February 22, 2024 • 24 mins
In this episode, Karol interviews Javier David, managing editor for business and markets at Axios, about the state of the economy and societal issues. They discuss the performance of the U.S. economy, the impact of inflation on prices, the job market, and the challenges millennials face in buying a house. They also delve into the societal and cultural problems of disconnection and thoughtlessness, and whether these issues are solvable. Javier shares his advice on improving lives by taking breaks from technology and enjoying offline activities. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday. Email Karol at karolmarkowiczshow@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
If you've been listening to this show for a while,
you know that I love to ask guests to provide
a life improving tip. I really enjoyed compiling these. I
think that the tip I hear about most often that
people have implemented in their own lives is from my
very first episode. My guest was my fantastic friend Buck Sexton,
(00:33):
and he said to read before bed. Now, obviously that's
not rocket science, right you read before bed, you feel better.
You don't stare at your phone. We all know that
staring at our devices right before trying to get RESTful
sleep is a recipe for tossing and turning all night.
But sometimes we just need to hear people give us
that obvious advice. Buck's advice is something that I've implemented myself.
(00:57):
I try to read fiction specific before bed, and I mean, look,
I'm not perfect. Do I find myself scrolling on Instagram
reels before bed some nights of the week, of course
I do. But the nights that I don't, the nights
that I follow the advice to unplug before bed, are
my best nights of sleep. And it's helpful. So the
(01:19):
advice doesn't have to be astonishing or startling or really unique.
It can just be something that you need to hear.
I asked my listeners and followers on Twitter to submit
their own tips for living a better life. I'm trying
to keep them kind of small and easy, like the
reading before bed one, and not big pieces of advice
(01:40):
that we all need but would be harder to implement.
These are my three favorites from this week, but keep
them coming. Email Carolmarkowitz Show at gmail dot com, or
tweet me at Carol on x New Twitter, whatever you
want to call it. I'll read some responses on the
show and future episodes, so tune in. The number one
thing that came up again and again is to get
(02:04):
off your phone. I've talked about this one here. I
understand it's a challenge, but we all know how much
better off we would be if we used our phones less.
I've talked about how I take breaks for vacation, but
I'm going to make a serious attempt to just be
on my phone less. I get that it's really tough,
and even right now, I'm thinking about all the things
(02:25):
that I need to get done on the Internet, which
would require me using my laptop or my phone. But
it's necessary to cut back, and I know it, and
I'm going to stop using it for like entertainment when
I wait on a line or I'm doing something that
I don't want to be doing. Number two is similar
but a little different. Somebody wrote, remember that social media
(02:46):
is not real life. Go out and see the world,
talk to people, live life in person. I talk about
this a lot on here. I think it gets very
easy to live your life online, especially if you work
from home. Challenge yourself to have one conversation in real
life this week. And I don't just mean with your
spouse or with your kids. I'll say a conversation has
(03:07):
to be three sentences long, so it can't just be
nice weather we're having with your neighbor and that's it.
Connect with people in real life. Number three is compliment
one person a day. Be the kind of person who
says nice things to others. It'll make you feel better
about yourself too, I promise. Coming up next and interview
with Javier David join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Javier David Javier is managing editor for
Business and Markets at Axios. He oversees the Markets, Macro
and Closer newsletters and is an unrepentant Brooklyn Night, which
is how we met when I was one two. Hi Javier,
so great to have you on.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Hey, good morning.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So I know very little about finance or financial markets,
but you're now actually the third financial journalists I've had on,
which just means I'm friends with a lot of financial journalists.
The other two were John Carney and Mitch Rochelle from
Breitbart and Box Business. But it's interesting finance and I
love to learn. So where do you see the economy going?
(04:15):
You know, in a sort of playing terms for people
who don't know a lot about what's going on.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah. John Carney incidentally is one of my former colleagues
who work together at NBC. A great guy, super smart,
huge amount of respect for them. Hi John, if you're listening,
But yeah, sure he's listening. He is. I see him
all the time on Twitter, but not in person. But
all that said, yeah, the economy in twenty twenty four
(04:45):
kind of puzzled, you know, against all odds. And I
know this is a sort of controversial thing to say.
It shouldn't be, but you know, the economy, the US
economy is really in a lot of respects outperformed every
other major and we're in an election year, and you know,
it's sort of, uh, the economy becomes something of a
(05:06):
ror shark test where if you're you know, whether you're
a Democrat or Republican, and all kind of is skewed
based on kind of a or view through a partisan lens.
And that's unfortunate because you know, you have a jobs
market that is really really strong after a very long
period where workers wages were stagnant. People are earning more,
(05:30):
they're earning more or getting more from their employers. That's
a good thing. You know, unemployment below four percent, that
has been there's a lot of noise surrounding the state
of the jobs market because we've had a tremendous amount
of layoffs announcements since since at the start of the year.
I mean a lot of that has been concentrated in
sectors that kind of over hire during the pandemic, and
(05:51):
that would be technology and also in the field that
we're in, which is media. And if you remember I
think twenty one twenty one twenty twenty two, it seemed
like everybody was getting a new job somewhere right. It
was kind of the Yolo economy, and everyone was like, Hey,
I'm gonna go you know, personal news on Twitter like that.
(06:13):
You know, it was a really heady time to be
a journalist and you after, you know, you come into
this profession and you don't really believe that you're gonna
make a lot of money. And people started getting good money.
But now we're kind of overcorrecting for that what was
in that sort of an over hiring. But all things considered,
the inflation, I think that's what everyone is kind of
(06:37):
like on the phone. That's what everyone's talking about. And
why views about the economy are so to you because
we are in fact paying much more for everything, and
more than we've paid in a very long time, and
the data suggests that we are. In fact. Inflation is slowing. Now.
Slowing is a different animal altogether than falling prices, and
(06:59):
you have a lower rate of inflation, but prices are
still rising, so we kind of call it disinflation, which
means that, yeah, inflation is still there. It's still president,
it's still at the risk, and it's one of the
reasons why the Federal Reserve won't kind of commit to
cutting rates anytime this year because there is a real
risk that it could pick up again. And those of
(07:21):
us old enough to remember guys like you know, Vulgar
and green Span, These guys were Federal Reserve chairmen who
were committed inflation fighters that they weren't about this stuff
all the time, that if you allowed inflation to get
out of control, it absolutely would and it would kind
of devour everything. So we're coming out of this era,
or this particular juncture where prices were really, really high,
(07:45):
but now they're starting to normalize. So again, normalizing is
different than falling, which isn't a good thing either, because
you don't want deflation. It's is almost that as inflation,
but you want to stable prices. And managed to kind
of stick the landing and hyped rates. It's broad inflation
sort of under control nominally, and the growth is still there.
(08:06):
And more importantly, anyone that needs a job can find
a job, and that the data shows that it's a
lot tougher than it was a year ago. But certainly
people can feel confident in the fact that like this
is a place, you know, the economy. Economy is in
a place where people can find jobs, you can earn money,
and it's you know, it's not a disaster. The economy
(08:27):
is certainly not fallen off cliff.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Where would we first see that inflation go down? Because
I have not seen. I just I'm constantly amazed up
prices like I, you know, I've been blessed do I,
you know, really haven't had a financial downturn in the
last few years that a lot of people did during
the pandemic. And I am like horrified at a lot
(08:49):
of the prices, and I just think that it makes
me afraid for the future because I just don't see
them going down. But you're saying that they may, So
where would we feel that or see that first?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
So we're seeing it, we're starting to see I think
people get the most triggered by grocery prices.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And grocery prices I am triggered.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And they're still very high. The data says that they're
still rising, but at a much more normal rate. Where
people are actually starting to see the sticker shop, honestly
is when they go out to You remember, at one
point last year, over the last year or so, it
was cheaper to eat out than it was to stay
at home. Any prices were so absurd. Now we're at
(09:31):
in this particular juncture where the grocery prices are starting
to level off. But again, leveling off isn't a different
animal than falling still high, but like moderating. A lot
of the fast food joints are have hiked prices and
they're starting to see some pushback from that because people
are not eating there as much. And as a matter
(09:52):
of fact, we had a couple of fast food operators
report earnings just as ye and some of them, you know,
were we then expected because it's starting to get the
data suggest the numbers suggested people are not necessarily inclined
to just keep paying or coming out of pocket.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Like my brother was telling me yesterday that McDonald's is
like in collapse.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And that's concerning McDonald's. McDonald's an interesting story because they
really thrived during the pandemic, and you know, their whole
sort of stick is the dollar menu, the cheap eats
that they've got really great value for their for their
you know, for what they offer. And if you're an
app user, like it's even better because you kind of
(10:38):
accumulate loyalty points, you get special deals and whatever. So
I'm a big fan of McDonald's and I love their
app and I absolutely love their coffee. But in terms
of crisis, everyone is starting to realize that this isn't
just a one way bet. You can't just sort of
pass on costs, pass on costs, and the real reason
(10:58):
that we have to sort of be fair. The real
reason why we're seeing such sort of price inflation is
because it costs a lot of these companies a lot
more to do business, and so their inputs like f loower, eggs,
all of the things that are used to make a meal. Yeah,
prices of skyprocketed. So at some point there's a willingness
(11:19):
for the company to eat some of those costs. But
at some point it's like, it's costing me a lot
to put all of this together, and I'm going to
start passing it out to consumer.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Right, will millennials ever be able to buy a house
or are they just going to be eating avocado toasts
in their in their rentals for the rest of their lives?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes, you know this is there's a strain of thought
that says, you know, you shouldn't deprive and I've seen
this a lot more recently, and I'm up to minds
like don't deprive yourself of things that make you feel good.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
That's been my philosophy. Are my husband doesn't love that,
but yeah, that's that's how I live.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, here's the thing, like, I think we all sort
of grew up with this idea that you know, especially
for those of us a certain generation, like you had
to save every day, wasn't you know, you can treat
yourself and like maybe that's every week or once a
week or once every two weeks or whatever, but there
was a limit and that you kind of had to
(12:19):
impose the differenscipline. You had to live within a budget. Nowadays,
I think, primarily because of the proliferation of social media
and things like that, there's a lot of i don't know,
for lack of a better, certain period pressure. People feel
obligated fomo or you know that. They call it lifestyle cre.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
People and hey, the US government does it, so whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Well, yeah, that's a whole lot of conversation.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But hey, buy all the Starbucks treats.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, and so the idea people are making more money
in the data suggests they are. Wages were going up.
So that entails people looking and saying, hey, I'm making
a little bit more money, why don't I You know,
I couldn't afford that, you know, fifty dollars caviar lunch before,
but now I can. I can afford to go to
Vail for vacation, I can afford to do all of
(13:05):
these other things. And that's when it starts to catch
up with you. So there's got to be, you know,
a balance, like if you buy in Buying a house
is a real responsibility. It's a very expensive proposition, and
I think people aren't don't really fully prepare themselves for
just how much home ownership involves a lot of money,
a lot of responsibility, a lot of time. It involves
(13:28):
like putting down and down payment. And if you've got
to put down and down payment, I mean you don't
have a rich relative or rich parents or whatever, You're
going to have to figure out how to come up
with that money by yourself. Mortgage rates being what they are,
they've come off seven eight percent levels which we saw
just several months ago, but it's still not cheap and
housing is still very very scarce. Affordable housing is still
(13:50):
very very scarce. So you have to look at all
of these things and say like, yeah, I can have
my Starbucks, I can have my avocado toast, but I
actually do at some point want to own a house
and it's not going to be so I've got to
make the sorts of decisions. Now. You know, when you
spend all of these money, all this money regularly, it
(14:10):
starts to add up, right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Not necessarily on avocado toast. If you're you know, spending
the money you should be using on a down payment, it's.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
The new vision pro thing. Like, and if you've got
a lot of money on credit cards and you're carrying balances,
you're paying interest on it. You're paying a substantial amount
of interests. You're paying at least to twenty percent interest.
There's more or less the average APR, and that's a
record high. So all of these things add up, and
so they seem in the moment it's like, Okay, it's
(14:40):
just five dollars, twenty dollars whatever, a lot of money.
But if you continually do it, and you're working toward
a financial goal that involves ownership of a home or
car or whatever it might be, these are things that
you just have to really weigh in consideration to like
where you are now and what you've got available and
where you actually want to go.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I feel like I'm going to send this video
to the US government and say, like, hey, Javier says
that maybe you shouldn't outspend what.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You're earning, just you know, all the way.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite topics. We're get
on that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitz Show. So switching away from
the financial world. A question that I ask all of
my guests is what would you say is our largest
societal or cultural problem? And do you think it's solvable?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Wow, We've got a lot of projects. I think I
think a lot of it. I think people blame social
media for a lot of things, and I think we
do have, you know, a number of challenges and our
law our biggest is were really disconnected. And I think
that people attributed to you what's what's the best way
(16:03):
to phrase this? People think it's individualism, But I don't
believe it's individualism. All the people wanting to do what
they want to do and they're just looking out for themselves,
and I don't think that that's really the problem. I
just think that people are very not are thoughtless, that's
the best way to put it. Like they're doing things
or they're behaving in a way that just they're not
(16:24):
really considering not only themselves, but kind of like the
domino effect of what they do, like in the future,
and how that impacts you know, future decision, future availability, future,
you know, the resources. And in a lot of way,
you know, we this what we see on social media
playing out on Twitter or Instagram on any given day
is really a function of the fact that we are
(16:46):
very disconnected from ourselves, and I think people are trying
their best to fill a void and they're just getting
it all wrong. And a lot of it is you know,
expressed in you know, consumerism and the crazy news that
we see on Twitter and social media, and it's all
a symptom of just something that's really really deeply ingrained
(17:09):
and that people really are struggling to try and reconcile
themselves with or compensate for.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And do you think it's solvable? Is this something that
we can fix?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
You know, I want to call myself an optimist, but
you know, I see things just jumping the rails every day,
like you you you, I'm more of a realist than
I am optimistic. And it's one of those things, as
cliches in might sound. I think it's going to get
worse before it gets better. And I think that people
(17:44):
we have to hit rock bottom, and apparently I don't
think we're there yet, and everything I think we are
sort of at a rock bottom. Things get a little worse,
and so all of that said, like I just I
feel like we need to stop placing so much in
order for things to get better. We need to stop
(18:04):
placing so much faith or emphasis in politics or the
political system. People are looking for some sort of like
you know, superman or super woman or people that were
to redeem themselves or redeem how you feel about their circumstances,
and that's the wrong way to look at it. Like,
and when we're electing government officials, we're not electing our best,
(18:27):
and we're certainly no, we're not electing our best, and
we're kind of like imbuing them with this power some
sort of thing. We kind of want them to govern
a certain way or govern over in US and like
we you know, we used to govern ourselves. These people
work for us. When you elect them. They're supposed to
(18:49):
be making decisions on our behalf, and they're supposed to
be like accountable to us, and a lot of ways
it's not working out that way. And I think that
that's part of an expression of the whole disconnect and
the fact that people are yearning for something but are
like putting it in all of putting the emphasis on
all the wrong things and all the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I normally end with this question, but this seems like
a natural segue. Here is what's your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Get off the computer once in a while, Just close
the phone, close the laptop, go out, go to a movie.
I go to the movies every week. Really, you're a
Brooklyn night and you know, you know where the night
Hawk is the night week. Every week they have great
retro movies, like I'm going to see Shafts next week.
(19:39):
I saw Mommy Darius there a few weeks ago, a
few months ago. I really enjoy the movies, and I
really enjoy going to the movies. It's strangers itself by myself.
I just kind of like sitting in the movie theater
and it's dark and you got your popform food. If
you go to place like the Nighthawk, they serve cocktails,
they starve for full menu. It's really cool and it's
like and I'm in walking distance, so often most of
(19:59):
the time I end up walking there, riding my bike,
getting fresh air and sort of unplugging from the matrix.
That well convinced ourselves we need to participate and partake
in every day and give hot takes and on the
Instagram or whatever, and give it all the rest, like
you know, give yourself, give your like, your mind a break.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
What would you be doing if you were not a
financial journalist? What would the plan b for?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Javier believe or I really wanted to be a lawyer
at one point I forget that. The cliffs stillest version
of my life is like right it from high school,
went straight to the military. I was a paralegal in
the Army. I got exposed to law that way, and
I was like, Wow, this is great. I want to
do this. And I graduated Like once I got a
(20:49):
military I went right to college. I blasted my way
through college, double major in economics and politics and I
minored in English LID. And my whole idea was I
was going to you know, leverage that to go to
walls cool, But then as like, wow, it's a three
year commitment and it's so expensive, and so I got
a master's degree instead. I kind of stumbled into financial journalism.
(21:11):
But I was actually, you know, once upon a time
during myself for preparing myself for a career in law.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Wow, I really would not have guessed that. I feel
like you might have missed your calling with voiceover work.
You have this great voice and it's so soothing. I
could like listen to, you know, tell me about financial markets.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And so it's not Shakespeare, but.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I believe in you. I think you could totally do Shakespeare.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
I used to love Shakespeare. I was a big Shakespeare fan.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I could see that, yeah, and I could see you,
you know, on a stage like its just something to consider,
you know, right, do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
No, I feel like made king. It is a misnomer.
It's almost like miss leading in a lot of ways.
It's like, you know, you never stop learning and you
should never stop growing. And I think that once you
have like that's a real danger. I am firmly of
the belief that, like, you know, I don't know what
(22:15):
make it looks like and I think that a lot
of ways, like a lot of us look to people
with a lot of money and a lot of power
and famous, and it's like, wow, like I want that,
and you don't. Necessarily. Those folks have a lot of problems.
I don't. Necessarily I wouldn't want to be Elon Musk
for all the money and the billions that he has,
I would want I probably Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I just I always think, like such a tough life.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
But it really is. And I feel firmly that money,
a lot of money, just turns people into animals. And
the proximity to it, people just feel like they have
to have it, or they have to ingratiate themselves with
people that have it so that they can get some
of it. It, you know, corrodes your morality, It can
corrode your sense of self, and it's not a good thing.
(22:58):
And I would, you know, just always said to myself,
I just want to live comfortably, and I do live comfortably,
and I'm like, I'm grateful and I'm thankful for like
the life that I have and the decisions that I've
made and the fact that you know, my bills are
paid I can come see my mom and Miami most important,
and go hang out in West Palm Beach sometimes even
(23:19):
But yeah, I just I have to correct you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Though we saw each other on Palm Beach, the people
on Palm Beach do not like when you call Palm
Beach West Palm Beach.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Like as I said, my my, my knowledge of Florida
gets a little fuzzy over around Fort Laarden. I went
to high school in Miami, so I'm like South, very
South Florida oriented. But like everything, passport starts again a
little blurning.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah. Well, I love that advice, you know, get off
the internet, and I you know, I talk about that
on the show a lot. Touch Grass, Live your life,
love it. Thank you so much for coming on, Javier.
I love talking to you and we'll hopefully talk to
you again soon.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Definitely. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Markowitz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
If you've been listening to this show for a while,
you know that I love to ask guests to provide
a life improving tip. I really enjoyed compiling these. I
think that the tip I hear about most often that
people have implemented in their own lives is from my
very first episode. My guest was my fantastic friend Buck Sexton,
(00:33):
and he said to read before bed. Now, obviously that's
not rocket science, right you read before bed, you feel better.
You don't stare at your phone. We all know that
staring at our devices right before trying to get RESTful
sleep is a recipe for tossing and turning all night.
But sometimes we just need to hear people give us
that obvious advice. Buck's advice is something that I've implemented myself.
(00:57):
I try to read fiction specific before bed, and I mean, look,
I'm not perfect. Do I find myself scrolling on Instagram
reels before bed some nights of the week, of course
I do. But the nights that I don't, the nights
that I follow the advice to unplug before bed, are
my best nights of sleep. And it's helpful. So the
(01:19):
advice doesn't have to be astonishing or startling or really unique.
It can just be something that you need to hear.
I asked my listeners and followers on Twitter to submit
their own tips for living a better life. I'm trying
to keep them kind of small and easy, like the
reading before bed one, and not big pieces of advice
(01:40):
that we all need but would be harder to implement.
These are my three favorites from this week, but keep
them coming. Email Carolmarkowitz Show at gmail dot com, or
tweet me at Carol on x New Twitter, whatever you
want to call it. I'll read some responses on the
show and future episodes, so tune in. The number one
thing that came up again and again is to get
(02:04):
off your phone. I've talked about this one here. I
understand it's a challenge, but we all know how much
better off we would be if we used our phones less.
I've talked about how I take breaks for vacation, but
I'm going to make a serious attempt to just be
on my phone less. I get that it's really tough,
and even right now, I'm thinking about all the things
(02:25):
that I need to get done on the Internet, which
would require me using my laptop or my phone. But
it's necessary to cut back, and I know it, and
I'm going to stop using it for like entertainment when
I wait on a line or I'm doing something that
I don't want to be doing. Number two is similar
but a little different. Somebody wrote, remember that social media
(02:46):
is not real life. Go out and see the world,
talk to people, live life in person. I talk about
this a lot on here. I think it gets very
easy to live your life online, especially if you work
from home. Challenge yourself to have one conversation in real
life this week. And I don't just mean with your
spouse or with your kids. I'll say a conversation has
(03:07):
to be three sentences long, so it can't just be
nice weather we're having with your neighbor and that's it.
Connect with people in real life. Number three is compliment
one person a day. Be the kind of person who
says nice things to others. It'll make you feel better
about yourself too, I promise. Coming up next and interview
with Javier David join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Javier David Javier is managing editor for
Business and Markets at Axios. He oversees the Markets, Macro
and Closer newsletters and is an unrepentant Brooklyn Night, which
is how we met when I was one two. Hi Javier,
so great to have you on.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Hey, good morning.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So I know very little about finance or financial markets,
but you're now actually the third financial journalists I've had on,
which just means I'm friends with a lot of financial journalists.
The other two were John Carney and Mitch Rochelle from
Breitbart and Box Business. But it's interesting finance and I
love to learn. So where do you see the economy going?
(04:15):
You know, in a sort of playing terms for people
who don't know a lot about what's going on.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah. John Carney incidentally is one of my former colleagues
who work together at NBC. A great guy, super smart,
huge amount of respect for them. Hi John, if you're listening,
But yeah, sure he's listening. He is. I see him
all the time on Twitter, but not in person. But
all that said, yeah, the economy in twenty twenty four
(04:45):
kind of puzzled, you know, against all odds. And I
know this is a sort of controversial thing to say.
It shouldn't be, but you know, the economy, the US
economy is really in a lot of respects outperformed every
other major and we're in an election year, and you know,
it's sort of, uh, the economy becomes something of a
(05:06):
ror shark test where if you're you know, whether you're
a Democrat or Republican, and all kind of is skewed
based on kind of a or view through a partisan lens.
And that's unfortunate because you know, you have a jobs
market that is really really strong after a very long
period where workers wages were stagnant. People are earning more,
(05:30):
they're earning more or getting more from their employers. That's
a good thing. You know, unemployment below four percent, that
has been there's a lot of noise surrounding the state
of the jobs market because we've had a tremendous amount
of layoffs announcements since since at the start of the year.
I mean a lot of that has been concentrated in
sectors that kind of over hire during the pandemic, and
(05:51):
that would be technology and also in the field that
we're in, which is media. And if you remember I
think twenty one twenty one twenty twenty two, it seemed
like everybody was getting a new job somewhere right. It
was kind of the Yolo economy, and everyone was like, Hey,
I'm gonna go you know, personal news on Twitter like that.
(06:13):
You know, it was a really heady time to be
a journalist and you after, you know, you come into
this profession and you don't really believe that you're gonna
make a lot of money. And people started getting good money.
But now we're kind of overcorrecting for that what was
in that sort of an over hiring. But all things considered,
the inflation, I think that's what everyone is kind of
(06:37):
like on the phone. That's what everyone's talking about. And
why views about the economy are so to you because
we are in fact paying much more for everything, and
more than we've paid in a very long time, and
the data suggests that we are. In fact. Inflation is slowing. Now.
Slowing is a different animal altogether than falling prices, and
(06:59):
you have a lower rate of inflation, but prices are
still rising, so we kind of call it disinflation, which
means that, yeah, inflation is still there. It's still president,
it's still at the risk, and it's one of the
reasons why the Federal Reserve won't kind of commit to
cutting rates anytime this year because there is a real
risk that it could pick up again. And those of
(07:21):
us old enough to remember guys like you know, Vulgar
and green Span, These guys were Federal Reserve chairmen who
were committed inflation fighters that they weren't about this stuff
all the time, that if you allowed inflation to get
out of control, it absolutely would and it would kind
of devour everything. So we're coming out of this era,
or this particular juncture where prices were really, really high,
(07:45):
but now they're starting to normalize. So again, normalizing is
different than falling, which isn't a good thing either, because
you don't want deflation. It's is almost that as inflation,
but you want to stable prices. And managed to kind
of stick the landing and hyped rates. It's broad inflation
sort of under control nominally, and the growth is still there.
(08:06):
And more importantly, anyone that needs a job can find
a job, and that the data shows that it's a
lot tougher than it was a year ago. But certainly
people can feel confident in the fact that like this
is a place, you know, the economy. Economy is in
a place where people can find jobs, you can earn money,
and it's you know, it's not a disaster. The economy
(08:27):
is certainly not fallen off cliff.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Where would we first see that inflation go down? Because
I have not seen. I just I'm constantly amazed up
prices like I, you know, I've been blessed do I,
you know, really haven't had a financial downturn in the
last few years that a lot of people did during
the pandemic. And I am like horrified at a lot
(08:49):
of the prices, and I just think that it makes
me afraid for the future because I just don't see
them going down. But you're saying that they may, So
where would we feel that or see that first?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
So we're seeing it, we're starting to see I think
people get the most triggered by grocery prices.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And grocery prices I am triggered.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And they're still very high. The data says that they're
still rising, but at a much more normal rate. Where
people are actually starting to see the sticker shop, honestly
is when they go out to You remember, at one
point last year, over the last year or so, it
was cheaper to eat out than it was to stay
at home. Any prices were so absurd. Now we're at
(09:31):
in this particular juncture where the grocery prices are starting
to level off. But again, leveling off isn't a different
animal than falling still high, but like moderating. A lot
of the fast food joints are have hiked prices and
they're starting to see some pushback from that because people
are not eating there as much. And as a matter
(09:52):
of fact, we had a couple of fast food operators
report earnings just as ye and some of them, you know,
were we then expected because it's starting to get the
data suggest the numbers suggested people are not necessarily inclined
to just keep paying or coming out of pocket.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Like my brother was telling me yesterday that McDonald's is
like in collapse.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And that's concerning McDonald's. McDonald's an interesting story because they
really thrived during the pandemic, and you know, their whole
sort of stick is the dollar menu, the cheap eats
that they've got really great value for their for their
you know, for what they offer. And if you're an
app user, like it's even better because you kind of
(10:38):
accumulate loyalty points, you get special deals and whatever. So
I'm a big fan of McDonald's and I love their
app and I absolutely love their coffee. But in terms
of crisis, everyone is starting to realize that this isn't
just a one way bet. You can't just sort of
pass on costs, pass on costs, and the real reason
(10:58):
that we have to sort of be fair. The real
reason why we're seeing such sort of price inflation is
because it costs a lot of these companies a lot
more to do business, and so their inputs like f loower, eggs,
all of the things that are used to make a meal. Yeah,
prices of skyprocketed. So at some point there's a willingness
(11:19):
for the company to eat some of those costs. But
at some point it's like, it's costing me a lot
to put all of this together, and I'm going to
start passing it out to consumer.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Right, will millennials ever be able to buy a house
or are they just going to be eating avocado toasts
in their in their rentals for the rest of their lives?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes, you know this is there's a strain of thought
that says, you know, you shouldn't deprive and I've seen
this a lot more recently, and I'm up to minds
like don't deprive yourself of things that make you feel good.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
That's been my philosophy. Are my husband doesn't love that,
but yeah, that's that's how I live.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, here's the thing, like, I think we all sort
of grew up with this idea that you know, especially
for those of us a certain generation, like you had
to save every day, wasn't you know, you can treat
yourself and like maybe that's every week or once a
week or once every two weeks or whatever, but there
was a limit and that you kind of had to
(12:19):
impose the differenscipline. You had to live within a budget. Nowadays,
I think, primarily because of the proliferation of social media
and things like that, there's a lot of i don't know,
for lack of a better, certain period pressure. People feel
obligated fomo or you know that. They call it lifestyle cre.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
People and hey, the US government does it, so whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Well, yeah, that's a whole lot of conversation.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But hey, buy all the Starbucks treats.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, and so the idea people are making more money
in the data suggests they are. Wages were going up.
So that entails people looking and saying, hey, I'm making
a little bit more money, why don't I You know,
I couldn't afford that, you know, fifty dollars caviar lunch before,
but now I can. I can afford to go to
Vail for vacation, I can afford to do all of
(13:05):
these other things. And that's when it starts to catch
up with you. So there's got to be, you know,
a balance, like if you buy in Buying a house
is a real responsibility. It's a very expensive proposition, and
I think people aren't don't really fully prepare themselves for
just how much home ownership involves a lot of money,
a lot of responsibility, a lot of time. It involves
(13:28):
like putting down and down payment. And if you've got
to put down and down payment, I mean you don't
have a rich relative or rich parents or whatever, You're
going to have to figure out how to come up
with that money by yourself. Mortgage rates being what they are,
they've come off seven eight percent levels which we saw
just several months ago, but it's still not cheap and
housing is still very very scarce. Affordable housing is still
(13:50):
very very scarce. So you have to look at all
of these things and say like, yeah, I can have
my Starbucks, I can have my avocado toast, but I
actually do at some point want to own a house
and it's not going to be so I've got to
make the sorts of decisions. Now. You know, when you
spend all of these money, all this money regularly, it
(14:10):
starts to add up, right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Not necessarily on avocado toast. If you're you know, spending
the money you should be using on a down payment, it's.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
The new vision pro thing. Like, and if you've got
a lot of money on credit cards and you're carrying balances,
you're paying interest on it. You're paying a substantial amount
of interests. You're paying at least to twenty percent interest.
There's more or less the average APR, and that's a
record high. So all of these things add up, and
so they seem in the moment it's like, Okay, it's
(14:40):
just five dollars, twenty dollars whatever, a lot of money.
But if you continually do it, and you're working toward
a financial goal that involves ownership of a home or
car or whatever it might be, these are things that
you just have to really weigh in consideration to like
where you are now and what you've got available and
where you actually want to go.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I feel like I'm going to send this video
to the US government and say, like, hey, Javier says
that maybe you shouldn't outspend what.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You're earning, just you know, all the way.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite topics. We're get
on that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitz Show. So switching away from
the financial world. A question that I ask all of
my guests is what would you say is our largest
societal or cultural problem? And do you think it's solvable?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Wow, We've got a lot of projects. I think I
think a lot of it. I think people blame social
media for a lot of things, and I think we
do have, you know, a number of challenges and our
law our biggest is were really disconnected. And I think
that people attributed to you what's what's the best way
(16:03):
to phrase this? People think it's individualism, But I don't
believe it's individualism. All the people wanting to do what
they want to do and they're just looking out for themselves,
and I don't think that that's really the problem. I
just think that people are very not are thoughtless, that's
the best way to put it. Like they're doing things
or they're behaving in a way that just they're not
(16:24):
really considering not only themselves, but kind of like the
domino effect of what they do, like in the future,
and how that impacts you know, future decision, future availability, future,
you know, the resources. And in a lot of way,
you know, we this what we see on social media
playing out on Twitter or Instagram on any given day
is really a function of the fact that we are
(16:46):
very disconnected from ourselves, and I think people are trying
their best to fill a void and they're just getting
it all wrong. And a lot of it is you know,
expressed in you know, consumerism and the crazy news that
we see on Twitter and social media, and it's all
a symptom of just something that's really really deeply ingrained
(17:09):
and that people really are struggling to try and reconcile
themselves with or compensate for.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And do you think it's solvable? Is this something that
we can fix?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
You know, I want to call myself an optimist, but
you know, I see things just jumping the rails every day,
like you you you, I'm more of a realist than
I am optimistic. And it's one of those things, as
cliches in might sound. I think it's going to get
worse before it gets better. And I think that people
(17:44):
we have to hit rock bottom, and apparently I don't
think we're there yet, and everything I think we are
sort of at a rock bottom. Things get a little worse,
and so all of that said, like I just I
feel like we need to stop placing so much in
order for things to get better. We need to stop
(18:04):
placing so much faith or emphasis in politics or the
political system. People are looking for some sort of like
you know, superman or super woman or people that were
to redeem themselves or redeem how you feel about their circumstances,
and that's the wrong way to look at it. Like,
and when we're electing government officials, we're not electing our best,
(18:27):
and we're certainly no, we're not electing our best, and
we're kind of like imbuing them with this power some
sort of thing. We kind of want them to govern
a certain way or govern over in US and like
we you know, we used to govern ourselves. These people
work for us. When you elect them. They're supposed to
(18:49):
be making decisions on our behalf, and they're supposed to
be like accountable to us, and a lot of ways
it's not working out that way. And I think that
that's part of an expression of the whole disconnect and
the fact that people are yearning for something but are
like putting it in all of putting the emphasis on
all the wrong things and all the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I normally end with this question, but this seems like
a natural segue. Here is what's your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Get off the computer once in a while, Just close
the phone, close the laptop, go out, go to a movie.
I go to the movies every week. Really, you're a
Brooklyn night and you know, you know where the night
Hawk is the night week. Every week they have great
retro movies, like I'm going to see Shafts next week.
(19:39):
I saw Mommy Darius there a few weeks ago, a
few months ago. I really enjoy the movies, and I
really enjoy going to the movies. It's strangers itself by myself.
I just kind of like sitting in the movie theater
and it's dark and you got your popform food. If
you go to place like the Nighthawk, they serve cocktails,
they starve for full menu. It's really cool and it's
like and I'm in walking distance, so often most of
(19:59):
the time I end up walking there, riding my bike,
getting fresh air and sort of unplugging from the matrix.
That well convinced ourselves we need to participate and partake
in every day and give hot takes and on the
Instagram or whatever, and give it all the rest, like
you know, give yourself, give your like, your mind a break.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
What would you be doing if you were not a
financial journalist? What would the plan b for?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Javier believe or I really wanted to be a lawyer
at one point I forget that. The cliffs stillest version
of my life is like right it from high school,
went straight to the military. I was a paralegal in
the Army. I got exposed to law that way, and
I was like, Wow, this is great. I want to
do this. And I graduated Like once I got a
(20:49):
military I went right to college. I blasted my way
through college, double major in economics and politics and I
minored in English LID. And my whole idea was I
was going to you know, leverage that to go to
walls cool, But then as like, wow, it's a three
year commitment and it's so expensive, and so I got
a master's degree instead. I kind of stumbled into financial journalism.
(21:11):
But I was actually, you know, once upon a time
during myself for preparing myself for a career in law.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Wow, I really would not have guessed that. I feel
like you might have missed your calling with voiceover work.
You have this great voice and it's so soothing. I
could like listen to, you know, tell me about financial markets.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And so it's not Shakespeare, but.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I believe in you. I think you could totally do Shakespeare.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
I used to love Shakespeare. I was a big Shakespeare fan.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I could see that, yeah, and I could see you,
you know, on a stage like its just something to consider,
you know, right, do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
No, I feel like made king. It is a misnomer.
It's almost like miss leading in a lot of ways.
It's like, you know, you never stop learning and you
should never stop growing. And I think that once you
have like that's a real danger. I am firmly of
the belief that, like, you know, I don't know what
(22:15):
make it looks like and I think that a lot
of ways, like a lot of us look to people
with a lot of money and a lot of power
and famous, and it's like, wow, like I want that,
and you don't. Necessarily. Those folks have a lot of problems.
I don't. Necessarily I wouldn't want to be Elon Musk
for all the money and the billions that he has,
I would want I probably Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I just I always think, like such a tough life.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
But it really is. And I feel firmly that money,
a lot of money, just turns people into animals. And
the proximity to it, people just feel like they have
to have it, or they have to ingratiate themselves with
people that have it so that they can get some
of it. It, you know, corrodes your morality, It can
corrode your sense of self, and it's not a good thing.
(22:58):
And I would, you know, just always said to myself,
I just want to live comfortably, and I do live comfortably,
and I'm like, I'm grateful and I'm thankful for like
the life that I have and the decisions that I've
made and the fact that you know, my bills are
paid I can come see my mom and Miami most important,
and go hang out in West Palm Beach sometimes even
(23:19):
But yeah, I just I have to correct you.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Though we saw each other on Palm Beach, the people
on Palm Beach do not like when you call Palm
Beach West Palm Beach.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Like as I said, my my, my knowledge of Florida
gets a little fuzzy over around Fort Laarden. I went
to high school in Miami, so I'm like South, very
South Florida oriented. But like everything, passport starts again a
little blurning.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah. Well, I love that advice, you know, get off
the internet, and I you know, I talk about that
on the show a lot. Touch Grass, Live your life,
love it. Thank you so much for coming on, Javier.
I love talking to you and we'll hopefully talk to
you again soon.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Definitely. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Markowitz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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