Should Politicians Be Allowed to Trade Stocks?


[00:00:00] Speaker A: Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy. [00:00:18] Speaker B: This is another Money show. Get set for another hour of the latest financial information and economic news affecting your bottom line. J.R. and Anthony are committed to helping more Americans like you optimize their inc. Reduce their tax risk and reach financial freedom. So let's start the show. Here are your hosts, Anthony Correo and J.R. rochford. [00:00:41] Speaker C: It's weird not starting with the the spiel like before. It's different today. [00:00:47] Speaker D: No J R well, when jr's away, [00:00:49] Speaker C: the boys will play Parents are out of town. I used to work with a guy at Amazon. He used to yell that anytime the managers were out of the building and I always thought that was funny, especially because we were all in our 20s. [00:01:01] Speaker D: What did Junior doing today? Can the audience know or is it. [00:01:05] Speaker C: I don't see why not. I'm pretty sure he talked about it last time. He is doing another boys trip to Laughlin, which I don't think it was that long ago, right? That was only like a month ago. They did that, right? [00:01:15] Speaker D: A few weeks ago we were just talking about it and I just went to Vegas. So Junior and I were swapping gambling stories. Sounds like he had a great time and they're trying to relive the great time they had maybe last month. [00:01:27] Speaker C: I think he's just trying to prep himself for retirement because I think these guys are retired and going every month and he wants to be a part of the gang. We'll see how it goes. [00:01:36] Speaker D: Sometimes, you know, I'm an advisor in the south. You're an advisor in the Valley. Like sometimes with the people I talk to, actually spending the money and actually like being a retired person is a difficult adjustment for them. It's tough for people to like spend the money they've saved and actually adapt to that. I'm going through that with my dad right now. He's kind of half retired. He's retired from the state. He just moved to North Carolina. He's in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We're going to drive up there this weekend, Memorial Day weekend, and hang out with them. So he's still working, but just a much lighter load. And I think it's a challenge for him and a lot of other people out there to actually start living like a retired person. Not that that you know you need to live any particular way, but actually adjusting and having that lifestyle change and that mental switch, have you seen that? [00:02:29] Speaker C: Oh, 100%. And I, I see it as two different things because there are the people that just like need to work and they need to do something. So there's the do something factor and then there is the will I run out of money factor. Right. So that's why, I mean, I can't help these people with the do something factor. We get some that'll work, go back to work part time with their current job, or be a consultant or just do something somewhere. And then we've got a few that will volunteer and that's how they spend their time. Some have family, some travel. So it is good. We have one lady, and this one, she's my favorite retiree story because we helped her get set up with a pension, so she got lifetime income, worked on all the debt, so going in free. But they decided they wanted to travel, they were still young and they're like, screw it, we're selling the condo, we're buying a boat. And every single time I call her, she's in a different state, so it's very difficult to do paperwork for them. But she's my favorite retiree because she's just like, well, this is what I want to do, so I'm going to go do it. And I think that was very important because I have a lot of people that just do nothing. And again, if you're happy doing nothing, more power to you. That's what you should be doing. You're retired now, you do whatever you want. But people that are miserable doing nothing, but also don't want to do anything for fear of running out of money. That's so like with your dad, I mean, I don't obviously he've produced the show enough Times and you're JR's second favorite son, so. So you kind of know our thoughts on it. Like, are you working with him on excess income and saying like, because that's the mindset, right? You give these 401ks, or it's like, here's a large chunk of money, good luck, don't run out. But if you have income, like you've had income his whole life leading up to this point, like, he knows what he can budget for, he knows what's coming in, what's going on. Like, are you working with him on that transit? Is that your theory? Let me ask you that, because you're right, doing what we do now, like you're doing individual business and you're helping people. Like, do you share our mindset? Is yours a bit different? [00:04:40] Speaker D: I think it comes down to what the client wants at the end of the day. Me personally, how I would run and how I do run my household and my business and how I'm helping others run their households and even small business owners run their business finances. I feel safer if I know worst case scenario. And if you want to know what a worst case scenario is, listen to any other episode of another money show. JR will tell you all the worst case scenarios. But I want to know that if and when those things happen, that my expenses are covered, I'm going to be able to continue living the way I want to live the best I can. And so I think people have a responsibility to themselves to make sure that those things at a minimum are going to be covered. Like whatever it is, the bills, the putting food on the table, whatever those non negotiables are for you. Like sometimes the non negotiables for people in retirement do include travel. It will certainly include travel for me. Like they want to make sure that they're going to be able to take two $10,000 trips a year in retirement. If that's a non negotiable for you, let's set it up so that all of those things are going to be covered from your guaranteed sources, which is namely Social Security, which we talk a lot about that on this show and what might happen to it in the future. But between that, if you have a pension and setting up personal pensions for yourself and structuring your plan in a way that worst case scenario, these things are going to be covered. And then beyond that, what's your risk tolerance? Do you enjoy managing your money? If so, like, you know, continue to manage some of your money on your own. If you have no interest in that, work with somebody who's sitting on the same side of the table as you and like, you know, they kind of share a hand in that. His situation, without getting into too much detail, he worked for state for a long time. He had a pension through the state. And then you have various options with your pension. What he ultimately decided to do was a partial lump sum rollover. Sometimes people can do full lump sum rollovers. In this case, the state would allow you to do up to half. And so you can do various. [00:06:54] Speaker C: With my mom is almost the exact same thing. [00:06:57] Speaker D: So he's got one income stream turned on already, like getting that on with the other half. But then with the other, he wants to continue working. He doesn't need all of that yet he's putting it into something that eventually can be an income stream for him. But for now he's just deferring and getting that kind of guaranteed growth. And then when he needs to turn that into an income stream, he can. And between that and Social Security and their savings and they have some real estate investments as well. [00:07:26] Speaker C: Another income stream too. [00:07:28] Speaker D: Yeah. Yes, they're going to be good. And like more often than not, like what I found, Anthony, is people who end up coming to an advisor even if they don't have that spreadsheet, that's a budget, they have some sense of like what their expenses are every month. And they're doing a pretty good job of not living beyond their means. That's why they have this sum of money for you best in the first place. And if you're doing a good job at that, like make that decision to retire and then enjoy it. [00:07:59] Speaker C: Yeah, makes sense. [00:08:01] Speaker D: That's how I feel. [00:08:02] Speaker C: Short answer is yes, you feel almost the exact same. I think that's where J R and I differ too, cuz I'm almost of your mindset is once the income's taken care of, I literally don't care what you do with the rest. I mean, obviously I would like people to make smart decisions and still have safety and balance and this and that, but I was like, as long as your income's taken care of, you could gamble all of your savings away because I know next month all your bills are covered still now again, do I want people to do that? Absolutely not. But you could. [00:08:33] Speaker D: Yeah. If you're going to be a gambler, if you're going to play, you know, in the casino, or if you're going to do the Wall street casino, it's going to be much safer to do that if you know your room is paid for at the end of the day, you know, that's, you know, think about it. You go to Vegas, they put you up in these comp rooms, you know it's covered. So you can afford to gamble more. If you know your expenses are going to be covered with guaranteed income, you can take as much risk as you like at the casino or in the stock market or whatever else you want to do. If you want to go buy, you know, motorcycles, enjoy, and then load up [00:09:08] Speaker C: on life insurance for that generational wealth transfer. [00:09:11] Speaker D: Yeah, there you go. [00:09:12] Speaker C: That's actually funny. I've never thought about that. But you know how people retire to cruise ships because everything's taken care of there. You think there are people that are retiring gamblers and staying in because. Because you could just stay for free or racking up points and you know, as long as you can break even for the most part at those tables, they'll keep comping rooms. You think anybody's done that successfully? Maybe Jared needs to look into that. [00:09:36] Speaker D: I would imagine. I would imagine there's some retirees that have relocated to Las Vegas. I mean that city's growing like crazy. If you look at what's happened to that city. I mean really everywhere in the Valley is. And you know, west of the Rockies has really grown. I definitely know some retired gamblers. Just kind of scanning through my mental Rolodex. So yeah, I think people have done that. Cruise ships. I, I don't think I could do that. I think I could. I've never even been on a cruise, so it's hard for me to criticize them. But I do enjoy travel. But that does not seem like the type of travel that I would enjoy at this point. But I'm not shutting the door for the future. [00:10:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean if that's what you're into, just like the, the client that's out there sailing the globe, you know, good for them. If you like being. I get seasick. [00:10:27] Speaker D: What you want? You just spent 30, 40 years. Well, hopefully you were doing what you wanted. But a lot of people probably do not say, oh I loved my career for 30 or 40 years. It's exactly what I wanted to wake up at 6:30 and do every day. It's probably not the case for most people. So it is the time to do what you want. Like, like my dad, he said he was going to get into fly fishing because now he's in like in the Blue Ridge Mountains in one of the best parts of the world for that. Like yeah, why not? Please learn how to do that and then teach me how to do that. [00:10:56] Speaker C: And, and that'd be the apocalypse when you have to go out and hunt and fish for your own food. And we'll be prepared. [00:11:02] Speaker D: That'll be great. [00:11:04] Speaker C: Speaking of being prepared, are you prepared for. Is it Kevin Wash. Kevin Walsh, let's say like Joe Walsh. [00:11:11] Speaker D: We got a new ed chair, we got a new fed chair. Kevin Warshire from. You get way out in the country. That's how some people pronounce Wash. Have [00:11:24] Speaker C: you read up on him? It's, it's interesting how he is in place because it sounds like he has 180 degree philosophy that's different from Jerome Powell and the quantitative easing and just like influencing all this fake Money into the market. And you know, the articles I was reading is like prepare for turmoil. And I'm looking at it. What are we recording the 21st? If I look in like the last five days on the S and P, just throwing that into Google essentially hasn't moved at all. It's almost the exact same. So obviously there's no immediate fears with him, but what I'm reading up on him is that he doesn't want to. So the Fed's balance sheet from 2008 was about 900 billion and now it's running around 6.7 trillion. So essentially they're just out there buying anything that they can to incentivize market growth, incentivize gdp, incentivize the stock market, keep it all flowing. But that's not what they're there for. You know, they're supposed to be out there controlling interest rates. You know, when we have 2 and 3%, 30 year mortgages, it's, it's great in theory, but that's also awful when the bank is offering you 0% for 15 years. You know, and these large corporations are using this opportunity to borrow cheap money to inflate the market, which is, you know, we talk about on the show all the time. So to have this guy Kevin coming in saying that he doesn't want to continue to prop up the market like that. Now granted he's saying that doesn't mean that that's what his actions are going to be. But I am interested to see how this all plays out. [00:13:09] Speaker D: Yeah, so like at a base level, what people should know, the Federal Reserve has nothing. They're not the federal government. And if you want a history lesson, you can go down that path if you want. But the Federal Reserve is not the federal government. [00:13:23] Speaker C: They control the federal, it's the deep state that controls everything. [00:13:27] Speaker D: That's right. That's right. The, what the Fed and people call the Federal Reserve, the Fed. All right, this is kind of like your first day at econ and the Fed controls the federal funds effective rate is what they call it or the Fed rate. And that is their lever to push and pull and seemingly heat up or cool down the economy and has all kinds of other effects as well as far as like motivating consumers to make purchases or not make purchases or make conservative investments or not and business owners to do the same thing to, to grow or contract. I'm looking at pulling up here kind of the history of the federal funds rate and kind of what's happened so we can maybe have a Sense of. Okay, here's the, the whole broad context of it in relation to, to what's actually happened because this is, that's essentially what you need to know about the Fed. And the federal funds rate affects all other interest rates. This new guy seems to have the support of the President and seems to want to lower interest rates to heat up the economy. We, we won't know for sure until the Fed starts meeting and his leadership has had a chance to kind of permeate this, this group that is the Fed and, and maybe move things down. It doesn't seem like the odds are that they're going to move it up now. Right. What do you think? [00:14:56] Speaker C: I don't know. I, I do think they kind of need to stay about this. Well, no, if anything, they do need to go up. We need to stop punishing savers, inflating a market that's already inflated. The, I think a lot of it's the, the proportions though too, because think of, I mean, you've got this pulled up, right? So from 202016 to 2022, I mean at its peak, what was it? About two and a half. And I remember that to 2018, 2019, when they started trying to raise rates and the market through a fit. So they paused everything. Then Covid happens, they, they drop it to pretty much zero. But okay, so that means large corporations because we don't have access to, to borrowing at a federal prime rate. You know, we're not big enough. So these banks can, and these other institutes can, and then they can loan to us. So through that rate, what was your credit card rate? Was the national average credit card rates? 17%, 27%. I'm seeing on some of my now, I mean, thank God I'm not dependent on my credit card. I use my credit card for everything. And I think most people should because debit card is direct access to your bank. If someone gets strict access to your bank, you're screwed. With a credit card, you have one step between, you know, these thieves and your actual bank account. We just had a client go through this and I. They talked to Macy this week. I haven't gotten all the full details, but I feel awful because that. I just, I couldn't imagine you have all these secondary factors and all these really annoying securities things. But you know, if it's protecting you, you're a little thankful because I'm sure given the options, you would rather have those little annoying inconveniences versus having all your money store them. I know JR and all of his stories about trying to make any, trying to take any money from the bank. But again, that's just because he loves picking up fights. It goes from 0 to 100 so quickly. [00:17:03] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't want to turn it into to true econ 101, but like, they wouldn't, they absolutely would not want to touch credit card interest rates because what the credit card companies want to do, they want to motivate you to spend money. Especially during a time of economic crisis when some people truthfully had to cut back. For a lot of people, their life did not change. They went to work from home, their paychecks still came. You know, maybe they had to change the way they did things, but they were able to move on. A lot of people, their way of life and their business changed dramatically. And if they didn't adapt, they were, they were going to die as a business. So they definitely wanted to continue encourage spending. And even today, like when things have stabled out and if you look at the economy, like things are doing great. Right. If you look at all the metrics. [00:17:54] Speaker C: But I mean, has it stable? Has it stabilized? I mean, have we fought inflation? You know, no. These tariffs that are. The tariff rebate that's going to go to these large corporations again, which the money is not going back to the consumers. And they passed it on to the consumers. You know, any excuse you have to take away, you know, take away. What's that. I was gonna make a point about taking away freedoms, but I was going off on a different tangent. But it's. Things don't come back. Like, you raise prices, prices don't go lower. You give away freedoms from the Patriot act. Like, you don't get those back. [00:18:37] Speaker D: Yeah. So, yeah, the prices of things have certainly not gone down. And there's just money out there that it makes sense that the prices have to go up in a way just because of the amount of money that's out there. [00:18:54] Speaker C: Oh, should we use that as the transition? I want to. When you play that Mike Johnson clip, will it play so we get to re. Watch it too? [00:19:01] Speaker D: Yeah, we can play it right now [00:19:03] Speaker C: because I'm assuming this is making the rounds and people haven't heard it. They're going to. [00:19:08] Speaker D: Do you want to set it up or play it and respond? [00:19:10] Speaker C: Play and respond. Yeah. All right. [00:19:12] Speaker E: Well, look, you know, the, the salary of Congress has been frozen since 2009. You know, when you adjust for inflation, a member of Congress, the days make it 31% less than they made in that year. It goes down every year. And, and over time, if you stay trajectory, you're, you're going to have less qualified people who are willing to make the extreme sacrifice to run for Congress. And it's just people just make a reasonable decision as a family on whether or not they can come and, and move to Washington, have a residence here, residents at home, and do all the things that are required. So the, the counter argument is, and I have some sympathy, look, at least let them like engage in some stock trading so that they can continue to, you know, take care of their family. [00:19:53] Speaker C: So they have to be dependent on trading stocks to take care of their family. Right? I mean, really think about what that. Because don't get me wrong, like that you have to have two residencies, like if you're working for Congress. So you need to be in D.C. you need to be in your home state. It's a very expensive. In D.C. so it'd be nice if they just set up housing, like whoever the acting is, here's your little condo out here. But they don't. So they give it up to them. So I get that it's very expensive to do those things. Also not raising rates since 2008. I get that's annoying too. It does seem like a lot of money, what they're earning. Is that enough to support a family in two different states? Probably not. So I see that argument there. But to justify insider trading, because that's essentially what he's saying, right? Because stocks should have ebbs and flows and go up and down and you just kind of sit things out. But he's saying that they should be able to bet on the stock market and win where they can depend on feeding their family with this money. Right. Am I, am I hearing that correctly? [00:21:01] Speaker D: I, I'm based on the clip that I heard. That's, that's what it sounds like. And it doesn't, it doesn't sound good. And we did not edit that in any way. That was played in succession from a section of a press conference. It doesn't sound like he's justifying insider trading, but it also doesn't sound that way. I would say like, yeah, sure, elected officials can participate in the market. Absolutely. But it's going to be like you put your money in a controlled fund that you have no access to. It's essentially A S&P 500 ETF, low cost, just follows the market. [00:21:47] Speaker C: But they're not, though, they're not making [00:21:50] Speaker D: stocks, not making individual transactions ahead of time to gain or to avoid loss, both of which are insider trading and both of which are criminal in my opinion. You know, using your knowledge as an elected official to profit or to avoid a loss while others who go to work and contribute to their, you know, 401ks every two weeks just have to take that hit that happens for whatever reason. [00:22:18] Speaker C: And that's most people invest in is their 401ks. They're not always out there fully funding the Roth or carrying brokerage firms, brokerage accounts on their own. You know, a lot of it is strictly 401ks out of sight, out of mind. And what do 401ks offer? Typically it's overall market funds, those target date funds for retirement to throw some bonds into the mix or, or you can have shares of the one company that you work for. But to have insider knowledge and to be able to trade any company anywhere essentially at that level is. Yeah, I don't know. [00:22:57] Speaker D: Yeah, it doesn't make sense because like as advisors when we're getting license, you have to disclose the accounts that you personally own or that people in your household personally own because they want to be monitoring you for violations. But our elected officials don't have to follow these rules. [00:23:16] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. There. Have you heard of. Let me look this up. I want to make sure I get the name right. And I feel like there's a, a few companies doing this but it Autopilot. Have you heard of Autopilot investing? [00:23:29] Speaker D: I have not. Enlighten me. [00:23:32] Speaker C: You can track like this one says Pelosi Tracker. [00:23:37] Speaker D: Yes. [00:23:37] Speaker C: The inverse. Kramer. Because there were, you know, individual ETFs that offered that. [00:23:43] Speaker D: But they certain they were not true ETFs they wouldn't follow. The day after Nancy, you know, called up her trade to sell Nvidia or whatever, they would lag behind but based off of the most accurate information available, which is kind of to the point of our conversation, like we don't know what these politicians are doing. We just know that they're profiting and they're avoiding loss by using their intel that they get for their job. The, for the extreme sacrifice that they're making. Anthony. [00:24:15] Speaker C: To not make any money. But it seems like if you put money into, you know, this one specifically Autopilot, they do all the investing for you based on what these guys are doing. And there's looks like there's one for Bury. Michael Burry, Ray Dalio. Yep. So it's fascinating. I want to spend more time on that and I've almost opened an account myself just to follow it. But I have, I mean I, I manage money for clients. We talk about annuities all the time on this show. And that's. We believe in safety, especially when interest rates are high, where you can have annuities, fixed annuities with all its safety and get decent rates between. I mean, we've seen some double figures, which is crazy to me, but we've seen it. So we do have stock market and, you know, I do some of that too, but it's not such a small piece. But I've looked at, okay, what are senators and stuff buying? You know, I've done the Pelosi tf, I've done the Kramer, and they've, they've panned out pretty well. But to have this where it just does it automatically for you. I mean, obviously I don't have access to do that for clients, but I was interested in looking it up myself to kind of see if this is something worth doing. [00:25:32] Speaker D: Yeah, you could certainly follow the, the components and the transactions as best you could. Like, theirs is lagging behind reality, and if you were to do that on your own, it would lag a little bit behind theirs. But it would be interesting to see, like, kind of all of the politicians or these, you know, celebrity investors, if you will, like Michael burry. What's their one year, what's their five year, what's their 10 year? Like, how are they doing? And. And what were those moves that they made? Interesting, interesting stuff. [00:26:03] Speaker C: Oh, Quiver Quantitative is the, the other one. And I don't know if they do anything for you on this one, but it's a single site that essentially labels all the transactions it lands when it was traded versus when it was filed. So, like, I'm pulling it up now, and it's Sarah Jacobs. Qualcomm put between 500,000 and a million filed May 20, but made the trade May 7. And a lot of these are two to three weeks after the trade. And like you said, you know, obviously a lot of things have happened in between when they buy the stock. I'm sure there's more public announcement and you're, you're missing something in that. In between not being able to follow their exact trade in. It's fascinating that this is even something that we could have access to. And now we could almost be trading exactly like them. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. [00:27:00] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of frustrating things in politics right now, but it's really like this situation. And if you missed the sound bite, go back and listen on the Another Money show podcast. It really just highlights that it's oh, rules for the. And not for me. And we know that a majority of elected officials and politicians have wealth from wealth. That's one of the reasons why they're able to afford making that sacrifice of having extra expenses. I, I am not. I don't want to completely write it off as like, it's not a sacrifice because for you or me to go do that, it would be very difficult to do. And there is somebody, an elected official, who was doing it the hard way. Thomas Massie. And I think we should talk about him right after the break because I have some interesting stuff to say about him. [00:27:53] Speaker C: Oh, is that a good way to lead into the break or is this. Is it happening right now? [00:27:57] Speaker D: The break is happening right now. [00:28:00] Speaker B: All of Junior and Anthony's listeners receive a free consultation just for listening to the show. Visit another money show. This is another money show. [00:28:13] Speaker C: All right, who are we talking about? Thomas Massie. [00:28:15] Speaker D: We're talking about Thomas Massie, who's a American politician. He's actually a former engineer. He was a congressman out of Kentucky. And he was somebody who was essentially like, okay, hey, if anybody can, you know, run for office and represent their constituents, why not me? I'm going to give it a shot. He got elected. He was a Republican, but he, he did a lot of things working across the aisle. Interesting story about him when he went to D.C. because you do have to spend a good amount of time in D.C. he lived out of an RV. It was essentially like a camper in D.C. i'm trying to pull up some information about it right now, but he, he would find places to park in D.C. and, and lived out of his camper as being a serving congressman. And, and he just had to go up for re election again. And he was defeated in a primary. And I don't know much about the challenger and who won, but essentially the, the president did not support Thomas Massie. And so, like, you know, we're talking about money getting involved. Money gets involved in politics, it gets involved in elections. And if they want to squish somebody out, especially somebody who is finding places to park to be a congressman, that's not going to be difficult to do because you can, you can buy your way. [00:29:44] Speaker C: Yeah, you can outspend in this country. [00:29:46] Speaker D: Yeah. Now, Mike, you know, it's not the only thing. Mike. Bloomberg threw a bunch of money at a run, and those ended up being wasted dollars, I'd say. But. But it can be done, unfortunately. [00:29:58] Speaker C: I would say it helps, but it doesn't necessarily. You can't really guarantee the election, actually, I take that back. Have you heard. Have you ever heard of. Oh, my God, what is a Danny Jones? Danny Jones podcast? So my. A friend of the family sent me a podcast to send to. Well, he sent it just to me, but it probably needed to go to JR as well. And it was about, you know, higher ups, people with money building doomsday bunkers, and, you know, him being just kind of a normal guy that helps prepare people for situations like that. But he was like, you're linking all this wrong because it's like, all right, you're going to hire the military. But now everything's like, why would they. When money means nothing, why would they still support you or care about you? So it was kind of interesting. They talked about all kinds of things. None of that matters. Essentially on this episode, there's this Venezuelan spy. But, you know, Venezuela has been in the news a bunch, and they were saying that there are these drug ships and evil organizations and blah, blah, blah. But what this guy was saying, again, you never really know how much is this is true. Or it's like, you know, Joe Rogan's had these ex CIA guys on. There's ex CIA is doing podcast tours and blah, blah, blah. Were they truly XCI or CIA? Is this just what the government wants you to hear? Are these true whistleblowers? Like, there's so much information now that it's hard to really know what's going on. But what this guy was saying is that Venezuela owns Dominion. You know the voting machines that were in the news. Yep. The. The country owns a private firm business that owns them. And they've been rigging elections in South America. And the problem is, like, why? You know, they said that Trump probably has all of the information to go public with it, but he can't necessarily, because both sides are using it in multiple different countries. Like, to blow the lid off of it would ruin every election for the last 20 years. But it was fascinating because we're talking about spending money, right? Spending money for elections. But this is a way to do it. Apparently you can spend money through hacking these machines. And again, is this true? I have no idea. It's fascinating to hear a guy talk about it. [00:32:32] Speaker D: I mean, is it possible? Absolutely. It's absolutely possible. [00:32:38] Speaker C: At that. Such a large level, though. But that kind of like the Epstein thing, like, you think the deep state and all these big networks, it's like, well, if it is like that, then couldn't these people get away with it for forever? But they get. [00:32:54] Speaker D: Not that it's possible to. And not that it's impossible to, you know, influence or rig an election that you ran entirely on paper ballots. You could certainly find ways to stuff the ballot box and like, that's it. Read history. That that's happened before. We've been there as long as there have been elections. There's always been cheating, interference in elections. I don't foresee a future where we have perfectly audited, 100% accurate elections. But I think we could do better and we should do better. Elections are a riot like here. What's frustrating to me is in the primaries, you have to choose. Are you filling out a Democratic ballot, are you filling out or a Democrat ballot, a Republican ballot, or unaffiliated. If you fill out an unaffiliated ballot, you're only going to see the judges that don't have parties. If you choose one of the either Republican or Democrat ballot, then you get to vote in all the primaries and things like that. It's predisposing people to choose one side or another, which is what's most convenient for the status quo. Because it's easier for lobbyists to only have to line the pockets of two groups of people rather than more than one. That's frustrating to me and we went through that this week. I think it should be completely open and you should be voting for your candidates regardless. [00:34:23] Speaker C: No party affiliations, not just have more than two parties, but having no parties. [00:34:29] Speaker D: Yeah, you can say you're whatever party you want, but to me, that's no different than saying you stand for any other individual like issue. Like I, I think the party should not matter. It should be not. It should not be a part of the election process. [00:34:49] Speaker C: Interesting. I mean, shouldn't be. But like Jerry says, all the time is like it's getting further and further to one side. Like you have to pick party status quo. Otherwise even within the party, they're not going to support you. Well, that was the, the whole Bernie Sanders thing, right? In 2016, they came out that the DNC was actively trying to hurt his campaign because he wasn't playing ball with them. So I get why JR doesn't like him, but I don't know, he's one of those that always seemed like he was trying, like he cares. Obviously, there's some hypocrisy in his lifestyle and choices, but have I told my [00:35:28] Speaker D: Bernie Sanders story before on this show? [00:35:30] Speaker C: I don't know if you have. It's been four years on this show, so we've plenty of time. We can repeat Stories. [00:35:36] Speaker D: It's really short. But essentially when I was in college, he was running for office and it was the primaries and he was in. This was one of the times he got hosed. But he was in a primary race with Hillary Clinton. So this was probably like 2015. And all of a sudden I was driving down the main stretch and in town downtown and there were like crosswalks every, you know, hundred yards. You could cross the street and crossing the street is Bernie Sanders and a bunch of guys in, in black suits right in front of me. And he was just, he had a campaign event in town and he was going downtown to a barber shop and he was getting his hair cut. It was just, I remember reading about it the next day and being like, wow. I saw that happen like right in front of me. It's so wild. [00:36:24] Speaker C: There's wild to just like see someone of that stature. But wow, what else do I want to talk about? That's the hard thing is I read articles at all this stuff prepared, but I was like, I don't want to talk about any of this stuff. I don't have the excitement. People aren't going to be excited. But we talk about housing a lot. And again, I, I think I've said this before. 2008 was different because houses for the most part weather all kinds of storms. Properties, great investment, they weather different things. 2008 was all these shoddy loans being placed on homes and homes being the catalyst for everything else going typically like 2008 it was, or not 2008, but the dot com bubble was just people dumping all this money into these tech companies that didn't play out kind of like what we're seeing with AI right now and starting to see. Well, the market isn't seeing any effects of that, but you're hearing stories of it. So with housing, I just saw an article that they're predicting the next bubble because of the amount of layoffs within the industry because there's so many different numbers to look at in housing. But they were talking about mortgage lenders and from their peaks to where they're at now and how many people are they hiring to process housing payments? Because if things are going well, if they're going good, you need more people, more people working. But I've never thought of looking at the employment rates within the lending sphere as a way to predict that because they were saying, you know, it was about 45% drop peak to peak. See numbers between 45 and 50, depending on what exactly you're looking at within the real Estate market for employers and this was outside of banks and they're saying currently we're at like a 40 to 45%. And I'm personally, we have a lot of lender clients, people that we've known throughout the years and some of them are holding strong, they're still working, but we've seen quite a few over the last few years get laid off and they've all been telling us that housing is a different market now than what it used to be. So I'm not really sure what that means. Again, we have a lot of predictions on what's going to happen next. I don't like Junior, I don't think it'll be good when whatever it hits, but I don't think housing will be the catalyst, you know, in 2000 or 2020 we have a lot more cash purchases. I don't think there's going to be as many defaulted loans now with all these cash purchases and then the Zillow and like all of those buying up properties too. What happened to. I think that was going to be a talk in a bill and I don't know if it was just if it already got shot down or if it's never actually passed through, but they were going to say that they were going to limit big firms ability to purchase single family homes. Do you know what happened with that? [00:39:42] Speaker D: I'm not sure where we're at with that, but I mean that sounds like something that I would support. I would have to take a look at it at least to a certain point. Like you wouldn't want to cross over a certain threshold where most of your residential property anywhere was owned by a corporation. Just imagine like one town if the corporation owned a large majority of the, the residences. Like then all of a sudden it's like you're working for the company and they own your house. Not, not a good situation to be in. So and, and where we're at in the, you know, capitalism machine here in the US and it's, it is a great capitalism machine. But if it runs away, that could be, that could be a bad thing. I don't know where we're at with that bill. I really don't even know where we're at with the housing market in general. You would think it would heat up if interest rates went down. But I could see it almost being like an aftershock of some like broader economic challenge that if there was a bunch of layoffs and then all of a sudden people are foreclosing and then values go down because you don't have that many buyers. I think right now you, the housing market is kind of unique. Like, people are almost stuck if they had purchased a home and it's at a really low interest rate, they may want to move or may have to move because of work, but then they're swapping a 3% interest rate for a 7% interest rate. There's some interesting. [00:41:11] Speaker C: And they're paying more for the home too. Like you're going to profit quite a bit. But yeah, we've, we've talked to a couple people recently about their retirement planning because it's like, oh, well, do I sell now? If we do think that there could be a downturn. And I've had to tell them, I was like, when you're going home to home, it doesn't really matter as much because if the market is high, yeah, you're going to pay too much for the next house, but you're also going to sell your house for too much. But let's say, you know, it drops like a 2008, 2009, 2010 situation. Oh, I'm selling my, my home at half cost. Yeah, but you're going to buy your next home at half cost, so it's almost a wash. When you're going home to home, it's different. If this is an investment property or if you're going to carry a mortgage, then that changes the conversation a ton. But if it's, you're just going home to home, I think it matters a lot less. That's where I kind of got screwed though, because, you know, I moved from Utah back to Arizona and joined Junior in 2018. But because I went from W2 to 1099 work, I couldn't get a loan for two years. Well, it happened in those two years. Right now we're in 2020. So luckily I was able to get it done a little bit sooner with our mortgage guy. But I wasn't able to go house to house because I couldn't rent in my home in Utah because of their HOA, which I hate HOAs. So I don't deal with one now because that was going to be planned. I was like, oh, I'll just own a rental and I'll get another place down here. Couldn't do it. So sell it. Now I'm just sitting, waiting, wasting money on rent. And then 2020 happens and everything starts skyrocketing. Luckily I got that. But now I'm trying to figure out, do, do I wait, do I make a big push to pay down my house like you're saying like at that low interest rate, because I'm, I think I'm a sub 3 rate or maybe just a bit above 3, I don't remember but I've got a fantastic rate. Do I try to get something now for more? Like do I trade do, what do I do? So it's interesting, I think a home's [00:43:16] Speaker D: still a great asset. I think for most people, I think if given the choice, they'd prefer to own their home. It's part of your portfolio like you said, like you can swap it out for another one somewhere else. Like that's a well established thing and there are processes for that. Even if the market goes down, it's probably going to go down fairly broadly. So if you, like you just said if you're selling it for less, well you're now buying a new one for less too. So and that, and that kind of ties to interest rates as well. Like sometimes you just see the price of things go up because cash is readily available. Like if, if it goes down to 3% for a 30 year mortgage, again you're probably going to see home prices go up. All other things being equal because people can demand more of a price because money's cheap, cheaper to borrow. That's why you saw student loans become such a problem because the government was backing up, you know, college tuition rates and offering super low percentage loans to teenagers. And the states and the educational institutions saw, wow, there's all this cash out here that people can go borrow for cheap and they only thing they can spend it on is school. So let's raise the price of school. And, and that's just another example of how interest rates matter. So yeah, I don't know what war [00:44:35] Speaker C: gouging, that's what that becomes. They didn't have to raise their rates so high, but they chose to because people had access to cheap. And so talking about free money, right, I've mentioned this before and I pulled it up before we started the show, but the M2 money supply, right, the, the money in savings, checking, money market, easily readily available like since 2020 has been up, it went up 40%. It went from like 15, what was this? Trillion. Billion. So 15 trillion to 21 trillion in the span of like two years, that's an increase of 40%. But where exactly is all of this cash? And I really mean that because it feels like there's so much debt out there and the, the stock market's overinflated. But that's because people are using cash to purchase shares. But where does, where is all of this excess cash? Because I mean, obviously that's part of where a ton of the interest rate and the inflation that we've seen is coming from. [00:45:45] Speaker D: Where's the money? Like you think of all these, you know, if you're retiring now, you have been on. If you, if you've retired from a job at a company where hopefully you had a pension, you probably didn't, that's a story for another episode. But if you've been saving in a 401k or some other IRA for the last 30, 40 years of your career, you have done that in the best time ever to have done that. Even, even with a horrible crash in the middle and people are now selling these assets for much, much higher than they bought them for. And now all of a sudden they have this extra cash and they're spending it. I, I think that is going to create some pressure. Just as you start to see more people retire and they're spending their money on things. That's another reason why prices go up. The businesses can't serve infinite people every day. At a certain point they have to raise prices. But the gouging has gotten out of control as well. There's some things that, where it's just, I feel like everything costs a hundred dollars these days. [00:46:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it used to be like, oh, you get 20 bucks, you'll be fine, and then just keeps going up. But to like, you know, think of your grandparents age. And so when I remember when I used to buy this for a nickel, like that's just how prices work. It's going to change a lot in the next few years. But how, how exactly. So, and now I'm running more numbers, I'm looking more at this graph. I wondered if the Fed counts their own numbers. So there's 22.6 trillion in what I'm looking at for the M2 money supply. And we just talked about how the Fed themselves have 6.7 trillion, which is like 30% of all of the money out there. [00:47:35] Speaker D: It's just being, hit me with those numbers again. [00:47:42] Speaker C: M2 money is 22.6 and then the Fed has 6.7. And that was based off an article I had just read on our homeboy Kevin, who just got the Fed chair. [00:47:57] Speaker D: So that, that's a delta of like what, 16 trillion? Yeah, the difference between how much money there actually is and how much money there is. [00:48:09] Speaker C: Yeah, wild. [00:48:11] Speaker D: Yeah, that is wild. And Junior talks about this too, and his epic saga with PNC Bank. Like if you have a lot of people have 50 grand in the bank for an emergency fund or you know, if not that, whatever they've got. Even if you wanted to go withdraw 5,000, $10,000 from the bank, I imagine you're going to strike out at most retail banks on that request for sure. [00:48:35] Speaker C: So wait, so we just dumped 40% more over a two year span just a couple years ago of theoretical cash into our system, but there is actually no, no cash. Not in the banks, not anywhere. So I know it's just ones and zeros, but even that, who's holding it? Because the, the banks themselves outside of the Fed or zero reserve. Right. So they're not holding their money in reserve, they're loaning it back out. [00:49:06] Speaker D: It doesn't exist. [00:49:08] Speaker C: I don't know, man. [00:49:09] Speaker D: And there's so much money out there. Like that's, that's why you see the prices continue to go up. [00:49:16] Speaker C: And this is. Someone's going to listen to this and be like, Anthony's an idiot. I can explain all of this. So maybe they'll reach out and they can explain some of this to me because I would love that we, that would tell you we have a. So the, the episode last week with our buddy Jeff on saying Arizona is out of water, someone reached out to us and said, hey, that's not the case at all. [00:49:38] Speaker D: We have, someone found the water. They found all the water and we're gonna have them on the show. Yes. Which is awesome to get the, the other viewpoint because I found the interview. Was it Steve, was it Joe who was on last week? [00:49:51] Speaker C: Jeff. [00:49:52] Speaker D: Jeff. Jeff was on. And, and I thought I was, I thought that was great, that was locally relevant. And then we had someone else who was listening, who's also in the industry say, actually I have a different perspective. And we're going to have them on. [00:50:06] Speaker C: And yeah, we haven't set a date yet, but I'm looking forward to that because I will. I don't know. I don't really view anything as black and white. Everything's pretty much gray, which makes it real difficult to have strong opinions on things because there's so many variables to what is right, what's wrong. It's a fact if you only look at it from this direction, but if you look at. From this direction, that fact is more of an opinion. So it, so I love it. I would love to hear what he has to say because I would love to. I mean, we didn't talk about desalinization, which I think we're getting better at. So obviously all the, the Ocean water. Right. If we can have access to that, then what. What kind of shortage are you talking about? You know, for the sun will explode before we run out, hopefully. I mean, who knows? I don't want to be here when we truly run out of drinking water. [00:50:57] Speaker D: We accidentally drained the oceans. [00:51:01] Speaker C: It could happen. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything about this. So I'm glad he reached out, though. So we haven't gotten a date booked yet because JR's Travel and Me travel over the next few weeks is a weird schedule. But I am looking forward to that because I would love to hear what he has to say. And I looked up the company a little bit. I think some of it just has to do with their inability to find the water. Like, not that it's not there, but just they don't have the right infrastructure and search procedure. And I think that's what his company specializes in. I did a little research, but we'll see. So we'll see how it happens. But I'm looking forward to it. Me, too. I would love to have one reason not to be worried. Right. And J has 10 pillars, but none of them was water. But maybe water needed to be higher up on the list, but apparently not. It doesn't need to be on that list. [00:51:53] Speaker D: Yeah. And. And I. You're right. Like, it's not always it and hardly ever is it black and white. Like, it's much more easy for us to understand if we're like, it is what it is and it's this way and this is how it is. And this is my side and that's your side. [00:52:07] Speaker C: But it's a radio show. Yeah. Sensationalize. Makes it more exciting. That's why people want to hear Junior and not my monotone NPR voice talking about quiver Quantitative Congress easing, and. [00:52:21] Speaker D: Well, if you want more Junior or if you want to listen to that episode and that interview we were just talking about, it's on the Another Money show podcast feed, which now has more than four years of consecutive episodes. You can pick any week from the last four years. You can go back to the episode after elections or the episode. I mean, it was still a little, like, post Covid when we first started. Like, it's a time capsule of JR's rants. And if you like JR's rants, there's a podcast for that, too. [00:52:56] Speaker C: Yeah. That was literally the. The first podcast before we got the radio show as you was called J.R. rants. That one was fun. We had a couple drinks in our system and would Just press record and kind of hope for the best. And then. And some episodes were better than others. [00:53:09] Speaker D: Well, that's kind of what we loosened up what we did today. We've got a few minutes left. Anthony. We kept it casual today. Love that people are listening out or listening and reaching out, especially those who are. Are credible enough to be guests on our, our show. And that's a fairly low bar. But they did reach out. We, we have had, we have had some discussions about maybe having a comedian back on the show. Not sure. [00:53:42] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, have Bob Zany back. I wouldn't mind having him back. I just want to hear more Mitch Hedberg stories. How much more time do we have though? [00:53:49] Speaker D: We have two minutes and I would like to use one of it, one of those minutes to talk about. Did you see what Doug Stanhope did? The comedian? [00:53:58] Speaker C: No. Oh, about doing the. The city council and that. You have like five minutes. Yeah, yeah. [00:54:06] Speaker D: So essentially the comedy where, where this comedian lives and a bunch of other comedians. [00:54:10] Speaker C: The comedy club closed and it closed Arizona. So it's kind of local news for us. [00:54:17] Speaker D: Yes, yes. And it closed for a very good reason that you can look up and we don't have time to get into. But until it gets back open. They essentially turned the twice a week city council meetings where every person gets three minutes of time. They've turned it into an open mic and essentially like a Kill Tony style comedy show. And, and look up Doug Stanhope in Bisby, Arizona. It's really good. [00:54:41] Speaker C: So I saw when he went before the council and advertised that and then posted that clip. But I haven't seen any c. City council meetings since. Like, have you seen footage? Are there people actually doing this? [00:54:52] Speaker D: Not. I haven't seen anything, you know, after Doug's initial proclamation. But it was a good, it was a good video and it was probably the best thing to happen at the Bisbee City council meeting. In a while. [00:55:05] Speaker C: I'm gonna have to look more into that. All right, I'm gonna leave you with this because it's more out of curiosity and I did kind of want to talk about it, but with like AI streaming, right. The whole new world order is you'll own nothing and you'll be happy with to some extent. Do you think we're only ever just getting what we asked for and now they're paying consequences that we didn't know about. So like think about streaming, right? Or at some point you're listening to the radio and you'd be like, oh, it'd be nice to listen to A radio without ads. And then we got that be like, oh, and now it'd be nice to listen to just exact songs that I want, wherever I want without having to carry my CD around. Then streaming camera, like Spotify came and you. Or not Spotify itunes and you could buy the individual. And then streaming came and now you can have any music you want anywhere. Anywhere. Which had a whole chain of reactions. But it was like, that's something that we wanted, but kind of with all these streaming services and how we didn't want cable. So we have all these streaming services now, but now they found a way to turn on the streaming services into what we hated about regular tv. But it's like we're. We're getting what we asked for with AI, with robots and be like, you know, 20, 30 years ago when we didn't think any of this could actually happen. You watch the Jetsons and be like, man, wouldn't it be cool if I have a robot that could do this and a robot that can do this and if my car drive me. Like, we're getting everything that we've wanted and then found a way to be upset about getting everything we've ever wanted. [00:56:35] Speaker D: It's true. The radio example is. Is so on it because it's like there would be that new song that came out and you'd listen to the radio and you'd wait for that song to come on and you could not wait for it. Now all you hear is the 15 second hook of the most popular song over and over until you hate it. That's all you get now. [00:56:54] Speaker C: Oh, and you overkill. I do that all the time. But I would love to have a better or a more, you know, more examples, but longer conversation about that part. But like, I, I think about this a lot lately because, like, we are upset about how fast technology is moving and we're seeing all the bad things sides. But I think we're forgetting some of the good. Like this is all stuff that when I was growing up, I wish I would have had access to. And now we're getting it and then it's just like, I don't know. Yeah, it's something I've been thinking about lately. [00:57:22] Speaker D: I like that. And maybe J.R. what? You're listening. I'm sure you can respond to that next week when we record. But send us your fan mail and your hate mail and we'll be back next week. Anthony, anything else? [00:57:36] Speaker C: Ah, give us a call if you need any help, you have questions, you want to throw anything financially at us, you know whether it's stuff we handle or not. If you have questions, concerns, I like being a resource. It's my favorite part of this job. Give us a call 623-523-0444. The number again is 623-523-0444. [00:57:57] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to another money show. You deserve to work with a private wealth management firm that will strategically work to protect your hard earned assets. To schedule your a free no obligation consultation, visit anothermoneyshow.com investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Rochford Financial are independent of each other. 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