just not the spirit of business whatsoever.
SPEAKER 15 :
I’m here to tell you, Scott, that if we started cracking down on some of the things you and I just said, including even the corporate espionage and so on that China is very good at, if we started cracking down on that and they didn’t have the access to the things that literally at times we just hand over to them – They would not be – I mean, they’re not technologically as advanced as most people think. They copy and redo a lot of the things that they steal from us. If they didn’t have that in the first place, they wouldn’t be where they’re at.
SPEAKER 05 :
I mean, China’s economy really took off because of all the manufacturing business they picked up, gosh, you know, in like the 80s and 90s when it really started. And China turned around and started to weaponize that against Europe and the U.S. And I think Trump was the first person to really step in and say, hey, we’re not putting up with this anymore. And it’s, you know, China’s economy is being crippled now because All of these companies that manufactured goods there from Europe and the U.S., they have left. And we talked about this years ago. When a company leaves, they’re not coming back. That’s a big investment, and they have to make a huge investment somewhere else. I think China’s got some real economic problems for the foreseeable future.
SPEAKER 15 :
I agree. And, you know, we are doing not as quick of a job here as we should be. But eventually some of the things we’ve even started here, you know, TSMC as far as chips and so on. I mean, we’re doing some things here, whether we agree with how it’s been funded or not. At the end of the day, we are bringing some things here to make happen that those those sorts of things, especially, Scott, as you know, that does not help China out at all. In fact, doesn’t really help. help Taiwan either, even though right now Taiwan’s the largest manufacturer of that when it’s all said and done. But if we get some of those things moved here and we start doing some things here along those lines, that affects those particular industries greatly, and China won’t have the power they’ve got right now.
SPEAKER 05 :
They won’t. And to your point, yeah, it really helps the U.S. as well. I agree. I mean, think about all the manufacturing jobs that would, you know, the skilled labor jobs that will pick up here in the U.S. because of that. And, you know, I can’t tell you how many times I heard people complain about during COVID that, oh, my God, the supply chain. Think about all these medical products that were made in China that could have been made here. Well, We’re being presented with the opportunity to have exactly that thing happen. So why would that be so bad?
SPEAKER 15 :
It’s not. We should take advantage of that. I think Trump will make some of those things happen. He’ll incentivize. And by the way, I’m a big one on if we can cut some of the just. you know total government waste that’s out there you know doing studies in other countries we shouldn’t be doing to you know some of the different things that we we just waste money on literally waste money i mean no offense scott the amount of money we spent on ukraine we could have tooled up and done all sorts of manufacturing here Thank you very much. I’m all in, and the reality is we could cut government waste in a lot of areas and put it into the things you and I are talking about. Whether that’s right, wrong, or otherwise, and depending upon what your belief is on whether we should help private companies or not, that’s irrelevant. The reality is we could cut in some places and do those things very easily.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and sort of going back to some of the China stuff as it relates to this, too. I mean, people don’t remember, I feel like, all the time that a lot of these companies in China that are making these goods are government-owned, controlled. That’s right. Basically, they’re state-sponsored entities.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 05 :
So China is dumping tons and tons of money. They’re not worried about costs. They’re not worried about these things. You don’t have to be. Yeah, and it’s really an unfair advantage versus the rest of the world. This is why China is able to dump all of these goods into different markets.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s right. Exactly right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Because they don’t care.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s right. All right, so how do folks find you and learn more? And as we look into 2025, we’ll have another show here before we close out the year and head into the holidays. But how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, sure. You can go to Twitter. You can go to LinkedIn. Look for C. Scott Garlis.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right. We’ll talk more about next week and stocks and where folks can invest and so on. I’m a little tight on time today, Scott, but I appreciate you, and we’ll talk again next week. Thanks so much for your time, John. I bet you, man. I appreciate you. Have a great evening. Affordable interest mortgage is next. Speaking of interest rates and all of that, how does that work when it comes to a mortgage? Give Kurt a call today and find out. 720-895-0500.
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SPEAKER 03 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Tomorrow, Dr. Kelly Victory should be with us. Steve House for sure will be. And we’re going to talk about a little bit of inside knowledge on some of Trump’s cabinet picks, especially the Surgeon General pick. We’ve got a little bit of insight on that we will share with you all tomorrow. tomorrow. And as you guys know, there’s a pick there right now that Dr. Kelly and Steve will both comment on that, frankly, none of us, myself included, are very happy about, because this is a person that, frankly, was all in on the vaccine mandates and masks and social distancing and so on. And why in the world Trump has picked that particular individual, we really do not know. But We’ll share some insight maybe on that tomorrow. And then I’ve also got a business expert that’s going to talk about the wokeness in the DEI end of things and the fact that it is now leaving some of the larger corporations. So that, plus much more. We’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great night. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
