WEBVTT
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The most excruciating winter for Ukraine in that the gloves are off in terms of kidding urban infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
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There was an interview yesterday with somebody living in one of the secondary Ukrainian cities saying that they live in a relatively new apartment building and they've been informed there'll be no heat all winter this year.
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It was interesting because Secretary Rubio called the war a strategic stalemate and then President Zelensky answered, where's the stalemate?
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It's called unwillingness, uh, the part of Moscow.
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Well, welcome back, everybody, to the Heroes Path Dispatch.
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I'm John Fenzel, and we're recording here on Friday afternoon.
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As we speak, a category three hurricane named Isaiah's is a few hours from Alabama and the Florida panhandle coast.
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It's the first hurricane of the season, the latest first hurricane on record, and it has already shut in about two-thirds of all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Yesterday, the president wrote that the United States will not attack Iran before the election on November 3rd.
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The same week, three newsrooms reported the Pentagon was told to finish planning for one.
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On Wednesday, the 10-year treasury touched 5.36%, the highest since 2002.
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And next Wednesday, Social Security announces your raise.
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After every story tonight, we're gonna stop and we're gonna tell you plainly what it has to do with you.
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Jeff, it's great to be with you.
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Great to be back, Johnny.
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Well, let's walk through this, Jeff.
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We've got six short topics.
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The first one arrives while people are listening, and that's Isaiah's becoming a major hurricane at 20 past seven this morning, Central Time.
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And as of the latest advisory, it's a category three with winds of 120 miles an hour moving north to northeast at 16 and 160 miles south of Pensacola.
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This is a big hurricane, isn't it?
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That area, especially.
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It's potentially a big one.
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And that area, the far end of the panhandle underneath Alabama, is an area that is probably not all that well prepared to handle the kind of sustained rains and wind that are coming.
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So I'm concerned that people in those local areas, it's not a wealthy area.
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Some of the far panhandled areas around Pensacola are pretty nice.
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But by and large, that southern Alabama area in particular is not necessarily fully prepared infrastructure-wise to sustain it.
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I'm concerned about that.
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Yeah.
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Well, you know what's interesting too.
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This is the first September without a hurricane for the first time in at least 32 years or so.
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What's the part of this that people aren't going to be seeing on the Weather Channel?
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Well, they probably will say on the Weather Channel that the El Nino effect coming up from South America has increased the likelihood of hurricane activity on the West Coast and reduced the frequency and probability of hurricanes up the Atlantic coast.
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I think the warming trends of the recent years have tended to push a lot of the hurricanes that might have earlier hit the Atlantic coast of Florida.
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They're coming in further south, they're crossing into the Gulf, sometimes running up the Gulf side and hitting in the Gulf of Mexico region and tend to come back across the state of Florida up towards the Jacksonville area and may cause some damage in the Carolinas.
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No hurricanes at 120 miles an hour are easy to deal with.
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Half of the country's refining is on the Gulf Coast and the storm is hitting its edge, not its heart.
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On Monday, we should be watching the diesel prices, which are already up to about$6.50 a gallon, right?
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Exactly right.
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Plus, the other factor, particularly in the southeast, is that a single highly damaging hurricane is going to significantly impact on property insurance for the next several years after that.
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In addition to our concerns about the well-being of the people directly in the path, there's a knock-on effect within the insurance for residential and other even commercial real estate that's going to hit all of our pocketbooks if we get one or two more significant storms this season.
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We still got a month and a half to go.
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Yeah.
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So if it does hit their refining capability, if diesel prices do go up, then that means that our grocery bills are going to go up and everything else.
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And then if it eases, that means that the storm is missed, and that's good news.
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So we'll see what happens.
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Yeah, to add to that, earlier today, President Trump announced that he had the phone conversation overnight with Russian President Putin and that they've reached an agreement where Russia is going to be shipping large amounts of diesel fuel to the United States.
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It seems to be a deal that's extended over many months and well into 2027.
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That has implications for the Russia-Ukraine war, has implications for diesel prices here in the United States.
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And I think it's just another reminder that President Trump is looking for any and every opportunity to mitigate against this major household inflation factor that's going to be clearly a big determinant in the outcome of the November elections.
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Yeah.
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Well, and speaking of Moscow, Vladimir Putin, the winter campaign we told you about it has already started.
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Tuesday night, a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment block in Preluki.
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22 dead, five of them children.
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Wednesday morning, a glide bomb hit two buses in Kramatorsk, 33 dead, and then on Wednesday night a strike on an energy facility put more than three million people in Kyiv in the dark and stopped a subway.
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So it's really hitting them hard, and that's by intention, right?
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Absolutely.
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I mean, it's been made crystal clear by various statements from Putin and other Russian government officials.
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They intend to make this the most excruciating winter for Ukraine and that the gloves are off in terms of hitting urban infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
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There was an interview yesterday with somebody living in one of the secondary Ukrainian cities saying that they live in a relatively new apartment building and they've been informed there'll be no heat all winter this year.
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It was interesting because Secretary Rubio called the war a strategic stalemate, and then President Zelensky answered, where's the stalemate?
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It's called unwillingness on the part of Moscow.
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Russia's budget went to parliament on the 30th with 17.15 trillion rubles for defense.
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Haven't seen a call-up order, but today in Miami, Whitkov and Kushner are meeting a Ukrainian delegation.
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Any insights on that at all?
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Well, the Ukrainians want to get an inside window on how advanced an economic negotiations are between Whitkop, Kushner, and Dmitriev, who's the Russian economic czar for negotiations with the United States.
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There's been reports in the New York Times that there's been a year-long negotiation for a consortium of American businessmen backed up by some Gulf money to buy up the international operations of luke oil, and people very close to the Trump administration stand to make an enormous amount of money.
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It also means implicitly that the sanctions that were signed into law by President Trump with the Lindsey Graham Act not even a month ago are now being reversed.
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And so I think that we're back to the kind of thinking that we saw back in February of 2025 when you had that blow up at the White House when Zelensky first came to visit Trump and Vance.
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I think that the economic prospects of major Arctic deals for U.S.
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companies closely politically aligned and financially aligned with Trump is a factor in the state of the Russian-Ukraine war that is now becoming a lot more obvious.
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Well, anytime you hear the word stalemate, and when Washington uses that word about a war, it's usually helping to pay for it.
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It is preparing for a deal.
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That deal is on the table, as you just mentioned.
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And by Kiev's account, that's going to trade the sanctions relief on Russian oil and gas for Russia not freezing Ukrainian cities.
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So whatever you think of that trade, the fuel you buy this winter is priced off of it.
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Again, domestic politics and critical international security decisions, which by all rights should be totally separate from one another, are completely morphed together.
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It speaks to the interdependence of our world today.
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Exactly right.
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Well, the third issue, Ebola crossed a border on an airplane, actually.
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A 40-year-old Kenyan man who lived in the Congo for about seven years fell ill early in September and was treated at a couple Congolese hospitals on October 2nd.
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He traveled by road through Beni to Kampala, then gets on a flight to Nairobi and lands at 10 past one in the afternoon.
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He clears the health screening, and then a relative drives him straight to the Nairobi hospital where he was isolated with fever and chills and bleeding under his skin.
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It was confirmed that he had Ebola on Monday and he died that night.
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We thought things were improving, but when things start crossing the borders, that's something to be more alarmed about, I think.
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Well, it's the COVID story all over again.
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The first stage of the COVID spread was internal to China when local authorities knew about the outbreak in Wuhan, but did nothing to prevent people from that city from traveling all over the country for the spring festival.
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And then, of course, the first countries to see the spread beyond China were countries that are the leading trading partners.
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Italy was one of the first countries in Europe.
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And so when you're not really moving aggressively to fully contain these early outbreaks, then in our interdependent and shrinking world in terms of travel capability, you're seeing the inevitable playing out.
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Hopefully it'll be curtailed before it spreads further.
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But if one person got through that screening process and landed in another country and now he's been in contact with 66 or so people that they can document, it's hard to believe that was the only instance of an Ebola spread elsewhere in Africa.
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Yeah, I mean, remember that the next time somebody tells you that and they hand you a thermometer at an airport, they call that a wall.
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It's not a wall, it's a sieve.
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The hospital is the wall.
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The risk to you is still very low.
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The CDC said it, so do we.
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Nairobi is a hub, and there's a direct flight from there to New York.
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And this gets us even a minute tonight and not just a line, because it's something that we all have to be looking at with pretty clear eyes.
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The number to carry right now is 8,728.
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Ten days ago, it was 8,067.
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So it's not bending anymore.
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Nobody should be able to tell you in November that this came out of nowhere because we're seeing it right now.
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We've been talking about it over the past several months, haven't we?
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Yes, we have exactly.
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Anyway, it's something to be concerned about.
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Other issues, I think, at home, the CDC's count this morning for measles is 4,080 cases this year, up 193 in a week, with 42 outbreaks and 414 people hospitalized.
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Pennsylvania is at 1,078 cases in 41 counties, 207 hospitals and five deaths.
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You've got discussions about the budget crisis inevitably leading to cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
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And the very first thing that goes in any of those cuts is the monitoring of the spreads of various diseases.
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It's considered to be a luxury that requires extra staffing at hospitals and doctors' offices.
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And so one can almost assume that there is a reduction in the tracking.
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A number of people have said that the measles outbreak is far more extensive based on the anticipated fatality rates and the number of deaths relative to the total number of cases that have been reported.
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There's a lot more out there.
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The guidance hasn't changed, but the number has gone up.
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The vaccination is two doses, about 97% protection for life.
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So if you're born before 1957, you had that vaccination.
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If you're vaccinated between 1963 and 1968, you should definitely ask your doctor whether you need another.
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But there's another thing, too.
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We're in the middle of flu season this month and next.
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The virus is three weeks early on the West Coast and it's coming east.
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In November, a regional committee reviews whether this country still counts as having eliminated measles.
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I don't think it has.
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I don't think they need a commission to tell us that.
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The National Intelligence Council produces an annual global threat assessment.
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In the five years of annual reports leading into the outbreak of COVID, in each of those five years, they issued explicit warnings about the danger of a new pandemic and pointed to the fact that the early warning mechanisms that would detect it early and prevent the pandemic spread were basically reduced.
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Our most advanced intelligence product was warning when everybody was focused on terrorism and great power rivalries.
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Every year that report contained a special section saying, hey, time out, we're headed for a pandemic and we're not doing anything about it.
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So even the intelligence warnings were ignored.
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And that's the world we're living in right now.
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Yeah.
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We just had the summit with China that we talked about last week.
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Wall Street Journal reported this week that during his three days in Washington, she required extensive downtime and spent it in a room in the West Wing that only he and his wife could enter.
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That's just one newspaper.
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He appeared in public all three days, but the rumor mill hasn't stopped since.
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What do you suppose is true and what's not, Jeff?
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I've been hearing for a number of years about health problems for both Xi Jinping and Putin.
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In the case of Putin, there's uncertainty about succession.
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In the case of China, I think it was noteworthy that during his visit to Washington, Xi's delegation included several people who are already in line as potential successors.
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The most significant one is Xi, who is basically in charge of the Communist Party of China's organizational department, which means running the day-to-day affairs of the party.
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He was appointed in June as head of the Central Party School.
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This is the elite training institute and think tank for the party.
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They've got 300 or so people designated as the next generation of leadership being trained under the supervision of Qi and the last two presidents of China, Xi Jinping and Hu Jin Tang, the last jobs they held before they became the top leaders was heading the party school.
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So in the case of China, I think it's fair to say that the succession and continuity are already baked into the system.
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We tend to over-personalize politics.
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In the case of China, their structures are much more stable and clearly defined.
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So if Xi Jinping were to drop dead tomorrow morning, I can say with pretty high certainty who the successor is going to be and what the continuity of policy is going to look like.
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In Beijing and Moscow, and even in Washington, power, we've seen it being moved in the same direction over the last decade away from the committees and toward just one man with institutions around and weaker than they were.
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It's not a statement about any one of them, but it's a statement more about all three.
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In the short run, it leaves everyone, including us, exposed to the judgment of a single person.
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In the long run, it opens up every possibility for better or for worse in all three countries.
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A report like this that he had his own room in the West Wing is a small way of seeing a larger thing, I think.
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The Trump administration, at least some people, and I think we can include the president in this, have the view that the existing institutions that are supposed to be the anchors of strategic stability, namely the group of seven and the group of twenty, they're viewed as largely dysfunctional.
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Within the group of seven, the US and Europe are at each other's throats.
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So that kind of says something about that.
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And the national security strategy that was produced last year for Trump, an earlier version of it proposed an alternative, namely the C5, that the United States, Russia, China, India, and Japan should function in the same way that Franklin Roosevelt viewed the big four at the end of World War II: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, that these should be countries that share a responsibility for maintaining global economic and political stability, even though it really spits on the sovereignty of the vast majority of countries in the world.
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But I think that is something that President Trump, by his own instincts, to believe the world is defined by those with the muscle as something that would be, in his view, a viable approach to things.
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And I'd be looking for that during the final couple of years of the Trump presidency to move much more publicly and visibly in that direction.
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And Jeff Mike Ditka died this morning.
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He was 86 years old.
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He was the first tight end in the Hall of Fame.
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And he was also the coach of the 1985 Bears.
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What a game that was.
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I'll never forget it.
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I remember I was stationed in Germany.
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I was listening to that at two o'clock in the morning, and what a game that was.
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I think that he and Walter Payton are probably having a discussion right now.
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This morning in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pele, the South African judge who chaired the UN Commission that found Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza.
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Within hours, the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court itself.
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So what's your take on that?
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Well, she when she got word that she had won, she said maybe VIOR to offer to share this with Donald Trump.
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She has a sense of humor.
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But they clearly wanted to deliver a very pointed political message with this announcement.
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So there will clearly be repercussions.
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One of the big events coming up in the next couple of weeks is the Israeli elections on October 27th.
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A lot hangs in the balance, what the outcome of that election is.
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Yeah, we'll be talking more about that.
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Secretary Heggseth announced that Nadal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, is going to be executed by firing squad on December 3rd.
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And then I guess they plan on live streaming that, which is just incomprehensible to me.
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We haven't had an execution since what in the 1950s, right?
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Correct.
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But I mean the live streaming is completely new, really, in my view, grotesque.
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Yeah, I mean it puts us in the same category as Iran, North Korea, and other countries like that.
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There's a lot that's going on in sports this year.
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The Tampa Bay Rays needed only three games of a best of five.
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That's called a sweep.
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I know that upset some folks who are Yankees fans and Cubs fans.
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Guilty as charged.
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I watched the video replay of that fan reaching in and taking a home runaway from the Yanks that might have left a thin thread of potential comeback open.
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I'll move on and get over it.
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You have to get over it.
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Tuesday is the Navy's 251st birthday, so happy birthday to the Navy.
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That's coming up.
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What else, Jeff?
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What else do we need to talk about?
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I think it's important to take note that we're continuing to see significant turmoil on the bond markets.
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We talked last time about 10, 20, and 30-year treasuries reaching rates that haven't been sitting in many years.
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The venture capital money has been largely going into the commercial bond market, but the rates reached a tempting enough level that some of that venture capital money as well as some foreign central bank money went into buying up at the last treasury auction.
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So the rates went down a small amount.
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But major people like Ray Delia, who intensively follows both the stock and bond markets, continues to express concern that the whole overinvestment in the AI sector has now reached a kind of a bubble point.
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And he's looking at an inevitable blowout at some point.
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Never can predict a date certain, but the trend lines are moving in that direction.
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So I've just read that Anthropic is said to be 20 billion less than has been reported.
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Well, because you've got these companies that are massively expanding their infrastructure on borrowed money.
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If you look at the balance sheets, every one of these big companies is losing money.
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Anthropic is yet to turn a profit.
00:20:57.440 --> 00:21:00.400
It's a situation where A is going to go forward.
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:07.279
It's going to be a revolutionary transformation of manufacturing and the way the economy is ruined.
00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:10.720
But there's going to be a handful of winners and a lot of losers.
00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:13.920
Like the dot-com bubble around 2000.
00:21:14.079 --> 00:21:15.200
There will be a reckoning.
00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:16.319
There'll be a shakeout.
00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:41.759
The problem is that these kinds of things will tend to trickle down to the pockets of people who are not the billionaire and multi-billionaire investors, but are going to be impacted by a major crisis, particularly if we have to go through another bailout of these financial institutions that loan the money to these unregulated venture capital funds for these overinvestments.
00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:50.240
It's the nature of our economy that we don't run a top-down state-controlled economy and people are free to speculate.
00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:54.799
Unfortunately, there's periods where these things reach a break point.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:57.279
Life will go on, but people are going to be hurt.
00:21:57.359 --> 00:22:00.319
And the people who least deserve it are going to be hurt the most.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:06.079
At the end of the day, all this is going to be visible at the kitchen table, and you can add it up your own way.
00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:13.039
If I were doing that with my own family, I'd say if you're retired, your raise is about$73 a month,$66 after Medicare.
00:22:13.119 --> 00:22:16.319
Against diesel up 71%, gasoline up 40%.
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:19.440
So you should just plan it as a pay cut because that's what it is.
00:22:19.599 --> 00:22:24.720
If you're planning retirement, don't plan on$600 less and don't plan on nothing less.
00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:29.839
Take your projected benefit, run it at 100%, 83%, and 78.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.960
It takes 10 minutes to do that, but it tells you exactly how much of this is your problem, our problem.
00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:36.160
And look at that date.
00:22:36.319 --> 00:22:40.559
A 58-year-old lady today is 64 in 2032.
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:42.480
So that's not your grandchildren's problem.
00:22:42.559 --> 00:22:45.440
If you're borrowing, seven and a half is the planning number.
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:55.200
And Jeff, you just gave the right arithmetic tonight about$225 a month more than a year ago on$300,000, not four and a half.
00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:56.720
It matters to all of us.
00:22:56.880 --> 00:22:58.400
This still isn't 2008.
00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:03.599
And the people who get hurt in a year like this are the ones who assume that it's going to be fixing itself by spring.
00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:05.039
It's this is a long-term problem.
00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:11.759
And of course,$40 trillion is the number that our federal government debt has reached.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:19.839
This year, the projections are the debt will have increased by$2 trillion this year alone with the higher yields on treasuries.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:25.440
We're going to be looking way north of a trillion dollars this year in debt service on the federal government debt.
00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:42.240
That's where Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all of these nominally sequestered special funds are going to be impacted because government's not prepared to take the steps now that would ensure longer-term liquidity for those funds.
00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:55.039
We're also living under the impact of the permanent tax cuts, which have been somewhat helpful to the middle class, but the overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthiest 1% of the population.
00:23:55.359 --> 00:23:57.359
Ahead of us, Monday is Columbus Day.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:23:58.880
The bond market is closed.
00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:03.440
Tuesday, Judge Kelly's going to be ruling on the prespasses for the White House.
00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:05.440
And then it's also the Navy's birthday.
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:07.279
On November 9th, the Senate comes back.
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:09.759
This after the midterms on November 3rd.
00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:20.400
Then on December 11th, the government's money runs out again, and Iran's answer is due in days, and that sits on top of everything about how this all goes in the Strait of Hermuz.
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:25.440
I think the outcome of the elections is going to be a reframing moment.
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:31.839
It's going to tell us what we can expect and what to not expect over the final two years of the Trump presidency.
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:40.160
It's going to define as both parties begin to move early on into the season for choosing presidential nominees.
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:45.519
We're going to be talking about a different set of developments a couple of weeks from now.
00:24:45.759 --> 00:24:47.119
Jeff, I'll finish with this.
00:24:47.279 --> 00:24:52.480
Tonight a hurricane comes ashore in Alabama while the strait stays contested, half a world away.
00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:57.039
The same gallon of diesel runs through both of them on its way to your driveway.
00:24:57.200 --> 00:24:58.319
It's good to be with you, Jeff.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:01.200
We'll be talking about this next week and we'll see how it runs.
00:25:01.359 --> 00:25:03.200
To everybody listening, hold your people close.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:04.400
Watch the numbers.
00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:06.880
And if you heat with oil, call your dealer this week.
00:25:06.960 --> 00:25:07.839
I'm John Fenzel.
00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:09.680
Thanks for walking the path.
00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:08.480
The most excruciating winter for Ukraine in that the gloves are off in terms of kidding urban infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:19.600
There was an interview yesterday with somebody living in one of the secondary Ukrainian cities saying that they live in a relatively new apartment building and they've been informed there'll be no heat all winter this year.
00:00:19.839 --> 00:00:26.879
It was interesting because Secretary Rubio called the war a strategic stalemate and then President Zelensky answered, where's the stalemate?
00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:29.839
It's called unwillingness, uh, the part of Moscow.
00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:42.240
Well, welcome back, everybody, to the Heroes Path Dispatch.
00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.840
I'm John Fenzel, and we're recording here on Friday afternoon.
00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:53.200
As we speak, a category three hurricane named Isaiah's is a few hours from Alabama and the Florida panhandle coast.
00:00:53.280 --> 00:01:01.840
It's the first hurricane of the season, the latest first hurricane on record, and it has already shut in about two-thirds of all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:07.680
Yesterday, the president wrote that the United States will not attack Iran before the election on November 3rd.
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:12.799
The same week, three newsrooms reported the Pentagon was told to finish planning for one.
00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:19.519
On Wednesday, the 10-year treasury touched 5.36%, the highest since 2002.
00:01:19.599 --> 00:01:22.799
And next Wednesday, Social Security announces your raise.
00:01:22.879 --> 00:01:27.040
After every story tonight, we're gonna stop and we're gonna tell you plainly what it has to do with you.
00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:28.480
Jeff, it's great to be with you.
00:01:28.719 --> 00:01:29.599
Great to be back, Johnny.
00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:30.959
Well, let's walk through this, Jeff.
00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:32.560
We've got six short topics.
00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:39.680
The first one arrives while people are listening, and that's Isaiah's becoming a major hurricane at 20 past seven this morning, Central Time.
00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:51.200
And as of the latest advisory, it's a category three with winds of 120 miles an hour moving north to northeast at 16 and 160 miles south of Pensacola.
00:01:51.359 --> 00:01:52.560
This is a big hurricane, isn't it?
00:01:52.799 --> 00:01:53.519
That area, especially.
00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:55.200
It's potentially a big one.
00:01:55.359 --> 00:02:10.479
And that area, the far end of the panhandle underneath Alabama, is an area that is probably not all that well prepared to handle the kind of sustained rains and wind that are coming.
00:02:10.639 --> 00:02:16.240
So I'm concerned that people in those local areas, it's not a wealthy area.
00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:20.639
Some of the far panhandled areas around Pensacola are pretty nice.
00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:30.000
But by and large, that southern Alabama area in particular is not necessarily fully prepared infrastructure-wise to sustain it.
00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:31.360
I'm concerned about that.
00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:31.840
Yeah.
00:02:31.919 --> 00:02:33.280
Well, you know what's interesting too.
00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:38.400
This is the first September without a hurricane for the first time in at least 32 years or so.
00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:41.680
What's the part of this that people aren't going to be seeing on the Weather Channel?
00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:59.759
Well, they probably will say on the Weather Channel that the El Nino effect coming up from South America has increased the likelihood of hurricane activity on the West Coast and reduced the frequency and probability of hurricanes up the Atlantic coast.
00:02:59.919 --> 00:03:09.840
I think the warming trends of the recent years have tended to push a lot of the hurricanes that might have earlier hit the Atlantic coast of Florida.
00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:25.919
They're coming in further south, they're crossing into the Gulf, sometimes running up the Gulf side and hitting in the Gulf of Mexico region and tend to come back across the state of Florida up towards the Jacksonville area and may cause some damage in the Carolinas.
00:03:26.159 --> 00:03:30.560
No hurricanes at 120 miles an hour are easy to deal with.
00:03:30.879 --> 00:03:36.080
Half of the country's refining is on the Gulf Coast and the storm is hitting its edge, not its heart.
00:03:36.159 --> 00:03:42.479
On Monday, we should be watching the diesel prices, which are already up to about$6.50 a gallon, right?
00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:43.439
Exactly right.
00:03:43.599 --> 00:03:56.560
Plus, the other factor, particularly in the southeast, is that a single highly damaging hurricane is going to significantly impact on property insurance for the next several years after that.
00:03:56.719 --> 00:04:14.319
In addition to our concerns about the well-being of the people directly in the path, there's a knock-on effect within the insurance for residential and other even commercial real estate that's going to hit all of our pocketbooks if we get one or two more significant storms this season.
00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:15.919
We still got a month and a half to go.
00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:16.319
Yeah.
00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:24.240
So if it does hit their refining capability, if diesel prices do go up, then that means that our grocery bills are going to go up and everything else.
00:04:24.319 --> 00:04:28.079
And then if it eases, that means that the storm is missed, and that's good news.
00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:28.959
So we'll see what happens.
00:04:29.279 --> 00:04:47.360
Yeah, to add to that, earlier today, President Trump announced that he had the phone conversation overnight with Russian President Putin and that they've reached an agreement where Russia is going to be shipping large amounts of diesel fuel to the United States.
00:04:47.519 --> 00:04:53.120
It seems to be a deal that's extended over many months and well into 2027.
00:04:53.360 --> 00:05:00.959
That has implications for the Russia-Ukraine war, has implications for diesel prices here in the United States.
00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:17.040
And I think it's just another reminder that President Trump is looking for any and every opportunity to mitigate against this major household inflation factor that's going to be clearly a big determinant in the outcome of the November elections.
00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:17.360
Yeah.
00:05:17.519 --> 00:05:22.399
Well, and speaking of Moscow, Vladimir Putin, the winter campaign we told you about it has already started.
00:05:22.560 --> 00:05:27.199
Tuesday night, a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment block in Preluki.
00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:29.680
22 dead, five of them children.
00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:42.160
Wednesday morning, a glide bomb hit two buses in Kramatorsk, 33 dead, and then on Wednesday night a strike on an energy facility put more than three million people in Kyiv in the dark and stopped a subway.
00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:45.199
So it's really hitting them hard, and that's by intention, right?
00:05:45.439 --> 00:05:45.759
Absolutely.
00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:52.480
I mean, it's been made crystal clear by various statements from Putin and other Russian government officials.
00:05:52.720 --> 00:06:02.800
They intend to make this the most excruciating winter for Ukraine and that the gloves are off in terms of hitting urban infrastructure, energy infrastructure.
00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:13.839
There was an interview yesterday with somebody living in one of the secondary Ukrainian cities saying that they live in a relatively new apartment building and they've been informed there'll be no heat all winter this year.
00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:21.199
It was interesting because Secretary Rubio called the war a strategic stalemate, and then President Zelensky answered, where's the stalemate?
00:06:21.439 --> 00:06:23.920
It's called unwillingness on the part of Moscow.
00:06:24.079 --> 00:06:30.160
Russia's budget went to parliament on the 30th with 17.15 trillion rubles for defense.
00:06:30.319 --> 00:06:35.759
Haven't seen a call-up order, but today in Miami, Whitkov and Kushner are meeting a Ukrainian delegation.
00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:37.199
Any insights on that at all?
00:06:37.519 --> 00:06:53.600
Well, the Ukrainians want to get an inside window on how advanced an economic negotiations are between Whitkop, Kushner, and Dmitriev, who's the Russian economic czar for negotiations with the United States.
00:06:53.839 --> 00:07:15.439
There's been reports in the New York Times that there's been a year-long negotiation for a consortium of American businessmen backed up by some Gulf money to buy up the international operations of luke oil, and people very close to the Trump administration stand to make an enormous amount of money.
00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:26.720
It also means implicitly that the sanctions that were signed into law by President Trump with the Lindsey Graham Act not even a month ago are now being reversed.
00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:41.839
And so I think that we're back to the kind of thinking that we saw back in February of 2025 when you had that blow up at the White House when Zelensky first came to visit Trump and Vance.
00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:47.360
I think that the economic prospects of major Arctic deals for U.S.
00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:57.680
companies closely politically aligned and financially aligned with Trump is a factor in the state of the Russian-Ukraine war that is now becoming a lot more obvious.
00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:04.399
Well, anytime you hear the word stalemate, and when Washington uses that word about a war, it's usually helping to pay for it.
00:08:04.639 --> 00:08:06.000
It is preparing for a deal.
00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:08.240
That deal is on the table, as you just mentioned.
00:08:08.319 --> 00:08:15.360
And by Kiev's account, that's going to trade the sanctions relief on Russian oil and gas for Russia not freezing Ukrainian cities.
00:08:15.519 --> 00:08:19.199
So whatever you think of that trade, the fuel you buy this winter is priced off of it.
00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:30.959
Again, domestic politics and critical international security decisions, which by all rights should be totally separate from one another, are completely morphed together.
00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:33.440
It speaks to the interdependence of our world today.
00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:34.320
Exactly right.
00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:38.399
Well, the third issue, Ebola crossed a border on an airplane, actually.
00:08:38.559 --> 00:08:47.840
A 40-year-old Kenyan man who lived in the Congo for about seven years fell ill early in September and was treated at a couple Congolese hospitals on October 2nd.
00:08:47.919 --> 00:08:54.720
He traveled by road through Beni to Kampala, then gets on a flight to Nairobi and lands at 10 past one in the afternoon.
00:08:54.879 --> 00:09:03.039
He clears the health screening, and then a relative drives him straight to the Nairobi hospital where he was isolated with fever and chills and bleeding under his skin.
00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:06.799
It was confirmed that he had Ebola on Monday and he died that night.
00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:12.639
We thought things were improving, but when things start crossing the borders, that's something to be more alarmed about, I think.
00:09:12.879 --> 00:09:15.039
Well, it's the COVID story all over again.
00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:31.759
The first stage of the COVID spread was internal to China when local authorities knew about the outbreak in Wuhan, but did nothing to prevent people from that city from traveling all over the country for the spring festival.
00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:39.279
And then, of course, the first countries to see the spread beyond China were countries that are the leading trading partners.
00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:41.600
Italy was one of the first countries in Europe.
00:09:41.759 --> 00:10:00.240
And so when you're not really moving aggressively to fully contain these early outbreaks, then in our interdependent and shrinking world in terms of travel capability, you're seeing the inevitable playing out.
00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:04.240
Hopefully it'll be curtailed before it spreads further.
00:10:04.399 --> 00:10:19.200
But if one person got through that screening process and landed in another country and now he's been in contact with 66 or so people that they can document, it's hard to believe that was the only instance of an Ebola spread elsewhere in Africa.
00:10:19.519 --> 00:10:25.039
Yeah, I mean, remember that the next time somebody tells you that and they hand you a thermometer at an airport, they call that a wall.
00:10:25.120 --> 00:10:26.559
It's not a wall, it's a sieve.
00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:27.759
The hospital is the wall.
00:10:27.919 --> 00:10:29.679
The risk to you is still very low.
00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:31.440
The CDC said it, so do we.
00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:35.679
Nairobi is a hub, and there's a direct flight from there to New York.
00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:42.799
And this gets us even a minute tonight and not just a line, because it's something that we all have to be looking at with pretty clear eyes.
00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:46.960
The number to carry right now is 8,728.
00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:49.519
Ten days ago, it was 8,067.
00:10:49.679 --> 00:10:51.039
So it's not bending anymore.
00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:55.759
Nobody should be able to tell you in November that this came out of nowhere because we're seeing it right now.
00:10:55.919 --> 00:10:58.639
We've been talking about it over the past several months, haven't we?
00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:00.000
Yes, we have exactly.
00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:02.080
Anyway, it's something to be concerned about.
00:11:02.240 --> 00:11:15.600
Other issues, I think, at home, the CDC's count this morning for measles is 4,080 cases this year, up 193 in a week, with 42 outbreaks and 414 people hospitalized.
00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:22.720
Pennsylvania is at 1,078 cases in 41 counties, 207 hospitals and five deaths.
00:11:23.039 --> 00:11:32.480
You've got discussions about the budget crisis inevitably leading to cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
00:11:32.639 --> 00:11:42.399
And the very first thing that goes in any of those cuts is the monitoring of the spreads of various diseases.
00:11:42.639 --> 00:11:48.879
It's considered to be a luxury that requires extra staffing at hospitals and doctors' offices.
00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:54.720
And so one can almost assume that there is a reduction in the tracking.
00:11:54.879 --> 00:12:08.879
A number of people have said that the measles outbreak is far more extensive based on the anticipated fatality rates and the number of deaths relative to the total number of cases that have been reported.
00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:10.080
There's a lot more out there.
00:12:10.399 --> 00:12:13.360
The guidance hasn't changed, but the number has gone up.
00:12:13.519 --> 00:12:17.679
The vaccination is two doses, about 97% protection for life.
00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:21.039
So if you're born before 1957, you had that vaccination.
00:12:21.200 --> 00:12:27.039
If you're vaccinated between 1963 and 1968, you should definitely ask your doctor whether you need another.
00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:28.159
But there's another thing, too.
00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:30.720
We're in the middle of flu season this month and next.
00:12:30.799 --> 00:12:34.480
The virus is three weeks early on the West Coast and it's coming east.
00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:40.480
In November, a regional committee reviews whether this country still counts as having eliminated measles.
00:12:40.639 --> 00:12:41.440
I don't think it has.
00:12:41.519 --> 00:12:43.279
I don't think they need a commission to tell us that.
00:12:47.759 --> 00:12:54.000
The National Intelligence Council produces an annual global threat assessment.
00:12:54.159 --> 00:13:17.919
In the five years of annual reports leading into the outbreak of COVID, in each of those five years, they issued explicit warnings about the danger of a new pandemic and pointed to the fact that the early warning mechanisms that would detect it early and prevent the pandemic spread were basically reduced.
00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:26.639
Our most advanced intelligence product was warning when everybody was focused on terrorism and great power rivalries.
00:13:26.799 --> 00:13:35.840
Every year that report contained a special section saying, hey, time out, we're headed for a pandemic and we're not doing anything about it.
00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:39.200
So even the intelligence warnings were ignored.
00:13:39.279 --> 00:13:41.759
And that's the world we're living in right now.
00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:42.240
Yeah.
00:13:42.399 --> 00:13:45.279
We just had the summit with China that we talked about last week.
00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:56.000
Wall Street Journal reported this week that during his three days in Washington, she required extensive downtime and spent it in a room in the West Wing that only he and his wife could enter.
00:13:56.080 --> 00:13:57.200
That's just one newspaper.
00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:01.200
He appeared in public all three days, but the rumor mill hasn't stopped since.
00:14:01.360 --> 00:14:03.360
What do you suppose is true and what's not, Jeff?
00:14:03.600 --> 00:14:10.639
I've been hearing for a number of years about health problems for both Xi Jinping and Putin.
00:14:10.799 --> 00:14:15.200
In the case of Putin, there's uncertainty about succession.
00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:29.120
In the case of China, I think it was noteworthy that during his visit to Washington, Xi's delegation included several people who are already in line as potential successors.
00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:41.840
The most significant one is Xi, who is basically in charge of the Communist Party of China's organizational department, which means running the day-to-day affairs of the party.
00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:46.320
He was appointed in June as head of the Central Party School.
00:14:46.639 --> 00:14:51.440
This is the elite training institute and think tank for the party.
00:14:51.600 --> 00:15:09.759
They've got 300 or so people designated as the next generation of leadership being trained under the supervision of Qi and the last two presidents of China, Xi Jinping and Hu Jin Tang, the last jobs they held before they became the top leaders was heading the party school.
00:15:09.919 --> 00:15:18.399
So in the case of China, I think it's fair to say that the succession and continuity are already baked into the system.
00:15:18.639 --> 00:15:21.679
We tend to over-personalize politics.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:28.399
In the case of China, their structures are much more stable and clearly defined.
00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:37.919
So if Xi Jinping were to drop dead tomorrow morning, I can say with pretty high certainty who the successor is going to be and what the continuity of policy is going to look like.
00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:49.919
In Beijing and Moscow, and even in Washington, power, we've seen it being moved in the same direction over the last decade away from the committees and toward just one man with institutions around and weaker than they were.
00:15:50.080 --> 00:15:54.080
It's not a statement about any one of them, but it's a statement more about all three.
00:15:54.159 --> 00:15:59.279
In the short run, it leaves everyone, including us, exposed to the judgment of a single person.
00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:04.480
In the long run, it opens up every possibility for better or for worse in all three countries.
00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:10.799
A report like this that he had his own room in the West Wing is a small way of seeing a larger thing, I think.
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:30.000
The Trump administration, at least some people, and I think we can include the president in this, have the view that the existing institutions that are supposed to be the anchors of strategic stability, namely the group of seven and the group of twenty, they're viewed as largely dysfunctional.
00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:33.919
Within the group of seven, the US and Europe are at each other's throats.
00:16:34.080 --> 00:16:36.480
So that kind of says something about that.
00:16:36.720 --> 00:17:14.000
And the national security strategy that was produced last year for Trump, an earlier version of it proposed an alternative, namely the C5, that the United States, Russia, China, India, and Japan should function in the same way that Franklin Roosevelt viewed the big four at the end of World War II: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, that these should be countries that share a responsibility for maintaining global economic and political stability, even though it really spits on the sovereignty of the vast majority of countries in the world.
00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:27.599
But I think that is something that President Trump, by his own instincts, to believe the world is defined by those with the muscle as something that would be, in his view, a viable approach to things.
00:17:27.759 --> 00:17:35.440
And I'd be looking for that during the final couple of years of the Trump presidency to move much more publicly and visibly in that direction.
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:38.079
And Jeff Mike Ditka died this morning.
00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:39.279
He was 86 years old.
00:17:39.440 --> 00:17:41.680
He was the first tight end in the Hall of Fame.
00:17:41.759 --> 00:17:45.440
And he was also the coach of the 1985 Bears.
00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:46.480
What a game that was.
00:17:46.559 --> 00:17:47.279
I'll never forget it.
00:17:47.359 --> 00:17:48.720
I remember I was stationed in Germany.
00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:52.000
I was listening to that at two o'clock in the morning, and what a game that was.
00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:55.200
I think that he and Walter Payton are probably having a discussion right now.
00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:05.519
This morning in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pele, the South African judge who chaired the UN Commission that found Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza.
00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:10.000
Within hours, the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court itself.
00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:11.519
So what's your take on that?
00:18:11.839 --> 00:18:18.400
Well, she when she got word that she had won, she said maybe VIOR to offer to share this with Donald Trump.
00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:20.480
She has a sense of humor.
00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:28.000
But they clearly wanted to deliver a very pointed political message with this announcement.
00:18:28.160 --> 00:18:30.799
So there will clearly be repercussions.
00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:37.039
One of the big events coming up in the next couple of weeks is the Israeli elections on October 27th.
00:18:37.119 --> 00:18:40.640
A lot hangs in the balance, what the outcome of that election is.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:42.319
Yeah, we'll be talking more about that.
00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:49.039
Secretary Heggseth announced that Nadal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, is going to be executed by firing squad on December 3rd.
00:18:49.119 --> 00:18:52.559
And then I guess they plan on live streaming that, which is just incomprehensible to me.
00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:55.680
We haven't had an execution since what in the 1950s, right?
00:18:55.920 --> 00:18:56.319
Correct.
00:18:56.480 --> 00:19:01.119
But I mean the live streaming is completely new, really, in my view, grotesque.
00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:06.400
Yeah, I mean it puts us in the same category as Iran, North Korea, and other countries like that.
00:19:06.559 --> 00:19:08.480
There's a lot that's going on in sports this year.
00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:12.319
The Tampa Bay Rays needed only three games of a best of five.
00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:13.279
That's called a sweep.
00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:16.400
I know that upset some folks who are Yankees fans and Cubs fans.
00:19:16.880 --> 00:19:17.920
Guilty as charged.
00:19:18.079 --> 00:19:28.480
I watched the video replay of that fan reaching in and taking a home runaway from the Yanks that might have left a thin thread of potential comeback open.
00:19:28.559 --> 00:19:29.599
I'll move on and get over it.
00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:30.720
You have to get over it.
00:19:30.799 --> 00:19:35.200
Tuesday is the Navy's 251st birthday, so happy birthday to the Navy.
00:19:35.279 --> 00:19:35.759
That's coming up.
00:19:35.920 --> 00:19:36.559
What else, Jeff?
00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:37.759
What else do we need to talk about?
00:19:38.079 --> 00:19:45.519
I think it's important to take note that we're continuing to see significant turmoil on the bond markets.
00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:52.960
We talked last time about 10, 20, and 30-year treasuries reaching rates that haven't been sitting in many years.
00:19:53.200 --> 00:20:11.039
The venture capital money has been largely going into the commercial bond market, but the rates reached a tempting enough level that some of that venture capital money as well as some foreign central bank money went into buying up at the last treasury auction.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:13.759
So the rates went down a small amount.
00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:29.279
But major people like Ray Delia, who intensively follows both the stock and bond markets, continues to express concern that the whole overinvestment in the AI sector has now reached a kind of a bubble point.
00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:32.960
And he's looking at an inevitable blowout at some point.
00:20:33.119 --> 00:20:37.279
Never can predict a date certain, but the trend lines are moving in that direction.
00:20:37.359 --> 00:20:42.079
So I've just read that Anthropic is said to be 20 billion less than has been reported.
00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:49.119
Well, because you've got these companies that are massively expanding their infrastructure on borrowed money.
00:20:49.279 --> 00:20:54.319
If you look at the balance sheets, every one of these big companies is losing money.
00:20:54.559 --> 00:20:57.279
Anthropic is yet to turn a profit.
00:20:57.440 --> 00:21:00.400
It's a situation where A is going to go forward.
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:07.279
It's going to be a revolutionary transformation of manufacturing and the way the economy is ruined.
00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:10.720
But there's going to be a handful of winners and a lot of losers.
00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:13.920
Like the dot-com bubble around 2000.
00:21:14.079 --> 00:21:15.200
There will be a reckoning.
00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:16.319
There'll be a shakeout.
00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:41.759
The problem is that these kinds of things will tend to trickle down to the pockets of people who are not the billionaire and multi-billionaire investors, but are going to be impacted by a major crisis, particularly if we have to go through another bailout of these financial institutions that loan the money to these unregulated venture capital funds for these overinvestments.
00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:50.240
It's the nature of our economy that we don't run a top-down state-controlled economy and people are free to speculate.
00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:54.799
Unfortunately, there's periods where these things reach a break point.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:57.279
Life will go on, but people are going to be hurt.
00:21:57.359 --> 00:22:00.319
And the people who least deserve it are going to be hurt the most.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:06.079
At the end of the day, all this is going to be visible at the kitchen table, and you can add it up your own way.
00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:13.039
If I were doing that with my own family, I'd say if you're retired, your raise is about$73 a month,$66 after Medicare.
00:22:13.119 --> 00:22:16.319
Against diesel up 71%, gasoline up 40%.
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:19.440
So you should just plan it as a pay cut because that's what it is.
00:22:19.599 --> 00:22:24.720
If you're planning retirement, don't plan on$600 less and don't plan on nothing less.
00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:29.839
Take your projected benefit, run it at 100%, 83%, and 78.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.960
It takes 10 minutes to do that, but it tells you exactly how much of this is your problem, our problem.
00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:36.160
And look at that date.
00:22:36.319 --> 00:22:40.559
A 58-year-old lady today is 64 in 2032.
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:42.480
So that's not your grandchildren's problem.
00:22:42.559 --> 00:22:45.440
If you're borrowing, seven and a half is the planning number.
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:55.200
And Jeff, you just gave the right arithmetic tonight about$225 a month more than a year ago on$300,000, not four and a half.
00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:56.720
It matters to all of us.
00:22:56.880 --> 00:22:58.400
This still isn't 2008.
00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:03.599
And the people who get hurt in a year like this are the ones who assume that it's going to be fixing itself by spring.
00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:05.039
It's this is a long-term problem.
00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:11.759
And of course,$40 trillion is the number that our federal government debt has reached.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:19.839
This year, the projections are the debt will have increased by$2 trillion this year alone with the higher yields on treasuries.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:25.440
We're going to be looking way north of a trillion dollars this year in debt service on the federal government debt.
00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:42.240
That's where Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all of these nominally sequestered special funds are going to be impacted because government's not prepared to take the steps now that would ensure longer-term liquidity for those funds.
00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:55.039
We're also living under the impact of the permanent tax cuts, which have been somewhat helpful to the middle class, but the overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthiest 1% of the population.
00:23:55.359 --> 00:23:57.359
Ahead of us, Monday is Columbus Day.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:23:58.880
The bond market is closed.
00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:03.440
Tuesday, Judge Kelly's going to be ruling on the prespasses for the White House.
00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:05.440
And then it's also the Navy's birthday.
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:07.279
On November 9th, the Senate comes back.
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:09.759
This after the midterms on November 3rd.
00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:20.400
Then on December 11th, the government's money runs out again, and Iran's answer is due in days, and that sits on top of everything about how this all goes in the Strait of Hermuz.
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:25.440
I think the outcome of the elections is going to be a reframing moment.
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:31.839
It's going to tell us what we can expect and what to not expect over the final two years of the Trump presidency.
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:40.160
It's going to define as both parties begin to move early on into the season for choosing presidential nominees.
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:45.519
We're going to be talking about a different set of developments a couple of weeks from now.
00:24:45.759 --> 00:24:47.119
Jeff, I'll finish with this.
00:24:47.279 --> 00:24:52.480
Tonight a hurricane comes ashore in Alabama while the strait stays contested, half a world away.
00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:57.039
The same gallon of diesel runs through both of them on its way to your driveway.
00:24:57.200 --> 00:24:58.319
It's good to be with you, Jeff.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:01.200
We'll be talking about this next week and we'll see how it runs.
00:25:01.359 --> 00:25:03.200
To everybody listening, hold your people close.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:04.400
Watch the numbers.
00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:06.880
And if you heat with oil, call your dealer this week.
00:25:06.960 --> 00:25:07.839
I'm John Fenzel.
00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:09.680
Thanks for walking the path.
