Chris Temple - Powell Hold Rates: Fed's Inflation Nightmare Crushes Stocks & Sparks Recession Fears

I'm Michael Foxen. This is a Prospector podcast and joining me as we do after the Fed meeting each and every time I have Chris temple the national investor walk of Chris.

Hey, Mike. How are you? I'm doing good. So it's been another Fed day.

This one here is a little bit funny, though. It looks on the surface like a nothing burger.

Everything that was said and done last time was done again, but if we dig under the surface of this thing, that's where the nuances are.

And this is far from a nothing burger, isn't it?

It really is. I mean, just like in so many things in life, a lot of people like to deny reality because they've got a narrative in her head that's different from reality.

And I want to believe this. Okay. And for the longest time, the markets have wanted to believe that the Fed really does have inflation on the downhill path going in the right direction that the Fed really was going to lower interest rates more to follow up with the rate cuts of late last year.

And that that was going to validate everybody's continued dopey bets on a lot of different asset classes that are overpriced.

And more than ever, that got kind of shot down by Chairman Powell this afternoon. In fact, even though the headline really wasn't anything that anybody should have been surprised at, nobody believed there was going to be a change in policy today.

Most people believed that they would take a rhetorical step toward a hawkish direction, but there was still that blind faith that Powell, at least, is going to say something that'll let us all sleep a little bit easier tonight that all things get really bad.

Don't worry. I still will cut interest rates because that's what we do. He actually said the opposite in several respects.

I can't remember. And I watched the entire press conference. I cannot remember from this afternoon, a single solitary answer to a question that would have given anybody with any hope of a more aggressive easing coming any foundation for that at all.

As he always is, he talked about both sides of his mouth frequently denied a lot of his own reality quite honestly. I mean, the Fed came out and they significantly raised their inflation projections for this year to which, as you might imagine, a couple of different reporters said, wait a minute, what are you talking about rate cut possibility for at all instead of rate hikes.

If you're saying the economy is still growing solidly, which it is only if you look at some numbers that really isn't, but.

And if you're raising your inflation expectations, why are we talking, why aren't we talking about the next move being a rate hike and you know, and he had to dance around that is he's had to do the last few meetings, but in language, Mike.

He went beyond and in more detailed and anything I remember him saying.

For quite a long time.

To explain away why the Fed is now in its 50 year.

Of not meeting its inflation projections, he kind of had to admit that, you know what, we're losing.

And we're not losing to the point where we're going to raise rates right away, but, you know, like the Fed talked about it the last meeting this meeting he admitted that there was a discussion had that they're going to have to put the possibility of rate hikes again more squarely on the table.

So it's not to surprise the markets if it comes to that. So when all of a sudden done.

The markets behaved exactly.

As they should be behaving during a time like this stocks now have closed at their lowest level.

Of 2026 precious metals were getting slammed copper got slammed.

The only commodity of any note that didn't get slammed was crude oil because you've still got the work going on natural gas astonishes me it's a screaming by right now for a number of reasons.

We've finally moved about 5% today, but it should be up about a double word is right now.

So one of my big calls right now in a recent past was to be buying a couple of leverage natural gas ETFs.

Because we're about to go from this crazy winter weather to a scorcher throughout almost all of the continental US in the coming days.

And this is on top of, you know, Israel and the US attacking natural gas infrastructure elsewhere.

You know, the much higher prices overseas are going to continue to pull up prices and even in North America and sympathy not nearly as much obviously.

So anyway.

The markets of behaving as they should they're behaving for stangflation.

Paul had some cute comments about that.

And we're going to get more of the same. I mean the stock market has only started its correction or bear market whatever turns into being.

Energy, even if we've roughly peaked is going to stay elevated until this war is settled and then it's only going to come back down a little.

And precious metals are as I have said for many weeks now have seen their peaks for this part of the move.

Not that this is going to be the all time high because we're going to have new all time highs later, but later it's going to be a while.

Yeah, no, the precious metals are definitely consolidating the stock markets.

This looks like it's going to be a cascading move downwards towards that bear market. We haven't even really kind of crossed into correction area yet.

It's just been down markets for several days, but.

Economic data does not look good, you know, we've spoken of the Sophie's choice for for Paul fighting high unemployment and fighting high inflation rates while the unemployment rates ticked up.

The job numbers didn't look good in the last report.

You know, the PPI came out today and it ticked up and the PPI would have reflect February's, you know, prices and the war hadn't even started yet.

So like the increased in prices related to energy hasn't even been factored in yet and inflation looks like it's taking up so.

The fed defense been painted into a corner here badly.

Well, they have and I think when you look at the very toxic mix of things that they're dealing with, it's been a long time.

Since it's been this bad for the Fed, I mean, at the same time, and you and I were talking about this before we recorded.

The same time the Fed is trying to talk a good tough, you know, schoolmarm almost kind of stick to get people to understand it just because the stock market wraps four or five percent just because oil is up a little bit and there's supply issues.

Doesn't mean the Fed always runs at the rescue and loosens policy because that could be more harmed and good in the end.

So at the same time we're saying that is I've been talking about for a while now and you and I have talked about this.

They've been making increased use of their discount window, their overnight repo facility, their overall open market operation facilities.

The end to broad money supply has a new record territory, which sounds counter intuitive to a lot of people, but we are the new gross all time high for the broad money supply.

So it's not like there's not a lot of liquidity and credit out there.

The problem is that the private markets are starting to destroy all this credit faster than the Fed was putting it out previously.

And even is putting it out a little bit now to try and short things up.

And that's the thing that there was one surprise that I had in all the questions this afternoon, Mike, it was that there really wasn't much interest in talking about the debacle right now.

So called private credit, you're talking about many trillions of dollars of debt that has got its worst delinquency rate since 2008 right now.

You've got a lot of the big money center banks now that are increasing loan loss reserves that are starting to pull the plug on funding a lot of this stuff and that's going to reverberate for a while.

It's just like, you know, and we talk about the bond market vigilantes, the bond market vigilantes are our feel under oats more these days as well.

And it's one of the reasons why the long term treasury yields have continued to stay fairly elevated and may go up even more is because when you look at the rapidly again deteriorating debt situation in the US, which Tiffany, please, we just hit 39 trillion yesterday.

40 don't don't fear folks, so 40 will be here, even still this spring.

But you've got that you've got the Trump administration ordered to cough up 130 billion and tear free funds, which they're now scrambling to figure out the mechanism to do that.

And you've got the orange wonder thanks to him and his Israeli handlers, adding to the debt about a billion and a half more every day you take.

So that's the bond market vigilantes that's bad enough when they're the ones keeping long term borrowing costs in the market higher.

Now you've got the main transmission mechanisms for the Fed, the big commercial banks, the money center banks.

But help enable everything else downstream. Now they're getting a skittish. Now they're pulling their horns in.

And this is another reason why I think the Fed really is not wanting to get forced into having the cut rates because that will do zero to solve these problems.

And Paul kind of admitted that at one point today and admitted that in the past, the Fed has made mistakes.

Meaning in the wrong way to shocks and has made those worse, you know, the Fed did it in the 70s with the oil price.

East policy to help us with the oil shock made everything worse and pile himself did it with the supply shocks due to COVID and pumped up the money to supply.

And it's simply went and fed into inflation because monetary policy is not going to stop what's going on in the Middle East.

Okay, you don't, the old saying of what you've probably heard this before went when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And Paul, if you believe him is trying to resist that right now.

If the private market is actually going to do some of the heavy lifting, you know, maybe the best policy is to keep the interest rates exactly where they are.

If the banks aren't lending to the private lenders, the private lenders aren't lending to people for mortgages and for auto loans.

It's kind of going to slow the economy down and take some of that inflationary pressure out of the economy that a rate hike might do at the same time.

And I agree if you lower rates, it's not going to matter if the banks aren't lending to each other, the money doesn't go anywhere.

Well, that's exactly right. I mean, in the 70s, because of political pressure from Richard Nixon, who is running for reelection in 72, after burns one ahead and ran a hot monetary policy and even after that, less than the value of the dollar kept interest rates too low, let inflation get out of hand.

And none of what he did in that respect was going to change the mind of the Arab nations that had embargoed oil.

Well, it wasn't going to change the mind prior to that of the conflict that was causing a problem in the energy market as well, nothing like what we have today, but you have that fact then as well.

So all you do with increasing the money supply and lowering interest rates when that cannot affect supplies, you just cheap into dollar and raise the price of everything, period.

And again, as I said, Powell did that, you know, when you had all supply shocks and stuff wasn't moving because of COVID.

All polycop, which by printing a lot of money was to make the dollar even cheaper and to raise the prices of stuff that was changing hands, because too much money chasing too few, too few goods raises the prices.

So they sure aren't going to be easing policy just on this war.

But the only way they'll do that is if their open market operations prove insufficient to arrest a growing credit crisis that we have underneath the surface.

That will get in the move.

The question is will it be like 2008 where it's after the fact you've already had a 40% drop in the stock market and a few big players go bust.

Or is it going to be more of a rolling thing than that? That remains to be seen.

It's and like it's me to when I was a kid in the 1970s, we used to go to these variety shows and you'd see them on TV as well. And there is always these, I guess, jugglers for the lack of a better term for them, but they used to have this act where they would have a bunch of plates spinning on sticks.

And the idea was to keep all the plates going and keep adding plates until all the sticks are covered up.

It kind of reminds me of that. We've got inflation. We've got unemployment. Now we've got a war. We've got, you know, private credit.

We've got, you know, defaults and delinquencies. You know, they've only got six plates going. They're all wobbling.

Right. So, you know, it's going to take, I think, a miracle for something here and not to actually break and send the world into a into a larger recession.

Well, I agree in what still troubles me as much as my hope is that President Trump comes to what's left of his senses and manages to find, you know, he bullshit us about everything.

I mean, in the same sentence, he changes his story about the same subject. So it's not going to be much of a stretch for him when he does things like that to come up with some cock and made me excuse any kind of half did it today.

We're he threatened that while we're just going to leave after we've bombed some more and take out what we think is a military threat for Iran and leave the rest of the world to clean it up, but whatever it is.

What worries me and I've sent this to you and many other people before is that there still needs to be some incidents of blame.

The coming recession and bear market on.

I don't think Trump is going to be happy if he were to cut and run now for my ran and the world sees that the shooting is over and maybe the oil price comes back down a bit.

But the stock market and private credit and everything else continue to deteriorate.

You know, that's not going to make him look good at all. So the guy does not think like the average person does far from it.

And as part of the risk here with the soul thing is you don't know from one day to the next.

Whether he's going to really go full neuro.

Or again, he's going to listen to a couple of saner heads and figure out a way to extricate ourselves and start to clean this mess up.

But it's important to remember and I've said this many times also Mike that we were in this boat and headed for this kind of a of an economic and credit contraction, which will ultimately the stock market won't be able to ignore forever.

Regardless of what was going on in Iran, this was already a matter of gravity and mathematics and what Trump has done.

In being pulled into starting this war restarting this war, depending on how you want to look at it is to accelerate this whole timeline.

And you have to check the wisdom of doing that in a in midterm season.

You know, if he wants to lose control of the of the two houses, this is like the most brilliant way to do it.

This is what is astonishing and maddening and frustrating and telling and I mean, we could talk all day about this, you know, and.

We're in a family channel, so I won't use bad words, but I've got a term for a friend of mine colleague of mine has called it for years now, the Trump and Stein project.

But a lot of people are starting to wonder is, is Donald Trump just that unhinged?

Is there something deliberate and planned about getting a reasonable, small majority of the country to believe that the country is really going to get screwed up and end to just pull a rug off under everybody and screwed up even more.

It's the old Higaly and dialectic thesis, antithesis and in synthesis.

No sane person says and does the kind of stupid stuff that's come out of Trump's mouth in just the last 18 days, whatever it's been of this war.

And even before that, and now it's cascading.

He was incrementally losing a lot of the base that voted for him based on promises like we're going to cut government.

You know, we're going to unleash those we're going to get out of foreign wars and regime change operations and one by one going back and every one of them in a worse way than, you know, George Bush Jr. looks like power taft.

The senator who ran for president on time regrettably didn't win.

But was a great ultra conservative and paleo conservative lion back in the post war war two era.

This is stuff you don't do if you're serious about your own movement and it's especially incredible to look at this Mike when.

Flip in it over he was riding pretty high politically at the state of the union address largely because the only bad option left in putting the Democrats back in charge is still in a lot of people's minds worse than leaving him and Republicans in there.

And now he's removed a lot of people's views of even that I saw something the other day is saying the good news is the Republicans are going to lose this year the bad news is the Democrats are going to win.

And that's that's the way things have unfolded so this guy has been in the process, which is accelerated recently of snatching defeat politically from the jaws of victory potentially more than any president that you can name in going back 250 years.

Well, I can't say that I would argue with that, but you know he's enabled by his own party if he's as bad politically for them as he appears to be he's losing that mega base.

There is to 25th amendment and nobody stepping forward to even suggested.

It is to me remarkable that there's only been a very tiny handful of Republicans who have dared to cry foul at all.

And it's astonishing, you know Donald Trump is pushing 80 years old.

If he finishes this term, he's not going to be in there for another one.

And a lot of these people that he's putting his administration are a generation or more younger than him.

And it makes you wonder the extent to which they want their own political careers ended potentially if things don't miraculously improve somehow because they're going to be saddled with just what you said.

And you say something. I mean, we had the head countercarism guy at the financial security can't resign yesterday.

And of course that's been a big cause celebrity media and otherwise down here for a whole host of reasons.

A lot of people listening to us have probably already read or heard of.

And the first question a lot of people are asking is what's wrong with his boss.

Who regularly before she joined forces with Trump warned against the idiocy of going to war against Iran specifically.

And more generally the whole idea where she got on board with what Trump stated agenda was, you know, and foreign wars get out of the Middle East.

We've spent trillions of dollars and many thousands of lives on lies over the years.

And now he's telling just as big of ones is, you know, George Bush senior and junior both ever told.

So why is Tulsi Gabbard stand on board? Why is Bobby Kennedy who came to the Trump fold for somewhat the same reasons and others? Why hasn't he uttered a peep?

It really does make you wonder. I mean, his Trump behind his scenes that got something on people.

Is he that charismatic? The people really have the belief that in the person of Donald Trump like this crack pot.

Still called spiritual advisor of his says, if you if you question Trump, you're questioning God.

They all really believe this shit. I mean, a few of them do.

You and I talk recently about, you know, the context of the war you've got people like Pete Hegseth and, and, you know, Lindsey Graham and a couple of these other ones, Huckabee.

Who really believe that Jesus is going to give them a gold star if they help kill more Arabs.

But, or Persians in this case both. But damn.

What's wrong with people like this that they aren't speaking out like like Mr Kent did yesterday at last?

I've been asking that question since the start of the year. It was, you know, yeah, it was normal. Trump may have.

And then Christmas happened the new year came and then.

This isn't the normal Trump may have anymore.

Well, no, and I mean, in his mind, and I don't know if his mind is failing or he's getting that much more angry or bold because he doesn't have an exit ramp.

So he's got to continue to be bold.

Or what the situation is, but, but you look at some of the stuff out of his mouth.

And, and you look at some of the actions. I mean, here again.

Is it right for the US to figure out a way to get ourselves extricated from a lot of the rest of the world.

We bought our own hemisphere. Of course it is.

My mind board with that 110%. I always have been.

Is this the way to do it by all of the mayhem and, and, and economic destruction and more hell know.

But even in our own hemisphere, look at what he's done to Cuba recently.

It's just some more really dopey.

Stuff.

That that we're hearing about. And this guy comes out over the weekend.

And I'm actually looking for a quote here. I thought I had it in front of me.

Yeah, he said he says he was asking about Cuba.

This is a direct quote.

Okay. I think I can do anything I want with it.

Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want.

This is after someone pressed him on scene. We mean you're going to take Cuba.

This is what this guy's answer is.

And to get to that point, he's, he's.

He's really strengthened the embargoes that were already existing.

Now he's caught off energy. So for a while, if you, if you, if you saw this in the last few days.

The entire country's electric grid was gone.

I read just in the last 24 to 48 hours that they got it back up and running.

But you're talking about hospitals.

You're talking about food. You're talking about refrigeration.

You're talking all kinds of stuff. And he doesn't give a shit.

If it's going to cause Cuba to knuckle under and say, okay, we surrender.

We want it to be part of the US again.

Is that a long term goal you should have? Of course.

A lot of people myself included a thought that for decades now.

This insane embargo that we have had against Cuba and keeping these people in third world status is just a lunacy.

But, but this.

So.

I mean, he is not in the eyes of everybody except the Israeli government and Fox News.

This guy's not wearing the white hat.

But at the same time, Chris and this is from an outside observer.

But I, I honestly, I look at this and most of this is he still pissed off at Obama for making fun of him at a dinner, like 12 years ago, you know.

Venezuela Obama was negotiating a peaceful economic deal with Venezuela.

He created the taunt with with Cuba to the point where the embargo and the stuff got raised from Cuba.

You know, whether it was a good dealer or not, that's an arguable thing.

But, you know, he seemed to have gotten around off of their nuclear program.

And he's destroyed that all the way along.

I almost think Obama should come out daily and say the opposite for what he wants Trump to do just so Trump says screw you and does the right thing.

I don't know.

Far be it for me to, you know, carry water for Obama or Biden or any of the rest of them because in the end, regrettably they all serve the same people to one extent or another.

You know, let's not forget that black rock just to use one name, but one of the more prominent ones has made billions of dollars in a destruction of Iran specifically and a lot of energy infrastructure generally in the Middle East and we're going to make billions from rebuilding it.

So they love this shit.

Absolutely love it and a lot of the defense contractors love it and they love the fact that Trump wants to go from an already obscene trillion dollar a year to fence budget to an absolutely evil and obscene trillion and a half dollar a year defense budget.

I don't even think this Congress is going to give that to him at this point, but who knows.

So this is still all about power and money, but, you know, a lot of people in the US Mike that have voted Republican, other lives, a lot of people three times voted for Trump, he only fooled me once in 2016.

They they want to believe that the US, where's the white hat that this is all going to end well that Donald Trump believes what he says there's never been an all politicians why.

I love I love the thing that I heard the other night, you ever watch a movie with the hunt for red October.

Yes.

All right, the guy the guy early in the movie when when Jack Ryan, who was played early on by Alec Baldwin, you know, suggest that make her.

Remius might actually try and be trying to defect and the military brass in the room is ridiculing him and an asshole security advised that I can't think of the actor who played with him is pushing back and when he has Ryan alone in the room, he says, look.

I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar.

And when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing her lollipops.

He says, but also means I leave my options open.

And you would think and the whole first part of that thing aptly describes all of these politicians, they all cheat, they all lie, they all tell us what they're going to do when they get in.

They've been a bigger chasm between Trump's rhetoric and what he's done in office, I must say.

I mean, he's done some things I approve of and I like, but even though out of those things, that to the extent that everybody who voted for him expected.

But the part about keeping options open.

Again, getting back to something we said a few minutes ago, it just astonishes me.

Overwhelming majority of the Republicans who are just on board with all of this stuff.

And a lot of the establishment ones are biting their times, they know he's not going to be there forever.

They're still part of the same group that George Carlin famously described, you know, he says a big club and you ain't in it.

But the ones that are going to have a really rude awakening are a lot of the more recently minted.

Members of Congress and even a few senators who came in largely on the themes that Trump enunciated and, you know, what do they do for an encore when when their idol is proven to be even more so fraud.

Which a lot of people that don't have Trump deification syndrome already see.

Not that I enjoy saying that I sure don't, but it's the facts.

Well, it's it's going to start to show up, I think, in the midterms.

And again, we're going to have to see, but right now, you know, you've got like four or five hour line ups at TSA just to get on a plane and a lot of your airports.

Because Congress on both sides can't get together and hash out a budget because they've got to the point where.

Neither side trust the other to make any sort of, you know, a concilitation said, you know, concession that would get everything going, which if we want to go back to the Fed and let's let's do that one of the things that.

That came out in the statements later today, you know, from Paul after the the announcements, he was asked if he's going to stay on past his term and he said as long as.

You know, Janine Pirro's investigations going on he's going to he's going to stay at the Fed and there are Republican politicians that said.

You know, they are taking the high road and saying, no, this is wrong.

And we won't confirm wash until these investigations and.

So, you know, we're increasing the all round likelihood that.

Paul will still be the chairman of the Fed long past his is best before date and may.

Well, you remember who suggested that first, I hope.

I believe that was done by you in a, you know, in a conversation with me way back in December, a while ago.

Yeah, no, that's that's growing increasingly certain and and and Paul that he had the whole room, which doesn't happen often in the Fed press conference.

It's so annually.

Retentive and analyzing and everything like that. He had the whole room bust out laughing the way he put it when he was asked that question.

But, but no, he's made very clear that that, you know, if if I'm sure that they've already had this discussion.

At the Fed and that everybody with the possible exception of Myron, who's the most recent Trump important, I'm not even sure he would.

I'm not going to send on this, even if there was a public vote on it, but he will stay chairman until there's a new chairman.

There's no question about that.

And also, as he said the day, and as I've said in a few others have said recently, he isn't going anywhere.

Until this investigation is done.

I listen to her and other batshit crazy one out there and.

This is just this is just really some stupid stuff of of a president who, you know, I used to praise Trump.

And he still was better, I guess, in relative terms.

He used to praise him for not falling into the trap.

That Richard Nixon was in for much of his career because if Nixon was attacked in a press or hit that personal attacks.

Or, you know, political fights.

He was a very dark, brooding person.

Who would take it personally, let it eat away at him.

For most of his career until it seemed more so recently, Trump ate it like candy.

He loved it.

And I, and I was one of millions of Americans that loved watching him give it back to his detractors and twice the measure that he received the brick, bats and stuff.

But this guy's skin has gotten increasingly thin.

You know, I don't know if that's evidenced by his hand or the rash behind his neck or whatever recently.

Maybe that's a microcosm of his problem or manifestation of whatever.

But damn, give up already.

I mean, he puts out a tweet this morning, I wonder when Tulate Powell is going to lower interest rates.

I can don't already know the answer.

Shut up and say and do something productive.

Because I don't see North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican who was not running for election this year.

So he doesn't have to answer to anybody, especially.

The last couple of times he's talked about it, including after Peril's insistence that she's going to keep this prosecution going and whatnot.

So it was fine if she wants to do that, fine, you're not getting a new chairman.

That's that simple.

So yeah, Powell will stay there.

He may or may not stay after the investigation is done and.

You know, I can't imagine at this point he would want to.

But who knows, but he as far as chairman, he ain't going anywhere.

And nobody on the committee is going to undermine him.

And even Steve and Myron today, who just out of courtesy to the orange wonder descended and said, yeah, I'd rather have an extra 25 point basis cut this time around.

He is, he has become a bit more tame on all of this as well.

Trump has picked, Trump has picked a fight with somebody institutionally and legally way bigger than him.

And he should drop it.

He's never, you know, shied away from a fight that he can't win.

So, you know, it has their problem in Iran.

Yep.

But it's not just Powell, like there's, you know, the replacement for catch who just recently resigned is being hung up in committee because.

You know, they're not like in the answers that the.

The new guy is coming up and Rand Paul is blocking it.

So, you know, you, you got to wonder, you know, how much longer Trump can be, be swinging a bat and holding.

Everybody to account when there's, they're slowly pushing back and not getting any really negative outcomes.

And, you know, it's, it's really kind of hard to say, but.

There is a bit more pushback, though, and I thought it interesting yesterday when.

And I never get the title correct because it's one unique to Ireland, but well, one of the Irish leaders was in the old office with Trump.

And he nodded his head and, you know, obligingly and politely, you know, agreed with a lot of what Trump was saying, but then Trump attacked.

Prime Minister Starmer of the UK for.

Not wanting to help and all this kind of thing and he's a lightweight and he's ungrateful and all this kind of stuff.

And then this Irish leader in the old office, you know, undermined Trump finance said, no, I disagree because this is how I see Starmer and.

You know, you know, in a very polite way saying don't blame somebody else for this issue that is not of NATO's creation.

You hear that every day.

You know, usually it's Trump vectoring somebody else.

So.

I do believe that under the surface, there's a lot more dissension than a lot of people willing to say and voice publicly.

There are a few members of Congress starting to come out.

You know, Nancy Mace was one just for an example.

She's, of course, here again, she's running for governor now.

Of South Carolina.

But she was one who has said that, well, I'm going to hold my nose and vote against this Democrat war powers resolution in the house now.

But I, but this has better be answered fast kind of thing.

And there are a few other ones too that are, that are cropping up, but.

You know, the Republicans.

The leadership. And I've said this forever since they won is next to worthless in the house and Senate both anyway.

And.

They, they aren't part of the reason why the whole TSA thing and whatnot is hung up.

There's a lot of arguing over the language and what's exempted what's not and, and whatnot, but.

There's a statistic out this week that with a Republican house and Senate both.

And Republican president.

You go back and look at past instances of this.

And when it was necessary prior Republican presidents under the same circumstances, made numerous recess appointments.

Of people that were brought up judges and, and, and, and other officials.

There's not been a single recess appointment during Trump 2.0.

So a lot of his agenda, a lot of his people stayed, you know.

Stuck in, in limbo.

And the legislation passed has been the lowest in decades.

By this Congress. Now, a lot of that is Trump's own fault. The Congress is on doing a spent the majority of 2025, of course, on the.

Big, beautiful baseball hot dogs, mag of.

Flight of flag apple pie, whatever bill that adds 20 trillion to the dead over 10 years.

Didn't have time left for much of anything else.

And this year, you know, a lot of stuff has been promised and it's not happening. So.

You know, like I said earlier, the good news is these Republicans will probably lose the bad news is the Democrats are going to replace them.

Well, and, but maybe a loss in the Republican side will change the the issues at the top of the party and.

You know, you get back to a more normal Republican party, which would be.

Probably a good thing for everybody, but.

Well, I mean, I don't know if I'd even say Mike and normal Republican party because that was part of the problem and one of the things and again, this is what's so.

Again, blowing to people who actually believed in a lot of the changes Trump claimed to be trying to make Republican party needed to be gutted.

And for a while, it was looking like.

Trump had turned Republican party now into the party of the working class.

So the, you know, bread and butter issues.

And it was a Democrats had been turned into and turned themselves into the elitist and walk party.

Trump, I mean, still, whatever he's done wrong deserves a lot of credit for changing that narrative, even though he is now the one undermining it.

And it's regrettable. I mean, I saw Ross Perot do that to his own reform party 30 plus years ago.

You know, where he had a great thing going and then he was the one that ruined it in the end.

And didn't mean that the issues were gone, Republican party adopted him.

And I don't think everything that Trump has supported and run on that was good.

It's going to go away. I think he has to a great extent change the culture than a Republican party.

And I, and I also think and hope I'm correct on this.

That once Trump is out of the picture.

A lot of the people who are keeping a mouth shut now are going to be willing to put their head up and say, look, I really do believe in mag.

I think that, you know, we made a mistake and I ran again just like the others.

We really need to be serious this time about not stirring up these hornets nest all over the world, et cetera.

I hope I'm true. I'm correct about that. But I don't know right now it's something that.

You know, the Republican is going to pay for because getting back, you know, getting off of politics and back for a few minutes of the economy and stuff like that.

You know, Trump has unilaterally surrendered the affordability argument that he had.

Just on a street for me, gasoline has got a four handle on it again. And these will fuel as well into a five handle.

And historically, whatever you think, good, bad or indifferent when millions of consumers go to the polls and are spending an extra 10 bucks or 20 bucks or whatever to fill their car.

When it costs them 20% more to heat or cool their home.

And groceries now are going up at a double dig your annual rate again because of the high fuel costs and so forth.

They don't they're not going to listen to the nuanced arguments of you or me or analyzing these things.

All they care about is vote under pocket book and guess which way it's going to go.

Yeah.

Is there a sticker starting to show up with Trump's face going. I did that.

That's right.

I bought spare plate. He asked for this and he deserves it.

You know, it's, you know, it is what it is.

There's going to be another Fed meeting in a few weeks.

Probably more the same, but there's going to be most of the iterations.

I'm going to guess they're going to be political. It's going to affect this economy.

Hopefully the airports will be open still and.

And we're not facing another government shutdown.

You know, on some on some other issue because those seem to happen about every two to three months and we're almost due for the next one.

Well, you've got a lot of things right now that are time sensitive.

It's it's been covered at least somewhat not as much as the major war headlines and.

You know, the energy prices and whatnot, but 30% of the world's fertilizer.

Again, more of that to the rest of the world and not, but we do get some here.

That goes through the state of hormones in that part of the world.

We're approaching planning season. In fact, we're starting planning season and some parts of the lower Midwest approaching.

Immunally.

And you know, less fertilizer means lower yields lower yields means less foodstuffs and higher prices.

You've got shipping costs in Asia right now. There's a major.

Parameter of shipping costs in Singapore just hit an all time high. So even higher now.

Then it was in 2008 when oil peaked at $147 a barrel.

The whole stagflation thing is really starting to take hold a lot.

You know, Paul tried to dismiss it by saying, well, it's not as bad as the 70s.

But he had to concede that the pattern is starting to show up.

He doesn't want to use that word yet. He said it's not appropriate in his mind, but he said that's just his opinion.

My opinion is he's going to have to start using it like the rest of us is.

So look, between now and the next Fed meeting.

The only positives I can think of will be if there is some legitimate end to the shooting part of this war.

It'll cause a relief rally on Wall Street oil might settle back down to the 75 to 85 dollar range.

It sure is how won't go back into the 50s.

Because so much of the energy infrastructure is damaged elsewhere.

We're going to state a much higher threshold price for quite a while.

That's the best scenario and it'll only slow down the unfolding correction because make no mistake about it.

Those factors of decaying private credit.

The mainstream economy being less healthy, I must say, than then Paul tried to portray today.

And the rest of it, you know, we've started either a correction or bear market.

And whether we're technically in a recession by election day remains that we've seen, but I dare say that the average consumer is not going to feel any better about life and maybe a fair bit worse by the time November gets here.

No, I agree. And, you know, these are definitely scary waters to be sailing.

And so if they want to, you know, get advice from Captain Chris to steer their way through all of this, how would they do so?

Just go to national investor.com and follow the yellow brick road.

You can sign up from my paid service. You can all my recommendations, which we've been doing extremely well on for a while now, including recently, though, for reasons I'd rather we didn't have to navigate.

Meaning shorting the market and being heavier and energy.

And, or you can get my free newsletter. There's a lot of recent commentaries and whatnot on there as well on the war and the broad markets and otherwise.

So a lot of good stuff there.

Wonderful. As always, thank you for joining me and I'm sure we're going to be back here talking again in short order is as the world turns.

Okay, thank you.

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