Latest / The Financial Exchange Show / What powered Google's revenue jump?
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- 1:05Veterans Development Corporation faces the Financial Exchange with Chuck Zada
- 1:10and Mark Van Betty.
- 1:14Speaker 2: It's Chuck, Mark and Tucker with you here, And as
- 1:18we get into the second hour of our show, we've
- 1:22got markets with a little bit of modest upward drift. Overall.
- 1:27The Dow is up one hundred and eleven points right now,
- 1:29the S and P's up seven, NASDAC up twenty three.
- 1:32All three indices were down by anywhere from a third
- 1:35to a half percent at one point in this morning's trading.
- 1:38So it is something where we're off the lows of
- 1:41this morning, but not really with any clear direction. And
- 1:45in particular, we're just seeing an awful lot of chop
- 1:48in individual names as we go through this earning season.
- 1:52Here as an example, Eli Lilly at one point was
- 1:55down eleven percent, now down about six and change after
- 1:59missing on their earnings estimates and guiding lighter. Remember Eli
- 2:04Lilly has been one of the companies on the forefront
- 2:07of these GLP one drugs that are quite honestly some
- 2:12of the more miraculous drugs that I've ever seen, just
- 2:15in terms of the data as I can interpret it.
- 2:18Speaker 3: Do you know anyone who's had success with those.
- 2:21Speaker 2: I know in numbers of people that yes, they're swearing
- 2:23by them. I mean, the weight loss thing is one aspect,
- 2:26but the other studies that are done in terms of hey,
- 2:29there's these weird say side effects where people who are
- 2:34on them are also reporting you know, lower levels of
- 2:37addiction than previously reported and things like that. So it's
- 2:40like helping on that side of things. It's I don't
- 2:44understand the mechanism for how it all works, but these
- 2:49drugs quite honestly, and yes, while there are side effects
- 2:52and things like that, they have the potential to be
- 2:56one of the most miraculous medical discoveries we've ever met made.
- 3:00If you look at the potential to shift all cause
- 3:04mortality over the next couple decades, I mean you're talking again.
- 3:11You look at the stuff that we both spend money
- 3:13on to treat and that kills people, like in large numbers.
- 3:18It's basically heart disease and cancer. That's where the bulk
- 3:21of our spending and bulk of our mortality comes from today,
- 3:26and these go right to treating that. I mean, especially
- 3:30like you will get so many cancers that are caused
- 3:33by obesity and overweight like it's a huge risk factor
- 3:37for a number of cancers and you'd get rid of that,
- 3:39not to mention all the cardiac benefits and stuff like that.
- 3:42It's potentially just massive the shift that this is, and
- 3:46I don't know if that's fully appreciated yet. I also
- 3:48caveat this with look, we might find something out five
- 3:51years from now. It's like, oh, yeah, it's good for
- 3:53these reasons, but here's the bad stuff. When you're actually
- 3:55on these for like five to ten years. I don't
- 3:58know where we go there. But honestly, to this point,
- 4:02the data that I'm seeing is nothing short of amazing.
- 4:07It's absolutely wild what we're seeing there. But in any case,
- 4:10Eli Lelly was not a great quarter, and so the
- 4:15company stocked down about six percent. Now, AMD reported earnings,
- 4:19they're down about nine percent. Google or Alphabet who we're
- 4:22going to talk about in a minute, they reported they're
- 4:23up five, Visa reported they're up three, Caterpillar reported there
- 4:27down two. So really wide dispersion. It's not something where you're,
- 4:31you know, consistently seeing hey we beat and everyone's up.
- 4:34It's just kind of, hey, you really got to look
- 4:37at the earnings right now and see what companies are
- 4:39actually doing, and so we're going to do that with
- 4:41the company formerly known as Google, now known as Alphabet
- 4:45and they reported revenue growth of fifteen percent year over year,
- 4:50faster revenue growth actually than the prior quarter. And in particular,
- 4:56they are seeing their cloud division, which is where their
- 4:59AI business is housed, that revenue up thirty five percent
- 5:04from the previous year, in acceleration from twenty eight percent
- 5:06revenue growth in the previous quarter. So Google at least saying, yeah,
- 5:10we're seeing, you know, good revenue growth in the places
- 5:13that you'd like to if you want to believe that
- 5:14AI is going to have a meaningful positive impact on
- 5:17our business.
- 5:17Speaker 3: So the shift to the cloud has happened, and it's
- 5:22now the incremental revenues coming from selling businesses that store
- 5:29their data anyway on AI. Just could you guys follow
- 5:32you and Mike Armstrong follow companies and no companies a
- 5:34lot better than I do. It's just so I understand
- 5:36this right now, they're selling these companies on AI tools
- 5:39that can allow them to do whatever they're doing that
- 5:41they need to store in the cloud more efficiently.
- 5:43Speaker 2: Yeah, and Microsoft's doing the same thing now. Just as
- 5:46an example, last week, maybe two weeks ago, I picked
- 5:51up a subscription for Microsoft Copilot. It's their office based
- 5:55tool that helps you use AI for you know, Word
- 5:58and PowerPoint and Excel. And I did it. It's a
- 6:00one year contract, it's four hundred bucks. And I did
- 6:03it just to be like, hey, is there anything here
- 6:08that is useful?
- 6:10Speaker 1: Like?
- 6:10Speaker 2: Can it help me to write stuff better? Can it
- 6:13help me to analyze data and Excel better than I do?
- 6:17I don't really know what I'm gonna do in PowerPoint
- 6:19because like what am I making like large you know,
- 6:22long PowerPoint presentations and this and that. But I was
- 6:25just curious, you know, what it's gonna do. And I
- 6:28don't know if I'm gonna find that there's anything there
- 6:30or not. But these companies Microsoft and Salesforce, they started
- 6:35rolling out what they're calling AI agents in the last
- 6:38week or two month or two and those the premise is, hey,
- 6:43you tell this agent a business function that you know
- 6:47that someone normally does, and it can do it for
- 6:50you instead of a person doing it for you. That's
- 6:53the premise behind it. Now can't do complex things like hey,
- 6:57walk to the water bubbler and talk about the web, No,
- 7:00like it's it's in your computer and in the software,
- 7:03So it has to be something that that software can
- 7:05actually touch and understand. So it might be I don't know, hey,
- 7:11like in our business, Hey, every week on Thursday, we
- 7:16get the report on initial jobbles claims in the I'm
- 7:20assuming that there's some way that you have, like an API,
- 7:22where you can pull the data from those jobless claims
- 7:25into you know, some other program that these agents can use. Okay,
- 7:29on Thursday at eight thirty one, pull in this data
- 7:32and write me a report about what you saw in
- 7:34the weekly jobles claims data. That could be something that
- 7:38an AI agent does. In theory, just like thinking about
- 7:41it for two minutes, it could be, Hey, every month,
- 7:44you know, analyze trends in you know, all this data
- 7:48and spit out you know what you think the economies do.
- 7:52I'm not thinking hard enough about it, but that's that's
- 7:54what these companies are trying to do, because the business
- 7:58spend is where they think they're going to make their
- 7:59money on AI. It's not from you and I like what, Hey,
- 8:05draw a picture of a cat. Well, I'm not gonna
- 8:07pay for you to make a picture of you know,
- 8:09a cat smoking a fish or something like that. Like
- 8:12that's just not who's who's gonna pay for that? No one.
- 8:18But if you're a company and like this this is
- 8:22the part that's transformational but also kind of scary. If
- 8:27you're a company and you're paying an entry level worker
- 8:31forty thousand dollars a year to do extra fifty thousand
- 8:34dollars a year to do why you know, in like
- 8:36a white collar setting, and Microsoft comes to you and says, hey,
- 8:41I can give you an AI agent that'll do all
- 8:43that for twenty thousand a year. It's a huge incremental
- 8:46revenue boost to Microsoft. It's a huge cost cut for
- 8:51your business. And that's like, that's the premise of it
- 8:56and also the thing that makes you know, people a
- 8:58little bit scared when they talk about how AI could
- 9:00displace workers at large scale. You see where it could
- 9:04go potentially, Yeah, does it actually work well enough to
- 9:08do that? No clue, But companies are going to try
- 9:11this stuff out just to see because hey, if it
- 9:14does work and you're on that cutting edge, man, think
- 9:17about the potential boost of profits and things like that,
- 9:19That is what companies are going to look for. It's
- 9:22that productivity edge. It's any automation exactly.
- 9:25Speaker 3: Still, you'll still need people to supervise the process.
- 9:28Speaker 2: Maybe there's actually something really interesting that's going on right
- 9:32now where you have insurance companies that are trying these
- 9:36things out as part of their claims process. Yeah, And
- 9:41where you're running into potential problems is that if you
- 9:46end up just with this cycle of AI agents talking
- 9:49to each other, how do you actually know that they're
- 9:51getting anywhere. So let's say that you have an auto accident,
- 9:54just as an example, and mark, you have Company X
- 9:58and I have Company Y that are our insurance companies. Normally,
- 10:02the way it works right now, in order to settle
- 10:04the claim is okay, Company X calls Company Y. Okay,
- 10:06here's you know, the report of the accident, here's blah
- 10:09blah blah. Insurance companies are looking at hey, can we
- 10:12just have an AI agent, you know, do that for
- 10:15so that we don't have to have people doing those conversations. Well,
- 10:19if you end up with just a bunch of ais
- 10:21talking to each other, you potentially end up with this
- 10:24feedback loop where they can't get anywhere.
- 10:27Speaker 3: It's not different for most of it. And then at
- 10:28people though.
- 10:29Speaker 2: But then you need a person to come in and
- 10:31be like, what's actually happening here, Like, hey, I'd like
- 10:34to speak to the manager. Yeah, and and so you
- 10:36might not get the efficiencies that you think theyre. So
- 10:39these are the things that we're going to have to
- 10:41sort out over the next five to seven years. And again,
- 10:46I know that a lot of us get scared by
- 10:48this stuff, and I understand it's scary because hey, the
- 10:50potential for disruption in jobs, it's significantly huck.
- 10:55Speaker 3: I can't wait that we do a lot of content
- 10:57and Armstrong Advisory Group you know this, and a lot
- 10:59of it goes into power Point and word and we
- 11:01spend you and I personally countless hours just formatting stuff.
- 11:05I can't wait for office to recognize that I'm trying
- 11:08to do the same thing to every I don't need
- 11:10AI to tell me what to chart, because often you
- 11:13don't know until sure hands on the data. But I
- 11:15do need it to help me make it look good.
- 11:17And to have to do the same thing over and
- 11:19over again to an object like a chart or a
- 11:21formula is infuriating. It's so monotonous. That would be wonderful.
- 11:26Speaker 2: Well, and the other thing is, look, with every technological innovation,
- 11:31someone is always displaced from their job. I say it jokingly,
- 11:36you know, but look when when Gutenberg came out with
- 11:39this printing press, you better believe the stone tablet makers
- 11:43their union. It was like, don't let those things into
- 11:46our city. Don't put one of those in our city,
- 11:49probably saying the same thing that port workers are saying
- 11:52right now about you know the other man.
- 11:53Speaker 3: The sheep were happy because it took like twenty thousand
- 11:56sheep to make a Bible or something. But they may
- 11:59not have vellum, right, was the is parchment?
- 12:02Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I guess I guess it wouldn't. Yeah, you
- 12:04were making a stone.
- 12:05Speaker 3: Tablet by the skin, and then describes the monks the
- 12:09only literate ones would.
- 12:10Speaker 2: Well, I was just talking about the tablet makers. I
- 12:12wasn't getting into it.
- 12:13Speaker 3: I think they were had the book phased out at that.
- 12:15Speaker 2: Point, not bookmakers. That's a different union.
- 12:17Speaker 3: Well yeah, coo, yeah, of course. Well this is Massachusetts.
- 12:21Speaker 1: Find daily interviews and full shows of the Financial Exchange
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- 12:30This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network text US six one, seven, three, six,
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- 12:41the stories we are covering. This is the Financial Exchange
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- 12:46Speaker 2: Market's talk a little bit about a MD Advanced micro Devices.
- 12:50They are a semiconductor manufacturer, and they reported earnings last
- 12:55night that met on earnings per share, and we're a
- 12:58little bit better on revenue new but their overall revenue
- 13:02guidance didn't have any increase from you know, current expectations,
- 13:06and so shares are actually down about nine percent in
- 13:09trading today. A key example of hey, it's not just
- 13:13how good were your earnings, but how good are they
- 13:15relative to your expectations? As well as how good is
- 13:18your guidance relative to expectations.
- 13:20Speaker 3: We use the expression priced in a lot. We don't
- 13:23often define it, but we simply mean the markets are
- 13:26already expecting something any ass This can apply to any
- 13:30security And to your point, the only explanation here is
- 13:33that this news or better news was priced in so paradoxically,
- 13:37though the quarter was strong, not as strong as people
- 13:39wanted or they had already expected it, and there's just
- 13:42a natural release that occurs. I don't really know exactly
- 13:45how to explain it, but it's something along those lines.
- 13:48Speaker 2: So I don't know that you can necessarily tell a
- 13:50ton about the semiconductor sector as a whole because of
- 13:53what AMD is reporting, because they're not the largest chip
- 13:57maker for any particular type of chip that's a key
- 14:00focus right now. Like they're not the biggest PC chip maker,
- 14:03they're not the biggest AI chip maker. I don't know
- 14:06where their business is for like RAM and stuff like that,
- 14:08but maybe maybe that's where, like they, you know, have
- 14:11some of their bread buttered at this point. But I
- 14:13don't know that you can tell a ton, as you know,
- 14:16as to the sector as a whole. But what I
- 14:18can tell you is that the semiconductor sector as a
- 14:21whole is selling off today. In videos down one point
- 14:24three percent, broad calms down point six uh, Texas Instruments
- 14:28is down. Who else? Analog devices down, Micron is down,
- 14:32Intel like literally every semiconductor company in the S and
- 14:37P five hundred aside from O N Semiconductor. I guess
- 14:39maybe they're called on I don't know, SI it's capitalized.
- 14:44Speaker 3: It's talk about themselves.
- 14:46Speaker 2: They're the only one in the S and P five
- 14:48hundred semiconductor sector that is up today, and it it
- 14:52could be this. It also could be we covered last
- 14:54hour super Micro computer their auditor uh basically away saying hey,
- 15:01we can't make any sense out of these books and
- 15:04we're out. And so super Micro who is they're involved in?
- 15:09Basically like they're a contractor that does a lot of
- 15:11work with AI projects in terms of buying semiconductors and
- 15:16setting up servers and things like that. And so I
- 15:19guess a read could also be, Hey, if you can't
- 15:22understand how their business works, maybe there isn't as much
- 15:26demand for their services as people think in the semiconductor
- 15:29sector is weaker than people think as a result. So
- 15:33I don't know exactly how you read through all this,
- 15:35but semis are getting hit today, and basically, aside from
- 15:38Eli Lilly and Chipotle, semis are really the only place
- 15:42that's getting hit hard today in the market. You look
- 15:45at other sectors at the moment, and quite honestly, basically,
- 15:50I'm going through and healthcare is down because of Eli Lilly,
- 15:53Utilities are floating around, and consumer staples are pretty flat,
- 15:56but everything else is up today in the S and
- 15:59P five huh undred for your sectors. So I think
- 16:02that there's a little bit of nerves creeping in around
- 16:05what's going on with semiconductors, and hey, is the demand
- 16:08still there for you know, these continued earnings beats and
- 16:12increases in guidance. That's one read that I think you
- 16:15can have on this.
- 16:16Speaker 3: Maybe another phrase we use a lot is priced for perfection,
- 16:19and this is related to something, to the notion of
- 16:22something being priced in, and companies like AMD have been
- 16:25on a tremendous tear so arguably priced for best possible outcome,
- 16:29priced for perfection, that makes them fragile.
- 16:31Speaker 2: Taking a look at markets as we head towards the
- 16:34bottom of the hour, we still have all three major
- 16:36US industries in positive territory. That Dows up one thirty
- 16:39five s and p up ten, Nasdaq up forty one tenure.
- 16:42US Treasury is flat today at four point two seventy four.
- 16:46It was down around four point two earlier today. But
- 16:49with a stronger than expected eighty p report on job growth,
- 16:54which most economists don't really look at it that strongly.
- 16:58Is that a fair way to phrase it.
- 17:01Speaker 1: I think so.
- 17:02Speaker 2: Most economists don't really put a ton of weight in
- 17:04that report. But with a stronger than expected ADP report.
- 17:08Maybe you get a stronger jobs report Friday. It could
- 17:11be the thinking, and so you've got to again in
- 17:13the ten year flat oil West Texas Intermediate up a
- 17:16dollar fifty four barrel to sixty eight seventy five, so
- 17:20a little bit of a rebound after selling off for
- 17:23the last couple of days, after no further attacks between
- 17:28Israel and Iran in direct confrontation at least the TRIPA
- 17:32national average for gas price is up one tenth of
- 17:34a cent to three thirteen and five tenths and gold
- 17:39today is up seven dollars and ten cents. Now it's
- 17:42making another new all time high, currently trading at twenty
- 17:45seven eighty eight.
- 17:47Speaker 4: On the Nose, bringing the latest financial news straight to
- 18:00your radio every day. It's The Financial Exchange on the
- 18:04Financial Exchange Radio Network.
- 18:08Speaker 1: Miss any of the show. The Financial Exchange Show podcast
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- 18:15button and leave us a five star review. This is
- 18:18the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Mark.
- 18:21Speaker 2: We get a jobs report coming out this Friday, and
- 18:26I've been saying for the last month we're not really
- 18:28gonna know what to make of it because the data
- 18:31collection point for this is going to include people that
- 18:34were disrupted by both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane what was
- 18:41the second one? Oh, Milton, Milton, Yeah, there you go.
- 18:46And so it's going to be something where it's unclear
- 18:49exactly what this is going to show because in prior
- 18:53hurricanes that have been large enough to cause the level
- 18:57of devastation that we've seen, you can have a range
- 19:01of you know, negative impacts from twenty thousand fewer jobs
- 19:05to one hundred and fifty thousand fewer jobs, and you
- 19:07don't really know where the impact is going to end
- 19:10up landing. So I think ultimately it's coming at a
- 19:15time where we want more clarity from the labor market,
- 19:19but we're not going to get it because of these
- 19:20hurricanes impacting the data collection time.
- 19:22Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good reminder that we call these things statistics,
- 19:26not because we look for a fancy way to refer
- 19:27to them, but because that means estimate. It means we're
- 19:29not really sure what the population value is. They always
- 19:33come with big errors, so to speak. Every month we
- 19:37say there were X number of jobs created, we said
- 19:38there were two hundred and fifty four thousand. I think
- 19:40it was I only know that at the top of
- 19:41my head because I was writing something about it this morning,
- 19:44But that that's a plus or minus one hundred thirty
- 19:47thousand jobs with nine percent confidence. So a better example
- 19:51might be if we if the number was one hundred
- 19:52and thirty reported, the actual number could be zero or
- 19:55it could be twice. That you really don't know, which
- 19:58is why you and Mike Armstrong always say don't read
- 20:02too much into a single data point. I call Mike
- 20:04Armstrong moving average Mike because he loves to do the
- 20:07three month and annual. It's not quite a moving but
- 20:09it's the only alliteration I could come up with. He
- 20:12likes to annualize. You probably do that too. I think
- 20:14it's a good practice. So either way, you know, chill out.
- 20:17It's what we talked about this Mike Armstrong and I
- 20:19did yesterday morning with Jolts. One data point. We're not
- 20:21even sure if it helps with forecasts. First of all,
- 20:24it probably does, but not everybody agrees. And secondly, you
- 20:27need several months, as you like to say, for a trend, So.
- 20:31Speaker 2: Yes, you cannot have a trend of one does not exist.
- 20:36That's a point, not a trend. So just like to
- 20:39point that out. Speaking of the trend mortgage rates right now,
- 20:44you know what we're seeing that their highest level since July.
- 20:46According to Mortgage News Daily, we're now at seven point
- 20:49three percent on the thirty year fixed rate mortgage nationally.
- 20:52That's not really doing home buyers a lot of favors.
- 20:55Speaker 1: At the moment.
- 20:55Speaker 3: It's amazing how that can coexist with record upon record
- 21:00in price appreciation month over month, and by some metrics,
- 21:04a languishing a word I'm using a lot today for
- 21:07some reason. Home market for home sound in terms of prices,
- 21:13but in terms of activity, as evidenced by the detraction
- 21:17that residential fixed investment part of GDP, which you reported
- 21:21on earlier. The degree to that to which that detracted
- 21:25from GDP not a lot like two tenths, but it
- 21:28detracted nevertheless last quarter.
- 21:30Speaker 2: And this also we have some I was just taking
- 21:32a look at some of the data just that's out
- 21:34there from an inventory perspective, because ultimately inventory leads sales.
- 21:39It's just a question of how long it takes it
- 21:42to end up leading sales. But this is data from
- 21:45Mike Simonson, who we've had on the show quite a bit.
- 21:48As far as you know, just looking at single family
- 21:51housing data, and what we're seeing right now is unsold inventory.
- 21:57And this is for single family You're currently it's seven
- 21:59hundred thirty eight thousand units nationwide, and this compares normally,
- 22:05like twenty seventeen through twenty nineteen, you were at about
- 22:08nine hundred to nine hundred and fifty thousand units. So
- 22:10you're only off about fifteen to twenty five percent now.
- 22:13I say only because the last few years you've been
- 22:15off forty five to fifty percent, so you're you're getting
- 22:19closer to normal nationwide inventory levels. The problem is it's
- 22:24all like disjointed in terms of where it is. Connecticut
- 22:27is still like twenty two percent of pre pandemic inventory.
- 22:31All the New England states are between thirty Aside from
- 22:34Connecticut between like thirty and sixty five percent. Florida, Texas
- 22:38are already way above pre pandemic levels, like you're seeing
- 22:42prices rolling over in the Dallas area now and stuff
- 22:45like that, and so ultimately it still is a very
- 22:49local market, but it is something where hey, nationally, you've
- 22:53got these inventory levels that are propping up. And if
- 22:56that's the case, especially in those areas where you're now
- 22:59you know again, Texas, Florida, Arizona, places like that. Prices
- 23:04are already starting to come down now. If you take
- 23:06a look at Dallas, just as an example. This is
- 23:09more data from Mike Simonson, because I don't know kind
- 23:13of ows his stuff. If you take a look at
- 23:16where Dallas is in terms of price per square foot
- 23:19for penning home sales two percent below last year now
- 23:24and falling. So these are the things that we're seeing
- 23:27at the moment.
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- 24:33Speaker 2: Mark anything else to add on housing before we go
- 24:36a little far.
- 24:36Speaker 3: Oh, I just wonder if it's a harbinger of something
- 24:40broader as it was in eight and I think the
- 24:42answer is now versus a return to kind of normalcy
- 24:45a fragmented There is no such thing, or at least
- 24:48wasn't historically as a national housing market outside of events
- 24:53like like nationwide depressions. Historically the market has been pretty
- 24:59as you called it, disjointed, and I think that's a
- 25:01good thing. It makes housing economists might tell me I'm
- 25:04an idiot on this one, but I think that makes
- 25:06it more robust.
- 25:08Speaker 2: Peace in the New York Times day, it's type of
- 25:11automatic refunds for significant flight disruptions. New airline rule goes
- 25:15into effect. So the DOT has a new rule that
- 25:19airlines are going to have to provide automatic refunds to
- 25:22passengers who are going through significant flight disruptions. To clarify
- 25:27what this means. Before this, airlines could set their own
- 25:32concept of what a significant delay is. And now the
- 25:36DOT is stepping in and saying, here's the threshold. It's
- 25:38three hours for domestic flights and six hours for international.
- 25:41So a qualifying flight is delayed by more than three
- 25:45hours domestically and six hours internationally. And before, what you
- 25:50had to do, like let's say that you wanted compensation
- 25:52for this, you got to get on the phone, or
- 25:54you're waiting in line at the gate, or you're emailing
- 25:57someone back and forth. With these new rules from the
- 26:01refunds are required to be automatic, so if your flight
- 26:05is delayed by this amount, refund has to come back.
- 26:11They are due within seven days for credit card purchases
- 26:14and twenty days for other payments if you have other
- 26:19itinerary changes. Let's say that you're downgraded to a lower
- 26:22service class, so you had booked a first class ticket
- 26:24and hey, you're getting thrown into economy that falls into
- 26:29this category as well. And if you have significantly delayed bags,
- 26:34so hey, we all know that when there are weather
- 26:37delays or other things like sometimes you're flying to Florida
- 26:40and your bags don't make it there. If your luggage
- 26:43is missing for more than twelve hours on a domestic
- 26:45flight or fifteen on international baggage, fees are required to
- 26:48be refunded as well. So that is what we're seeing
- 26:52here and overall, I think, look, my view is when
- 26:59it comes hey, where should the government make rules and not? Hey,
- 27:02the government needs to make rules for places where individuals
- 27:07don't have the power or agency to the government acts
- 27:11in place where individuals can't act adequately for themselves. Like
- 27:14this is why the US has the army and the
- 27:17air force is because you don't want you and I
- 27:18being like, hey, let's buy a plane and defend you know,
- 27:21our airspace like that? Would we would? We would? Would
- 27:25you be? Do you see yourself as more of a
- 27:28pilot or like a tail gunner?
- 27:31Speaker 3: That's not something I've thought about. I'm sorry, Chuck, I
- 27:33can't answer that on the spot.
- 27:34Speaker 2: Okay, In any case, you don't want Mark and I patrol,
- 27:37which one you're good at. If we're doing this, my
- 27:39eyesight's not great, so you probably don't want me flying
- 27:42or shooting. I could I could do the radar exactly.
- 27:46I could do the radar.
- 27:47Speaker 3: What use would you be on this mission? I could
- 27:49be goose Oh glad that didn't end well.
- 27:51Speaker 2: But no, but I could be goose dead. That's that's
- 27:57where I would end up. So in this case, when
- 28:00we talk about, you know, flight delays and things like that,
- 28:04I think that ultimately the scale of the problem is
- 28:07one where for a lot of families, Look, you've booked
- 28:11a vacation, You've spent a fair chunk of your annual
- 28:14take home pay, and your flight doesn't get somewhere, and
- 28:18you're like, hey, what gives I spent all this money
- 28:20to go somewhere and now I can't go or my
- 28:22hotel is you know, this is a fairly substantial financial
- 28:27problem for families that happens. Does it rise to the
- 28:31level of, hey, do you need to automatically be refunded? Well,
- 28:37in a world where there's more competition amongst airlines, the
- 28:41ones with the best service and best customer experience, yeah,
- 28:48would be the ones that survive. Think but in a
- 28:52world where we're unwilling to have an appropriate level of
- 28:56competition amongst airlines, where we say, hey, we won't allow
- 29:00Jet Blue and Spirit to merge because they'll be too big,
- 29:03but we already allowed all these other mergers that have
- 29:05restricted competition, and so Jet Blue and Spirit are potentially
- 29:08going out of business because they can't compete with the
- 29:10big boys. Well, in a world where we won't properly
- 29:13size our airlines to allow more competition, I do think
- 29:18this is something where hey, if you're you know, delayed
- 29:22by you know, two days for you know, what was
- 29:24going to be a five day vacation. Yeah, I don't
- 29:28really see you know, an issue on this, uh, in
- 29:32terms of having a consistent standard and requiring a rebate
- 29:39in these cases. Because in a perfect world, what I'd
- 29:42love to do is, hey, let's have more competition in
- 29:43the airline space. But otherwise, Yeah, this is kind of
- 29:47a big deal for folks.
- 29:49Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you just have to concede that at
- 29:50this point the industry is so heavily regulated, in the precedent,
- 29:53so well established that it's pointless to question does the
- 29:55government have the authority to do it? We don't. Even
- 29:58as Lutskin and I were talking about this earlier, nobody
- 30:01even asks anymore, does the federal goverment have authority here
- 30:03or should it be states or should it be neither?
- 30:06Nobody even asks.
- 30:07Speaker 2: So we're that the airlines we not.
- 30:10Speaker 3: I guess it's interstate commerce, so it's probably clear, but
- 30:13no one, no one even asks whether constitutionally where that
- 30:16power should lie. But that horse left the barn like
- 30:19during the new deal, so it's pointless. In three to
- 30:21five years, we'll know if it raised or lowered fares,
- 30:24and we'll know, based on data that will have rolled in,
- 30:27whether or not people are better or worse off than
- 30:29having to say, haggle on their own. I'm sure this
- 30:32is something that economists who studied transportation will have a
- 30:34field day with.
- 30:35Speaker 2: Well, here's the place that we probably end up is
- 30:38because there's only so there are only so many airlines
- 30:41flying to and from, flying you know each route. Ultimately,
- 30:46it's probably like banks, Okay, you get rid of overdraft fees. Fine,
- 30:49we're giving you less interest. All right, you're gonna make
- 30:52us refund people when we're late. Fine, Baggage fees are.
- 30:55Speaker 3: Going on unintended consequences.
- 30:58Speaker 2: It's gonna be stuff like that thing. Yeah yeah, but
- 31:00well know, take a quick break here. When we come back,
- 31:05we'll do a little bit of stack roulette.
- 31:08Speaker 1: If you missed any of today's show, catch up whenever
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- 32:05the Financial exchange and help support our great American heroes.
- 32:09Speaker 2: You know, I generally try to be pretty understanding of
- 32:14different people. We're all figuring out life as we go, Like, no,
- 32:17none of us have any idea what the heck we're
- 32:19doing here, if we're being honest, like, it's it's hard,
- 32:21it's confusing, and we're all just trying to get through
- 32:24the day. So again, we might have different views or
- 32:27different ways of going about things, but hey, none of
- 32:30us have the perfect way to do anything. So we
- 32:32give people some slacker at least we should because hey,
- 32:36like just how life is, yeah, Tucker. Occasionally we do
- 32:41run into complete idiots, though, and this is one of
- 32:45those cases. And we talked about this a few weeks
- 32:48ago where there were these people that were going on
- 32:50TikTok and they were bragging about this quote free money
- 32:54glitch that they found at Chase Bank, where if you
- 32:57deposit a really really big check, JP Morgan gives you
- 33:03some of the money right away, even though the check
- 33:05hasn't officially cleared, and then you can withdraw the proceeds
- 33:09and go and spend it. And that was the glitch
- 33:11for infinite money. Now in the real world, this is
- 33:15called check kiting and fraud and it's illegal. And the
- 33:19fact that these people he thought this was a way
- 33:22that they could just get free money from the bank,
- 33:24because Hey, the bank's just not going to notice I
- 33:26don't know, like three hundred thousand dollars missing or something
- 33:29like that. Really dumb and b what made it even
- 33:34dumber was, hey, let's go brag about this on social media.
- 33:38Now the bank already knew, like who was doing this,
- 33:40because if you're withdrawing money from your account, it's you, Like,
- 33:46they don't need your social media posts in order to
- 33:48prove it, but when you do it, it makes it obvious.
- 33:51So yesterday JP Morgan, Chase strikes back, and look, it's
- 33:55rare for me to root for you know, giant banks,
- 33:58you know, like I'm not really for them. But the
- 34:01whole basis of the entire you know, economy, just a
- 34:05little thing like that, is that we have to have
- 34:07a baseline level of trust. And so when you deliberately
- 34:10perpetrate fraud in the system, I don't really root for you.
- 34:14So JP Morgan suing four different people in federal court.
- 34:17One is a defendant in Texas who owns the bank
- 34:19two hundred and ninety thousand dollars. One's in California owing
- 34:22ninety thousand, and two in Florida owing one hundred and
- 34:25forty one and one hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars.
- 34:27So these people are not, you know, trying to make
- 34:29off with like five hundred bucks. They were trying to
- 34:31make off with hundreds of thousands of dollars and bragging
- 34:35about it on TikTok. My guess is none of them
- 34:39actually have the money to pay this back because they
- 34:41probably spent a decent chunk of it already. And long
- 34:45story short, these are just civil claims, but I don't
- 34:48know how these people are ever going to be able
- 34:50to open a bank account again. Two, there are probably
- 34:53going to be criminal court cases that follow, and these
- 34:56people are probably going to jail for an extended period
- 34:59of time. And three, don't fraud.
- 35:06Speaker 1: No.
- 35:08Speaker 2: Chuck.
- 35:08Speaker 3: If you want to racket, run for office and grift.
- 35:12Speaker 2: That's edgie, Mark, that's very edgy. You should go. That's
- 35:17so lame, or have like here's my political newsletter, you
- 35:22know something. Yeah, just something that's like adjacent so you
- 35:25don't even have any responsibility, you know, something like that,
- 35:29because here's here's the problem is if you run for
- 35:31office like that and then you win, you do have
- 35:34to govern. If all you do is like you you
- 35:38have to again, you have to pretend to govern. If
- 35:42all you're doing is like, hey, I'm running a political podcast,
- 35:45you don't have to do anything. That's it. That's the
- 35:49whole game. But yeah, so JP Morgan going after the fraudsters,
- 35:53and uh, good for them, because yet don't commit fraud.
- 35:57We're done for the day. Back at it tomorrow with
- 35:59more financial exchange