Receipts Live: Diesel Prices Soar to $6 a Gallon, Inflation Outpaces Wages

0:00Hello everyone, I am Catherine Randpell, the economics editor here at the Bullwork and I am delighted as always to be joined this Friday by my friend and colleague JVL to talk all things economics business corruption. What is going on with gas prices? We are going to talk a little bit about how the Iran War is trickling down to your wallets out there and the latest numbers on prices and how the administration is sort of fruitlessly, fecklessly trying to spin them. So JVL, we had some new data that came out this morning, the consumer price. It was not good. I know you are shocked. Normally when we do this show, it's good news on planet. Well, good news is in the eye of the beholder. I guess if you want to watch the world burn, then maybe this was good news.

1:03In the world burning in some literal ways as well. Yes. Yes. So the numbers, the numbers today were 3.4% inflation in August, year over year gas prices still elevated. 3.4% inflation is above the feds target rate of 2%. We've now been above the feds target rate for over six years at this point. However, our dear buddy Kevin has it. Thanks. We are headed in the right direction. Can we play that? In the model that I would be using, I would say that you just about hit the target and inflation is decelerating. Now what the fed decides to do, maybe they decide that they're going to do something that put risks on the side of that side. It's up to them. But frankly, I think that inflation is clearly decelerating even with this slight uptick this month. If you look at three-month average, then you're basically hitting the core target.

2:03Even though inflation is up, he thinks it's clearly decelerating Catherine. Yeah. Why do we why do we even have people like this on the television? Well, look, he's an important guy on paper anyway. He is one of the chief economic advisors to this president. So. So. You put Baghdad Bob on TV. I mean, and this is a, this is a real question. Like if somebody comes on it, it just says up is down. What is the news value in that? I guess there is some value in understanding how the White House is like spinning it's spinning the facts and spinning its wheels. What they are trying to do to try to grapple with these numbers. Are they actually acknowledging that things are bad and that they're going to try to fix them like maybe I don't know dealing with the war not having tariffs things like that.

3:04Are they going to like actually do something proactive or are they in denial? And I think that in and of itself knowing that they are in denial is informative. It's informative for voters who may be heading into the voting booth. Yeah, you know, and it's an instant informative for for Wall Streeters and and other people who might be watching these data and trying to figure out where they're headed. I think it's probably informative for the Federal Reserve to because they're like the residual claimant on all of the dumb shit that this White House does. Right. Like they don't get to set fiscal policy. They don't get to set military policy, but they have to clean up after all of it and figure out how do they fulfill their mandate of stable prices and maximum employment given the crap that has been handed to them. So I think in that sense. Yeah, it's it's useful. It's not free though, you know, like there is a there is a propaganda cost to doing this sort of thing, especially if you're not going to push back like Aaron Ross, Sorkin style and say Andrew.

4:08And he says it's all in the celebrating, but but it's not it's going up. I mean, I suppose wanting a better media. I want everybody to be like the bullwork. Well, in fairness, that was on I believe that was on Bloomberg. They have had exhaustive coverage of what has been going on with inflation and what it means for the Fed. So it's not like this was presented, you know, in the abstract like in isolate in a vacuum, I should say. And people didn't quite understand what the context was like they have pretty sophisticated viewers and they have pretty sophisticated courage and to be clear. Yes, yes. The the numbers that were cited there that that came out today, 3.4% inflation, we're supposed to be decelerating when Trump got into office. It was 3% and we were we were told that higher or lower than. You know, it's been a long time. Yeah, it's been a long time since I took a math class, but I'm pretty sure 3.4% is higher than.

5:11Wow. Greater than sign. Yes, greater than sign. And actually, if you look at the greater trajectory for what was happening with inflation, it had been. It's been too high for too long, but it had been trending down. It was go it was decelerating. Yeah, but how about real wages. Inflation can be outpacing real wages right now, can it Catherine? It is. It is. Unfortunately, yeah, I think for the last five months, people's paychecks have not kept up with inflation. So if those are watching. Probably people watching. If you feel poor, that's because you are poor because your pay is not keeping up with the numbers. And you can see that in the other data that came out today, the consumer sentiment numbers, which showed this is the University of Michigan. It they track every month how people feel about the economy. They've been doing this for decades and decades and decades. People hate the economy.

6:12And so this is actually is a chart showing that if you look at the red line, that's like what people think is going to happen with inflation. And I believe this is you yeah, you're ahead. So like how fast do they think prices are going to go up, which is an important measure because inflation can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people think that prices are going to rise, then they preemptively raise their own prices or they demand higher pay or whatever, because they don't want to fall behind everyone else. And then if you know if everybody does that at the same time, you get the inflation, right. Nobody's outrunning the inflation because they are actually causing the inflation. And so when you see that red line tick up, when you see that people are expecting prices to accelerate price growth to accelerate, that's a really bad sign. That means that people are not like calm down. They are not in the Kevin Hasett camp where they think things are getting better and don't worry at all.

7:13So we're on the right track. The Fed is where it needs to be. Probably this is a good time to cut blah blah blah blah blah. No, Americans are saying this is bad. I think it's going to get worse. I need to like get my ducks in a row so that I'm not left behind because my paycheck already isn't keeping up. So this is pretty bad. And I also interesting camera. Yes, as you and I say, it feels like almost every single week. This isn't inflation because Russia invaded Ukraine or because a hurricane disrupted shipping or a global pandemic messed up supply chains. And then there was a glut working through and all like this is a man caused. Debacle. Yeah, you can see the two things on the charts, the gray bars going up are tariffs. Just stop doing tariffs. And the gas thing is Iran. Just stop doing your war. Yeah, turn off the tariffs, turn off your war and things get better.

8:16But this is this is inflation of choice. And it's amazing. Yeah, particularly since this president, of course, ran on a promise to lower prices. And instead he has used every tool in his toolkit available to raise prices higher. Is there a historical analog of this? What do you mean? Of a president taking blatantly inflationary policy positions, not out of necessity. And like normally when you get inflation, it's because like there's a hidden factor at work. Nobody quite appreciates it or because they're fighting the last war. Right. So this was the reason we got inflation under Biden to the extent that it was the fault of a policy choice of Biden is because economists learned too much the lesson of the Obama year. Which was that the stimulus came in too late and too small. And the fact of trying to target stimulus to the extent that economists in the Obama White House did meant that what you got was you avoided catastrophe.

9:23But the recovery period didn't feel great and it took like almost six full years. And so the lessons learned by economists in the Biden administration were just drop money out of a helicopter. Just try to get money into people's hands that over at the crisis. And especially at like the state level, state municipal level, which is where it was really untargeted. That seems to have contributed to inflationary pressures. But these are like these are judgment calls. You know, like in the midst of a crisis by good faith actors, their arguments on both sides. It isn't like this where everybody who is more sane than Peter Navarro knows these terrorists are fucking stupid. And everybody who isn't Pete Hegseth can look at the Iran war and say, this isn't going well. This is this is very, very bad for America in the world. And we don't have a strategic off ramp, etc.

10:25We should never have done this. Like it's just obvious. You know, there isn't like you don't have to do Monday morning quarterbacking. And yet we are where we are. Yeah. I just can't think of a historical analog for it. I don't know if there isn't the United States. There are similar analogs in the countries. Yeah. In like Zibabwe or Argentina or places where they just said money for the government. They thought that they could deal with inflation by printing more money. And that was bad. That did not work. So like the intentionality of some of this stuff I think is really hard to divine and to assess. Like the willful blindness. If it's not intentional as it willfully blind. And I would definitely put like I don't think Donald Trump was trying to raise prices to be clear. I don't think he was trying to make diesel $6 a gallon nationwide, which is the the first time ever that we have passed that threshold which happened yesterday, I believe.

11:34Good thing diesel doesn't have a big input on prices of other goods. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Totally food. We imagine that terrible. Be if diesel contributed to the price of food or construction or. Yeah. That would be problematic. So I don't think Donald Trump was trying to make these things more expensive. I think he's like a little bit impervious to good advice. He only wants to hear things that confirm his priors. And in fact, there is this quote that I think about all the time you mentioned our pal Peter Navarro. Who is I like to think of him as like the worst candidate ever who got a PhD from Harvard and economics. Peter Navarro had this quote in Trump 1.0 where he said something like Donald Trump's intuition is always right in my job as an economist is to provide the evidence that supports that intuition. And that is like completely the opposite of what an economist is supposed to do. Yes.

12:34He literally said this. Your job is not to start with the conclusion and then reverse engineer the evidence and reasoning that gets you to that conclusion. It is to look at the evidence and figure out what it says and determine. Is it a good thing or a bad thing if we raise prices. Um, raise taxes on Canadian goods. For example, from, you know, purely economic means forget about all the deployment diplomatic and national security implications and all of that other stuff. Just economic means if you're an economist you're like supposed to be thinking about it in those terms, not well, we are taking it as a foregone conclusion that it is a good thing to levy tariffs around the world to have this like arterial spray of tariffs on all of our trading partners friend or foe. And then we are going to come up with the rationale for why that is the case. But that's the amazing line. I had never heard that. I mean, there is a version of this at play, which is very common among ideologs, which is like I know what the right answer is and I just got to find the data to support it.

13:43But this isn't that. This is more cult leader or religious movement. Yeah. It's other third person who isn't me. They are infallibly correct. And whenever they make a pronouncement, whatever I think of it, I, I must know that it's correct and that that's weird shit. Yeah, it is. But like that's who Trump wants surrounding him. Right. He wants people who are going to tell him that his intuition, his instincts are always correct on economics or wars or anything else. That's how the voters wanted. So I'm glad they're getting it. I guess they chose it. Yeah. They chose something. I don't know if it was this. So in any event, as I mentioned before, diesel hit six bucks a gallon, crossed six dollars a gallon for the first time. Yes. Line go up. Yeah. Line go up. We like that in economics. Don't we?

14:43We're not for this. Not for these. So Patrick DeHon, who's the gas buddy guy, you should follow him on Twitter and elsewhere. If you don't already, he always has great new data looking at what's happening with gas and diesel prices around the country. He noted that there were a few places in California. Well, this was one tweet of his I, where he says 28 states have set all new all time record highs for diesel. And these are the states. Some of those are states that have like pretty important Senate races coming up. Texas among them, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Alaska. Yeah. Yeah. A few of these seem kind of important. The other thing that I was going to say is that Patrick tweeted yesterday about how there were some gas stations in California that had diesel prices posted at like 9. 9.9999. Well, they broke the scoreboard.

15:43Well, they didn't, I don't think they actually broke the scoreboard. I think it's like if you have 10.00, that's just as many digits. But there's a psychological barrier around crossing that. I love that for America. Yeah. Crossing that $10 threshold. Like nobody wants to be the first to sell diesel at $10 a gallon. So they're all like, maybe we can like inch it up by like one more thousandth of a point. And well, after what happened last night over in the Gulf. Yeah. I mean, it seems possible. Yeah, tell our audience more about what's going on. So we seem to have gotten two developments last night. Perhaps while JD Vance was speaking. It appears as though a Saudi pipeline has been massively bombed or mistletoe or drone or something.

16:45And then two tankers that were being escorted by American Navy vessels on the Omani side of the straight, which was where we've been putting all of our eggs. Oh, on the Omani side, we've got that. That's on lock. Don't worry about that. They were hit while under escort. Which again, it's just a statement of like nobody is. Nobody is safe. And you know, it is a full who's the captain now, right? And this. I haven't looked at oil futures prices. But I'm pulling those up right now actually. Higher than they were 24 hours ago is my guess. Yeah, they're at a. Brent is at 105 25. Yeah, where was it like 36 hours ago? I mean, not. It's not great. Not lower than that. Yeah, lower than that. So this is a real problem. And there's another report today that the Iranians are building ballistic missiles again.

17:45We see the Houthis who have seized a small island. Near the Red Sea shipping. You may recall that the Houthis were completely wiped out like five minutes ago, according to Pete Hegseth. And this is kind of like the Iranian ballistic missile program was totally destroyed and could never like five. I've literally read it. Totally. Totally. And so, you know, America has lost this for. And I just like it's as clear as day, the question is just when. When do we ratify it by pulling out my guess is we will before that we will wind up getting. The other Gulf states cutting individual side deals with the Iranians. That just don't even take us into consideration. And that will be the ratification of this. Now, when the Saudis have their own deal with Iran. When Al-Mana and Iran have their own regime for how the street is going to be handled that they announce.

18:48That will be the end of it. And I know I've talked with Bill this morning about this Catherine. Is it conceivable that this could go all the way through 2028. So I have been wrong about this war from the jump. I mean, I really thought after 48 hours, Trump would pull out. I thought after two weeks, he would pull out. And like at almost every period since then, I've just thought, what's over? Everybody knows what the outcome is going to be within like 10% of the, you know, the variance of the end end game scenarios here. It's pure dain. So this smart thing from to do would be just leave. Just leave. Start your invasion of Puerto Rico or Greenland or whatever else you're going to do now. Right? We'd be very, very bad. Oh, right. Cuba. Sorry. It will be very, very bad. And it will be terrible for America and bad for everybody in the floor price of oil would go up. But on the other hand, like it would be over.

19:48The bleeding would stop. And what it stops. Again, if the straight of hormones is still under the control of the Iranians, it's not over. Well, I think what that does is it just raises the floor price of oil. Right? Because the Iranians are then skimming off the top for every barrel of oil that is shipped. And that's bad for the global economy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's good for Iran. But again, that's what we're headed anyway. And we're going to be there eventually. And having like the American military assets in the region getting overextended, going to hot war for a couple days once a month. And then like, I don't know, it just seems like we're in the worst of all worlds with this. Like if you're, if you've already lost a war, then you should lose the war and stop. I don't know. Like do you think this could keep going? I'm the wrong person to ask, honestly, I would trust Markert Langs got reactions on this more than mine.

20:53I sort of assume that we're going to be there indefinitely because we have to get, well, we have to get oil through. That's a long time. Yeah. But I don't, I have, I'm not an informed person on this to be honest. And I think a lot of this depends on like, again, who's whispering in the president's ear and not necessarily about like, what are the actual strategic implications about any of this because he's again impervious to advice that contradicts whatever his priors are. So unless it's coming from a donor who donated to his ballroom, what? Weird that Americans would vote for this. Yeah. It is 70 million of them. That's a lot of people. It is peculiar. Yeah. And like I said, like, you know, to get back to the economic implications of all of this. If we are there indefinitely or at least for the foreseeable future and that does raise the price of the floor price for oil.

21:53That's going to feed through to prices. Now, as long as oil does not keep on like. Right. You know, if it. Let's say it goes up like 10% in a day, as long as it's not like indefinitely 10% and another 10% and another 10% and another 10% and another. Like inflation will stabilize because inflation is about the pace of growth in prices. It's not the level of prices. Like the way that normal people think about prices and whether things are costly or not is different from how the Fed thinks about it. The Fed cares about how fast prices are growing, not like. Is you. Yeah. There you are. Oh, sorry. I don't know what happened. So in any event like in the near term, it's going to feed into much faster inflation, but like at some point, maybe it'll stabilize or hang on or if. Like when gas prices get so high that they really start to eat into people's paychecks.

22:57That's not money that they can decide not to spend, right? It's like because they still have to get to work. They still have to take their kids to school. So it kind of serves as a tax. So it's both that they're paying higher prices, but it's also taking away. And which is painful, but it's also like taking away money that they could have been spending on other stuff going out to restaurants or whatever buying their kids new clothes. And so the other consequence of high oil prices besides higher inflation in the near term is potentially worse growth and a recession. Right. Like we've had oil shocks lead to recessions before, for exactly this reason. It just grinds every other kind of economic activity to a halt because everything gets more expensive and people don't have money to spend on other things. Makes businesses, you know, transporting food like we were talking about or growing food much more expensive. It just makes makes the numbers much harder to get to add up in your favor.

23:58And so there's a scenario in which this indefinite war like maybe leads to higher prices, maybe also leads to a recession. I'm not saying that that's the likely outcome, but it is certainly a possible one based on the historical record. And I do wonder like what again, what does all this mean for the Federal Reserve their meeting next week. And in some ways like a recession is the best possible outcome if you're Kevin Warsh. I say that only partly tongue in cheek. So that he can cut rights and make it. Yeah, right. I don't know that he's thinking about it that way, but it would certainly get that monkey off of his back Donald Trump wants interest rates to go down. And all of the numbers we were talking about that came out today plus all the numbers we've seen in recent months suggest the opposite that the Fed needs to raise interest rates. And the Fed is meeting next week like I don't know. I have been asking people for months how does Kevin Warsh avoid this collision course with Trump who put him there to cut rates and he knows he needs to raise rates like he's going to do something that's going to piss off the boss.

25:10And or it's not supposed to be the boss. It's a market expectation now is the market expectation to get a small hike. Yeah, yeah, I can actually tell you I'm looking at it now. Okay, so again, the meeting is next week and markets think that there is basically a 90 90% chance 88.7% chance that the Fed raises rates. And that's a yesterday they thought it was a 72% chance now it's you know, 88 90% so the so it was likely before today, but today's numbers again those CPI numbers showing inflation at 3.4% which Kevin Warsh thinks is great, but nobody else does the consumer sentiment data everything else we've seen recently that all kind of like sealed the deal that the Fed needs to raise interest rates with. Everybody kind of knows I'm sure Kevin Warsh knows he has signaled as much in his recent speech at Jackson hole everyone knows except for the president.

26:15And the president is the one that has all of the tools of law fair at his disposal. So I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how Kevin Warsh is going to do what he needs to do and not be subject to all of the like weaponized government that Jay Powell was subject to I think Warsh, you know, reportedly is talking to Donald Trump fairly frequently on the phone according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He thinks he can like handle him there have certainly been prior Trump appointees and aides and independent people whatever who thought that they could also handle Donald Trump and they could be the adults in the room and it did not work out so well for them, particularly in the first Trump administration. So I don't know I really want to sign on his loyalty. I think that's unlikely, but I guess that's one. Trying to think outside the box for him.

27:16That's one offer. Look, I hope he's figured it out donate to the ballroom. You know what you really do. He should he should call him and say boss, can I get a tour of the ball? I got to come over and see the construction. Would you show me what the ballroom looks like? I really I can't wait to get to just keep Trump talking about the ballroom and then like, we have to raise rates. But don't worry about that. Let's talk about that. You know, that's a that's a cute idea, particularly since it would be a nice book and to that very famous or infamous meeting on it at a different construction site with Trump and the previous Fed share, J Powell, right? Like there's this famous moment where Powell is touring the Fed building, the Eccles building, which is under construction and Trump is like complaining about cost overruns and things like that. And that's that's going to be the excuse to fire J Powell, whom Trump himself appointed and then got mad about because he wouldn't cut rates as much as Trump wanted. Now, maybe they can take layman on Lisa cook. You say I at least a cook wants to raise rates.

28:16Oh, you know, she's the worst. She's a low IQ person. You know what I mean boss. I think possibly that could be a version of what he does. He throws everyone else under the bus. I don't know. All these DBI's on the Federal Reserve Board. Oh, you know, the problem. The problem is that his vote on whether to raise rates or keep them steady or cut them will be public. So it's a little bit harder to say like look boss. I wanted to cut rates, but I got outvoted all of these dope surround me decided that they wanted to screw you over and raise interest rates. I don't know that he would do that, but he it's not really an option that's available to him even, you know, even if he wanted to because when the like when the Fed comes out with its decision on interest rates next week, they'll put out a statement. And they'll say everybody agreed except for the following however many people who dissented if people dissent. And if his name is not on the list of people who dissented and it would be crazy if it were because the Fed share almost never dissents like he's supposed to he's supposed to foster consensus.

29:26That would be nuts, but so this is why like I have been fixated on this for months. How is Kevin Warsh going to handle this because it matters not for just like prairie and interests about like ooh like these this Trump pick is going to maybe come to blows with his with the guy who thinks he's his benefactor who's not supposed to be. But also because like this really matters for the US economy. It's not just about this interpersonal relationship. It's also what does it mean for inflation going forward this year next year like in perpetuity if people no longer believe the Fed is independent. I don't know. So these are all things I am looking forward to watching. And to put you do not want to watch the world burn. I don't you like the world. I like the world. I want everybody. I do you know I have a one year old daughter and I want to work to open our future.

30:27Exactly. Well, and let them lead the way, Catherine. Thank you. I could not have said it better myself. You know, you should copyright that. Right down somewhere. I do want to point out that on a completely separate note, we are getting messages in the comments. About JVL's awesome merch. The most woke. Woke Bill Crystal. Yes. Thank you for thank you to our producers for putting up the very easy place where you can get said merch or my beautiful hat. I honestly, I love this hat. I've got. I now have three bull wear cats. Because every time there's a new iteration, I request a new one. And this is the best one. So if you want to get one of these. I like the great. It's not for me. Doesn't look good on me. I could look great. I like it. It's great on you. Thank you. I like the typeface. My other ones just had the the ship. And this one has a ship on this side. Woke Bill Crystal. Somebody we can all believe in.

31:28Yes, I agree. I like the. I don't know what it's called the little type of typographical thing with the upside down. Exclamation point. Like, you know what it is, right? I mean, it's from Spanish. It's a. O.C. Do you remember the a. O.C. campaign? No, raising off into the middle. Just like the iconic a. O.C. campaign poster. Okay, I had forgotten this, I guess. Yeah. Well, that's that's the joke. That's the design. Okay, that's a joke. Thank you for having to explain it to me. I'm sorry for my ignorance. But either way, I love the idea of a woke Bill Crystal. Sure. And while I am on the path to monetizing our audience. Thank you for supporting independent journalism. I would also like to briefly just very briefly kick it. We're going to talk to about the $5,000 bribe on the other side. Oh, absolutely. We're going to talk about the $5,000 bribe. Good. Because I know you forward to that all week. I know. Thank you. We're going to talk about the $5,000 bribe and why it's like even dumber than you think.

32:30And how the administration is going to pay for it. But first, we got to play a very, very brief ad. This ad is brought to you by ZockDock. So there are certain things that are incredibly easy to put off. And making a doctor's appointment is pretty high up on that list for me at least. You know, you need to do it. But then you think about making that phone call and getting put on hold. And figuring out whether they'll even take your insurance. And you got to figure out if they can even have an opening for you. And suddenly you decide, well, you know what? This is not a problem for tomorrow. Let's just kick it down the road. That's what I want to tell you about today's sponsor, ZockDock. ZockDock lets you search and compare local and network doctors. You can see actual appointment openings right there. So instead of calling around and playing phone tag, you can just find a time that works and instantly book your visit online. There are more than 150,000 providers across more than 200 specialties in all 50 states. So whether you've moved or changed insurance or you've just been putting off an appointment for way too long, you can see the options available to you.

33:31You can choose the doctor who fits what you're looking for. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be too complicated. Find and book the right doctor with ZockDock. Head to zock.com slash boretakes to get started. And check that appointment off here to do this. That's zoc. doc.com slash boretakes. Okay, let's talk about bribing the voters. So earlier this week, we got another flood of these like credulous headlines about how Donald Trump was going to give every red blood of an American citizen adult out there, five grand. And five stacks, five big ones. Five big ones. Five stacks of a high life. Yeah, five imaginary big ones. He announced this at his RNC convention speech again. It got like all of these headlines taking it for granted that this was true.

34:33And I was, you can tell them like my eyes are rolling out of my head again. I was just like sighing and rolling my eyes because I have heard this so many times before. In fact, like the next day, Sam said, I think you got to switch your topic for receipts this week. I think you got to write about these checks, these Trump checks. And I was like, I literally wrote this whatever six months ago. He's like, what you did. And I said, yes. And then I sent him a link. I was like, I wrote a newsletter about the last time he did this thing. And he's like, you got to do it again. Sam, not reading Catherine Rampels newsletter. This is why I do like this. I mean, I'm pretty sure he edited it. The problem is that, yeah, I'm pretty sure the problem is that Steve Bannon was right. And they just flood the zone with shit. And we all just forget like they're just washes over us all the shit from the zone washes over us. And so Trump keeps on dangling these $2,000 checks, $5,000 checks, $1,000 checks, $500 checks, whatever it is,

35:40promising that it's just around the corner and he's about to give it to you. And then he doesn't. And then we all move on. And then he does it again. And then it gets another round of headlines. And yeah, so that's where we are. Do we have the super cut off that? I think we do. Can we play that? Then under consideration, a new concept where we give 20% of the doge savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt because the numbers are incredible, Elon. We're thinking about a rebate because if nobody's coming in from tariffs, I'm going to rebate for people of a certain income level. And there could be a distribution or dividend to the people of our country. I would say for people that would be middle income people and lower income people, we could do a dividend. We're going to issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people, about $2,000. And I'll be giving back $2,000 or so to the income people, low income people, everybody with the rich.

36:45I'll sue American citizens' transfer, let me talk to Chris, while I'm shopping. No, no, nothing this year. It'll be next year, so. And we're going to be giving back. We funds out of the tariffs because we've taken in literally trillions of dollars. And we're going to be giving a nice dividend to the people, and addition to reducing debt. We will be able to make a very substantial dividend to the people of our country. I believe we can do that without Congress. You floated the idea of $2,000 rebate checks for Americans from Terra for Avenue. Who's going to get that? And what is that going to happen? We'd make it, I'm looking at it very seriously. I'm the only one can do it because I'm taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of buy. But you can promise some Americans we'll get those checks. Oh yeah, sure, I can do that. I haven't made the commitment yet, but I may make the commitment. And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.

37:49Nearly 1 million hard work in Americans in 30 states will soon be getting refunds of $500,000. Each with a check sent to their home address. In many cases, these refunds will cover the entire spike in your insurance cost by Democrats, who solely work to protect big insurance companies. Okay, so that's just a partial inventory of all of the times that Donald Trump has promised some version of these checks, which have not been forthcoming, obviously. Sometimes they're going to be funded by terror for revenue. Sometimes they're going to be funded by doge savings, which never materialized, in fact. Trillions and trillions. I know. I know. Sometimes it's from the Obamacare subsidies that expired. Sometimes it's from other Obamacare funds on specified. It's like the math never adds up, right? Like the amount of money that it would cost for this latest iteration of the Trump voter payoff is something like $1.2 trillion.

38:55And terror for revenue this year is going to be a little more than a tenth of that. So it's not like terror for everyone who's going to pay for it if that's supposedly the source. But it almost doesn't matter. Like it drives me crazy because we have to pretend to analyze a pretend proposal that Donald Trump clearly has given no thought to. But we have to like in the same way that Peter Navarro has to backfill like evidence and rationale for whatever Trump's intuition is. Like the universe of pundits and journalists and other analysts have to figure out like, wait, where would the money come from? And it's like, no, that's Trump's job. He didn't do it because he doesn't mean it. So why are we bothering with this exercise? I don't know. I mean, this is what happens when you put somebody who is manifestly unfit for office into the presidency. Right. I mean, from the very, very beginning of the Trump wars in 2016, if you go back, the phrase which is used most often that people like us was manifestly unfit.

39:57And what that means is like there is no universe in which this makes sense. It's like saying you're going to make a chihuahua as the head of the air traffic controllers at Newark International. Right. Like it's a category error and that any country attempting to do this is courting ruin because it's not like he's a little bit wrong or he's mostly wrong or he's entire. Like it's just you can't do this manifestly unfit. And this is where you wind up. You wind up with bullshit like this. And I don't know. Here's the part that's really depressing. I suspect that if we were to go and put a poll out into the field of Republican primary voters and ask them, have you received your Trump dividend check? I suspect some non trivial percentage of them would answer yes.

41:00Maybe I think the argument against that outcome is that there are tons of Republicans who are actually fundraising on the prospect of these checks. Like they're all saying just as Trump keeps on saying, oh, the checks are coming next year, the checks are coming after the midterms, whatever. They're always around the corner. There are a lot of Republicans who are sending out these please for donations with like the hook of don't you want your $5,000 Trump check. Just sign up here. Give us your information here. Just like put a little penny and you know it's like this whole prosperity gospel kind of thing. If you just pay us a little bit, you'll get the money back. So the only reason I think it might be more salient that people have not gotten these imaginary checks is because the imaginary checks keep getting used to this day as bait. Actually, our colleague Chris Herbert was helping me look up some like some of the archive.

42:00Email blasts. Yeah, the fundraising emails. And there's this wonderful website that like that is I say wonderful, but it's like deeply, deeply dystopian that has all of the emails or some index of a large number of political fundraising emails that get sent out and you can see how many of them to this day, including Paul Gossar from Arizona, is still yeah, exactly is sending out these emails actually asking people you know confirm your $5,000 doge refund. Like it hasn't even caught up to the latest midterm check. Right. Thank right. It's like they're still operating the these clearly are pre program right there's still operating from the $5,000 or $2,000 or whatever the amount was the doge refund that Trump promised in February of 2025. He is still blasting out these messages and he's not the only one he's just one particularly bad actor here, which I think raises another important problem with with like this vaporware that Trump has been putting out.

43:09There were he keeps on promising this policy, this check that's going to come that never comes. It is catnip for scam artists, both the sort of like metaphorical kind the politicians who are scamming you by promising these things, but also like actual fish fishing type, you know, swindlers online posing as IRS agents, there have been time every time Trump floats an idea floats a promise for these checks. You get like a ton of sort of personal financing write ups about please don't answer these emails or texts or phone calls or whatever from somebody pretending to be an IRS agent saying they just need your bank account information so that they can give you the Trump check. It's bullshit, it's not real, but this is exactly the kind of opportunity that an opportunistic scam artist can exploit to take advantage of people which like in some ways is thematically appropriate right like we have this scam artist in chief.

44:10I'm sure he's at best indifferent to the idea that other people might be scamming the American populace by using this $5,000 check bait. He's just he's not the only one like lots of people are are cash and in on that fake cash. So I have an idea I want you to put I want you to put notions of good government and civic morality aside I just want you to think make our job. Politics naked politics let's pretend Democrats take the house. Shouldn't they put forth a bill to give everybody their $5,000 Trump dividend checks. Are you trying to replay 2021 and let Donald Trump. Well, no, because here's the deal let Donald Trump either not pass it and have Republicans kill it and then the Democratic to say we don't Trump said that we had all this money and he wanted to give everybody $5,000 checks and so we're here to do that we want to give you $5,000 but don't Trump doesn't want it so hit him that way or if they do go out Democrats can say see we got you your $5,000 and then Trump can reap the inflationary world

45:32wind because he's in office for two more years and then all the bad downstream things which happen. Yeah, our Trump's fault. You know, I don't think it's going to play out that way. I know that you will play out that way. I'm asking that is a as a point of political theater. Might that not be quite effective. But I don't think it's going to I think the conclusion to your play to your your political theater is not going to be what you think it is because a version of this happened before where I get like almost exactly at the end of 2020 Donald Trump signed into law Trump checks this is after he had already lost. Yeah Joe Biden signed into law a few months later the Biden checks nobody got credit for any of it Republicans were very effective at claiming it was the Democratic checks that were responsible for inflation.

46:37And not the Trump checks and they're just much better at messaging. I know you're saying, oh, Trump will be in office and like. Let's see what it looks like. I hear you because it turns out that all the terrible things that happened in 2020 happened under Joe Biden's watch. Right, you know, the hardest question in the world is understanding is answering who is president in 2020. And I could see that we get to 2029 and the hardest question in the world was who is president in 27 and 28. Yes. I think that is a very challenging set of facts like they should put all of this on the I think the recently revamped citizenship test, you know, like all of these questions. Here's a real question though. If we if we went out in a survey just for Republican voters and asked them, did you get your Trump dividends check. Yes. Where would you set the over under on the percentage of Republicans who would just say, oh yeah, no, I got my Trump check because he talks about it so much that they just assume they've already gotten it.

47:4810% Oh, I take the over on that really. Oh, that's a bad line. Why would pounds that over? I the issue is that people are so 30% People are so mad about Donald Trump breaking his other economic promises, including by not dealing with inflation and worsening inflation. I think there's like a small portion of people who are happy to credit all things all good things real or imaginary to Donald Trump. But there are a lot of people who actually are pretty mad about prices and who are quite aware of their financial security right now. And you're seeing even Trump voters be mad at Donald Trump for the state of the economy. I think it's going to be a pretty small share. But I could be wrong. I don't know. Maybe we can get you gover somebody to to run that survey and get great poll question. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good idea. I'll look into it.

48:48Well, on that interesting note on that happy note, I do want to close with one brief announcement, which is a note for our audio listeners. This will be the last week that this show receipts will be posted to the main bullwork takes feed. We are striking out on our own. I mean, sort of. We're still part of the bullwork, obviously. But it's going to be a separate podcast feed. You can go follow receipts with Catherine Rampell, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple podcast, Spotify, etc. It's still going to be there. It's still going to be JBL and me every Friday. Plus some other episodes mixed in throughout the week with other bullwork buddies and outside guests. It's just going to be, you know, same good content. It's just going to be a separate feed because it'll be even better. It'll be even better. We're going to we're going to turn it up to 11 once we're on our own feed and we're not shackled by the bullwork standards and practices. Exactly. We're going to bust free. You're going to get maybe we'll get JBL modeling even more merch. I look forward to that day.

49:54But until then, exactly. Thank you. As always for joining us for hanging with us for following us. If you don't already please subscribe to the feed. It really helps us out. It helps us get new listeners and viewers and readers and all of the above. Join the Bullwork Plus community as well while you're at it. We have lots of ways to share all of our goodness and thoughts and in some cases darkness with you. And until the until next time have a terrific weekend.