May 25, 2023 • 40 mins
Jennifer Jones Lee hosts your Thusday morning Wake Up Call. Investopedia.com's Caleb Silver talks about the prospect of a government default. Then, ABC's Crime and Terrorism Analyst Brad Garrett examines how a default could devastate public safety. MACRO's Jason Middleton joins the show and talks about Americans and retirement, Meta's fresh round of layoffs, Florida oranges and BMW's latest feature coming to its cars. And ABC's Jim Ryan anticipates a busy weekend of travel for Memorial Day.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, it's Jennifer Jones Lee.You're listening to KFI, a M six
forty wake up call on demand onthe iHeartRadio app. She likes to call
it Friday. Here's Jennifer Jones Leewith your Thursday morning wake up call.
(00:20):
Maybe I'll change it. What doyou know, mister announcer guy, Maybe
I'm going to change it to Idon't have to get up in the middle
of the night eve, or Itake a five hour nap on Friday's Eve.
(00:42):
That's true, by the way,I don't know if you know anybody
else who in the middle of theday on a Friday takes the sleeping pill.
This guy does. You can't callthat a nap though? Why five
hour nap? Why nap? IfI'm napping, there's I think there's a
breaking point to when a nap becomesa sleep, and I'm pretty sure it
(01:06):
happens right around like the two hourmark. So every day I sleep,
because I sleep for like three tofour hours during the day, is a
full on sleep. Jin I thinkwe're going to debate this. Oh no,
I'm going to Miriam Webster's dictionary this, you know what, lay it
on thick. Then we might haveto urban dictionary. Oh what a nap
(01:27):
is? That's dangerous territory, that'sfun territory. Come on now, hello
everybody. It is a Thursday,Friday eve. Still cloudy out there,
But did you notice, just likeI said yesterday, much less drizzle out
there. I think one time mywindshield wipers whoop and that was it.
So it looks like that's going tobe the pattern though as we go into
(01:49):
the weekend. This may gray gonnastay with us through Memorial Day, but
the mist and drizzle will be gone. However, the National Weather Service says,
don't get too cozy, people,because heat waves are coming this summer.
More issues on Metro this time.Police in la are trying to find
a guy who stabbed a metrobus driverin Woodland Hills. And there's a school
(02:13):
that has come up with a threeyear program in southern California at three of
its middle schools to tackle what it'sseeing in a spike of mental health issues
following COVID nineteen. Also coming up, we've got the debt ceiling talk,
but we're gonna look at it froma couple of different angles that actually matter
to you. I'm like you,my eyes glaze over sometimes when we talk
(02:37):
about the debt ceiling, I'm like, Oh, I don't know what that
means or how it pertains to me. It does, though, and it
could impact your personal finances, andat twenty Brad Garrett's going to explain how
it might impact your security. That'sall coming up, So let's start with
some of these stories coming out ofthe KFI twenty four hour newsroom. LA
(02:58):
police are trying to find a guywho's stabbed a metro bus driver in Woodland
Hills. This suspect may be anywherein either the San Fernando Valley are nearby
areas, and that suspect may alsostill be writing either MTA buses are on
public transportation. It's comforting. LAPDDeputy Chief Alan Hamilton says the bus was
(03:19):
on Too Panca Canyon at Irwin lastnight when the guy got into a fight
with the driver. The altercation startedon the bus and then went onto the
street here on the sidewalk now.The stabbed bus driver was taken to the
hospital. He's in critical condition.Police say the stabber is about twenty one
years old, six feet tall,has blonde, curly hair. You can
(03:39):
see a photo of the guy onour website at KFI AM six forty dot
com. Slash Suspect and Blake Trolleyis following the story this morning, so
as new developments come, you'll hearthem live here on KFI. A judges
denied a request by the City ofla for the return of photos of LAPD
officers released to an active The cityclaims the LAPD inadvertently handed over some pictures
(04:02):
of undercover officers, but a judgeruled yesterday the city didn't make a good
argument for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalitionto return the photos. This is the
second time in a month the judgesruled against the city in the case.
The judge also told attorneys for thecity that they did not clearly define an
officer in an undercover capacity. InMarch, more than nine thousand photos of
officers were handed over to the coalitionas part of a public record's lawsuit.
(04:23):
At least three hundred officers have filedto claim against the city, alleging their
identities and safety were compromised. SteveGregory Kofine News Cash bail has been banned
for many arrests made by the LaCounty Sheriff's Department and the LAPD. A
judge issued a sixty day injunction barringthe departments from using bail on lower level
offenses. Adriana Molina, who ownsa clothing store in Altadena, says she
(04:46):
thinks criminals will become even more emboldenedby the ruling. She says she had
to move a clothing rack inside herstore when she was in Pasadena because of
theft. Something that's good for usfor marketing. We we had to switch.
A judge ordered the LAPD and Sheriff'sDepartment to come up with a what
they call pre court system. Theruling was in a lawsuit claiming cash bail
(05:10):
is unfair to lower income people.Caleb Silver, editor in chief of investopedia
dot com, ABC News contributor,Good morning, good morning, Good to
be with you, Nice to bewith you two. And I know what
I'm going to just be honest withyou, Caleb. I know that this
is your thing. And I actuallywent to school to be an accountant.
I'm not joking me an accountant thatwould have gone far. I love numbers,
(05:31):
actually love math, but when itcomes to looking at the debt ceiling
talks and a possible default I admitthere's some glazing over that happens. However
I shouldn't because I guess this couldbe personal to all of us. Yeah.
Absolutely. Let's start with the verypractical things that could happen if the
debt ceiling isn't raised or extended,or there's some negotiation to do it later.
(05:55):
That could mean the missing or delayingof Social Security payments and Medicare payments.
A lot of Americans depend on those. If the government runs out of
money, it may have to pushthose up. It eventually makes good on
those, but for folks living ona fixed income depending on that Social Security
check every month, it may getdelayed. You may miss a month,
so you have to prepare for that. Then there's the further tightening of lending
that's already happening in the banking system. Because of all those bank failures,
(06:18):
banks are going to be more reluctantto lend, and so a tightening of
lending is going to hurt folks thatare counting on borrowing money from the bank
to buy a house, start asmall business, pay their payroll, etc.
And then the worst case scenario isa potential credit down grade of US
government debt the US government treasury bond. The tenure is the most widely held
asset on the planet. We lenda lot of those out, a lot
(06:40):
of countries, a lot of biginstitutional investors buy those. If we get
a credit downgrade like we almost hadback in twenty eleven, that is going
to cause mayhem in the stock marketand in the bond market, and everyone's
going to feel that, Okay,And I think that it's obvious in this
study. I know that you're citingby morning, consoled about Yeah. I
mean, very few of us actuallythink about the debt ceiling as impactful as
(07:03):
you just pointed out it was.And in fact, I think that when
we hear default, we think,well, that's their problem. We don't
consider it our problem. Right,But it's one of those things that everyone's
going to feel. It has thereverberations through the financial system, and it
really starts again with those delaying ofpayments. You know, the government is
taking what Janet Yelling, the TreasurySecretary says, extraordinary measures, moving money
(07:26):
from account to account to try tomake sure we can pay the minimum of
our bills. But once we getto that June first or now, she's
saying potentially June fifteenth deadline. Thatmeans a lot of Again, those government
offices may shut down. You mayget the delaying of some of these payments
to millions of Americans that depend onthem. You may get the closing of
national parks, the furloughing of governmentemployees. None of that is very good,
and it causes us psychological cloud overthe markets and over US households because
(07:51):
we can't pay our bills and itstarts to bleed through the financial system.
Everyone's going to feel it all theway down the line. Absolutely. And
retirement account I never even thought aboutthose being impacted. Yeah, absolutely,
And the government does fund a lotof government employee retirement accounts, and so
far that might they have been ableto make those payments, but that could
(08:11):
be the first step the Treasury Secretaryhas to do is not fund the government
retirement accounts or delay the funding ofthose retirement accounts. Again, not going
to impact folks right away, butit will eventually. Now, usually when
this happens, and it's happened seventyeight times, we come up against the
debt ceiling and it's raised every singletime. The government makes good on those
back payments. But it's not funfor people who are depending on a monthly
(08:31):
payment, who are on a fixedincome to not get their check because politicians
in Washington, DC can't sort thisout, you know. And that I
think is the thing that frustrates mostpeople, is this political fighting, this
partisan fighting. Sometimes it feels likethey care a whole lot more about making
sure their side wins than they actuallydo about their constituents and what this kicking
(08:52):
the can down the road sort ofdoes to all of us. Caleb,
I I wish you were in thetalks with McCarthy and Biden. I do
too, but they took off forthe weekend, so they started their vacation
earlier. The rest of us aregoing to keep working because that's what we
gotta do. Isn't that nice vacationingwhen we have a debt ceiling and a
default lingering out there, possible creditdowngrade. Perfect time to go to the
(09:13):
beach. Yeah, thanks so much, but you all have a good holiday
and the rest of us are goingto sit here and worry about what happens
if we can't pare about exactly.Caleb, thank you, as always.
I appreciate it. Thank you.Yeah, that's investorpda dot COM's editor in
chief, Caleb silver Am, Ithe only one who gets peeved. Oh,
(09:37):
I'm must have a slip there whenyou hear holy canoli. People might
not get paid, People might notget their Social Security checks. And the
reason that the Social Security checks andthe Medicaid checks Medicare check checks particularly are
(09:58):
make me nervous is because usually peoplewho are getting those are on a fixed
income. Not to say that anyemployee who doesn't get paid is not going
to feel the impact of that.I remember when you know, the government
would come close to a shutdown ordid shut down a couple of times.
Not the same as a default likethis one. But I remember when you
know, my ex when he wouldhe worked for FEMA or does and we
(10:22):
wouldn't get paid. And that wasokay because we had two incomes and you
know, we were budgeting and thatkind of thing. But what if you
didn't. What if you were afamily where dad worked and mom stayed home
and you literally have one income andright now, with interest rates the way
they are, that a ton ofpeople are living paycheck to paycheck, and
(10:43):
so because of that, that's whereyou see this trickle down so hey,
guys, maybe don't go on vacation. Maybe work something out so that you
don't put the rest of the countryin a pick. That's just thinking out
loud. What evigil has been heldin Texas to mark one year since the
(11:15):
mass shooting at an elementary school inUvaldi. Nineteen kids and two teachers were
killed in that shooting at rob ElementarySchool. President Biden used the anniversary to
push Congress to pass an assault weaponsban. They've been used time and again
and mass killings of innocent children ofpeople. We need to ban high capacity
magazines, ability to shoot twenty thirty, forty fifty sixty were bullets without reloading.
(11:39):
Biden also wants universal background checks.Long Beach is pushing for a twenty
five thousand dollar reward for information onthe fatal shooting of a twelve year old
boy. Eric Brown, was shotand killed on May ninth while walking with
friends, but no arrests have beenmade. Long Beach City councilwoman Suey sorrow
says the reward is a way ofasking the public for help. It's something
(12:00):
our community has advocated for with thefamily and as a council, as a
city. We wholeheartedly support making surethat we catch this person, sorrow says.
The council unanimously voted in favor ofthe reward Tuesday, but it still
needs to be approved by the LaCounty Board of Supervisors. Chris Adler KAFIE
(12:20):
News. Cash bail has been bannedfor many arrests made by the La County
Sheriff's Department, and LAPD judge issueda sixty day injunction barring the departments from
using bail on lower level offenses.Also, we're going to be following the
story this morning of police in LAtrying to find a guy who stabbed a
metro bus driver in Woodland Hills.That driver is now in critical condition.
(12:41):
Let's say good morning now to ABC'scrime and Terrorism analyst Brad Garrett. Brad,
good morning, And I've kind ofbeen focusing on the impact a debt
ceiling default could have. First,we talked with Caleb Silver about how personally
it impacts us, because I knowa lot of us are like, uh,
whatever that's on, that we don'tthink about the trickle down and when
it actually comes to our wallets.And I had not even thought about the
(13:07):
impact on public safety that a defaultmight have So think about it this way.
The House fast To bill that Idon't think would ever have a chance
of passing into the Senate, butthat bill cuts seventeen billion dollars at a
federal law enforcement, the federal courtsystem, and the prison system. If
(13:28):
you think about that, that gettrickled down where the FBI would have to
potentially lay off eleven thousand people.I goes through ATFDA, every agency you
can think of, tsa twelve thousandpotential of folks they might have to lay
off, and the day to dayfunction even at the local city and county
(13:52):
law enforcement level, Jennifer, becausethe federal government through grants provides them with
a lot of money for training forhigher additional police officers. All of that
under some of these budget reviews andperhaps our bills, and perhaps even what
could happen if we do default wherethe money is not there, You know,
(14:16):
some of these programs and people maystart to disappear, and the law
enforcement doesn't function on While I canhave ten people today and three tomorrow,
it just doesn't work that way.And so I see some significant problems when
it comes obviously to morale, butmaintaining a level of folks that you need
(14:37):
in various departments and agencies, andlong term will people even want to come
work for them anymore if the governmentbecomes a place that people don't see as
stable. Right, I was thinkingthat exact same thing. Why would you
want to work for one of theseif you know that you know every year
or whatever, you might get hamstrungby partisan politics going through the one thing
(14:58):
to two of the agencies that youtalked about, so TSA and CBP at
a time when border protection is inevery headline that you see in every newspaper
across the country, and then alsoTSA. If you start pulling people out
of the TSA for somebody who's likeI don't really care about any of those
other agencies, you might want totravel this summer, and if there aren't
(15:22):
enough TSA agents, that is goingto impact your life. I mean,
I get why Congress and the Americanpeople want to reduce the amount of debt
we have, but you have tobe careful how you do it. I'm
not suggesting that agencies don't need totrim their budgets in certain places, but
(15:43):
you can't use a blant force approachto it to deal with that, and
that's apparently what I see in Congress, or at least in the House attempting
to do at this point. Andrelationships when it comes to Billy the case
where you've got informants overseas, you'vegot analysts here that are experts at a
(16:04):
certain part of the world that you'redealing with some really bad people. If
those people aren't there or there aren'tpeople as qualified to be in those positions,
you start losing intelligence, you startlosing timely events of potentially stopping somebody.
I mean, it has a tremendousripple effect that the public would never
(16:26):
see until an event actually happened.All right, Brad, thank you for
bringing up that side of it aswell. It just we you know,
I think sometimes that we see thingsin Congress happen and we feel like,
oh, we're not going to payattention to that because we don't have skin
in the game. Unfortunately, inall aspects of our lives, we do
have skin in the game when itcomes to a potential default. Brad,
(16:48):
Thank you so much, so welcometo take care of See you later.
ABC's Crime and Terrorism analyst Brad Garrettsee Freaking Summer Travel which is supposed to
be bigger than you know, thesize of Texas or something. And now
we could possibly have TSA layoffs ifwe default. We are living in strange
(17:15):
times, my friends. Speaking oftravel By the way, at five fifty,
we're going to talk with ABC's JimRyan and wait till you hear the
numbers COVID what wait? Oh,we had a pandemic? When did that
happen? That's kind of the mindsetthat it seems travelers are in right now.
(17:36):
But we'll get into it in aminute. I just saw this story
came across from ABC seven this morning. There is a Starbucks store in Studio
City that has removed customers seating.So you can waltz on into this Starbucks
store and you can still get yourcoffee. However, the seating is gone
(17:57):
because of what it calls safe concerns. I guess. There's a sign on
the door of the store. Thisis the one on Ventura and Vineland,
and it says that the removal ofthe seating is temporary. And it isn't
clear what actually prompted them to dothis. I don't know if there was
a specific incident or whatever. Butremember six other Starbucks locations across Southern across
(18:23):
across southern California closed last year becauseof crime, vandalism, and vagrancy.
So you have to wonder, mightthey say, Okay, we're not going
to close our stores, but it'sgonna be a grab and go kind of
thing you come in. Remember theyclosed that Starbucks right near the Pantageous Theater.
(18:47):
Is that Let's see, it wason the corner right near right.
But there's a Yes, there's likea good Will right there, I think
too across the street maybe, Ithink, yeah, But they closed it
because there was just it was toocongested. They were they were having a
lot of transience kind of linger thereand there was a lot of violence.
So yeah, it seems to bea trend for people to congregate around Starbucks
(19:11):
areas, which obviously the more peoplethat are there, the likelihood of violence
and problems just go up. Sowell, So I Jason Middleton is in
here by the way, jump oninto this little conversation if you wants.
So, I M let's see you. What was it nineteen No, it
was two thousand and two ish.I worked at Starbucks, so it was
(19:34):
after I got my first job inthe Bay area, and I was working
mornings in San Jose for a SanFrancisco state for a KGO where Jason and
I worked together. And I wasin our South Bay office and I knew
no one, I didn't like.Oh, I was bored whatever. And
I was sitting in a Starbucks oneday and they put a help wanted sign
in the window and I looked atthe woman who put it up there,
and I go, oh my gosh, I'll totally work. Here was down
(19:56):
the street from the cop shop.It was down the street from the ward
house, the whole nine yards,and I thought, yeah, this is
great. I'm gonna see every coupand attorney and judge and whatever that comes
in, and maybe they'll give thelittle barista a little tip here and there.
S from NBC when I was workingat NBC. Yes, that's right,
okay, so that when I wasworking at That's the reason I bring
(20:17):
it up. One of the thingsthat I always found bizarre that was the
Starbucks in the downtown portion of SanJose, which at that time had the
highest population of homeless people. ThatStarbucks let anybody into the bathroom. The
homeless would go in there and washThey would literally take baths in the sink
(20:41):
and walk out wet, and theycould bring a cup, so they would
go to the trash can outside theStarbucks, get a cup that somebody else
had used, come in and geta coffee refo. I think was like
ten cents. Yeah, yeah,I'm not I'm not judging. That's just
actual fact. However, it madea giant impact on the clientele in that
(21:04):
at that Starbucks. People were sayingthey didn't feel safe. People were just
saying the amenities there, you can'tuse the bathroom. Yeah, it was
gross. I mean, you know, and as an employee, I would
have to go in there, andI remember washing a wall one time and
thinking to myself, we have aproblem here. So I feel like Starbucks,
(21:25):
Yes, maybe all of this iscoming to a head, but I
feel I think I've been watching thisfor two decades. It seems that Starbucks
let something happen in their stores.Maybe they could have just put a keypad
on the door or something like that. They did add one at that one,
for sure. I know that theydid good. Yeah, I know.
The one near me where I livenow has a keypad as well,
(21:47):
and they rotated out and a lotof people come in expecting to be able
to go to do their ablutions inthe morning, and they can't because they
don't know the code because they changedthe code, yes, or they don't
remember it. Yes, Yeah,that's right. They kind of pulled this
house of cards on themselves. Andyes, that's how I feel. I
feel like you should have seen thiscoming Starbucks. I was complaining about it
(22:07):
twenty years ago. Okay, I'llget off my soapbox. Let's talk about
now this outlook on retirement. Ithink a lot of us are nervous right
now because we're watching interest rates goup. Sure, things are more expensive
all of a sudden, we're havingto dip into maybe our eras or our
you know whatever, sure to helpus get money. Right now, banks
(22:27):
are tightening who they're lending to.So our look at retirement maybe not even
as bad right now, but wehave our head in the sand. Well
it's down ten percent from ten yearsago. And so it was fifty three
percent of people thought they would beable to retire relatively comfortably, not like
living high or anything like that,but just like living comfortably, not having
(22:47):
to worry every month to pay thebills and meet to meet what they need
as far as their budget goes,right, So that's down ten percent.
What stuck it out to me wasthis forty three percent that right now say
that they might be able to retire. Is this is before the debt ceiling
and default debate started politically, soyou could understand how those head wins would
probably if this poll had been takenin May, then I can see how
(23:11):
that would be an impact and people'sthinking and doing the math and the calculus
for moving forward. But since itcame in April and earlier April, before
this all started, that stood outa lot. And the ten percent drop
is equal to what it was underGeorge W. Bush as well as under
President Biden. And that goes tostewardship of the economy. The only one
(23:33):
third of Americans think that both ofthose presidents then and now have the capacity
to guide the economy through regulation andother policies. So if it's ten percent,
and this was taken in April,and I know it was talking with
Caleb Silver from Investopedia earlier, hestarted talking about the impact on retirement accounts.
(23:55):
I'm gonna venture to save in that, I bet it's higher than ten
percent. Now if people were askedabout their retirement. Acco have to agree,
because look, inflation at the levelthat it is right now is basically
a pay cut, right, trivingto pay more for everything else. And
you your wages didn't go up quiteas much as as you would have hoped,
let's say. But then then youhave the Fed doing the interest rate
(24:15):
thing too, and that's a creditsqueeze that's happening. But the banks that
you mentioned, so all those thingscoming together really is going to slow down
the pace of retirement or the planningout a little bit farther. Luckily,
the eighteen to twenty nine's right nowsay that they are more confident than usual
when it comes to their retirement accounts, but they haven't been through these kind
of situations whereas older Americans have,right exactly. Oh, speaking of things
(24:38):
that have already happened and are happeningagain, meta with another round of layoffs,
I feel like this number that wekeep getting from Zuckerberg gets a little
bit higher and a little bit higher. And oh, that was the last
round of layoffs. Here's a newone. Twenty one thousand people since November
have been laid off. This isgood and bad in a way. It's
(24:59):
never good lose a job because youcould lose a work visa, you might
have benefits, concerns and things likethat. So this is it. So
this round was announced as the beginningof the year, the Year of Efficiency
from Zuck and ten ten thousand peoplein November, and then he realized,
hey, things are moving, Okay, maybe I can cut more, and
so he has. So. Butremember during the pandemic, the tech companies,
specifically, a lot of empty calorieswere taken on. Okay, they're
(25:23):
they're a little bit, a littlebit big around the middle, and so
this is this is a trim down. So if business wise this makes sense,
people wise, not necessarily. Andalso he's having to pivot away from
his metaverse focus so much because thatis a money suck, and he's had
to move some other to some otherprojects that may have been lower down on
a priority list and raising them up. He said in his earnings call that
(25:45):
he's finding more efficiencies than he anticipatedand in retrospect, he probably should have
made this move earlier. Okay,but then does that mean if he's finding
efficiencies, then we won't see anymore layoff? That's what they say.
They say that they're steady and forthe rest of this year at least and
probably into next year as well.But they're also making their own chips like
Apple was doing, and making theirown supercomputers like like Microsoft, and that
(26:10):
might be able to give them amoat and some kind of insurance that they'll
be able to keep their revenue streamsgoing because they have their own computers,
not relying on a vendor. Okay, that's pretty awesome. I went to
Florida for the first time. I'llknow, I guess second. Anyway,
it doesn't matter. We're Starbucks atthe time, not that smartassum so I
promise you I've never had I know, this is dumb. A better orange
(26:34):
in my life than I was onin Treasure Island, Florida. And there
was some little like dinky stand youknow that. It was like, yeah,
we're in Florida, we better getan orange. Yeah, I'll be
damned, best freaking orange I've everhad. I'm glad you had that memory
because we're not going to have thosefor a while. Thank you for that
worst orange production crop since the thirties. That's not okay, No, A
(26:56):
couple of hurricanes happened to twenty twentytwo, which does help infrastructure for sure.
But then they have this citrus greeningdisease that basically doesn't let an orange
mature, it stay, it staysgreen and bitter. And some of the
losses are ninety percent from some ofthese farms. The one that I read
about was he's sixty percent down,so the prices are going to go up
(27:18):
for availability. He's not going tobe there too. Um, I didn't.
I didn't have the chance to lookinto California production of oranges, but
obviously Florida is by far the biggestproducer statewise, So our orange juice,
Yeah, everything that's going to goup. Yeah, there's no there's no
raw materials. Then are we goingto have enough enough money left over to
buy a new BMW Sedan that Ican just look at me right now?
(27:44):
See him looking to the left?Yep, okay, look wait, I'm
looking at the right right. Youknow it's change length twice without turning a
blinker on. Nope, all youhad to do was look at your passenger
side or driver's side mirror, andit's automatically going to take you into the
lane that you're looking at. Youryour tendens are terrifying. See Okay,
Tyler, I'm glad you said thatbecause I thought to myself, what happens
if I don't know I'm just lookingright because somebody's passing me on the ride
(28:07):
or something. Am I going tocrash into them? There are some safeguards
in there as well, but thisis this is one of those auto driving
things where it establishes the algorithm whenyou're on an open road and it's obvious
that the data coming in is you'reon an open road, you're traveling at
a certain rate of speed, trafficis so light, then these will these
options will happen for you. Thereare some safety guards, but you know
what we said that about Tesla toremember ten when we did this. So
(28:30):
yeah, but it is it's asuper sexy looking car. Yeah, and
now it's a five series Sedan.By the way, if you're looking for
one, and if you're selling yourold five series Edan, call me.
But this looks really cool. SoI think I think it's it's it's where
we're headed. I just don't knowif we're headed there as quickly as people
want it to be safe right exactly? And I know that all the safeguards
(28:52):
are built in now with if youknow, any car pass up, I
don't even know you're twenty twelve,you get that little warning when you want
to change lanes or whatever. Soit's not like the car wouldn't already be
equipped with that probably wouldn't let youif you looked right and it had the
little you know, dope, yeah, change lanes thing, a little symbol,
the red triangle, yes, yeah. And also what if you just
looked at it a little bit longerthan you anticipated too, Like maybe you
(29:15):
really you were checking a blind spot, Yeah, you didn't see it,
and maybe that lingers a little bittoo long. Until I drive one,
I can't really uh sponsors. Yeah, I was just gonna say, I
feel like we should drive one.I feel like this is a road test
study research. Yeah, oh totally, yeah, data gathering right absolutely.
Hi Jim Ryan, good morning.Are you traveling. I'm running, I
(29:38):
know that much, not necessarily traveling. No, I'm I'm gonna sit right
here in Dallas four Worth over theweekend, be ready to go on one
day morning, just like everybody else. Nice. Oh, I hear that
we don't yes in radio. It'sso funny if people ask me like oh,
do you get Christmas off? Doyou get the holidays off? I'm
like, what do you know what? The news must go on kind of
thing, must Chris? What isright exactly? I heard that there's this
(30:02):
jolly guy that comes down and deliverspresent. I don't know what the hell
it is, Jim, So Ifeel like these numbers are I know that
every time we go, oh,look we're nearing pre pandemic levels, and
now we said pandemic. What pandemic? More or less? Yeah, it
seems to be in the review mirrorfor a lot of folks who travel this
Memorial Day weekend, it looks likeit's going to be one of the busiest
(30:22):
in the last twenty years or so, one of the top three busiest,
if that is, if the weathercooperates. And right now there is a
chance of some pretty strong storms rightup the middle of the country, from
the Mexican border up to the Canadianborder, through Texas and Oklahoma up in
dark you know, all over thispart of the country. So that could
throw a wrench into things. Butassuming that everything is stable, that the
(30:45):
weather cooperates for the most part,at least, we should see something like
what forty three million Americans traveling somewherethis holiday. Okay, Now, I
was just talking with your colleague BradGarrett about the security concerns should we have
a default. One of the agenciesthat would be impacted is TSA, which
(31:06):
makes me nervous because I don't knowthat I necessarily always feel like, oh,
yeah, the TSA's got it whenit comes to these giant crowds.
Now, let's reduce the number ofTSA agents. I realized it wouldn't happen
during this particular holiday weekend, butI think that if there are any glitches
that they should just be put inthe back of people's minds, like,
hey, if it sucked this badover a Memorial Day, now, let's
(31:29):
imagine the workforce has been cut.Yeah, you're right. Yeah, And
that could happen after June first,if the US can't reach an agreement,
if congressional and White House negotiators can'tcome up with a plan to raise the
dead ceiling. You're right, thatcould cut into the number of those blue
shirted TSA agents. I noticed afew weeks ago, and I'm trying to
remember where it was, which airport, but there was a huge staff of
(31:52):
TSA agents both at the security checkpointsand then sitting at the desks watching the
whole security operation going on. Sothey seem to be up to staffing at
least. The airlines likewise, haveworked on getting more people in the cockpits
and the passenger cabins. The FAAhas tried to staff up. We're seeing
(32:12):
that the on time averages for theairlines are running better than they were a
few months ago. So things areshaping up to be fairly smooth anyway,
And you know, we'll see whathappens. And obviously Memorial Days a harbinger
for what's going to happen over thesummer. The summer then tells us what
might happen next Christmas. One thingthat I was wondering too was about the
shortage of pilots. We've read alot about that recently. Is that making
(32:37):
any impact on the travel this MemorialDay weekend? Well? Yeah, well,
maybe not in terms of scheduling,but possibly in terms of air Farris
I was talking with a pilot theday. He said that the starting pilot
or pilots who have been in thecockpit for maybe ten years, are making
about six hundred and fifty thousand dollarsa year starting pilots are making you know,
(32:59):
over six figures just getting into thecockpit to start. So yeah,
a staffing up. It's an expensiveproposition in any industry, and especially when
it comes to aviation. Suddenly,I want to be a pilot me too.
Oh my gosh, for that money. Yes, please, Jim,
thank you so much. I appreciateit. And I might talk to you
Monday. We'll see, but havea wonderful weekend. Talked later, all
(33:20):
right, see you later. ABC'sJim Ryan, Jason Middleton. Are you
going anywhere? No, no,no, not this week. No no,
no, no, no no.But air traffic controllers. If you're
looking for work in aviation, theyneed three thousand new hires for air traffic
controllers. I heard that yesterday.Oh that's good to know too. I
know that that's a good gig.Oh yeah, but the stress level,
I don't know if I would wantto be an air traffic controller right because
(33:45):
I think it's long hours. Inthe focus has to be incredible. It
is long hours, but there's lotsof space in between each shift as well,
so you can reboot yourself and getready for the next one. That's
a good point. Unlike the showwhere you get up in the middle of
the night sleep deprived. If it'smore than two hours, it's not an
ap Oh yeah, we're gonna endthe show with that. By the way,
don't you know, ganging up onthe girl, just saying put yourself
(34:07):
in this position? Whatever. Okay, can we talk about this is a
Handle segment, but I want todo it without Handle because I want to
talk about him, and so Idon't want him here so he can defend
himself. Fair enough, Okay,so let's talk about now this sudden obsession
that people have that kind of makesHandle a fashionista, which grosses me out.
(34:28):
However, he goes to freaking Costcoand he buys his new Balance shoes,
and now everybody wants new Balance shoes. It's the hip thing. I
saw it a lot on the sidelinesat NBA games, people with the expensive
seats right on the first row.There weren't some new Balances. Okay,
I'm not saying that it's a badshoe. No new Balance or Brooks or
you know, any of those.If you go into like a Dick's Sporting
(34:51):
Goods or whatever, those seem tobe like the big brands. And you
know what I thought was interesting,I went into Dick's. The reason I
saw this was I went into aDick's to buy some new running shoes and
I got some Brooks, and theBrooks and the New Balance were right up
front. Nike was buried in theback. Oh. And so when I
saw this story last night, Iwent, oh, so people are back
on the New Balance. Was ita hot like a decade ago? Yeah,
(35:14):
I guess it was. But fivepoint three billion dollars in revenue for
New Balance is nothing to sneeze at. No, And it's a kind of
a meteoric rise. And now Idon't know if they're paying for those end
caps to have their retail break,But I don't know because it could just
be demanded. Dix wants to lookcool. Hey, these are in demand,
we have them come on in.Yeah, exactly, and freaking handle
a needle. I thought you weregoing to go to the cargo short story.
(35:37):
But no, no, no,oh no, you guys. Sometimes
it's cargo shorts and mandles, orwhen it's not cargo shorts and mandals,
it's a Costco like button down shortsleeve shirt. Yeah, yeah, cargo
shorts, white ass legs. Well, I mean that dude is translucent.
Oh well he's in radio. Welllet's he's in the studio. Well,
(35:59):
yeah, we can all tan.Well that's true too, okay, and
then bride and appearance. Yes,white socks and sometimes black New Balance shoes.
Bill's not here today, is he? He's a not physically, he's
not listening, I hope, speakingof Bill Costco. Okay, there were
what was it, like a momand a daughter. I think that our
(36:21):
viral right now sampling this four poundmeringuey treat that I guess is all the
rage at Costco. I have nothad it, have you? No?
I have not a lemon meringue cheesecake. This is dance. Four pounds of
cheesecake in one sitting. Nope,that's crazy. I did see another TikTok
lemon thing. It's a lemon meringue. It basically like a shake. I
got four as juiced four lemons andput sweet and condensed milk in the blender,
(36:45):
a little bit of ice, andit was like having a shake that
tastes like a lemon meringue. AndI saw it on the Tickety Talks.
Oh like, Okay, that onesounds good. That all right. So
here's what we're gonna end this showon this morning, because we started on
on this and I said that onFridays, I take a five hour nap
(37:06):
at least, I admit, Itake a sleeping pill, like middle of
the day. It's like eleven.And then I here's my routine. I'm
gonna kill you. Get off theshow, go home. I take a
bath, bubble bath middle of theday while I take the sleeping pill,
(37:27):
and then the dogs and I goin shut all the windows. I think
they know. I think they lookforward to Fridays and we take a nap.
Now, I said it's a fivehour nap. Come on. Tyler
said that's not the case. Jasonagreed with him. Steven agreed with him.
Who's training with Tyler? Here wego. Here is the definition of
(37:52):
sleep from Oxford Dictionary. A conditionof body and mind that typically recurs for
several hours every night, in whichthe eyes are closed, the postural muscles
relaxed, the activity of the brainaltered, and the consciousness of the surroundings
(38:13):
practically suspended. I like the definitionof that. Postural is a good word.
Yeah, I don't use it oftenenough. The definition of nap,
sleep lightly or briefly, especially duringthe day. So you've proven Tyler's point.
(38:34):
Mom Mand, that's what I'm hearing. And I even tweeted this out
Jen not you know I love youand I've got your back, but I
tweeted this out shortly after we talkedabout it at the top of the hour
for five o'clock. Yeah, whatworld do you live in where five hours
is brief? The world where you'vedone mornings for thirty freaking years and got
up in the middle of the night, go on, and this is your
(38:57):
routine. Yeah, I don't say, Hey, everybody, have a great
weekend. I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna go take a sleep.
Yeah, sep, don't if Idon't see tomorrow, you can take your
sleep. And oh do you takea sleep or leader taking your sleep?
Wow? By the way, youfive hours sleep and get you a five
hour energy gens will be good.There are Oh now I'm just going to
(39:20):
tell all my secrets. There areare times that I'll take a sleeping pill.
Take my name, Michelle, napor sleep? No naps. I
don't nap. I never nap.Would you consider five hours a nap?
Five hours in nap. Five hoursis a sleep. Thank you? What
is this gang up on gen day? Put your partial judge black robe and
everything. It looks good, looksgood. This is KAFI and kost HD
(39:45):
too, Los Angeles, Orange County. So cowweather from KFI. We've got
a still gray start to the morning, but we don't have the missed in
drizzle like we had yesterday. Butthese cooler temperatures and partly cloudy conditions will
last throughout the weekend. Hister Todayare just gonna be in the six the
seventies, maybe some very low eightiesinland. We lead local live from the
(40:05):
KFI twenty four hour newsroom. I'mJennifer jones Lee. You've been listening to
your wake Up Call with me,Jennifer jones Lee, and you can always
hear wake Up Call five to sixam Monday through Friday at KFI AM six
forty and anytime on demand on theiHeartRadio app.
Hey, it's Jennifer Jones Lee.You're listening to KFI, a M six
forty wake up call on demand onthe iHeartRadio app. She likes to call
it Friday. Here's Jennifer Jones Leewith your Thursday morning wake up call.
(00:20):
Maybe I'll change it. What doyou know, mister announcer guy, Maybe
I'm going to change it to Idon't have to get up in the middle
of the night eve, or Itake a five hour nap on Friday's Eve.
(00:42):
That's true, by the way,I don't know if you know anybody
else who in the middle of theday on a Friday takes the sleeping pill.
This guy does. You can't callthat a nap though? Why five
hour nap? Why nap? IfI'm napping, there's I think there's a
breaking point to when a nap becomesa sleep, and I'm pretty sure it
(01:06):
happens right around like the two hourmark. So every day I sleep,
because I sleep for like three tofour hours during the day, is a
full on sleep. Jin I thinkwe're going to debate this. Oh no,
I'm going to Miriam Webster's dictionary this, you know what, lay it
on thick. Then we might haveto urban dictionary. Oh what a nap
(01:27):
is? That's dangerous territory, that'sfun territory. Come on now, hello
everybody. It is a Thursday,Friday eve. Still cloudy out there,
But did you notice, just likeI said yesterday, much less drizzle out
there. I think one time mywindshield wipers whoop and that was it.
So it looks like that's going tobe the pattern though as we go into
(01:49):
the weekend. This may gray gonnastay with us through Memorial Day, but
the mist and drizzle will be gone. However, the National Weather Service says,
don't get too cozy, people,because heat waves are coming this summer.
More issues on Metro this time.Police in la are trying to find
a guy who stabbed a metrobus driverin Woodland Hills. And there's a school
(02:13):
that has come up with a threeyear program in southern California at three of
its middle schools to tackle what it'sseeing in a spike of mental health issues
following COVID nineteen. Also coming up, we've got the debt ceiling talk,
but we're gonna look at it froma couple of different angles that actually matter
to you. I'm like you,my eyes glaze over sometimes when we talk
(02:37):
about the debt ceiling, I'm like, Oh, I don't know what that
means or how it pertains to me. It does, though, and it
could impact your personal finances, andat twenty Brad Garrett's going to explain how
it might impact your security. That'sall coming up, So let's start with
some of these stories coming out ofthe KFI twenty four hour newsroom. LA
(02:58):
police are trying to find a guywho's stabbed a metro bus driver in Woodland
Hills. This suspect may be anywherein either the San Fernando Valley are nearby
areas, and that suspect may alsostill be writing either MTA buses are on
public transportation. It's comforting. LAPDDeputy Chief Alan Hamilton says the bus was
(03:19):
on Too Panca Canyon at Irwin lastnight when the guy got into a fight
with the driver. The altercation startedon the bus and then went onto the
street here on the sidewalk now.The stabbed bus driver was taken to the
hospital. He's in critical condition.Police say the stabber is about twenty one
years old, six feet tall,has blonde, curly hair. You can
(03:39):
see a photo of the guy onour website at KFI AM six forty dot
com. Slash Suspect and Blake Trolleyis following the story this morning, so
as new developments come, you'll hearthem live here on KFI. A judges
denied a request by the City ofla for the return of photos of LAPD
officers released to an active The cityclaims the LAPD inadvertently handed over some pictures
(04:02):
of undercover officers, but a judgeruled yesterday the city didn't make a good
argument for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalitionto return the photos. This is the
second time in a month the judgesruled against the city in the case.
The judge also told attorneys for thecity that they did not clearly define an
officer in an undercover capacity. InMarch, more than nine thousand photos of
officers were handed over to the coalitionas part of a public record's lawsuit.
(04:23):
At least three hundred officers have filedto claim against the city, alleging their
identities and safety were compromised. SteveGregory Kofine News Cash bail has been banned
for many arrests made by the LaCounty Sheriff's Department and the LAPD. A
judge issued a sixty day injunction barringthe departments from using bail on lower level
offenses. Adriana Molina, who ownsa clothing store in Altadena, says she
(04:46):
thinks criminals will become even more emboldenedby the ruling. She says she had
to move a clothing rack inside herstore when she was in Pasadena because of
theft. Something that's good for usfor marketing. We we had to switch.
A judge ordered the LAPD and Sheriff'sDepartment to come up with a what
they call pre court system. Theruling was in a lawsuit claiming cash bail
(05:10):
is unfair to lower income people.Caleb Silver, editor in chief of investopedia
dot com, ABC News contributor,Good morning, good morning, Good to
be with you, Nice to bewith you two. And I know what
I'm going to just be honest withyou, Caleb. I know that this
is your thing. And I actuallywent to school to be an accountant.
I'm not joking me an accountant thatwould have gone far. I love numbers,
(05:31):
actually love math, but when itcomes to looking at the debt ceiling
talks and a possible default I admitthere's some glazing over that happens. However
I shouldn't because I guess this couldbe personal to all of us. Yeah.
Absolutely. Let's start with the verypractical things that could happen if the
debt ceiling isn't raised or extended,or there's some negotiation to do it later.
(05:55):
That could mean the missing or delayingof Social Security payments and Medicare payments.
A lot of Americans depend on those. If the government runs out of
money, it may have to pushthose up. It eventually makes good on
those, but for folks living ona fixed income depending on that Social Security
check every month, it may getdelayed. You may miss a month,
so you have to prepare for that. Then there's the further tightening of lending
that's already happening in the banking system. Because of all those bank failures,
(06:18):
banks are going to be more reluctantto lend, and so a tightening of
lending is going to hurt folks thatare counting on borrowing money from the bank
to buy a house, start asmall business, pay their payroll, etc.
And then the worst case scenario isa potential credit down grade of US
government debt the US government treasury bond. The tenure is the most widely held
asset on the planet. We lenda lot of those out, a lot
(06:40):
of countries, a lot of biginstitutional investors buy those. If we get
a credit downgrade like we almost hadback in twenty eleven, that is going
to cause mayhem in the stock marketand in the bond market, and everyone's
going to feel that, Okay,And I think that it's obvious in this
study. I know that you're citingby morning, consoled about Yeah. I
mean, very few of us actuallythink about the debt ceiling as impactful as
(07:03):
you just pointed out it was.And in fact, I think that when
we hear default, we think,well, that's their problem. We don't
consider it our problem. Right,But it's one of those things that everyone's
going to feel. It has thereverberations through the financial system, and it
really starts again with those delaying ofpayments. You know, the government is
taking what Janet Yelling, the TreasurySecretary says, extraordinary measures, moving money
(07:26):
from account to account to try tomake sure we can pay the minimum of
our bills. But once we getto that June first or now, she's
saying potentially June fifteenth deadline. Thatmeans a lot of Again, those government
offices may shut down. You mayget the delaying of some of these payments
to millions of Americans that depend onthem. You may get the closing of
national parks, the furloughing of governmentemployees. None of that is very good,
and it causes us psychological cloud overthe markets and over US households because
(07:51):
we can't pay our bills and itstarts to bleed through the financial system.
Everyone's going to feel it all theway down the line. Absolutely. And
retirement account I never even thought aboutthose being impacted. Yeah, absolutely,
And the government does fund a lotof government employee retirement accounts, and so
far that might they have been ableto make those payments, but that could
(08:11):
be the first step the Treasury Secretaryhas to do is not fund the government
retirement accounts or delay the funding ofthose retirement accounts. Again, not going
to impact folks right away, butit will eventually. Now, usually when
this happens, and it's happened seventyeight times, we come up against the
debt ceiling and it's raised every singletime. The government makes good on those
back payments. But it's not funfor people who are depending on a monthly
(08:31):
payment, who are on a fixedincome to not get their check because politicians
in Washington, DC can't sort thisout, you know. And that I
think is the thing that frustrates mostpeople, is this political fighting, this
partisan fighting. Sometimes it feels likethey care a whole lot more about making
sure their side wins than they actuallydo about their constituents and what this kicking
(08:52):
the can down the road sort ofdoes to all of us. Caleb,
I I wish you were in thetalks with McCarthy and Biden. I do
too, but they took off forthe weekend, so they started their vacation
earlier. The rest of us aregoing to keep working because that's what we
gotta do. Isn't that nice vacationingwhen we have a debt ceiling and a
default lingering out there, possible creditdowngrade. Perfect time to go to the
(09:13):
beach. Yeah, thanks so much, but you all have a good holiday
and the rest of us are goingto sit here and worry about what happens
if we can't pare about exactly.Caleb, thank you, as always.
I appreciate it. Thank you.Yeah, that's investorpda dot COM's editor in
chief, Caleb silver Am, Ithe only one who gets peeved. Oh,
(09:37):
I'm must have a slip there whenyou hear holy canoli. People might
not get paid, People might notget their Social Security checks. And the
reason that the Social Security checks andthe Medicaid checks Medicare check checks particularly are
(09:58):
make me nervous is because usually peoplewho are getting those are on a fixed
income. Not to say that anyemployee who doesn't get paid is not going
to feel the impact of that.I remember when you know, the government
would come close to a shutdown ordid shut down a couple of times.
Not the same as a default likethis one. But I remember when you
know, my ex when he wouldhe worked for FEMA or does and we
(10:22):
wouldn't get paid. And that wasokay because we had two incomes and you
know, we were budgeting and thatkind of thing. But what if you
didn't. What if you were afamily where dad worked and mom stayed home
and you literally have one income andright now, with interest rates the way
they are, that a ton ofpeople are living paycheck to paycheck, and
(10:43):
so because of that, that's whereyou see this trickle down so hey,
guys, maybe don't go on vacation. Maybe work something out so that you
don't put the rest of the countryin a pick. That's just thinking out
loud. What evigil has been heldin Texas to mark one year since the
(11:15):
mass shooting at an elementary school inUvaldi. Nineteen kids and two teachers were
killed in that shooting at rob ElementarySchool. President Biden used the anniversary to
push Congress to pass an assault weaponsban. They've been used time and again
and mass killings of innocent children ofpeople. We need to ban high capacity
magazines, ability to shoot twenty thirty, forty fifty sixty were bullets without reloading.
(11:39):
Biden also wants universal background checks.Long Beach is pushing for a twenty
five thousand dollar reward for information onthe fatal shooting of a twelve year old
boy. Eric Brown, was shotand killed on May ninth while walking with
friends, but no arrests have beenmade. Long Beach City councilwoman Suey sorrow
says the reward is a way ofasking the public for help. It's something
(12:00):
our community has advocated for with thefamily and as a council, as a
city. We wholeheartedly support making surethat we catch this person, sorrow says.
The council unanimously voted in favor ofthe reward Tuesday, but it still
needs to be approved by the LaCounty Board of Supervisors. Chris Adler KAFIE
(12:20):
News. Cash bail has been bannedfor many arrests made by the La County
Sheriff's Department, and LAPD judge issueda sixty day injunction barring the departments from
using bail on lower level offenses.Also, we're going to be following the
story this morning of police in LAtrying to find a guy who stabbed a
metro bus driver in Woodland Hills.That driver is now in critical condition.
(12:41):
Let's say good morning now to ABC'scrime and Terrorism analyst Brad Garrett. Brad,
good morning, And I've kind ofbeen focusing on the impact a debt
ceiling default could have. First,we talked with Caleb Silver about how personally
it impacts us, because I knowa lot of us are like, uh,
whatever that's on, that we don'tthink about the trickle down and when
it actually comes to our wallets.And I had not even thought about the
(13:07):
impact on public safety that a defaultmight have So think about it this way.
The House fast To bill that Idon't think would ever have a chance
of passing into the Senate, butthat bill cuts seventeen billion dollars at a
federal law enforcement, the federal courtsystem, and the prison system. If
(13:28):
you think about that, that gettrickled down where the FBI would have to
potentially lay off eleven thousand people.I goes through ATFDA, every agency you
can think of, tsa twelve thousandpotential of folks they might have to lay
off, and the day to dayfunction even at the local city and county
(13:52):
law enforcement level, Jennifer, becausethe federal government through grants provides them with
a lot of money for training forhigher additional police officers. All of that
under some of these budget reviews andperhaps our bills, and perhaps even what
could happen if we do default wherethe money is not there, You know,
(14:16):
some of these programs and people maystart to disappear, and the law
enforcement doesn't function on While I canhave ten people today and three tomorrow,
it just doesn't work that way.And so I see some significant problems when
it comes obviously to morale, butmaintaining a level of folks that you need
(14:37):
in various departments and agencies, andlong term will people even want to come
work for them anymore if the governmentbecomes a place that people don't see as
stable. Right, I was thinkingthat exact same thing. Why would you
want to work for one of theseif you know that you know every year
or whatever, you might get hamstrungby partisan politics going through the one thing
(14:58):
to two of the agencies that youtalked about, so TSA and CBP at
a time when border protection is inevery headline that you see in every newspaper
across the country, and then alsoTSA. If you start pulling people out
of the TSA for somebody who's likeI don't really care about any of those
other agencies, you might want totravel this summer, and if there aren't
(15:22):
enough TSA agents, that is goingto impact your life. I mean,
I get why Congress and the Americanpeople want to reduce the amount of debt
we have, but you have tobe careful how you do it. I'm
not suggesting that agencies don't need totrim their budgets in certain places, but
(15:43):
you can't use a blant force approachto it to deal with that, and
that's apparently what I see in Congress, or at least in the House attempting
to do at this point. Andrelationships when it comes to Billy the case
where you've got informants overseas, you'vegot analysts here that are experts at a
(16:04):
certain part of the world that you'redealing with some really bad people. If
those people aren't there or there aren'tpeople as qualified to be in those positions,
you start losing intelligence, you startlosing timely events of potentially stopping somebody.
I mean, it has a tremendousripple effect that the public would never
(16:26):
see until an event actually happened.All right, Brad, thank you for
bringing up that side of it aswell. It just we you know,
I think sometimes that we see thingsin Congress happen and we feel like,
oh, we're not going to payattention to that because we don't have skin
in the game. Unfortunately, inall aspects of our lives, we do
have skin in the game when itcomes to a potential default. Brad,
(16:48):
Thank you so much, so welcometo take care of See you later.
ABC's Crime and Terrorism analyst Brad Garrettsee Freaking Summer Travel which is supposed to
be bigger than you know, thesize of Texas or something. And now
we could possibly have TSA layoffs ifwe default. We are living in strange
(17:15):
times, my friends. Speaking oftravel By the way, at five fifty,
we're going to talk with ABC's JimRyan and wait till you hear the
numbers COVID what wait? Oh,we had a pandemic? When did that
happen? That's kind of the mindsetthat it seems travelers are in right now.
(17:36):
But we'll get into it in aminute. I just saw this story
came across from ABC seven this morning. There is a Starbucks store in Studio
City that has removed customers seating.So you can waltz on into this Starbucks
store and you can still get yourcoffee. However, the seating is gone
(17:57):
because of what it calls safe concerns. I guess. There's a sign on
the door of the store. Thisis the one on Ventura and Vineland,
and it says that the removal ofthe seating is temporary. And it isn't
clear what actually prompted them to dothis. I don't know if there was
a specific incident or whatever. Butremember six other Starbucks locations across Southern across
(18:23):
across southern California closed last year becauseof crime, vandalism, and vagrancy.
So you have to wonder, mightthey say, Okay, we're not going
to close our stores, but it'sgonna be a grab and go kind of
thing you come in. Remember theyclosed that Starbucks right near the Pantageous Theater.
(18:47):
Is that Let's see, it wason the corner right near right.
But there's a Yes, there's likea good Will right there, I think
too across the street maybe, Ithink, yeah, But they closed it
because there was just it was toocongested. They were they were having a
lot of transience kind of linger thereand there was a lot of violence.
So yeah, it seems to bea trend for people to congregate around Starbucks
(19:11):
areas, which obviously the more peoplethat are there, the likelihood of violence
and problems just go up. Sowell, So I Jason Middleton is in
here by the way, jump oninto this little conversation if you wants.
So, I M let's see you. What was it nineteen No, it
was two thousand and two ish.I worked at Starbucks, so it was
(19:34):
after I got my first job inthe Bay area, and I was working
mornings in San Jose for a SanFrancisco state for a KGO where Jason and
I worked together. And I wasin our South Bay office and I knew
no one, I didn't like.Oh, I was bored whatever. And
I was sitting in a Starbucks oneday and they put a help wanted sign
in the window and I looked atthe woman who put it up there,
and I go, oh my gosh, I'll totally work. Here was down
(19:56):
the street from the cop shop.It was down the street from the ward
house, the whole nine yards,and I thought, yeah, this is
great. I'm gonna see every coupand attorney and judge and whatever that comes
in, and maybe they'll give thelittle barista a little tip here and there.
S from NBC when I was workingat NBC. Yes, that's right,
okay, so that when I wasworking at That's the reason I bring
(20:17):
it up. One of the thingsthat I always found bizarre that was the
Starbucks in the downtown portion of SanJose, which at that time had the
highest population of homeless people. ThatStarbucks let anybody into the bathroom. The
homeless would go in there and washThey would literally take baths in the sink
(20:41):
and walk out wet, and theycould bring a cup, so they would
go to the trash can outside theStarbucks, get a cup that somebody else
had used, come in and geta coffee refo. I think was like
ten cents. Yeah, yeah,I'm not I'm not judging. That's just
actual fact. However, it madea giant impact on the clientele in that
(21:04):
at that Starbucks. People were sayingthey didn't feel safe. People were just
saying the amenities there, you can'tuse the bathroom. Yeah, it was
gross. I mean, you know, and as an employee, I would
have to go in there, andI remember washing a wall one time and
thinking to myself, we have aproblem here. So I feel like Starbucks,
(21:25):
Yes, maybe all of this iscoming to a head, but I
feel I think I've been watching thisfor two decades. It seems that Starbucks
let something happen in their stores.Maybe they could have just put a keypad
on the door or something like that. They did add one at that one,
for sure. I know that theydid good. Yeah, I know.
The one near me where I livenow has a keypad as well,
(21:47):
and they rotated out and a lotof people come in expecting to be able
to go to do their ablutions inthe morning, and they can't because they
don't know the code because they changedthe code, yes, or they don't
remember it. Yes, Yeah,that's right. They kind of pulled this
house of cards on themselves. Andyes, that's how I feel. I
feel like you should have seen thiscoming Starbucks. I was complaining about it
(22:07):
twenty years ago. Okay, I'llget off my soapbox. Let's talk about
now this outlook on retirement. Ithink a lot of us are nervous right
now because we're watching interest rates goup. Sure, things are more expensive
all of a sudden, we're havingto dip into maybe our eras or our
you know whatever, sure to helpus get money. Right now, banks
(22:27):
are tightening who they're lending to.So our look at retirement maybe not even
as bad right now, but wehave our head in the sand. Well
it's down ten percent from ten yearsago. And so it was fifty three
percent of people thought they would beable to retire relatively comfortably, not like
living high or anything like that,but just like living comfortably, not having
(22:47):
to worry every month to pay thebills and meet to meet what they need
as far as their budget goes,right, So that's down ten percent.
What stuck it out to me wasthis forty three percent that right now say
that they might be able to retire. Is this is before the debt ceiling
and default debate started politically, soyou could understand how those head wins would
probably if this poll had been takenin May, then I can see how
(23:11):
that would be an impact and people'sthinking and doing the math and the calculus
for moving forward. But since itcame in April and earlier April, before
this all started, that stood outa lot. And the ten percent drop
is equal to what it was underGeorge W. Bush as well as under
President Biden. And that goes tostewardship of the economy. The only one
(23:33):
third of Americans think that both ofthose presidents then and now have the capacity
to guide the economy through regulation andother policies. So if it's ten percent,
and this was taken in April,and I know it was talking with
Caleb Silver from Investopedia earlier, hestarted talking about the impact on retirement accounts.
(23:55):
I'm gonna venture to save in that, I bet it's higher than ten
percent. Now if people were askedabout their retirement. Acco have to agree,
because look, inflation at the levelthat it is right now is basically
a pay cut, right, trivingto pay more for everything else. And
you your wages didn't go up quiteas much as as you would have hoped,
let's say. But then then youhave the Fed doing the interest rate
(24:15):
thing too, and that's a creditsqueeze that's happening. But the banks that
you mentioned, so all those thingscoming together really is going to slow down
the pace of retirement or the planningout a little bit farther. Luckily,
the eighteen to twenty nine's right nowsay that they are more confident than usual
when it comes to their retirement accounts, but they haven't been through these kind
of situations whereas older Americans have,right exactly. Oh, speaking of things
(24:38):
that have already happened and are happeningagain, meta with another round of layoffs,
I feel like this number that wekeep getting from Zuckerberg gets a little
bit higher and a little bit higher. And oh, that was the last
round of layoffs. Here's a newone. Twenty one thousand people since November
have been laid off. This isgood and bad in a way. It's
(24:59):
never good lose a job because youcould lose a work visa, you might
have benefits, concerns and things likethat. So this is it. So
this round was announced as the beginningof the year, the Year of Efficiency
from Zuck and ten ten thousand peoplein November, and then he realized,
hey, things are moving, Okay, maybe I can cut more, and
so he has. So. Butremember during the pandemic, the tech companies,
specifically, a lot of empty calorieswere taken on. Okay, they're
(25:23):
they're a little bit, a littlebit big around the middle, and so
this is this is a trim down. So if business wise this makes sense,
people wise, not necessarily. Andalso he's having to pivot away from
his metaverse focus so much because thatis a money suck, and he's had
to move some other to some otherprojects that may have been lower down on
a priority list and raising them up. He said in his earnings call that
(25:45):
he's finding more efficiencies than he anticipatedand in retrospect, he probably should have
made this move earlier. Okay,but then does that mean if he's finding
efficiencies, then we won't see anymore layoff? That's what they say.
They say that they're steady and forthe rest of this year at least and
probably into next year as well.But they're also making their own chips like
Apple was doing, and making theirown supercomputers like like Microsoft, and that
(26:10):
might be able to give them amoat and some kind of insurance that they'll
be able to keep their revenue streamsgoing because they have their own computers,
not relying on a vendor. Okay, that's pretty awesome. I went to
Florida for the first time. I'llknow, I guess second. Anyway,
it doesn't matter. We're Starbucks atthe time, not that smartassum so I
promise you I've never had I know, this is dumb. A better orange
(26:34):
in my life than I was onin Treasure Island, Florida. And there
was some little like dinky stand youknow that. It was like, yeah,
we're in Florida, we better getan orange. Yeah, I'll be
damned, best freaking orange I've everhad. I'm glad you had that memory
because we're not going to have thosefor a while. Thank you for that
worst orange production crop since the thirties. That's not okay, No, A
(26:56):
couple of hurricanes happened to twenty twentytwo, which does help infrastructure for sure.
But then they have this citrus greeningdisease that basically doesn't let an orange
mature, it stay, it staysgreen and bitter. And some of the
losses are ninety percent from some ofthese farms. The one that I read
about was he's sixty percent down,so the prices are going to go up
(27:18):
for availability. He's not going tobe there too. Um, I didn't.
I didn't have the chance to lookinto California production of oranges, but
obviously Florida is by far the biggestproducer statewise, So our orange juice,
Yeah, everything that's going to goup. Yeah, there's no there's no
raw materials. Then are we goingto have enough enough money left over to
buy a new BMW Sedan that Ican just look at me right now?
(27:44):
See him looking to the left?Yep, okay, look wait, I'm
looking at the right right. Youknow it's change length twice without turning a
blinker on. Nope, all youhad to do was look at your passenger
side or driver's side mirror, andit's automatically going to take you into the
lane that you're looking at. Youryour tendens are terrifying. See Okay,
Tyler, I'm glad you said thatbecause I thought to myself, what happens
if I don't know I'm just lookingright because somebody's passing me on the ride
(28:07):
or something. Am I going tocrash into them? There are some safeguards
in there as well, but thisis this is one of those auto driving
things where it establishes the algorithm whenyou're on an open road and it's obvious
that the data coming in is you'reon an open road, you're traveling at
a certain rate of speed, trafficis so light, then these will these
options will happen for you. Thereare some safety guards, but you know
what we said that about Tesla toremember ten when we did this. So
(28:30):
yeah, but it is it's asuper sexy looking car. Yeah, and
now it's a five series Sedan.By the way, if you're looking for
one, and if you're selling yourold five series Edan, call me.
But this looks really cool. SoI think I think it's it's it's where
we're headed. I just don't knowif we're headed there as quickly as people
want it to be safe right exactly? And I know that all the safeguards
(28:52):
are built in now with if youknow, any car pass up, I
don't even know you're twenty twelve,you get that little warning when you want
to change lanes or whatever. Soit's not like the car wouldn't already be
equipped with that probably wouldn't let youif you looked right and it had the
little you know, dope, yeah, change lanes thing, a little symbol,
the red triangle, yes, yeah. And also what if you just
looked at it a little bit longerthan you anticipated too, Like maybe you
(29:15):
really you were checking a blind spot, Yeah, you didn't see it,
and maybe that lingers a little bittoo long. Until I drive one,
I can't really uh sponsors. Yeah, I was just gonna say, I
feel like we should drive one.I feel like this is a road test
study research. Yeah, oh totally, yeah, data gathering right absolutely.
Hi Jim Ryan, good morning.Are you traveling. I'm running, I
(29:38):
know that much, not necessarily traveling. No, I'm I'm gonna sit right
here in Dallas four Worth over theweekend, be ready to go on one
day morning, just like everybody else. Nice. Oh, I hear that
we don't yes in radio. It'sso funny if people ask me like oh,
do you get Christmas off? Doyou get the holidays off? I'm
like, what do you know what? The news must go on kind of
thing, must Chris? What isright exactly? I heard that there's this
(30:02):
jolly guy that comes down and deliverspresent. I don't know what the hell
it is, Jim, So Ifeel like these numbers are I know that
every time we go, oh,look we're nearing pre pandemic levels, and
now we said pandemic. What pandemic? More or less? Yeah, it
seems to be in the review mirrorfor a lot of folks who travel this
Memorial Day weekend, it looks likeit's going to be one of the busiest
(30:22):
in the last twenty years or so, one of the top three busiest,
if that is, if the weathercooperates. And right now there is a
chance of some pretty strong storms rightup the middle of the country, from
the Mexican border up to the Canadianborder, through Texas and Oklahoma up in
dark you know, all over thispart of the country. So that could
throw a wrench into things. Butassuming that everything is stable, that the
(30:45):
weather cooperates for the most part,at least, we should see something like
what forty three million Americans traveling somewherethis holiday. Okay, Now, I
was just talking with your colleague BradGarrett about the security concerns should we have
a default. One of the agenciesthat would be impacted is TSA, which
(31:06):
makes me nervous because I don't knowthat I necessarily always feel like, oh,
yeah, the TSA's got it whenit comes to these giant crowds.
Now, let's reduce the number ofTSA agents. I realized it wouldn't happen
during this particular holiday weekend, butI think that if there are any glitches
that they should just be put inthe back of people's minds, like,
hey, if it sucked this badover a Memorial Day, now, let's
(31:29):
imagine the workforce has been cut.Yeah, you're right. Yeah, And
that could happen after June first,if the US can't reach an agreement,
if congressional and White House negotiators can'tcome up with a plan to raise the
dead ceiling. You're right, thatcould cut into the number of those blue
shirted TSA agents. I noticed afew weeks ago, and I'm trying to
remember where it was, which airport, but there was a huge staff of
(31:52):
TSA agents both at the security checkpointsand then sitting at the desks watching the
whole security operation going on. Sothey seem to be up to staffing at
least. The airlines likewise, haveworked on getting more people in the cockpits
and the passenger cabins. The FAAhas tried to staff up. We're seeing
(32:12):
that the on time averages for theairlines are running better than they were a
few months ago. So things areshaping up to be fairly smooth anyway,
And you know, we'll see whathappens. And obviously Memorial Days a harbinger
for what's going to happen over thesummer. The summer then tells us what
might happen next Christmas. One thingthat I was wondering too was about the
shortage of pilots. We've read alot about that recently. Is that making
(32:37):
any impact on the travel this MemorialDay weekend? Well? Yeah, well,
maybe not in terms of scheduling,but possibly in terms of air Farris
I was talking with a pilot theday. He said that the starting pilot
or pilots who have been in thecockpit for maybe ten years, are making
about six hundred and fifty thousand dollarsa year starting pilots are making you know,
(32:59):
over six figures just getting into thecockpit to start. So yeah,
a staffing up. It's an expensiveproposition in any industry, and especially when
it comes to aviation. Suddenly,I want to be a pilot me too.
Oh my gosh, for that money. Yes, please, Jim,
thank you so much. I appreciateit. And I might talk to you
Monday. We'll see, but havea wonderful weekend. Talked later, all
(33:20):
right, see you later. ABC'sJim Ryan, Jason Middleton. Are you
going anywhere? No, no,no, not this week. No no,
no, no, no no.But air traffic controllers. If you're
looking for work in aviation, theyneed three thousand new hires for air traffic
controllers. I heard that yesterday.Oh that's good to know too. I
know that that's a good gig.Oh yeah, but the stress level,
I don't know if I would wantto be an air traffic controller right because
(33:45):
I think it's long hours. Inthe focus has to be incredible. It
is long hours, but there's lotsof space in between each shift as well,
so you can reboot yourself and getready for the next one. That's
a good point. Unlike the showwhere you get up in the middle of
the night sleep deprived. If it'smore than two hours, it's not an
ap Oh yeah, we're gonna endthe show with that. By the way,
don't you know, ganging up onthe girl, just saying put yourself
(34:07):
in this position? Whatever. Okay, can we talk about this is a
Handle segment, but I want todo it without Handle because I want to
talk about him, and so Idon't want him here so he can defend
himself. Fair enough, Okay,so let's talk about now this sudden obsession
that people have that kind of makesHandle a fashionista, which grosses me out.
(34:28):
However, he goes to freaking Costcoand he buys his new Balance shoes,
and now everybody wants new Balance shoes. It's the hip thing. I
saw it a lot on the sidelinesat NBA games, people with the expensive
seats right on the first row.There weren't some new Balances. Okay,
I'm not saying that it's a badshoe. No new Balance or Brooks or
you know, any of those.If you go into like a Dick's Sporting
(34:51):
Goods or whatever, those seem tobe like the big brands. And you
know what I thought was interesting,I went into Dick's. The reason I
saw this was I went into aDick's to buy some new running shoes and
I got some Brooks, and theBrooks and the New Balance were right up
front. Nike was buried in theback. Oh. And so when I
saw this story last night, Iwent, oh, so people are back
on the New Balance. Was ita hot like a decade ago? Yeah,
(35:14):
I guess it was. But fivepoint three billion dollars in revenue for
New Balance is nothing to sneeze at. No, And it's a kind of
a meteoric rise. And now Idon't know if they're paying for those end
caps to have their retail break,But I don't know because it could just
be demanded. Dix wants to lookcool. Hey, these are in demand,
we have them come on in.Yeah, exactly, and freaking handle
a needle. I thought you weregoing to go to the cargo short story.
(35:37):
But no, no, no,oh no, you guys. Sometimes
it's cargo shorts and mandles, orwhen it's not cargo shorts and mandals,
it's a Costco like button down shortsleeve shirt. Yeah, yeah, cargo
shorts, white ass legs. Well, I mean that dude is translucent.
Oh well he's in radio. Welllet's he's in the studio. Well,
(35:59):
yeah, we can all tan.Well that's true too, okay, and
then bride and appearance. Yes,white socks and sometimes black New Balance shoes.
Bill's not here today, is he? He's a not physically, he's
not listening, I hope, speakingof Bill Costco. Okay, there were
what was it, like a momand a daughter. I think that our
(36:21):
viral right now sampling this four poundmeringuey treat that I guess is all the
rage at Costco. I have nothad it, have you? No?
I have not a lemon meringue cheesecake. This is dance. Four pounds of
cheesecake in one sitting. Nope,that's crazy. I did see another TikTok
lemon thing. It's a lemon meringue. It basically like a shake. I
got four as juiced four lemons andput sweet and condensed milk in the blender,
(36:45):
a little bit of ice, andit was like having a shake that
tastes like a lemon meringue. AndI saw it on the Tickety Talks.
Oh like, Okay, that onesounds good. That all right. So
here's what we're gonna end this showon this morning, because we started on
on this and I said that onFridays, I take a five hour nap
(37:06):
at least, I admit, Itake a sleeping pill, like middle of
the day. It's like eleven.And then I here's my routine. I'm
gonna kill you. Get off theshow, go home. I take a
bath, bubble bath middle of theday while I take the sleeping pill,
(37:27):
and then the dogs and I goin shut all the windows. I think
they know. I think they lookforward to Fridays and we take a nap.
Now, I said it's a fivehour nap. Come on. Tyler
said that's not the case. Jasonagreed with him. Steven agreed with him.
Who's training with Tyler? Here wego. Here is the definition of
(37:52):
sleep from Oxford Dictionary. A conditionof body and mind that typically recurs for
several hours every night, in whichthe eyes are closed, the postural muscles
relaxed, the activity of the brainaltered, and the consciousness of the surroundings
(38:13):
practically suspended. I like the definitionof that. Postural is a good word.
Yeah, I don't use it oftenenough. The definition of nap,
sleep lightly or briefly, especially duringthe day. So you've proven Tyler's point.
(38:34):
Mom Mand, that's what I'm hearing. And I even tweeted this out
Jen not you know I love youand I've got your back, but I
tweeted this out shortly after we talkedabout it at the top of the hour
for five o'clock. Yeah, whatworld do you live in where five hours
is brief? The world where you'vedone mornings for thirty freaking years and got
up in the middle of the night, go on, and this is your
(38:57):
routine. Yeah, I don't say, Hey, everybody, have a great
weekend. I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna go take a sleep.
Yeah, sep, don't if Idon't see tomorrow, you can take your
sleep. And oh do you takea sleep or leader taking your sleep?
Wow? By the way, youfive hours sleep and get you a five
hour energy gens will be good.There are Oh now I'm just going to
(39:20):
tell all my secrets. There areare times that I'll take a sleeping pill.
Take my name, Michelle, napor sleep? No naps. I
don't nap. I never nap.Would you consider five hours a nap?
Five hours in nap. Five hoursis a sleep. Thank you? What
is this gang up on gen day? Put your partial judge black robe and
everything. It looks good, looksgood. This is KAFI and kost HD
(39:45):
too, Los Angeles, Orange County. So cowweather from KFI. We've got
a still gray start to the morning, but we don't have the missed in
drizzle like we had yesterday. Butthese cooler temperatures and partly cloudy conditions will
last throughout the weekend. Hister Todayare just gonna be in the six the
seventies, maybe some very low eightiesinland. We lead local live from the
(40:05):
KFI twenty four hour newsroom. I'mJennifer jones Lee. You've been listening to
your wake Up Call with me,Jennifer jones Lee, and you can always
hear wake Up Call five to sixam Monday through Friday at KFI AM six
forty and anytime on demand on theiHeartRadio app.
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