Sam: Hello there we go you sound wonderful mr bow let's see if the streaming starts up properly what's.
Ivan: Up with the headphones.
Sam: Oh battery was almost dead and i didn't discover it until like a few seconds
Sam: ago so i used a wired pair that i have okay lying around explicitly to be a backup up when needed.
Sam: Okay. That's up. Make sure.
Sam: Okay.
Sam: And then this a fi boom. Okie doke.
Sam: Shall we just jump in as usual?
Ivan: Uh huh.
Sam: You sound awesome. Okay. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, April 5th, 2025.
Sam: It is just after 2 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter,
Sam: and Yvonne Bowe is back, the real Yvonne Bowe. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi. Has anything happened while I've been gone?
Sam: I talked.
Ivan: I mean, if I went in a coma, like, for just two weeks, I don't even have to do two years.
Ivan: If I went in a coma for two weeks and I woke up today, I'm in the hospital,
Ivan: I was in a bad accident, I woke up today, what would be the mood of the people
Ivan: that are coming to me to talk to me today? Like, you know, say my brother's coming over, right?
Ivan: He's like going to be, hey, hi.
Sam: He's going to be thrilled. He's going to be happy. We had liberation day.
Sam: Everything is good. Everything is wonderful.
Ivan: We had liberation day. Wow. Wow.
Ivan: It's good.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Wow. Oh God. Yeah. It's great.
Sam: So our agenda, as usual, we'll start with our, but first I'll talk about a movie.
Sam: Yvonne will talk about whatever, and then we'll talk about newsy stuff after that.
Sam: I am sure one of our topics will be liberation day and what followed.
Sam: I, I, I, it's going to, it would be surprising if we skipped that.
Ivan: I mean, yeah, yes. Yeah. Well, I mean.
Ivan: i'm just you're stunned i don't know you you seem okay there is the thing i
Ivan: am i have i hurt my neck shoulder area oh.
Sam: That's not good.
Ivan: About three weeks ago i
Ivan: started physical therapy on this yesterday um it it hurt really really really
Ivan: bad this sunday and monday it was just very very intense how did you hurt sleeping
Ivan: wrong well that's definitely got a kind of injury someone.
Sam: In their 50s gets.
Ivan: Well but you know and listen i i have also no drawn no no no problems but listen
Ivan: i remember the first time i did this and i was like 11 or 12 okay i was and
Ivan: i remember that i woke up what what were you doing sleeping.
Sam: Upside down on your head or something.
Ivan: No i just kind of like, I, I, I didn't either put my head on the, on the pillow, right.
Ivan: I maybe put an extra pillow. So my neck was like twisted in a strange way for
Ivan: a long, long, long, long time.
Ivan: And so when I woke up, it was an excruciating pain.
Ivan: So I mean, that's, that's what I did this time. And that's what I did.
Ivan: Like the first time when I was little, I remember that I was like 11 or 12 and
Ivan: I woke up and I couldn't even go to school.
Ivan: I was like, Mom, I actually went to, well, you know, this is where we're living in Coruscant.
Ivan: I didn't have a physical therapist, but somebody that was like,
Ivan: I don't know. She used some...
Ivan: lotions of some kind to try
Ivan: to alleviate the pain okay and massage
Ivan: it and whatever i still remember this and they were look this look like you've
Ivan: seen these movies where you go to these like these tropical islands and they
Ivan: have these like local like witch doctors or something yes The movies with.
Sam: The racial stereotypes, yes.
Ivan: Well, listen, I'm sorry, but I showed up to a place like that.
Sam: You went to the local witch doctor and they fixed you all up.
Ivan: Listen, it's not that much of a stereotype. Listen, we had an entire section
Ivan: in our pharmacy that was, you know, all this weird stuff.
Sam: Local folk remedy stuff.
Ivan: Oh, my God. It was just an entire section of like, I don't know,
Ivan: like bears, nails, shark teeth. I don't know.
Ivan: Oh, oh, oh, oh, the one of the best shark oil, a shark oil, which.
Sam: By the way, just to be clear, like like 95 percent of random folk remedies from
Sam: across the world are bullshit. But every once in a while, there are 5% that works.
Sam: And the problem is just that they haven't been validated properly scientifically
Sam: to separate out the ones that are bullshit from the ones that work.
Ivan: But I showed up at this shack, okay, all right, off a dirt road where some lady
Ivan: just applied all these things to my neck to make it feel better.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I'm not sure,
Ivan: If just time helped, I know at the moment it did give me some relief.
Sam: But I will tell you that time and the placebo effect are often significant.
Sam: But, you know, every once in a while, there's something.
Ivan: Listen, we had these things called santeros. OK, this is listen,
Ivan: these are I will say this is not an exaggerated stereotype.
Ivan: We had a lot of these are called the santeros.
Ivan: OK, these were the witch doctors. OK, they would do these things in order to
Ivan: get rid of the bad juju, whatever.
Ivan: You know, it was just it's these people.
Ivan: They had all these different things they burned and rituals and shit or whatever. It's like, really?
Ivan: You know, so so that's not, you know,
Ivan: now to say that that's how we treat everything. Well, that's not true.
Ivan: But we did have a lot of those. it's not it's
Ivan: not a total exaggeration that those are a lot of
Ivan: them and that we sell did sell a lot of shit to
Ivan: those people we had an entire section to pharmacy dedicated
Ivan: for all of this shit okay
Ivan: that they used so so yeah and but
Ivan: i will say that that started dying down really a lot
Ivan: like in the 90s you know when i was little the
Ivan: 70s and 80s that was like really big by the 90s people weren't buying as much
Ivan: of that stuff so uh but yeah so so i that was the first time i got relief this
Ivan: time i don't know i've used taken medications whatever i i kind of fucked it
Ivan: up worse on on on on sunday.
Ivan: It's better again now i went to the doctor i've been the physical therapist
Ivan: i'm taking pills and then i don't know if it's but i have a cold or my allergies
Ivan: but you sound congested as well yeah and then I got that going too and so I'm just you know,
Ivan: Not great. You know, and I slept also, it didn't help like during those two weeks.
Ivan: I slept like, I spent like, what, 12 days in a hotel?
Sam: Right. Because you, you, you missed two weeks of this show.
Sam: The first week you were doing work stuff and traveling for that.
Sam: And the second week you were doing stuff with your family.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And so, and so I slept like 12, I spent 12 days in a hotel and,
Ivan: you know, in two weeks. And I don't think that sleeping at the hotels helped
Ivan: for my neck because it started right at the beginning of my business trip.
Ivan: And then it just really got bad when I was at the hotel we were on for my son's
Ivan: spring break, which by the way, we did the mistake. We haven't done it in a long time.
Ivan: But we did the mistake that we didn't look at the calendar properly.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And we came back on Sunday and we got ready to take them and we took them to
Ivan: school on Monday and there was no school on Monday.
Sam: Oh, nice.
Ivan: Tuesday.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And I hadn't done that in a long time, but we wound up, yeah,
Ivan: we wound up waking him up. He was like, whatever.
Ivan: No, no, no. Come on. We gotta go. Whatever. We gotta, you know.
Ivan: And we get him to school and there's still school.
Sam: That's fun. Very fun.
Ivan: I mean, I gotta say, I've only done that like a couple of times.
Ivan: I don't understand. Listen, it I don't understand this thing.
Ivan: Why the hell do you have a whole week of spring break and then you don't come back on Monday?
Ivan: The fuck does that? What the fuck is that shit?
Sam: Breaks should always line up with weeks, right?
Ivan: Yeah. I mean, if you're going to go spring break week, what the hell is it that,
Ivan: you know, Monday there's, you
Ivan: know, you come back and there's nothing on Monday. Doesn't make any sense.
Sam: Yeah. I think that that's fairly common here too. Like after breaks, they start on Tuesdays.
Ivan: Well, we didn't.
Sam: I mean. I guess I'm happy if that's an extra day, right? Like if I'm the, if I'm the kid or what?
Ivan: Well, yeah, sure. I mean, you know, but, but, you know, we went,
Ivan: I mean, we went through the whole rigmarole and getting up and doing,
Ivan: and I mean, I, I wasn't going to stay an extra day.
Ivan: I mean, even I, I, I was like, I tried to get, you know, the six days of hotel
Ivan: and that was like, I was like, I was going to use whatever the hell the points I got.
Ivan: That's it. So I wasn't going to, and that was like that amount of time.
Ivan: and it lined up that it was like tuesday through sunday
Ivan: ideally i i didn't want a tuesday through sunday but that's the days that were
Ivan: available and so i was like no i i'm like i don't want to i don't want to pay
Ivan: it if i got the point i want to use the points i don't want to do it with money
Ivan: i don't want to use money i want to do with fucking points right so so so did that and you know so uh,
Ivan: I mean, shit's been happening, Sam.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, this is, you know, one of the things about what's going on,
Ivan: like, right now, I'm not going to talk about specifics later.
Sam: You're going to talk about your feelings about the issue now.
Sam: It's not about my feelings.
Ivan: It's more about, it's that this now has, you know, we talk about here.
Ivan: When they fire people at an agency or whatever, most people,
Ivan: they're not following the news closely. They don't know. Okay.
Ivan: But you crash the market like this and you hear that prices are soaring.
Ivan: This gets everybody's attention. You want to get everybody's attention?
Ivan: Well, you fucking got it now because nobody can talk about anything else other than this.
Ivan: Now he's completely, yes, he wanted to change the conversation. that
Ivan: that's one that i mean it i mean
Ivan: it just did this i think i
Ivan: kept talking all the time well what could cut through the bullshit right
Ivan: what could get you know through hey you know this is as simple as it gets and
Ivan: everybody's talking about it because i mean it's hard to ignore you know you
Ivan: got 70 million people 80 million you know 70 million households i think it is
Ivan: that have money in the stock market,
Ivan: even though the majority is with some higher net worth.
Ivan: So many people have money in our stock market.
Sam: Through 401ks, if nothing else.
Ivan: Through 401ks, through whatever. IRAs, whatever the hell it is.
Sam: Robinhood. People playing around with that. Because the barrier in entry is
Sam: much less than it used to be.
Ivan: Exactly. A barrier to entry right now just doesn't exist. It used to be this was complicated.
Sam: It used to be like, you know, So way back in the day, you had to have a pretty high level,
Sam: balance to open any mortgage or mortgage any
Sam: any brokerage account and there were significant fees associated with every
Sam: trade and all this kind of stuff yeah now you can like open a robin hood account
Sam: with like 50 or 100 bucks or something maybe even less i don't even know what
Sam: the minimum is yeah probably and you can do whatever and you can do fractional
Sam: trading with no fees you can do fractional.
Ivan: Trading which is one thing that is so novel that you know yeah i mean you can.
Sam: Buy so you You can buy, you know, pieces of shares.
Sam: I can buy, I can go in there and say, I want $1 of this stock.
Ivan: Right. And boom, you got it.
Sam: And you got it. With no fees.
Ivan: With no fees.
Sam: Because they're making money off selling your information and stuff like that
Sam: and the float and all kinds of other stuff.
Ivan: Also, like the float services, other stuff. I mean, they've got an entire ecosystem
Ivan: of shit that goes around this.
Ivan: I mean, you know, other traders will borrow your stock Yes, they got that, too. Whatever.
Ivan: You know, they got a whole bunch of shit going on. But, yeah.
Ivan: But this is... I've been trying to see what the fuck it is that's going to cut through the bullshit.
Ivan: And not even... I think that a lot of people did pay attention to Cory Booker talking for a while.
Sam: That did get some attention. But then that got wiped right off.
Ivan: But nothing compares to this spectacle, which everybody...
Ivan: I mean... Well, I mean, my high school, my high school chat groups, my brother,
Ivan: you know, my, my, my boss, I mentioned to him, like, you know,
Ivan: I mean, you know, I talked to a couple of my bosses, holy shit, the losses.
Ivan: I mean, you know, you know, it's just, you know, it's just, just nuts. Okay.
Ivan: You know, sports figures, you know, sport people, you know, like one of the
Ivan: guys talking about it was like the guy from Barstool Sports, for example.
Ivan: you know he mentioned yesterday for example that yesterday one day which kind of like gave away i
Ivan: kind of like how much money he's got in the market invested because
Ivan: he said how much he lost you know he said i kind of like made a made a quick
Ivan: math so dave portnoy said dude i lost seven million dollars in one fucking day
Ivan: right so i figure he's got about 100 million which i actually it's been reported
Ivan: that he sold barstool for 100 million or something so that that tracks he's
Ivan: got about $100 million invested.
Ivan: So he lost $7 million in one fucking day.
Ivan: I didn't lose $7 million in one fucking day. I mean, honestly,
Ivan: you know, if I had that kind of money, I mean, we would be at the Carmudge's
Ivan: Corner headquarters right now.
Ivan: But working from there. But, you know, but it's just one of these things that.
Ivan: And actually Richard, who's on our Slack, he texted me, said, shit, I made a mistake.
Ivan: And look at it. I log it in and looking at my investment accounts today.
Ivan: She was like, you know, was my wife. Listen, my wife.
Ivan: Okay. Who doesn't pay? All of a sudden I hear this scream from the other side
Ivan: because, you know, one of the accounts has a lot of money is in her name.
Ivan: So she logged into it. She said, I lost how much fucking money today? i was like.
Sam: Yeah yeah.
Ivan: Yeah well i don't well honey that's not all the money we lost,
Ivan: you know yeah that's not all of it so this is.
Sam: Well you know we we we said during the campaign and during everything else it's
Sam: sort of like no matter all the other issues people kept coming back to i mean
Sam: you know yes the trans issue yes some other things but people kept coming back to The economy.
Ivan: The economy, Donald Trump was going to be, he's strong, he's strong on the economy.
Ivan: He's, you know, he's, he's going to be.
Sam: You know. The thing, the thing is though, what you were saying about cutting
Sam: through the attention, because there's so many people who the bottom line is
Sam: if it doesn't affect them personally, it doesn't exist.
Ivan: Correct. Yes.
Sam: Well, and, and, and so this.
Ivan: Or if it doesn't elicit, or if it doesn't elicit hate.
Sam: Yeah. Yes. Okay.
Ivan: These are the two things. Seriously. I mean, either you elicit,
Ivan: you know, their bigotry or it affects them personally.
Sam: Yeah. And so this is, this is the case where like during the campaign and everything,
Sam: it was like, oh my God, groceries are expensive. Gas is expensive.
Sam: Rent is expensive, whatever it is. And everybody.
Ivan: It wasn't as expensive when Donald was, was here, you know?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It was all Biden's fault.
Sam: Yes. And it was all, it was all about that. Cause those were things that were
Sam: visible in your face to everybody.
Sam: You would notice, hey, it costs more when I go to the grocery store.
Sam: and all of these other more abstract issues like.
Ivan: Democracy you know
Ivan: yeah they couldn't give a shit about that and you know
Ivan: the other thing is that look like when the ukraine one of the biggest drivers
Ivan: of inflation during the biden administration was that we had a surge again with
Ivan: a war in ukraine yeah you know pandemic plus war yeah but but that thing is
Ivan: it had been coming Between those two.
Sam: It's almost everything.
Ivan: The inflation had been coming down. And then it went back up again after the day. Yeah.
Ivan: The invasion, you know, caused a big surge in inflation. Okay?
Ivan: And so, and part of it, you know, I was of the thought myself,
Ivan: I'm like, look, I mean, Ukraine is against Russia.
Ivan: I mean, fortunately, we got to suck this up.
Ivan: Well, nobody wanted to suck it up. But now we're getting, you know,
Ivan: now we're getting told we got to suck it up for
Ivan: the better in the country that the fact that you know
Ivan: this was like a little bit of inflation sam we're talking
Ivan: about back then right it was like a few you know relatively
Ivan: speaking we're talking about you know
Ivan: in in in the grand scheme
Ivan: of things it was like five percent ten percent
Ivan: here you know you had most items were
Ivan: something like that whatever um okay you
Ivan: know it happened over a couple of years you know we're talking you know we're
Ivan: talking crazy shit numbers right now we're talking insanity so this now this
Ivan: is what everybody can talk about and it's causing me to cough so.
Sam: Okay i would like to make a motion in this.
Ivan: Meeting okay that.
Sam: Given how we've started here Let's just continue to dive right into.
Ivan: This topic.
Sam: I will skip my movie. We will talk about my movie some other time.
Ivan: Well, I mean, I will say that this week is one of those weeks where— Because you've.
Sam: Jumped straight from, like, light and fluffy, but first stuff into a real topic.
Ivan: Well, because it wound up being that this is one of those things that it wound up transcending—,
Ivan: I mean, I couldn't talk to anybody about anything other than this.
Sam: Well, and this is what your main point was. Like, when it's this kind of stuff,
Sam: it affects many people directly.
Sam: Yeah. Like, we got the stock market crash affecting lots of people's 401ks and stuff.
Sam: And on the tariffs themselves, maybe people aren't seeing the prices yet,
Sam: but everybody's talking about how the prices are going to go up any moment now because of this.
Ivan: Listen, you go to, like, I, I, I, what, I, I.
Ivan: copy so this on one of
Ivan: the on one of the websites where i went like i
Ivan: went to i want to see what car dealers were doing about this okay
Ivan: and i went to a website and they already
Ivan: it had hey the cars in
Ivan: stock right now will not be affected by the
Ivan: tariff i mean this is all right i mean it's this is
Ivan: what i'm talking about it's permeating every fucking discussion hell
Ivan: you can't even pre-order nintendo switch twos yeah they were they were about
Ivan: to order and then nintendo said listen we can't we can't put them on sale we
Ivan: don't know how much we got to charge right um okay let's back up you want to
Ivan: talk about liberation day yeah.
Sam: Let's because we we started with sort of the effects of it but let's go back
Sam: what actually happened yvonne like you know shall you.
Ivan: Tell the story or shall i Listen, we knew for months, you know,
Ivan: ever since Trump had come in, he had first started with these saber rattling
Ivan: of tariffs to different countries.
Ivan: He had imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, then backed away from those at the last minute.
Ivan: And then, you know, we had some shit with Colombia where he backed away on those
Ivan: at the last minute. Then he had him post some on China.
Ivan: And those stayed...
Ivan: So we had those, but then he was going to end the loophole for Timu and Shine,
Ivan: but then he backed away from that.
Ivan: Basically, the loophole was like— Under $800 coming in internationally,
Ivan: those are not subject to tariff.
Ivan: It's called the minimus loophole. But we had had all of this,
Ivan: and then he started talking about all this shit about the reciprocal tariffs.
Ivan: And so he said that he's going to go and do this whole thing about the reciprocal
Ivan: tariffs, and we're going to go and do this and whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: And one thing is that reciprocal tariffs to anybody who has done international trade means one thing.
Sam: It means if they put a tariff on you of like 10%, then you put a tariff on them of 10%. Right, exactly.
Ivan: Maybe an equivalent product or something. Hey, if you sell me flower,
Ivan: you're Columbia, you sell us flowers at 10% and we export tractor,
Ivan: you know, I'm going to tariff your flowers and they tariff your tractors.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: For example, caterpillar tractors, say something, you know, something that we
Ivan: would export to Columbia for bringing up an example.
Ivan: So, so that's, that would be reciprocal. Okay. So that's what everybody was kind of like looking at.
Ivan: So you look at the tariffs and you look at, you know, what tariffs are around
Ivan: the world and you're thinking, for example, to give a good example,
Ivan: say Israel. I'll give a great example. Israel.
Ivan: Two weeks before the tariff announcement, Netanyahu trying to suck up Maximus to Trump.
Sam: And killed Israel's tariffs.
Ivan: Eliminated all tariffs on U.S. products to Israel. All of that.
Ivan: set him to zero set him to zero and he
Ivan: still slammed israel with tariffs yes okay well
Ivan: even though it set him all to zero okay so do we want to discuss no no no yeah
Ivan: so but this is the thing so all of a sudden well this is what happens he starts
Ivan: he spent the 30 minutes of meandering bullshit i heard a couple of minutes i
Ivan: was just like i can't listen to this shit i had to turn the sound back off.
Ivan: So I just let it, and I was like looking at the TV.
Ivan: And he's got everybody over there, and he brings out some guy who wasn't even UAW.
Ivan: It was like some union guy, auto workers for Trump, blah, blah,
Ivan: blah, some idiot dressed up, you know, their idiot MAGA garb, whatever.
Ivan: So they go through all of that. Then finally, he brings out these charts on the tariffs.
Ivan: And these are these two big charts, I start looking at the numbers,
Ivan: and then he says that, okay, so...
Ivan: Switzerland has us at a 67 percent
Ivan: tariff and i'm like switzerland has a 67 percent tariff
Ivan: on the u.s i'm like what the fuck is he talking about
Ivan: yeah i'm like you know switzerland has actually almost no tariffs so as i'm
Ivan: looking at this and i'm like and then he had a list of countries boom one after
Ivan: the other vietnam like huge tariffs also madagascar madagascar shit china japan,
Ivan: Well, Japan has tariffs, but all these numbers were just completely,
Ivan: completely, completely unrelated to reality of what's going on with tariffs.
Ivan: Unrelated to any reality.
Ivan: And then he says that he's calculated that that's the tariff.
Ivan: So he was going to do a 50% cut on, okay, so they're tariffing us.
Ivan: So my great deal is that we're going to impose a tariff that is 50% of that.
Ivan: Well, of course, the number you're looking at the first column looked completely nuts.
Sam: Well, and just to be clear, they also said that it wasn't just their tariff
Sam: rate of those countries.
Ivan: But it was adjusted for currency manipulation and something else,
Ivan: whatever. I can't remember.
Ivan: But, you know, he said that it was basically unfair.
Sam: Trade practices of various sorts. We would adjust by factors for that.
Ivan: Yeah. So.
Sam: But is that what they actually did, Yvonne?
Ivan: No no sam no apparently because
Ivan: you know we can't afford anybody that
Ivan: is an expert well no no i'm going to take that back trump
Ivan: just wanted to just i'm sure that what happened is they probably asked some
Ivan: people that were pretty smart to go do tariffs because we i heard that there
Ivan: was a lot of fights over these tariffs leading up to the announcement and probably
Ivan: what i'm pretty sure is a lot of people that are pretty smart got asked,
Ivan: well, you know, calculate these.
Ivan: They were all saying, you're out of your mind. Those numbers are nuts.
Ivan: So I'm sure that even the most, you know, stalwart, well, they're all just looking at this is insanity.
Ivan: So what they did, they revealed all of a sudden this formula.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And the formula basically took what they exported to us,
Ivan: what we exported to them, calculated the
Ivan: difference and then they divided it
Ivan: by two you know they took that factor so they came up a percentage so hey you
Ivan: know i i export 700 you know a hundred billion but but i've got a deficit with
Ivan: you of because i only sell you 30 so the deficit is 70 okay and.
Sam: Well, let me interrupt the detailed explanation.
Sam: It was so in the end, the formula was the basically the trade.
Ivan: If I listen, the trade deficit between Sam and I, I bought Sam over my life
Ivan: a lot more food than he's ever bought me. Yeah.
Ivan: So, so since there's a 80, 90% gap there, I would tariff anything that Sam was
Ivan: going to give me 90%, but I'm going to be nice.
Ivan: And then I'm going to divide it by two, going to be 45.
Sam: Yes. So look, so it's what, it's the, the trade deficit as a percentage of the
Sam: exports to that country, right? That was how it ended up.
Sam: Now the, the, the formula is okay.
Ivan: Let's be clear, which is complete nonsense.
Sam: Well, wait a second. There's more than that. The formula that they showed had
Sam: that plus two other factors that were supposed to- But they never.
Ivan: But they never, yeah, but they never came up with- No.
Sam: No. What they did, the two factors were set such that when multiplied together.
Ivan: They were one. Well, then you didn't know anything.
Sam: And like in theory, those two factors could be different for every country in
Sam: the world and you could adjust them. But they did.
Ivan: But if you, like I said, if you wind up with something that equals one that
Ivan: is the divisor, then you.
Sam: Right, right.
Ivan: You've divided by one!
Sam: Well, right. But if they actually had calculated those numbers for every country,
Sam: they wouldn't have multiplied to one.
Ivan: Okay, Sam, but let's be clear about this. Okay, nobody with a brain sat to do this.
Sam: Yes, well.
Ivan: Somebody went to chat GPT.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Because nobody with a—listen, nobody.
Sam: I was going to break that up back.
Ivan: This is what I was saying. I'm sure they went to a whole bunch of people.
Ivan: They asked them to do this. They all looked at them. are you out of your fucking mind.
Sam: Well and so they probably they probably at some point in the process some real
Sam: economists weighed in with some real reciprocal tariffs and they didn't yes and they looked at.
Ivan: Them and that's what i said the numbers were too low.
Sam: Yes because.
Ivan: Trump's saying that's that's that's it's too low so that's what i'm saying so
Ivan: then they went and they did with this calculation they asked chat gpt to do
Ivan: it and they asked for a list of countries to assess this too.
Sam: So so wait and then you wind up two things here there are two things here that
Sam: are important one somebody on the internet did an experiment where they asked
Sam: every major llm chat bot model out to.
Ivan: To try to see.
Sam: To basically say okay yeah.
Ivan: Give me give me this.
Sam: Yeah give me give me a way an easy way to calculate the tariffs i would want
Sam: to do if i wanted to do reciprocal tariffs across the entire world.
Sam: And every single one of the models came up with the same wrong answer.
Ivan: Same wrong answer. Yes.
Sam: Yes. This is not an answer that any actual expert in economics or trade or anything
Sam: else would have come up with.
Sam: This is a bullshit made up hallucination type answer.
Sam: and but they all came up with the same thing
Sam: so we don't know if they went to chat gpt or
Sam: claude or something or or or whatever it
Sam: was probably elon's model like x whatever brock whatever they call it whatever
Sam: no fuck they probably used elon's but it doesn't matter but we know that it
Sam: had to be an ai answer because no legitimate person would ever have brought
Sam: up this formula for this purpose,
Sam: Because it doesn't make sense for this.
Ivan: I mean, that's why everybody who had ever done this was looking at it,
Ivan: and they were like, this is nuts.
Sam: And so we'll talk about the list of countries itself in just a second.
Sam: But also, you brought up me and you as an example, but let's do an actual country
Sam: example that I've heard a lot. People have brought up Madagascar,
Sam: which I mentioned earlier, and another poor African country. I forget which one.
Sam: But let's talk Madagascar for a second because I remember the actual examples.
Sam: Madagascar's major export is vanilla.
Ivan: Okay? Okay.
Sam: So Madagascar produces a lot of vanilla.
Sam: It's exported all over the world, including the United States,
Sam: which, by the way, the U.S.
Sam: does not have a good climate for growing large amounts of vanilla.
Ivan: Or coffee. Or a whole bunch of other things.
Sam: Or a whole bunch of other things. But specifically in this example, we're talking vanilla.
Sam: So the U.S. does not make a lot of vanilla. But we buy lots of vanilla from Madagascar.
Sam: Meanwhile, Madagascar is not exactly a wealthy country. They are not importing
Sam: a lot of American goods because American goods are expensive.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And so you have a major trade deficit
Sam: where we buy a lot more stuff from Madagascar than they buy from us.
Sam: And so therefore they get like slammed with high tariffs. But like,
Sam: this is not because Madagascar is instituting super high tariffs on American goods.
Sam: This is not because Madagascar is doing like trade practices that are drastically unfair.
Ivan: It's because it's the only fucking place we can get vanilla.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: The only fucking place.
Sam: And they're poor enough not to buy a lot of our stuff.
Ivan: It's like, look, it's like you getting, you know, arguing about the trade deficit
Ivan: you have with your supermarket.
Sam: Right.
Sam: You know, I buy a lot more from my supermarket than they buy from me.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: I'm just saying. Yeah.
Ivan: You know, and here's the other thing that this doesn't consider. Services.
Sam: They didn't count those at all.
Ivan: They don't, they're like, they're acting like this is 19, the 1800s.
Ivan: It's all goods, no services. And the United States runs a huge services surplus. Okay. Okay.
Ivan: And so that didn't even go into consideration.
Ivan: Look, the main thing about this
Ivan: is Trump must have looked at what some economists did that made sense.
Ivan: And from what I can see, said the numbers are too low.
Ivan: That's bullshit. We're getting screwed a lot more. And then wanted something
Ivan: to give them bigger numbers.
Ivan: And somebody went and asked the LLM to do the calculation. They got that.
Ivan: Make the list of countries.
Ivan: And so this is why we're tariffing penguins and other things.
Sam: And let's talk about that. The list of countries that the LLM came up with is
Sam: the list of internet top level domains.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: So we've got uninhabited islands that only have penguins on them.
Sam: We've got islands that only have American military bases.
Sam: We've got we've got territories of countries that are also on the list as their
Sam: own countries. So there's overlap. app.
Ivan: Oh, and it's like nobody actually fact-checked this in any way.
Sam: Yeah. And oh, we should add, we should add, there was a 10% minimum as well. So like, well, yes.
Ivan: They didn't go with a 10% minimum.
Sam: Even for the countries that actually have surpluses with us,
Sam: and there are some, they still got hit with 10% because that was the absolute
Sam: minimum, no matter what.
Ivan: Which is nuts. I mean, it's just, the whole thing is nuts.
Ivan: The entire thing is just, And, you know, there was a chart I shared about where
Ivan: our tariffs sit vis-a-vis the average tariff in the world, like with this proposal right now.
Ivan: It is off the charts. There is no country in the world, let alone one of the
Ivan: top, you know, OECD countries, you know, the top 20 that has this kind of level of tariffs. Yeah.
Ivan: It's bonkers.
Sam: So let me ask a question. Yes, yeah, go ahead.
Ivan: How did the markets take it?
Sam: Wait, wait, we will get to that. I want one thing first. People have been trying
Sam: to play the game of understanding, like, okay,
Sam: option one, Donald Trump just has no idea.
Sam: But I mean, but but pretend for a second that there's some sort of actual logic
Sam: or rationale behind trying to do this or something like this.
Ivan: Listen, OK, the logic that I can think of, OK, is because remember,
Ivan: he has right now, 60 days into his new presidency.
Sam: I think it's like 72 or something.
Ivan: 70, whatever. Yeah. So it's OK. Yeah.
Sam: 73, 74.
Ivan: He has decided that the U.S. has, he has decided that he does not need or want any allies.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: No country. We need no allies.
Ivan: And so, when you start off from that premise, you've got no friends. I want no friends.
Ivan: Basically, what he did is kick everybody in the teeth and demand tribute.
Sam: Well, did he even? Because there's been some back and forth on whether or not,
Sam: like, on the one hand, some of his staff were given talking points and went
Sam: out to the media saying, this is not a negotiation.
Sam: This is staying no matter what they do. We don't care what they do.
Sam: Then Donald Trump himself said, we're making deals.
Sam: But bullshit. Come to us with a good deal. And then he reversed himself again.
Sam: And just a few hours ago, posted on Truth Social something about how these are
Sam: permanent no matter what.
Ivan: I do think that his main thing is that he's looking for deals.
Sam: So he's looking for one-on-one, whichever country comes and grovels and offers
Sam: all kinds of stuff. And if they do, he'll offer him a little bit of a discount
Sam: on the tariff rate or something like that. He wants to do that.
Sam: Obviously, he likes to think that way. He likes to force things into that transactional mode.
Sam: But at the same time, they keep also talking about how, hey,
Sam: look, yes, the goal here is to fundamentally, from the ground up,
Sam: change the international order.
Sam: I think, listen, they don't like free trade. They don't want free trade.
Sam: They want everybody to be insular in their own country.
Sam: I mean, how they could go a step further and just make importing things illegal.
Ivan: I mean, I don't know how we will live as a country.
Ivan: There are many things that we rely on solely imported. This is the whole problem
Ivan: with this whole damn thing.
Ivan: I do think that this is, he wants to use this as some kind of negotiating cruddle
Ivan: because he always wants, he always talks about how he's such a great deal maker. That's his shtick.
Sam: And he's talking about who has the cards and things like that.
Ivan: Who has the cards! That's always his shtick. So, and I do think that he's, like, right now...
Ivan: I...
Ivan: I do think here, I will say that I do think he's going to start negotiating with some countries.
Ivan: I do think that he doesn't want to back off on a big chunk of this,
Ivan: but I will tell you that the reality is that if he doesn't remove a big chunk of this, we're fucked.
Sam: Well, I've heard a lot of people. Yes. I've heard a lot of people say essentially we're fucked anyway.
Ivan: Because there's levels of fucked. Okay.
Sam: There are different levels. The point these people had is even if he takes them
Sam: off, given the history, how does anybody know he doesn't just change his mind
Sam: tomorrow and put them back?
Ivan: No, no, no. I get that.
Sam: But yes, keeping them on forever is worth. Well, there is the other thing.
Sam: I just want to say one thing to our audience. I have decided at this point,
Sam: like 40 some minutes into our recording, that I am not going to attempt to edit out Yvonne coughing.
Sam: Like the automated system will either remove what it does or not remove what
Sam: it does. Like he's coughing on average once a minute.
Ivan: I'm sorry.
Sam: I'm like, screw it.
Ivan: What am I going to do? Let me cancel again for another week. I was at whatever now.
Sam: No, no, I know. So I'm just saying, so if you've been hearing Yvonne cough in
Sam: this whole time, I apologize.
Sam: I just do not have time to deal with that when I edit this time around.
Sam: If you are not hearing it, thank the wonders of my post-processing,
Sam: like recognizing that it's a noise and getting rid of it.
Sam: But either way, it's not me. So, okay, go ahead.
Sam: Well, it's not me removing the coughing, if anything is removed.
Sam: And if it's there, sorry, Yvonne's sick. What can I say?
Ivan: It's just well there is one thing that can there are that can stop this more
Ivan: decisively in terms of the tariffs yeah which is congress can act okay congress
Ivan: could and the reality is that at some point,
Ivan: Look, this is so recessionary.
Sam: I have seen more nervous looking Republicans in the last few days than I have in years.
Ivan: In years.
Sam: This is so recessionary. The last time even close to this was the Access Hollywood tape in 2016.
Sam: Like when you had a whole bunch of Republicans go like, oh crap,
Sam: maybe this isn't going to work. We have to ditch this guy.
Sam: Now, they're not saying that quite that openly right now, but this is but you
Sam: see them in the halls where people are asking him the questions and they're
Sam: running away scared and not answering the question.
Ivan: They don't have any.
Sam: And there are there are a handful. There was a bill related to this that passed
Sam: in the Senate with all the Democrats plus four Republicans.
Ivan: Right. You know, that was probably that was before this shit show.
Ivan: They got four Republicans.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay. And I can see how quickly, look, with what the market is happening.
Sam: I think it's useful. It was Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, and the two women.
Ivan: Oh, Murkowski and Collins.
Sam: And Murkowski and Collins. That was the four. And it's sort of like if you had
Sam: to predict four on this issue, that's who you would have predicted.
Sam: But the fact that you could even do that, like it got to, they actually voted on it and it passed.
Sam: It's like, whoa, who would, you know, and you see, you know,
Sam: you see this hesitancy, you see people sort of in panic mode.
Sam: And you can see, again, this is the kind of thing where, as we started this
Sam: show, this gets people's attention in a way that nothing else does.
Sam: You already had Republicans afraid of going to town halls because people were showing up.
Ivan: Can you imagine going to a town hall like in a month with all these tariffs
Ivan: in place? They're going to the supermarket.
Ivan: They're going everywhere. Prices are through the roof. They can't buy a fucking
Ivan: car. They can't, you know, they're shopping at cars.
Ivan: All the car prices go on, you know, because by the way, this is also driving
Ivan: up used car prices. Okay.
Ivan: It's not even just new car prices. Okay. It's driving all car prices up. Okay.
Ivan: you know how many people are going to show up basically you know burning these
Ivan: people in effigy like right now over this.
Sam: Well and and this is the thing that like it's not
Sam: it's not just the democrats showing
Sam: up for these things they're mad at this it's there it's it's it's die hard mega
Sam: folks who are getting upset because this is not what they wanted now again if
Sam: they paid freaking attention and actually believed what Donald Trump said,
Sam: it should have been what they expected.
Ivan: No, because listen, I still can't forget this guy who was at the airport,
Ivan: who was some MAGA guy that worked a ramp at the airport. He was talking about
Ivan: how he's bringing in this genius.
Ivan: They're going to go through everything, and he's going to make the economy.
Ivan: He's going to cut our taxes, and we're going to be richer, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: I'm like, what What kind of delusional bastard are you?
Ivan: I mean, they're all, I mean, they all, I, here's, you've got this one group
Ivan: in Wall Street, one group in
Ivan: Wall Street that was like, ah, he's going to deregulate and cut our taxes.
Ivan: And, you know, the tariffs left time, eh, they weren't so bad,
Ivan: whatever. He just got in a trade war with China. It's no big deal,
Ivan: whatever. Ah, we can deal with this.
Ivan: But if we get our tax cuts and deregulation, we're good to go. And then,
Ivan: You know, that's not what happened. I mean, this guy is an idiot.
Ivan: This guy is a fucking idiot. You know, this entire fantasy where he thinks,
Ivan: you know, they're saying that somehow, magically, what?
Ivan: In a year or two, we're going to get all this manufacturing back. No!
Ivan: No! No, by the way, it's never all coming back. You can get some, but not a lot.
Sam: Well, and people also point out, this is important too, people also point out.
Sam: I mean, the Biden administration got some manufacturing to come back to the U.S.
Ivan: Well, they were doing it in a way that makes sense.
Sam: Well, because the key component is- Because it takes time. Well, it takes time.
Sam: But also the thing that's completely missing that Biden did is like,
Sam: okay, you also offer incentives- Incentives.
Sam: For the manufacturing to be done.
Ivan: Right. You make it- Because it takes a big investment.
Sam: It takes a big investment. So you offer commitments and incentives and you're
Sam: going to get tax breaks and we're going to subsidize and you'll get a loan at
Sam: a good rate, whatever you or, you know.
Ivan: And there is no program for that. As a matter of fact, this administration has been killing.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I mean, the shit that Biden had done, which is helping to bring some manufacturer
Ivan: back. He's killing that.
Sam: That was a big part of both of
Sam: those two big initiatives, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Both had significant components about encouraging manufacturing in the United States.
Ivan: And a lot of plants had been built, being built, and shit was moving and happening.
Sam: Now, a lot of the Republicans didn't like it because a lot of it was tied to,
Sam: like, clean energy stuff instead of fossil fuels.
Ivan: But they were bringing fucking jobs. But here's the thing. You know,
Ivan: what are, what the fuck are we going to bring back? Making t-shirts?
Ivan: Is that what we're going to fucking bring back? What? Are we going to pay $100 for a t-shirt now?
Sam: They want to bring everything back, Yvonne. Everything.
Ivan: I mean, you know, what are we doing? You know?
Sam: Well, that's key to this, too, and why it ties to inflation as well is because,
Sam: yeah, like, even if you brought the stuff back, it's going to be a lot more expensive.
Ivan: Listen manufacturing employment in the united states had
Ivan: dropped steadily since the 1960s okay
Ivan: this isn't the new thing it started flattening out somewhat you know but it
Ivan: had been it had been going down one part of the reason is it's not because automation
Ivan: okay that we you don't need that many people to manufacture a whole bunch of
Ivan: stuff like we used to okay yeah Yeah.
Sam: It's like even if you bring back the manufacturing, it doesn't mean bringing back all the jobs.
Ivan: Right. Same thing was with, you know, I hear people grieving for small farm
Ivan: towns. Well, here's the problem, too.
Ivan: You know, farming doesn't require as many people as it used to either.
Ivan: We have more farming output than we've ever had with a lot less people working
Ivan: the farms. And a lot of those people moved cities.
Ivan: That's why the small towns died because people decided that they didn't want
Ivan: to live in the, you know, out in farm country.
Ivan: They prefer to live in the city because that's also where there were jobs because
Ivan: we didn't need that many people to farm because technology changed.
Ivan: and so you know technology changed but you know it's like you want to bring it's like yvonne steel.
Sam: Is coming back to pittsburgh any day now.
Ivan: You know what that steel output has been flat in the u.s for the last 30 40
Ivan: years but employment is down like a ton okay,
Ivan: again technology same shit whatever and people
Ivan: keep forgetting it's just the whole damn thing oh
Ivan: they're taking advantage of us or whatever we were much better after
Ivan: in the 1950s and 60s in terms of manufacturing employment yes
Ivan: you know why because japan was decimated the uk was decimated europe was decimated
Ivan: all their fucking factories are fucking flattened by fucking wars okay china
Ivan: didn't exist it was communist russia too you know none of those existed None of it.
Ivan: We, the United States, benefited outlandishly from the absence of that infrastructure post-World War II.
Ivan: That is how all of a sudden we became so dominant.
Ivan: But the reality is that those countries couldn't stay down like that for the rest of their life.
Ivan: What? Korea was going to stay poor? Japan as well?
Ivan: China? What? I mean, this is part of the economic development of the world.
Ivan: And the reality is, yes, it had an impact in the U.S., but at the same time,
Ivan: the problem in the United States hasn't been that during that time,
Ivan: there hasn't been economic growth and there hasn't been jobs because a lot of
Ivan: jobs have been generated over that time. The jobs are different.
Ivan: But the reality is that a lot of people without the skill sets that this new economy needed,
Ivan: well you know they didn't
Ivan: the republic especially you know the republicans didn't give a
Ivan: shit about helping any of these people okay let's be clear about
Ivan: this yeah they i mean i mean
Ivan: reagan couldn't give two flying fucks about these people he fired you
Ivan: know it's like the air traffic controllers like he fired them for
Ivan: example and like all these people mourning in america
Ivan: blah blah blah look the 1980s was was one of
Ivan: the worst eras for union unionized employees
Ivan: in america factories kept shutting down one after
Ivan: the other and it's not like i mean you know you had that documentary by what's
Ivan: his name roger and me for example uh the suffering of all the gm employees and
Ivan: the downsizing of gm and factories and how work was gone and the reality is
Ivan: that the gop didn't give these people anything what do you got tax cuts.
Ivan: We got more fucking tax cuts, okay? And, you know, it's just one of these things
Ivan: where our problem isn't about that the country doesn't have enough wealth.
Ivan: Our problem has been since the 1970s that wealth has started to be more unequally
Ivan: distributed than it's ever been.
Ivan: You know, in about 100 years, that's the fucking problem. It's got nothing to
Ivan: do about us having the money.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, you also mentioned the fact that, like, they pretend like services don't exist.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, they pretend like fucking, and that's the thing, because all the fucking jobs were created.
Ivan: You know, yeah, we don't make the fucking iPhones, but you have all the people
Ivan: that design them, that do the marketing, that do, you know, set up the sales structure.
Ivan: You know, a company like Apple, most of the, you know, the majority of their
Ivan: employees are in the U.S., but 60% of their sales happen outside the U.S., okay?
Ivan: I remember when I was at HB, same thing. HB, you know, we had like more than
Ivan: 50% of employees in the United States.
Ivan: Only like 25% of sales came from the United States.
Ivan: And you look at that across the, you look at the top 10 companies in the Fortune,
Ivan: Global Fortune 1000. Nine of them are American.
Ivan: Nine. Nine out of 10.
Ivan: Nine out of 10. And all of those make so much profit. It's insane.
Ivan: And that, yes, so we don't get, you know, yeah, we look at this merchandise
Ivan: deficit. But fuck, man, the capital.
Ivan: We're taking the fucking capital from everybody in the fucking world.
Ivan: Everybody invests here. That's where they, well, they used to.
Sam: Yeah, I was about to say.
Ivan: Everybody came here to fucking invest and put their damn money and put in American
Ivan: companies because they were the ones that, and oh, by the way,
Ivan: because putting their money in the U.S. was more secure than being anywhere else.
Ivan: Well, this asshole thinks that all of that is bullshit. Then we need to go back to making T-shirts.
Sam: Yep. And furniture.
Ivan: T-shirts and furniture. And pay people $6, $7 an hour.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: No machinery. It's all manual. We'll just, you know, we'll just build a factory
Ivan: with a thousand fucking people paying $6, $7 an hour. Build sweatshops of people working 20 hours a week.
Ivan: That will, that will satisfy people. That will make people, that will make America
Ivan: great again. And what the fuck is wrong with these people?
Sam: Exactly. With that, why don't we take a break and let's pivot.
Ivan: Chat GPT Ivan cannot get angry like that. I noticed.
Sam: No, no. Yvonne GPT.
Ivan: He was very, very, he was very, very acquiescing of you.
Ivan: He would go and he would like go and you would say, he would pick a topic and
Ivan: then it would say, Sam, what do you think about this topic?
Ivan: And then you would say it, and then he would very pleasantly just agree with
Ivan: you, summarize everything you said in a very agreeable tone.
Sam: Absolutely. You know, Yvonne GPT knew who was right, you know?
Ivan: Yes!
Ivan: Totally!
Sam: Yeah, so I think that they have a little bit more work to do to properly simulate you, Yvonne.
Ivan: I will admit that At the end, the jokes he cracked were pretty good.
Ivan: I was impressed with the jokes.
Sam: Okay. Okay. Laughing about the camel or whatever. Yes. Skydiving camel.
Ivan: Yes. That was good. That was pretty good.
Sam: Okay. So let's take a break and let's pivot from sort of what Donald Trump did
Sam: and what he was trying to accomplish, which is obviously failing, to the reaction.
Ivan: Wait, wait, wait. He doesn't think it's failing. He doesn't think it's failing.
Ivan: By the way, he's out fucking playing golf.
Sam: I said, which is obviously failing, not that he realizes is failing,
Sam: but let's pivot to all the consequences.
Ivan: That motherfucker was out playing fucking golf as the stock market had its two worst days.
Ivan: I don't know, two worst consecutive days in the last hundred plus years?
Sam: Was it that? I thought there were some that were in early 2020 that were.
Ivan: The two worst consecutive days.
Sam: Oh, consecutive. Okay.
Ivan: Okay. Those were the two worst consecutive days.
Sam: Well, it would have had to been since 89 or whatever. Because that was a 25% drop in one day.
Ivan: The two others, the only two that were worse was 1929 and 1988.
Ivan: That's it. Yeah. Black Monday in 89.
Sam: I was a year off.
Ivan: It was Black Monday, 88.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll take a break. We will be back and then we'll talk all
Sam: the consequences. We'll talk more about the political consequences.
Sam: We'll talk about the stock market. We'll talk about in general,
Sam: the economy, inflation, all this stuff.
Sam: We touched on those, but we'll, we'll, we'll hit, we'll pivot more to that.
Sam: Sound good. Sound good.
Sam: Okay. We are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight break.
Sam: Number eight. Here we go.
Ivan: You know, so wait.
Sam: Wait, I just want to wait.
Ivan: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Sam: Okay, go ahead.
Ivan: There was a joke that I was remembering that this whole thing reminded me of.
Ivan: There's this part in Good Morning Vietnam.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: We're in a movie. Good Morning Vietnam. Robin Williams gets suspended,
Ivan: you know, for a joke that he made on the air.
Sam: I'm sure it's on my list. I'll add it.
Ivan: For God's sake.
Sam: I'll make sure.
Ivan: There is a scene where, where Robin Williams gets suspended from the radio station. His, his boss. Okay.
Ivan: Goes and takes over his show. Now, his show was hilarious, comedic.
Ivan: And this guy, his boss decides that he's going to do a comedy show instead in his style of comedy.
Ivan: And this was just the worst, the worst, just not funny, just ridiculously bad show.
Ivan: Okay, all right? And everybody that's producing him and whatever are looking at him doing this.
Ivan: And everybody is just aghast. just just you see
Ivan: people standing around the radios around yitnam or
Ivan: whatever listening to this just just just ridiculous thing
Ivan: and they're just like what the fuck and and they get to a commercial they get
Ivan: to a break you know they do little ads public service ads or whatever because
Ivan: it's armed force armed forces radio television service and the guys look at
Ivan: them are you planning on continuing with this show and that's what i'm i'm expecting
Ivan: isn't somebody you know somebody at some point,
Ivan: you know, she's going to show up in the Oval Office and as the stock market
Ivan: will drop again on Monday, probably, unfortunately. Okay, all right?
Ivan: I'm going to wind up with a fucking ulcer at this rate, okay?
Ivan: And I'm like, they're going to have that on there, and I'm like,
Ivan: Are we going to just keep doing this until we just crash into the ground? Is that your plan?
Sam: Yeah. So the one thing I was going to say, because the break was about a video channel,
Sam: was that the one immediate consequence that has been reported of the tariffs
Sam: is that apparently China was about to make the deal on TikTok,
Sam: but then the tariffs came off and they backed out of the deal and Trump extended
Sam: it another 75 days even though he's got no legal right to do so and so you know
Sam: the tariffs saved TikTok sort of kind of well I don't really saved.
Ivan: It but not I mean I don't know if they're gonna make a deal I mean.
Sam: They were gonna make a deal and then they didn't make a deal but then it was.
Ivan: Not like it wasn't gonna.
Sam: And of course Donald Trump was
Sam: saying that they were about to make a deal doesn't really mean they were.
Sam: But anyway, yeah, no. So let's let you started with the market reaction.
Sam: Let's the market obviously is tanked. As you said, the worst two consecutive days in like forever.
Sam: So what are we seeing with like, let's answer the question that you just said,
Sam: how long can this continue?
Sam: Like if Donald Trump doubles down and says, no, I did fucking mean it.
Sam: Yes, it's going to be painful, but all of these tariffs stay.
Sam: Even if the countries come and grovel, it doesn't matter. They all stay.
Sam: I'm not negotiating. This isn't part of making a deal.
Sam: I just think this is the way the world should be, and leaves it this way. How does that play out?
Ivan: I, you know, we're on, we're on uncharted territory here, you know,
Ivan: because this is, I mean, this is self-inflicted. All right.
Ivan: You know, we've had other times when I still remember, like during the 2008,
Ivan: right, where the stock market would accelerate down because basically the policy
Ivan: prescriptions that they were saying just weren't going to do anything.
Ivan: But they were dealing with a crisis.
Ivan: OK, already. All right. I mean, there was a crisis.
Sam: Remind us what was going on in 2008.
Ivan: Well, in 2008, this was a moment that all of a sudden we started realizing that
Ivan: a lot of the big banks and investment banks were insolvent. Okay?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: They were insolvent because they had been...
Sam: Overextending on bad loans, basically.
Ivan: Well, not exactly.
Ivan: What happened was that they had,
Ivan: in the early 2000s, had passed a rule that basically said that there was no
Ivan: limitation in how much leverage an investment bank needed to hold.
Ivan: So what that motivated you to do is take lots of risks.
Ivan: Well, it's not just take lots of risk. It was like almost like,
Ivan: you know, you're instead of like, say, you know, you buy a house.
Ivan: They were most of these were on collateralized mortgage bonds.
Ivan: OK, you know, they were doing the CMBS.
Ivan: These were these were packaged bonds that packaged mortgages.
Ivan: So they were looking at them like the same way as the mortgage on your house,
Ivan: where we would go up to 95 percent in large part, because that's your primary
Ivan: home. We do underwriting.
Ivan: We're pretty confident. Most people don't walk away from their primary home.
Ivan: But back then, we were writing.
Ivan: A lot of it were writing shit. And they were saying that all of these were AAA rated.
Ivan: So, okay, they're AAA rated. So I can write as many of these as I want.
Ivan: And because of that, I can borrow.
Ivan: 99, you know, because what I'll do is, instead of like before,
Ivan: where maybe we do a few billion here, a few billion there, fuck this.
Ivan: We'll carry a trillion dollars. Okay. And we'll borrow 980 billion.
Ivan: Okay. All right.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Well, okay. Now the thing is that at that level, you're going to be making a
Ivan: lot more profits supposedly because these things are like rock solid AAA.
Ivan: And instead of like just buying 10 billion, you're, you're doing a,
Ivan: you know, you're doing all of that volume. So you're, you know,
Ivan: you're, you're doing volume basically and taking the maximum risk because it's AAA rated.
Ivan: The problem is that people started digging through them and they weren't AAA rated.
Ivan: And so when all of a sudden you realize they weren't AAA rated,
Ivan: all you needed was those fucking, you know, securities to drop in value by 5%
Ivan: and they would wipe out a Wall Street firm.
Ivan: The losses would be so large that they did not have sufficient equity to cover them.
Ivan: And so that was happening... repeatedly, over and over.
Ivan: We had these... And then you had... The other thing was that some were selling...
Ivan: these default swaps okay basically
Ivan: it was like insurance you sold insurance on
Ivan: the default and well it's all
Ivan: triple a rated we'll never have to pay out on these so we'll write and we'll
Ivan: sell a hundred billion of this shit and the notional value behind it is a couple
Ivan: of trillion okay well guess what they started going bad so they started calling
Ivan: these and so all of a sudden AIG also got,
Ivan: AIG, GE had some of these on their books.
Ivan: I mean, so many of the bottom line.
Sam: Bottom line, I want to get us back. We were, we were, there was a bottom line is that this was.
Ivan: This was a real crisis because you had a significant number of the banking and
Ivan: financial institutions that were,
Ivan: that were there with basically that their,
Ivan: their equity was going to be completely wiped out they would
Ivan: be completely insolvent okay and that's
Ivan: what started precipitating the crisis because all of a sudden people started hitting
Ivan: the exits let's try to sell this shit and we started hitting
Ivan: the exits well guess what you think everybody wanted to buy those at
Ivan: 100 100 cents on the dollar no what started happening they started getting quotes
Ivan: 90 cents 80 cents 70 cents 60 cents 50 cents it it just bankrupted you know
Ivan: all of that so that's how that crisis started it It was deregulation under the
Ivan: Bush administration that started that.
Ivan: A lot of people blame supposedly low-income housing.
Ivan: That was very little of that. For the most part, the biggest problem was just,
Ivan: you had so many people that were going and borrowing 20, 30,
Ivan: you know, they were taken out. They were like mortgage moguls because the banks
Ivan: weren't even they weren't even underwriting the loans.
Ivan: They were just like, look, if you're you know, they said if you could fog a
Ivan: mirror, you borrow money.
Ivan: Literally, I heard this said if you showed up and you could fog a mirror,
Ivan: you'd get you know, you'd get a loan. That's it.
Ivan: That's all. That's the only requirement. And I'm sure they also load money to that people.
Sam: So now, of course.
Ivan: But but that was, you know, but but so so there was a crisis.
Ivan: It was a complex crisis that required a lot of,
Ivan: it required a lot of maneuvering in order to to get through that and you have
Ivan: to come up with a few different solutions but there.
Sam: Was a crisis that started and it still hurt quite a lot
Sam: but they managed to sort of make it so that it was just bad instead of existential
Sam: like people were worried that correct people were worried that if it didn't
Sam: if it got completely out of control we'd be at something worse than the great
Sam: depression in the 1920s and 30s yes um
Sam: But instead, we got the Great Recession, or whatever.
Ivan: It was bad.
Sam: That was still bad. Just not as bad as it could have been.
Ivan: Not as bad as it could have been, yeah.
Sam: And that whole tangent was because you were saying, well, that time there was
Sam: a real crisis. This time, we were doing fine.
Ivan: Listen, I had shared the cover of The Economist, October 2024.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: The cover said, the U.S. economy, the envy of the world. The envy of the world.
Ivan: OK, seven months later, you know, the cover now is that basically,
Ivan: you know what? We just fucking like we fucked ourselves.
Ivan: This is the big I mean, Trump did this.
Ivan: Trump 100 percent without any reason perpetrated this on the American people, period. Period.
Ivan: There was no reason for this. This bastard, and I was hoping maybe,
Ivan: you know, he would do this, could just come in, just coast.
Ivan: You know, he likes Air Force One, and he was looking at trying to get into it.
Ivan: I know he was looking at the Qatari VIP 7478. He's getting pissed off.
Ivan: He wants to be on the 7478. He wants to make it more golden or whatever.
Ivan: I figured he'd be out playing golf and just doing this shit. No. No. No.
Ivan: Let's, let's, on purpose, start, a major crisis for no good reason whatsoever.
Sam: So let me ask a fundamental question here. Do you think,
Sam: and it's hard to even try to get inside this guy's head, but do you think in
Sam: his head, he really and truly believes,
Sam: the tariffs will have an overwhelmingly good effect, even if there's a short-term minor thing?
Ivan: He thinks he's smarter than everybody else, yes. yeah.
Sam: Like like i do you think like he's not we don't think he's actually waking up
Sam: and saying i'm gonna crash the economy today or do we like.
Ivan: Because he actually shared he shared a
Ivan: video today yes where basically he
Ivan: was saying but basically said that yes that
Ivan: he was on purpose crashing the economy i mean
Ivan: yes now i i
Ivan: i think that maybe maybe he
Ivan: was delusional and he thought that everybody just would say that this is fantastic
Ivan: and the stock market would soar maybe he was delusional on that now he's now
Ivan: he's obviously because he's always like attack attack attack and now he's switching
Ivan: tactics now he's thinking well if you've seen treasury rates.
Ivan: The 10-year treasuries finally started dropping, and the reason it started dropping
Ivan: is because, look, you got $5 trillion of money out of the stock market.
Ivan: It's got to go somewhere.
Ivan: So people have been buying treasuries, okay?
Ivan: People have been buying treasuries and actually moving it offshore.
Ivan: A lot of money has been leaving the U.S.
Ivan: right now, and the dollar went down.
Ivan: So maybe he was, like, all of a sudden today demanding that Powell lower rate.
Ivan: so so maybe he's thinking this is the way to get
Ivan: rates to to be lowered to force
Ivan: powell to lower rates but here's but you've got this is the worst of every world
Ivan: because you've got inflation that is these tariffs are inflationary the dollar
Ivan: dropping is inflationary you'll make them worse and just so if i put a 25 tariff
Ivan: and the dollar drops just.
Sam: To be clear given the amount we import if all of these tariffs stay in place
Sam: without adjustment, we're not just talking a little bit of inflation.
Sam: This is a big fucking deal.
Ivan: This is an insane, insane, insane amount of inflation.
Sam: I've also seen it characterized as the biggest tax increase ever in the history of the world.
Sam: Of the world. Yeah, I was going to say the United States, but yeah.
Ivan: No, but I'm going to say probably the history of the world.
Sam: Yeah, and like, what happened to Republicans being anti-tax? I mean, this is...
Ivan: Fuck, didn't you see today that they were actually right now,
Ivan: because they know that their stupid tax plan is so bad on the fucking deficit
Ivan: that they were considering raising the tax rate on the top earners again?
Sam: I did see that before.
Ivan: The Republicans were actually... You didn't see that?
Sam: No, I did see that.
Ivan: It was... I mean, I'm like, what the fuck is going on now?
Ivan: Which I'm like, okay, I am all for that, but this is where the Republicans are.
Ivan: Not only do they want to pass the most regressive tax increase on Americans ever.
Sam: Well, and just to be absolutely clear, because the tariffs effectively act as a sales tax,
Sam: where the percentage of your income that you spend on stuff is highest the lower your income is.
Sam: Right. So these kinds of taxes, tariff kinds of taxes- Are super regressive.
Sam: Super regressive. And some people are
Sam: confused by the words regressive and progressive when it comes to taxes.
Sam: But what it fundamentally means is the less money you make.
Ivan: The more these- I think our audience is not confused by this term.
Sam: Yeah, probably, probably.
Ivan: Okay, all right.
Sam: Then the, so, you know, your Elons of the world- I don't have Lauren Boebert listening to this.
Ivan: Asking whether we, you know, what the hell do you confirm or negate?
Ivan: Negate? Negate?
Ivan: I'm like, I want the fucking...
Ivan: Go to Congress and punch her.
Sam: Which person was that again? Bobert.
Ivan: Bobert.
Sam: Yeah, okay. Yeah. So, yeah, like, biggest tax increase ever under a Republican president.
Sam: And now, like, yeah, they're...
Ivan: Worst stock market ever by any president being handed. the listen there there
Ivan: has been no president ever handed an economy like this that has managed to ever tank it like this.
Sam: Ever i i was looking at comparing to herbert hoover from you know the crash
Sam: in 29 in 2029 just to see because i was like well how's donald doing relative
Sam: to him and actually for like the first six months of the herbert hoover presidency the stock market was,
Sam: not only fine it was going great i mean it was a bubble
Sam: and that's what popped well that's what popped yeah but you
Sam: know but yeah he's he's it's just come right in and like destruction but like
Sam: and a few like a few weeks back maybe a month or two back i i asked you like
Sam: because some people were speculating that of course they want to you know tank
Sam: the economy tank the stock market etc et cetera,
Sam: because the oligarch class, the Elon Musks and all of these folks- You know
Sam: what the problem is with that bullshit argument?
Sam: Let me just say it and then you can react to it again because last time you
Sam: said, eh, that's plausible.
Sam: But basically the idea was that everything gets cheap, they're rich enough so
Sam: that they can survive no problem and buy everything up at pennies on the dollar
Sam: for when the recovery happens.
Ivan: Well, let me tell you something, okay? There's a chart today that went and crystallized
Ivan: this, showing the top 10 billionaires and how they've fared so far this year.
Ivan: A number of these have been either pro-Trump, like Elon Musk,
Ivan: or cozying or trying to ingratiate themselves with us.
Ivan: All except one. And that guy is the only guy that's made money.
Ivan: And the guy that actually basically called out and said that this guy is a fucking
Ivan: moron, a fraud, and that nobody should vote for him. And that was Warren Buffett.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And my whole point about this argument that those guys that say that are never
Ivan: that smart to go and, like, do that because they think that everybody else is the sucker.
Ivan: And, you know, and I'm not going to lose. But you know what?
Ivan: It's like Elon Musk and what he's been doing with Tesla. Okay.
Ivan: Listen, that, that, that, that finally it's looking like that horse is breaking.
Ivan: That thing is going to go so much down because, yep, he decided it.
Ivan: I'm the smartest guy and I just, Hey, you know, what do I care about the,
Ivan: you know, me going out there and being political and basically destroying my
Ivan: brand to everybody that really buys my fucking cars.
Ivan: and he's now he's going into a world of pain so I,
Ivan: you know none of those people that say that are ever prepared enough,
Ivan: to have the money to do that the vast majority of time it's very rare,
Ivan: you know two guys that I've seen that are very good at it is Warren Buffett
Ivan: but Warren Buffett was actually advocating actively for not to get this clown
Ivan: to be president because he thought thought it was going to be terrible for everybody.
Ivan: But he went very actively on the defense and he decided, I'm like,
Ivan: well, I'm going to hold the most cash ever.
Sam: So we've said before, Donald Trump is solely motivated by personal benefit to himself.
Sam: What do we think the personal benefit to himself is out of these actions?
Sam: Or is he really just so obsessed of like the tariffs of the late 1800s and early
Sam: 1900s were awesome and that's what we want.
Ivan: Look, right now, he is in a position that I'm sure that he feels of unchallenged power.
Ivan: And I think that to him is more important than anything else.
Ivan: The second thing is that, look,
Ivan: He's he's got to be making money off of this shit somehow. I mean, he was.
Sam: Yeah, we've said here in Miami. We've said before, if nothing else,
Sam: insider trading on the advanced knowledge that you're going.
Ivan: Oh, fuck. Yeah. I mean, Jesus, come on.
Ivan: And look, he was down here as the markets are imploding.
Ivan: He came down yesterday, flew down to Miami to go to that fucking like golf tournament at his place.
Ivan: The Saudis are paying him off for. listen the
Ivan: money gravy train of money coming into
Ivan: him for x y and z has got
Ivan: to be right now at at full tilt how
Ivan: many memberships how many expenses how many phantom hotel rooms how many every
Ivan: fucking way that they can line his pockets is happening as we speak yeah so
Ivan: right now to him in terms of him and money he is not a guy that's made money
Ivan: on being invested in the stock market He is a guy that has made his money.
Ivan: Well, what the hell? He's never made any money. What am I talking about?
Ivan: The only way that he made his money was on his name.
Sam: Yes. His TV show.
Ivan: And that's what he's doing right now.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That's what he's doing right now. This is his best time.
Ivan: It's my name. Who gives a shit? I'm going to get paid. I mean, Sam, the pardoning.
Ivan: Listen, as all of this is going on, as we've got RFK Jr. basically decimating,
Ivan: you know, the health institutions on one side, as we've got Elon running rampant all over the place.
Ivan: But it seems like finally his his time finally may be up. So that's probably
Ivan: going to trail off because he's in a world of problems.
Ivan: OK, which, you know, the one thing that I that I expected.
Ivan: So that's probably going to trail off to some extent at this point.
Ivan: But as all of this was happening, Donald Trump is pardoning criminals left and right for shit.
Ivan: I mean, all of a sudden, oh, this criminal for this, oh, it's pardon.
Ivan: You think there wasn't any, he didn't get any money from pardoning these fucking guys. Come on, man.
Sam: In some of the cases, it's been almost explicit. Like, they're not even hiding it.
Ivan: Right. I mean, he's literally just selling pardons left and right to fucking
Ivan: grifters and criminals.
Ivan: Every fucking week there's another pardon of some fucking criminal that was
Ivan: a fraudster that's unconscionable and he's like, oh, well, I'll just give him a pardon.
Ivan: And right now, with so much other noise, we're not even noticing that.
Sam: No. Yeah. I mean, I noted in passing a couple of those, but I didn't even bother
Sam: sharing them on our Commissions Corner Slack or anything. I was just like,
Sam: oh, there's another one.
Ivan: Yeah. There's another. Oh, another guy that stole millions and billions.
Ivan: Oh, well, he's getting pardoned.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean.
Sam: So I want to return to a question I asked you before. I want to understand the
Sam: worst case scenario, because then once we know the worst case scenario,
Sam: then the next question becomes, at what point do even diehard Republicans decide
Sam: it's time to do something about it?
Sam: So what really is the worst case scenario here?
Sam: I know you said it was uncharted territory, but everything that was announced
Sam: this week stays and stays permanently.
Sam: What happens to the economy?
Ivan: What happens to the market? It keeps going down.
Ivan: Look, it doesn't, it's not going to take long for the layoffs to start piling
Ivan: up for the recession to really kick into high gear.
Sam: I mean, some have already been announced in the last 24 hours.
Ivan: But you know what i was reading more specifically about how
Ivan: many small companies that depend on on
Ivan: imported products for them to manufacture stuff or
Ivan: whatever and all of a sudden they're getting hit by these
Ivan: massive increases that are costs okay just
Ivan: just just ridiculous here's one mark cuban shared
Ivan: this is a guy there's a guy a small company called days
Ivan: owl whatever you know the matter is the post
Ivan: on linkedin yesterday days old duties and
Ivan: tariffs were 17.6 today they are 63.6 the
Ivan: word from our government is that these tariffs are our liberation but in reality
Ivan: they are deeply damaging to regular working people tended to punish small business
Ivan: owners for not producing in the united states as if that somehow makes us less
Ivan: american i love my country and i recognize the profound privilege i have to
Ivan: be able to own a small business at all let alone here the reality is that making our goods in the U.S.
Ivan: has been prohibitively expensive for a long time, making our bag prices unattainable for regular folks.
Ivan: As of today, making them abroad is now also prohibitively expensive,
Ivan: which, not for nothing, is going to deeply damage the economies of our allies as well.
Ivan: I have one friend who has, I can't remember what kind of government loan for
Ivan: the government, but the tariffs, also by the government, are crippling.
Ivan: Does he owe the government money back if the tariffs are instituted to affect Crash's business?
Ivan: It's going to put me, my friend, and countless others out of business.
Ivan: If you're a small business in this situation like mine,
Ivan: or my friend's message me or comment below but this is what small businesses
Ivan: that hey you import say furniture for example the other day talking about furniture is a big.
Ivan: Restoration Hardware, which isn't a huge company, but the other day,
Ivan: I mean, they import all their furniture from Asia.
Ivan: I mean, in their call, when they set the tires on Vietnam, because so much of
Ivan: the furniture comes from down there, their stock to crash 25% in one hour. 25% in one hour.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay. The CEO was on the call. He heard about the tariffs. He was trying to do an earnings call.
Ivan: You know, one of those things where you schedule an earnings call.
Ivan: I'm sure he probably wanted to find out what was going on but you scheduled
Ivan: this so far in advance you can't really do much about it.
Ivan: He was on the call and they asked him and he was like just the guy almost just
Ivan: choked on the phone. I mean he was just like shit.
Sam: He literally said oh shit.
Ivan: He literally said oh shit. Yeah. He literally said oh shit.
Ivan: And a lot of businesses are going to get hit like this. I remember when I was
Ivan: in Kodak a few years back.
Ivan: And he, you know, he started with this shit with the aluminum tariffs and it hurt bad.
Ivan: It really hurt really, really bad. There was no other place where we could source
Ivan: that aluminum that we, that, that, that we needed. That wasn't from China.
Ivan: And he put a tariff on it and we had asked for an exemption and he refused to grant it.
Ivan: It was a specific type, just nowhere else nobody else had it and you know nope
Ivan: no exceptions so i so like i mean we're.
Sam: Seeing the stock market crash already like.
Ivan: Look let me tell you something the ones that's getting auto dealers are going
Ivan: to get murdered auto dealers are going to get completely completely,
Ivan: completely obliterated okay car sales are going to tank like crazy okay there's
Ivan: just no getting around because in.
Sam: Addition to the national tariffs there's an additional like 25 on cars specific.
Ivan: There's a 25 car tariff but the one thing is that and it's difficult to avoid
Ivan: because it remember you know cars you know even if they're assembled in the u.s yeah exactly the.
Sam: Parts are from everywhere the and usually like things are assembled in units
Sam: and then brought together and blah blah blah so.
Ivan: There is no.
Sam: Such thing maybe except some ultra luxury like custom car stuff.
Ivan: No there's no such thing as a car that's.
Sam: Made in a single country.
Ivan: There's no such no none of them hell it's
Ivan: totally the opposite of those ultra luxury custom cars because you know hey
Ivan: where are you going to get the you're not going to make specific electronics
Ivan: for them or yeah or a transmission or shit like that you're gonna you're gonna
Ivan: you know you gotta you'll make the engine and a whole bunch of the the seats
Ivan: and that kind of stuff but those components you gotta source them from somewhere the.
Sam: Only car that is truly made in only one country is if i like go cut trees in
Sam: my yard and make one out of wood myself.
Ivan: Basically yes,
Ivan: You know, the biggest problem with this entire fucking thing is how Trump is
Ivan: so dumb that, as I mentioned before,
Ivan: that the United States has been the number one beneficiary from this global
Ivan: trade that that he is trying to append now.
Ivan: Now, this country has been the number one beneficiary.
Ivan: And, you know, the thing, the issue with, you know,
Ivan: blue collar workers that have been hit by free trade and globalization has to
Ivan: do more with the fact that even though our wealth has been increasing,
Ivan: we didn't address how to make those people whole because the country as a whole
Ivan: was benefiting a lot. Right.
Sam: And instead of doing something where, you know, we actually intentionally redistributed
Sam: wealth and help out the people who were hurt and blah, blah,
Sam: blah. Instead of that, we're just like.
Ivan: No, you guys are lazy idiots. Fuck you.
Sam: Yeah, you're damn sure.
Ivan: And now his fix is to try to bring those jobs, which, by the way,
Ivan: technology and a whole bunch of shit has made of that, they're not,
Ivan: you can't really bring them back.
Sam: And again, it keeps bringing up the question, like,
Sam: You know, is he really dumb or is this on purpose? Is this what he's trying to do?
Sam: And as you said, he posted something today saying, yeah, it's what I'm trying to do.
Sam: Now, he it was it was a repost of a video by somebody else. You guys know how
Sam: that worked. It wasn't still.
Ivan: But anyway, look, I got here. I found this. I wanted to see.
Ivan: I bought a couple of years ago a Volvo S60.
Ivan: And the final assembly for this car was in South Carolina because Volvo put
Ivan: a plant in the United States for final assembly.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: But car finished in the U.S. U.S.-Canadian parts content, 10%.
Ivan: Major sources of foreign parts content, Belgium, 20%. Sweden, 15%.
Ivan: You know, country of origin engine parts, Sweden, transmission parts, Japan.
Ivan: This is a car that was built in the U.S.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Okay. And basically the U.S. Canadian parts content, 10%.
Sam: So let me ask you the question I was starting to ask a little while ago.
Sam: We keep going in different directions, but the stock market is crashing immediately.
Sam: How long before I, as a normal consumer, going about my daily business,
Sam: not a big purchase like a car, but going about my daily business,
Sam: is how long before I notice,
Sam: oh shit, this costs more than it did a few weeks ago?
Ivan: It's going to be the next 30 days. It's not going to take that long.
Ivan: It's not going to take that long. It's going to be the next 30 days.
Sam: Assuming everything stays in place.
Ivan: Yes. It's going to be the next 30 days. It doesn't take that long.
Ivan: I mean, yeah. No, it's not going to take that long.
Sam: And just to size it, compared to the inflation that everybody complained about during COVID.
Ivan: Size was this is the thing is that this is going to be no this is going to be
Ivan: big and this is going to be noticeable it's going to be noticeable right away
Ivan: you're going to be going and then all of a sudden because the one thing is that
Ivan: we had certain items that would go up in price and not others or whatever you're
Ivan: going to be seeing almost everything going up in price just everything,
Ivan: everything everything doesn't matter what the fuck you're buying it's everything,
Ivan: yeah it's really nuts it's everything.
Sam: So what do we think? That whole scenario is based on the assumption that everything
Sam: stays in place. What do we think really happens?
Sam: Do you think there's an amount of pain where Donald Trump backs off on his own?
Sam: Or do you think there's an amount of pain where, as you said,
Sam: the Republicans in Congress actually act to constrain him?
Sam: Because the only reason he's doing, by the way, just to clarify on the law,
Sam: the law says that Congress determines tariffs generally, but under certain emergency
Sam: situations, the president can make changes.
Sam: And President Trump declared an emergency that, frankly, is somewhat bogus.
Sam: I forget even what the excuse was for the emergency.
Ivan: I'm wondering if somebody could just go challenge this in court and get it struck down.
Sam: I'm sure they can. And the question is how, you know, you know how long the courts take.
Ivan: You know, I think that because of the scope.
Sam: The emergency, it could move pretty quickly. Yeah. So like, yeah.
Sam: So here are the scenarios.
Sam: Scenario one, this just stays in place and we spiral down the hell hole.
Sam: Scenario two, at some point it gets bad enough. Trump backs off himself.
Sam: Scenario three, the courts do something. Scenario four, Congress does something.
Ivan: Well, one thing is that at some point, at some point, well,
Ivan: the number one scenario that I, I, I always have to go back to is the classic
Ivan: Trump scenario, which is that he somehow figures out how to claim a victory.
Sam: Right. Like, and then just, you know, random country makes some random concession
Sam: and he's like, oh, beautiful.
Sam: You're back to normal. And then, and then a whole bunch of other countries do the same thing.
Ivan: I mean, that, that.
Sam: And it can be. It can be a meaningless little gesture that he uses to claim victory.
Sam: But now, even then, like, I guess that's the way out of them.
Ivan: I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's one, I mean, that's one possible
Ivan: scenario because, and I say that one because, you know, it's happened before.
Sam: Well, and you said earlier, there's different levels of fucked.
Sam: That's the way to get out of the immediate level of fuckitude.
Sam: But even then, you still have the issue that you've just destroyed the confidence in the whole system.
Sam: You know, it's not like you're going to pop instantly back to where we were.
Ivan: Well, we're going to get tax cuts and we're going to get deregulation.
Sam: I mean, this ties to like, I mean, he's been destroying foreign policy as well,
Sam: right? I mean, and we've already had the situation of Europe basically deciding,
Sam: hell, we have to figure out how to go it alone, assuming that the U.S. isn't on our side.
Sam: And so essentially you end up with the same situation economically that every
Sam: place in the world has to figure out what do they do with the actual U.S.
Ivan: Listen, here's a reality. We're fucked.
Ivan: I mean, I'm not going to say fuck forever, but I'm going to tell you that right
Ivan: now. This next decade is a disaster.
Ivan: Okay, look, this is, I wrote this on March 30th. It's the new dark world order that Trump wants.
Ivan: No allies. You just bully everybody.
Ivan: Criminals can pay to wipe their crimes. His cronies will enrich themselves while
Ivan: inflation, unemployment, and poverty rise.
Ivan: He wants the old spheres of influence. Okay, back from like the 1800s,
Ivan: early 1900s pax americana is over yeah it's it's over it's over it's it's done it's over,
Ivan: that's the reality that we are in right now sam and by the way what i said now as a counter true.
Sam: This is true even like donald trump resigns tomorrow and and and vance undoes
Sam: everything trump did which he probably wouldn't but let's say that happened it does not undo this.
Ivan: I would things have changed look trump dies
Ivan: tomorrow okay i was going with a reside but okay yes trump dies tomorrow i mean
Ivan: it limits the damage sam it does limit the damage but i don't know i'm not saying
Ivan: the reason why i'm saying the reason why i'm saying that well donald trump if.
Sam: He if he's alive will continue to do more and more damage what i what i'm saying
Sam: is yes it limits the damage if if if vance comes in tomorrow and everybody immediately
Sam: thinks he's a little bit more rational he undoes some stuff you undo some of
Sam: the damage all i'm saying is you're not doing undoing all of.
Ivan: It well you're not undoing all of it but but you know yeah there is stuff that
Ivan: you're you're it's not coming back like right right trump broke certain things
Ivan: for good I mean this entire thing,
Ivan: in terms of the security relationship that,
Ivan: Europe had with the United States is over I mean the Europeans can't trust the
Ivan: United States anymore on that no matter who comes in no matter who comes in
Ivan: because they can't trust.
Sam: That will remain for whoever's next after that.
Ivan: Exactly so that's over and it makes it that it's
Ivan: A much more unstable world in a certain extent, because the reason is because
Ivan: you've got a lot more countries that are going to arm themselves to the teeth.
Ivan: And like the same thing is, you know, having more guns on the streets doesn't make the streets safer.
Ivan: So, so having a lot more countries, you know, even if they are countries that
Ivan: I aligned with and agree with just so many armed isn't, isn't,
Ivan: isn't great. I will say this.
Sam: That I was thinking about the same kind of thing economically as well.
Sam: Like it's not going to be helpful to the world overall if every country decides
Sam: they have to figure out how to maximize how well they'll do if they can't trade
Sam: freely internationally. Yeah.
Ivan: I was also going to say that the Democrats need their own project.
Ivan: Well, I said 2026 and Bob said 2025 Q20 should be like right now.
Ivan: But but in terms of.
Sam: Well, I just want to say that here is one thing like I was I was saying like
Sam: in 2021 that the Democrats desperately needed to do shock and awe themselves
Sam: then while they had a chance.
Sam: and of course they did not have.
Ivan: The right senate to do that joe.
Sam: Biden wasn't in the mood for it but i mean my god in.
Ivan: 2021 listen they should have.
Sam: Reformed the supreme court they should have added states they should have done voter.
Ivan: Legislation listen listen okay monday okay but monday morning quarterback right it's not monday.
Sam: Morning when i was saying it back then.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah but but look i
Ivan: i think that a lot of people including myself you know i was like look you gotta
Ivan: let biden you know do it his way and you know his way was hey maybe instead
Ivan: of continuing to antagonize we try to do something that works for everybody
Ivan: and we try to get this country back that way.
Sam: Than anybody expected.
Ivan: Exactly and it just you know
Ivan: and and let's be clear he got older people
Ivan: like you know what happened politically is what happened politically and the
Ivan: democrats weren't good at countering the messages and so and the economy was
Ivan: the economy and they want and and you know so it didn't matter that the economy
Ivan: was so what everybody just saw what's.
Sam: Your democratic project 2020.
Ivan: No my my thing is that i think it needs to start right now i'll tell you I'll
Ivan: tell you where things need to start.
Ivan: I think that, like right now, Richard had suggested that, and I thought at first,
Ivan: that's too early for that, but he's not wrong, that the Democrats need to figure
Ivan: out who the fuck their leader is and to create a shadow cabinet.
Ivan: And that is not a crazy idea. And I will tell you why that is not a crazy idea,
Ivan: because beside that shadow cabinet, you need to work with a number of NGOs and rich donors.
Ivan: To create structures okay like
Ivan: right now to cover for the shit that
Ivan: trump is destroying in government in terms of health care education
Ivan: and other shit to provide that guidance and to
Ivan: counter the stupid messaging that they are doing and to
Ivan: be able to provide resources to oh oh they took
Ivan: away your resources no here they are okay yeah and
Ivan: that needs to happen both at at a u.s level and at
Ivan: a global level and so but what you need is
Ivan: the democrats need to pick okay i don't know maybe they're not the
Ivan: president but somebody that needs to be the leader of this we need
Ivan: to have these people that who the fuck is our person who shadows
Ivan: rfk jr who shadows the treasury secretary who
Ivan: shadows these people and it's like okay rfk jr
Ivan: goes today and says well this is bad more like no fuck
Ivan: you this is our commission where all of that shit he said is wrong this is the
Ivan: way this should be and it's gotta be you have to be basically tit for tot every
Ivan: fucking minute every fucking thing they say you're up there on on a bully pulpit
Ivan: and you're fucking countering every single piece of no i i absolutely i.
Sam: Absolutely agree i mean i think the i don't know that the democrats are organized
Sam: or unified enough to actually pull it off but i think you're absolutely right they should.
Ivan: They should be and.
Sam: And i i remember saying you know right after the election, you know.
Ivan: Hell, I saw Kamala and Obama come out of the woods.
Sam: Yes, yes.
Ivan: What the fuck? I'm like, hey, Kamala.
Sam: No, I mean, that's what we need. Look, I was like, look, there is no need to
Sam: wait for after midterms.
Sam: The 2028 presidential election should be going right now.
Ivan: Fuck that.
Sam: And I don't care. Like, they don't have to obviously actually pick the candidate
Sam: it quite yet, but you need strong Democrats out there.
Sam: Yes. With the visibility of running for president and making their case right
Sam: now, right now, don't wait.
Ivan: Don't wait.
Sam: If, if Harris, you know, I know you're thinking about running for governor,
Sam: but if you, if you have any thoughts whatsoever running for president again, start right now.
Sam: AOC start right now, you know, right now. Buttigieg, start right now.
Ivan: Right now.
Sam: What's his name? The guy who just did the filibuster thing? Right.
Sam: Booker. Booker. Start right now.
Sam: Hell, even the stupid guy in California who I don't like. If you're serious
Sam: about it, start right now.
Sam: All of you people, start and use that to make noise.
Sam: And it's really tempting to make it all about how bad Trump is,
Sam: but it really has to be your vision too. It has to be your counter.
Ivan: And that's my point by having the cabinet, which is where you're having these
Ivan: people that know this is the vision that we should have.
Sam: And who know deeply about the specific areas.
Ivan: This is what we do in healthcare. this is what the you know you need to have
Ivan: that this is the plan and this is what we're doing this is how we're fixing
Ivan: shit as soon as possible and.
Sam: Like you said even on simple things like okay the cdc isn't gonna put out updates
Sam: on xyz anymore because they.
Ivan: Fired everybody we're collecting the data we're gonna set up the website we're
Ivan: gonna call the data we're hiring those people we're getting you know we're getting
Ivan: donations we're gonna hire these people are gonna bring over here and we're
Ivan: fucking you know we're we're covering what the government is doing we.
Sam: We can't necessarily make up for everything that gets, you know,
Sam: because the budgets are just.
Ivan: We can make up for a lot.
Sam: But we can make up for a lot. I mean, during COVID CDC was not the best source of COVID data.
Ivan: No, it wasn't.
Sam: You know, there were volunteer efforts who had more up to date,
Sam: real time data that they collected from all sorts of places and brought together,
Sam: you know, and those kinds of efforts could work in a whole bunch of different areas.
Sam: But I think you're absolutely right. The messaging, the real time counter messaging
Sam: has to be there and has to be strong.
Sam: And it has to be none of this like, oh, we're going to wait a week and then
Sam: we're going to do like Medicare day.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This needs to be, we need to be out there.
Ivan: They need to be battling.
Ivan: And you know what Cory Booker did was the right approach. Fuck this shit.
Ivan: We need to do that every fucking week. The hell with this shit.
Sam: Now my one criticism like is is i i think absolutely got a bunch of attention and got a,
Sam: energized who weren't before. But at the same time, it didn't actually block any business.
Sam: Right after he was done, they fucking confirmed Dr. Oz.
Sam: Like, could you have like maybe delayed Dr. Oz instead?
Sam: Like there's another senator, I think it was Schiff, who's announced that he's doing that.
Sam: You remember that one Republican senator who held up the promotion of generals for like months.
Ivan: Right. Right.
Sam: Because it was one guy blocking it. Freaking do that for everybody.
Ivan: They need to be for everybody. Yeah.
Sam: Pick a senator for every nominee. Who's willing to block that.
Ivan: Nah, we're blocking that. Nah, we're blocking this.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: This needs to be, we need to stop acquiescing to anything.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Anything.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, I can somewhat understand the argument of, okay,
Sam: shutting down the government would have been worse.
Sam: Let that go. But like for things like nominating Dr.
Sam: Oz and letting him take office as whatever the hell he's doing.
Sam: No, there's no reason to allow that to go through.
Sam: you know and and yes do you
Sam: can he like do some temporary appointment
Sam: in the meantime and still do damage of course he can but don't
Sam: let dr oz in block it the senate rules
Sam: are set up you the minority the one person can't block something forever but
Sam: they can delay it they can stretch it out they can they can make a show of it
Sam: they can do that stuff and and you know i i think Cory Booker was a good move
Sam: in that direction. We need more.
Sam: Another thing that's been brought up, apparently this weekend there's protests
Sam: all over the country that aren't getting a lot of attention,
Sam: but they're building up momentum and steam.
Sam: I don't know if I can actually make the one tomorrow, so I feel like a hypocrite
Sam: saying this, but, you know, start doing this.
Ivan: The only reason, we were going to go tomorrow to one here, but the thing is
Ivan: that I'm still, listen, my wife's Achilles is still an issue, okay?
Sam: And you're coughing all over everybody.
Ivan: And I'm coughing all over everybody, so I'm not, I don't know.
Sam: But even the little things matter. And people have pointed out,
Sam: by the way, that the administration has actually backed off on a few things
Sam: that have gotten a lot of negative attention.
Sam: And maybe they'll end up backing off on some of the tariff stuff.
Sam: But like they they have indeed on certain areas, certain limited areas,
Sam: but where one particular thing or another has gotten a lot of attention and
Sam: people have been mocking them over it.
Sam: They've backed off. And so I mean.
Ivan: The negative attention does matter. I saw that fucking idiot, the total idiot, RFK Jr.
Ivan: Oh, we fired the people that were doing, you know, saving people from getting
Ivan: poisoned with lead pipes.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, we need to bring those back. I'm so sick and tired of hearing these
Ivan: assholes say this over and over.
Sam: I think RFK Jr. specifically said that probably 20% of the people we fired, we shouldn't have.
Ivan: What kind of a fucking jerk off does this?
Ivan: I mean, I, I, I, it's, he's fucking, if I, I, I better not bump into these people
Ivan: in person. I'm going to get arrested, Sam.
Ivan: If I fucking see RFK Jr., I'm going to fucking punch him.
Sam: Hey, hey, Yvonne, just to be clear, you would not just be arrested.
Sam: You would be arrested, shoved in a dark plane and sent to a prison in El Salvador.
Ivan: Fuck.
Sam: Let's be clear on that. The fact that you are a citizen does not matter.
Ivan: Hey, hey, hey.
Sam: Like, your point, that doesn't really count anyway. You know.
Ivan: Well, listen, I do have some very high-powered attorneys on call that are connected.
Ivan: I'd probably be able to get some pull.
Sam: They won't even find you. You'll be disappeared. You'll be gone.
Ivan: Well, you know, I'm a squirrely little guy.
Ivan: I can, you know, look, look, if it happens like near here, I know where the
Ivan: NetJets place is. I'm fucking taking the, putting the Amex, my,
Ivan: my, my Amex, I, I can, I can charge a private plane on my fucking Amex.
Ivan: I'm like, fuck this shit. I'm like, you know, all of a sudden I'm, you know, Sam. Yeah.
Ivan: I'm on, I'm on, I'm on a jet on the way to, I'm not sure where yet.
Ivan: I got to talk to the pilot where there's no extradition treaty.
Sam: Ah, yes. Yes.
Ivan: So it'll be something like that.
Sam: On that note we should probably close it up Yvonne.
Ivan: God the fuck why why you know you know america you fucking morons why why.
Sam: Why ivan it's clear
Sam: it's because kamala kamala
Sam: sorry kamala would not
Sam: make pro-palestinian statements and
Sam: was too supportive as his assholes and so
Sam: you know oh and and eggs and
Sam: the price of eggs oh and oh yeah we we don't want those trans people playing
Sam: college sports yeah yeah and yeah that that kind of stuff that's that's it and
Sam: you know and we don't want a black woman because that would be definitely.
Ivan: Don't want a black woman definitely don't want don't want one of those that's for fucking sure.
Sam: Obviously not our actual opinions just to be clear well.
Ivan: I mean you married one you know probably one of the smartest things you did.
Sam: So um i mean okay weird i dated.
Ivan: I dated a couple i can get married to one.
Sam: Yeah there you go i.
Ivan: Mean women are fucking smart but our country hates them.
Sam: Yeah. You know, I, I've heard the argument stated usually as a joke,
Sam: but like, I'm not so sure I'd be upset by this saying, you know,
Sam: basically men got to run the hunt, the country for 250 years or whatnot.
Sam: You know, why don't we just outlaw men in politics for the next hundred to even it up a little?
Ivan: I'd be good with that. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm down for that.
Sam: You know, I remember saying when we were in the run up for 2020 and we did end
Sam: up with Joe Biden, but like the thing that I kept saying is how about we just
Sam: have a rule straight up, no straight white men,
Sam: like whoever we pick, no straight white men, they've enough,
Sam: you know, and I am one, but I don't care.
Sam: We've had enough of those. Let's do something different.
Ivan: Exactly. Enough of you fucking guys.
Ivan: Seriously.
Sam: Okay. Hey, everybody. you know, the deal curmudgeons hyphen corner.com.
Sam: You'll find out all our transcripts, all the way to, all the ways to contact
Sam: us, our archives, going back to the beginning, all that fun stuff.
Sam: Uh, no link to Tik TOK yet. I mean, they've kicked it off another 75 days.
Sam: Maybe I'll add the link in the next 75 days, but you know, the second I add
Sam: the link, it'll be banned forever.
Sam: That's just how it would work, you know?
Sam: Um, but yeah. And of course a link to our Patreon. So you can give us money.
Sam: and at various levels we will mention you on the show we will ring a bell we
Sam: will send you a postcard we will send you a mug i still owe stuff to pete greg
Sam: and egg egg not not egg pete.
Ivan: Greg and egg egg.
Sam: Pete greg and ed i will make sure to send your stuff by the end of the month let's not,
Sam: things are still crazy for me for at least
Sam: another week but after that i'll be in seattle in july and ivan will be in seattle
Sam: in july well assuming that you know the infrastructure still works to allow
Sam: intercontinental travel or intra-continental travel.
Ivan: I should say yeah you.
Sam: Know like yeah you by the time we get to july ivan the only way to get to seattle
Sam: might be to walk with a machete battling all of the people between here and there well.
Ivan: You know for for what it's worth. I have done the, you know,
Ivan: in Puerto Rico, I've had to go through, like, the whips, using a machete. So I've done that.
Sam: So you're prepared.
Ivan: I am prepared for that kind of, it's a long time, so I've done this,
Ivan: but I have some preparation for this.
Sam: So you are prepared, you will do the journey.
Ivan: From Miami to Seattle.
Sam: With a machete walking.
Ivan: I'm sure that won't draw any attention. Make sure I get a very big, rusty machete.
Sam: Oh, yeah. That won't get you to a pompadour.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. Yeah. Anyway, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask,
Sam: we'll add you to the Commudgeons Corner Slack,
Sam: where Yvonne and I are chatting throughout the week about all kinds of wondrous
Sam: stuff that would make you want to join us,
Sam: and chat with us.
Sam: And you're missing out if you're not there. Now, I'll be honest.
Sam: Most of the talk in the last 48 hours has been about the exact same thing we've
Sam: been talking about on the show.
Sam: The tariffs and the impending economic disaster.
Sam: But do you have something that's not that you want to highlight for them to come up? Yes.
Ivan: On April Fool's Day, I fell for one.
Sam: You fell for one. Yes.
Ivan: And i shared it on on on
Ivan: on on our random channel where okay
Ivan: i get this notification from flight radar
Ivan: 24 that fucking concord is flying from lhr to jfk and i'm like what the fuck
Ivan: and i i go and i open it and they've got this fucking they're tracking a concord from lhr to JFK.
Ivan: Now, the thing is, the reason why I didn't immediately just think it was April
Ivan: Fool's was because there had been a couple of people that had been trying to,
Ivan: actively get one of the BA Concords, the one that was more closer to being flyable to fly again.
Ivan: So I had read a couple of times that there were a couple of people that were
Ivan: obsessed, look, just go to get one of these to fly again. Okay.
Ivan: But then I, I go and I, I look at it and I realize I'm like, wait now.
Ivan: Oh, fucking April fools. You fucking bastards.
Sam: Now I really, I.
Ivan: I, I really, I really wanted that to be true.
Sam: I only realized just now that you were actually fooled. I thought you were sharing
Sam: it just like, Oh, cool. April fools.
Ivan: I didn't realize you were actually fooled. I got fooled for a little bit.
Ivan: I went and I'm like, they had not done.
Ivan: I look, I've had flight radar 24 for, I don't know how long they never,
Ivan: I don't recall them ever having done this before.
Ivan: So, I mean, I just get, you know, they always have this thing about unique flights to track. Okay.
Ivan: So they'll pop up, Hey, this airplane, uh, you know, the first eight,
Ivan: three 51,000, you know, when that happened is making its maiden flight from,
Ivan: uh, whatever it's so, so, and so forth, you know, Hey, a seven, eight, seven.
Ivan: is making its final test flight you know
Ivan: stuff like that so you get a notification so so getting
Ivan: a notification like this of some unique flight you know
Ivan: isn't uncommon and so all of a sudden i see
Ivan: i mean you know concord is flying to lhr gfk i'm like wait what and then yeah
Ivan: it took me a minute or two and then i realized oh fuck you you assholes you
Ivan: fucking assholes i really wanted that to be true.
Ivan: And I believe that the tail number that they used yeah they used a real tail number from a Concord.
Ivan: And it's the one that I have a picture of in my son's room.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: So, you know, because it's not like they fucking even used a real tail number
Ivan: for a fucking Concord that I know exists.
Ivan: So I'm like, what the fuck? So, yeah, but no.
Sam: Concord. You know, I don't think any April Fool's jokes got me this year.
Sam: And I think, look, the other thing is, I think there was sort of a golden era
Sam: in like the early 2000s where all kinds of internet websites made April Fool's jokes.
Sam: And a lot of them were actually funny and they were amusing.
Sam: And, you know, the one people always talk about is Think Geek making the Tauntaun
Sam: sleeping bag from Star Wars.
Sam: And so many people liked it that they ended up actually making it and selling it a few months later.
Sam: But there were all kinds of others, and it was funny. And then all the brands
Sam: started getting in and trying to do something, and then it got really overplayed.
Sam: It got overplayed, it got dumb, and it wasn't enjoyable anymore.
Ivan: Well, this one isn't an April Fool's joke, but it kind of is
Ivan: okay okay newsmax at this something else
Ivan: that i shared on the slack newsback had its
Ivan: ipo and its ipo was on april 1st okay
Ivan: right away all right so but this was not a fool's this
Ivan: this was not an april fool's joke the initial
Ivan: price just these were priced at what
Ivan: i think it was seven dollars a share or
Ivan: something that was the initial price this the
Ivan: stock hit a high of
Ivan: 272 dollars wow and
Ivan: then and then and then proceeded to collapse to 45 dollars and 30 cents now
Ivan: it it just look so yeah so we had that going on during this week too where we had the only other other.
Sam: The only other April Fool's thing I want to mention to sort of tie into the
Sam: theme of the show is that for several weeks prior to Liberation Day for the
Sam: big tariff announcements,
Sam: Donald Trump repeatedly said over and over that he actually wanted to have them
Sam: take, wanted to have the announcement on April 1st, but he couldn't because of April Fool's Day.
Sam: And so he pushed it to April 2nd instead.
Ivan: Nice. Well.
Sam: Okay but yeah.
Ivan: So you don't think you're not gonna buying any newsmax stock i take it i.
Sam: Mean it started.
Ivan: It opened yeah it's like.
Sam: Okay let me ask because right after like in our i think it was our prediction
Sam: show in december one of the things we or maybe it was some other show but we
Sam: talked about what were the right investment vehicles for a donald trump presidency
Sam: and we said well obviously DJT.
Sam: How's it doing? Everything else is crashing. How's DJT?
Ivan: Let me, okay. It's a great question. Let's, let's check this out. Hold on.
Ivan: Hold on. Uh, where are you? Where'd you go? Where'd you go?
Ivan: Okay. All right. Let's go back to DJT.
Ivan: DJT, DJT. Okay, here we go.
Ivan: DJT is at, it's down to 17 bucks. So.
Sam: How's that compared to its high?
Ivan: Yeah, I don't know. The peak of DJT, it opened, let's see.
Ivan: uh it had been at 62 dollars was its peak when.
Sam: When was the peak.
Ivan: This was about you know this is not supposed to be a hard question a year ago
Ivan: it was a year ago okay i'm just and so it it had it had collapsed to 13 dollars
Ivan: right before his inauguration it soared back up to right.
Sam: Before the election it looked.
Ivan: Yeah right it's short back up to 40 something dollars and now it's back to 17
Ivan: it's worth 3.8 billion dollars okay it's worth 3.8 billion dollars it has earnings per share of,
Ivan: total revenue of 3.6 million dollars and it has an ebitda okay is that an ebitda
Ivan: of negative 183 million dollars but.
Sam: By the way i did also see news this week that some of donald trump's lockups
Sam: expired this week as well so he's now free to sell a bunch of this stuff if he wants to.
Ivan: Uh yeah well i'm sure that at some point he's uh he's gonna cash out some of
Ivan: this shit but yeah right now it's worth 3.7.
Sam: I heard speculation that now that twitter has merged with xai they will buy djt well.
Ivan: I mean elon.
Sam: Not not for any monetary value of the actual stock but just you know to as you
Sam: have said all of this stuff is vehicles to bribe donald trump up.
Ivan: I mean, it makes sense.
Ivan: I mean, look, that we had that. I mean, that was something that just happened this week to the X.
Ivan: Yes, that happened. I mean, you have the X, XAI.
Sam: The week before, I think, actually.
Ivan: But yeah, it was like, yeah, I was like, it was like while you were gone.
Sam: While you were gone.
Ivan: It was a week ago at most. We did the X, XAI merger.
Ivan: And again, number one thing. OK, and I double check this.
Ivan: OK, the the the price at which he did the the the the the deal that he basically
Ivan: gave shares to his other investors basically gave him a 25 percent haircut.
Ivan: OK, at that exchange. But but it was better than where they were before.
Ivan: It was seven days ago. Exactly. So, yeah. So so they got the 25 percent haircut. But here's the reality.
Ivan: Elon paid with his own money $33 billion for it, using XAI shares to buy X shares.
Ivan: But he had stuffed X with a whole bunch of XAI shares anyway.
Ivan: So the reality is that by diluting his partners 25%, he gets to own more of
Ivan: those XAI shares than they did.
Ivan: So he wound up fucking, you know, as usual, fucking his partners again.
Sam: There you go. Okay, now we're going to say goodbye for real, Yvonne.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: We are done. Everybody, have a great week. Have fun, but not too much fun.
Sam: Stay safe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: Try not, you know, don't look too much at the markets.
Sam: Don't jump out of any windows, you know, and we'll be here to talk again next
Sam: week, hopefully, if all goes well. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye. Thank you.
Sam: Thank you. Okay, here we go. hitting stop. Take care of yourself. Get better.
Ivan: Working on it.
Sam: Later.