AM Show Hr 3 | Economics 101

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load until
Michael Very Show is on the air.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And now a totally random week in review from the past.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Take a guess when this was, Think of all the
people you're better. Then that's how you feel better about yourself.
You should try that sometime. People who are unhappy will
tell you you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed
to be You're supposed to cry for everybody and emode
and empathize and all that. That's a recipe for need
and counseling.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
Well.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Hurricane Barrel is just days away from hitting the Texas
coast and state officials are gearing up for any impacts.

Speaker 5 (00:49):
Hurricane Barrel made landfall in Texas this morning after strengthening overnight.
Now this is now a dangerous Category one storm with
torrential rain and sustained wins up to eight miles an hour.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Barrel left millions of people without power. I used to
think that our people were tough, and you would see
it after these storms. I think our people were.

Speaker 6 (01:08):
Tough because of these sorts.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I think that you grow the way coal miners grow tough.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
The spirit of a people is developed and refined as
a result of having to pick up the pieces from
moments like this, homeless Victor, how are you.

Speaker 7 (01:24):
Oh bo I me? Or Bill? We went through the
John bulls, We went through the Okay bulls.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Victor. We had a tree over one hundred feet tall
fall and hit the car pork in the garage. How
on earth does it not pick your tent up with
you in it and fling you forty miles down?

Speaker 7 (01:44):
I'm serious, I have no idea. I let him glating
God and lia Bill pull do it both times.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Big Democratic donor George Clooney, of course, the actor has
just called for President Biden to step aside.

Speaker 5 (01:56):
George Clooney was.

Speaker 8 (01:57):
One of those celebrities that headline and a major Los
Angeles fundraiser with President Biden back in June, and today
he is saying that he believes it is time for
President Biden to step aside.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
So if Clooney says not only is he not going
to support him, but he's not going to give him money,
that sounds to me like Biden's got to step down.
Because George Clooney runs things, because he is a man
of great discernment, he would know take me, take me

(02:40):
hold to HOLLI take me, take me, Well, that one
much liked the Trump getting shot in the head audio

(03:05):
will be something a number of you will nail. Because
Hurricane Beryl has just hit and that sent a lot
of you like me into documentation mode of roofs collapsing
and windows being shattered and things like that. That particular Friday,

(03:32):
so you got to think a few days after the
storm hit was July twelfth? What date did Barrel hit?
You remember? Ramone and I had gone over to Michael Sambrooks,
who owns what oh that was the Dracho? We went there.
You're right, you know what, You're right. That wasn't Barrel.

(03:52):
That wasn't Barrel. July eighth was Beryl? Okay, when was
the d Racho? I never her a direct before that.
Drachel had you the du Racho was May sixteenth, So
Ramona and I had left the studio and gone over
to try the pit room on iten. Michael Sambrooks had

(04:17):
opened a second location of the pit Room. His first
one was in Montrose at Richmond and block or two
west of Montrose Boulevard on Richmond on the corner, let's
say it's Yoakum might be Yoakum actually one of those
streets right there, and he's won all sorts of awards
as part of this big resurgence of kind of high

(04:41):
end barbecue. I hesitate to send anybody there because a
lot of our listeners had been buying barbecue at the
old fashioned rural barbecue prices, and then Texas Monthly says, oh,
pit room is great, and they go in and it's
thirty bucks ap and I get hate email. Well, just

(05:01):
don't try it. I mean, that's part of the whole
trendy mendy thing, you know, when these things become trendy.
That's what it is is people who live inside the
loop and have a lot of money like to go
do rednecky things and feel real rednecky about it, but

(05:23):
spend a bunch of money on it, so it's not
barbecue like you make in your backyard. Anyway. Michael's our
friend who used to work for Levi Good. He's had
a lot of success, he's he's got multiple restaurants now,
and he met us over at the Pitroom on Ien West,
which is set back. It's just west of Memorial City,

(05:47):
Mall wester might be, might be east of Morris, it's
right there. It's no you know what, it's east because
if you're ien westbound, you exit ten at the Beltway,
you curl back around and you head in and it's
set back right there on the right. Anyway, he hadn't

(06:09):
been opened that long. The day we went. We didn't
know that De Racho was coming because we didn't pay
attention to it. And his brother, who was the head
football coach at Huffman or Shenandore or one of those schools,
was there with us. He's a big boy too, they're
both big boys. And all of a sudden, this huge

(06:34):
wind comes and knocks a bunch of stuff. He's got
these transom windows bow. I mean, it sound like a
gunshot go off. And then the power went out, and
he goes, hey, I hope you guys are willing to
settle in for a little while. I don't think y'all
should be driving. And my immediate thought was, if the

(06:57):
power's out while we still have eye, get the beer
and get it on ice. We're gonna be here for
a while because Ramone's driving. So dutifully he did, and
we moved to the interior of the of the restaurant
because the exterior of the restaurant was all glass, and
some of those windows ended up getting getting shattered while

(07:17):
we were there, but we had cold beer on ice.
Everything was fine anyway. So if you guessed July twelfth
right there, you did well.

Speaker 7 (07:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
The other thing is there was a reference there homeless
Victor was on that week. I believe that's the last
we've heard of homeless Victor. I got an email from
a listener yesterday, Hey is homeless Victor? Okay? Can you
check on him? And so I called his number. It
goes straight to voicemail, and I sent him a text,

(07:47):
but he's not always real good about the text. I
hope he's okay. But remember we talked. You know what happened.
We talked to him because he was in his tent
down by the by you when the dracho goes right
over him. Can you imagine how that wind would have
been howling and you're out there just probably clinging to

(08:09):
a tree. You got your mangy dog with you, because
that's a required accoutrement of every homeless person. But he
and that other guy, David, who he was trying to
get into a center. David's the marine, remember, and I
think David's got gangreen on his leg and one of
his eyes is hanging out and you know to hear
Homeless Victory teller, he's not. But anyway, if Homeless Victory

(08:32):
is out there and he could give us a call,
seven one three nine nine nine one thousand, I hope
he's okay. We'd like to know. Seven one three nine
nine nine one thousand. I got a message from uh
doctor Bowden, Mary Tally Boden, Mary Tyler Bell. I can't
remember that at Breathe MD, and she said, be mindful

(08:53):
if you need your prescriptions over the break, I'm calling
them in for my patients. Call our office and I'll
take care of it for you. Let's good reasoning of
the It's easy to forget how big Cyndi Lauper was
for a minute there. If you want a real good

(09:16):
time capsule screenshot of a moment in time, go back
and watch that We Are the World video and you
will look at people in there and go, why's that
guy in there? And it's because at that moment, that

(09:38):
guy had the number one song on the charts. Surprisingly, so,
the FED is expected this week to deliver for the
third time in a row. An interest rate cut and
then it is being predicted and Jerome Power is giving

(10:01):
indications to this effect that that will be that they
will either slow down the rate cuts or stop them
altogether for a little while. And I know you know
this already, but a quick review of how this works.
Inflation is a one hundred percent governmental issue. Individuals do

(10:28):
not contribute to inflation. It's important to understand what inflation is.
And if you really want a good primer on inflation,
the all time expert is Milton Friedman, and you can
go to YouTube or wherever you go for videos and

(10:52):
put in Milton Friedman inflation and he will explain it
as well as I've ever seen explained, patiently, methodically, thoroughly.
Inflation occurs when the money being injected into the economy

(11:14):
that is printed exceeds the current supply to the point
that you create more money, then you have products at
that price. So what that means is if we all,
if you took a snapshot right now, and everybody had

(11:34):
one hundred dollars in their pocket, and all of a sudden,
the government pumped out one hundred dollars for half of us.
So the let's say ramone got the hundred dollars. Because
he's Hispanic, he'd probably get it and I wouldn't. So
he and I go to the grocery store. We go

(11:55):
to the baker, and the baker was selling a Bogett
two dollars. It was a bogat cost. Do you know
I like a Boget. So the baker's been selling a
Bogett for two dollars when we all had one hundred dollars.
That's about where the market had established itself. Because remember
the marketplace sets price. Price is how buyers and sellers communicate.

(12:19):
When people say, I can't believe they're selling that car
for one hundred thousand dollars, it's not worth it. It
is worth it. Do you know how we know it's
worth it? Because somebody bought it for that it's not
worth it to you. It is not required that anything
be of universal value to everyone at that price, only

(12:42):
that one person is willing to pay. That's how we communicate.
So when we walk into a store, if the Bogatt
is four dollars and we go not gonna pay that,
I will turn and walk out. If everybody turns in
walks out, they're stuck with bread. That goes bad, so

(13:03):
they go, all right, three dollars still too much. When
it settles at a price, let's say two dollars, they
know that's the price you're willing to pay, the maximum
price you're willing to pay. And you know that's the
maximum price. That's the lowest they're willing to go because

(13:24):
enough people are willing to buy it. Now, many times
we have to pay more for something than we would
like to pay for it, because if other people are
paying that for it, that is what the established market is.
And you either pay the established market or you don't participate.
You don't get to set prices. You only get to

(13:46):
communicate I'm a buyer or I'm not at that price.
If enough people join you in that and you walk away,
they got to sell that. And bread's a great example.
I just lucked into it because bread goes back, so
they got to establish that market quickly. But so ramone
has another one hundred in his pocket. So now he

(14:07):
has two hundred dollars and I only have one hundred
dollars because the government gave him one hundred dollars. They
printed more money. So when he walks in, there are
a limited number of bogettes. He's now willing to pay
more than two dollars because there's only one bogette left.
They sell out every day. They got to sell their inventory.
And he says, hey, guys, I'll give you three dollars

(14:30):
for that boget and I go, oh, well, I can't
pay three dollars. Well, there's two of us competing for
the bogette, so one of us is going to get
the bogette. Who should make the decision as to who
gets the bogette? Not the government? The individual price is communication.

(14:52):
When ramone says I will pay three dollars for the boggette,
I didn't know I was gonna have to say bogettes,
So damn Menytimes. I would have picked some else. And
I say, well, I'm only willing to pay two dollars,
and they sell it to him.

Speaker 6 (15:05):
For three dollars.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
We've now established a market. Well that was the last
one on this day. So the next day they say, hey,
we had a buyer willing to pay three dollars for
the first time for a bucket. Let's price it today
at three dollars. So they do, and if people come in,

(15:26):
all those people with the extra hundred dollars in their pocket.
They go, damn, y'all went up on price. Yeah, we
sold out yesterday. Well I'll get no one wants to
pay more. But because they have more money, they pay
more money. Well, me, the guy that doesn't get the
extra hundred, my one hundred dollars is now worth It

(15:48):
is now not worth as much as it was yesterday
because now Ramon has two hundred and I only have
one hundred. Because that extra money was injected into the economy,
my one hundred dollars reduced in value because prices increased.
And when prices increase without my income increasing, my buying

(16:13):
power reduces. And this is where you see a lowering
of the standard of living. Anyone who doesn't get that cash,
however it's distributed now all of a sudden, is worth
less money. So now you start seeing situations where people
are looking at their investments or they're looking at their cash,

(16:33):
particularly people that hold cash. Cash is king. You always
hear that the problem is if my cash isn't growing
and prices are increasing, my cash is actually worth less now.
So the FED comes in when inflation heats up too
much and says we've got to pull some cash out

(16:54):
of the market. How do we do that? Well, one
of the ways cash is in acted into the market
is I go borrow money or Ramone goes and borrows money,
and when interest rates are low, we borrow a lot
of money. And interest rates had gotten insanely low. They
were down at two percent. I got a two percent
interest rate on my house. That's crazy. Historically, that amount

(17:16):
of money encourages people to take on a lot of debt. Well,
when you take on a lot of debt and put
that money into the economy to buy houses, to buy cars,
to do to buy clothes, to take vacations. When you
do that and inject all that money into the economy,
you increase inflation. And the only way to pull back
is reduce the supply of money, which is increased interest rates. Well,

(17:39):
that causes a slow down. To Michael Berry Show, Simple Man,
the Robber Rights are just the Two of Us by

(18:00):
Grover Washington Jr. This song makes number one of the
best sax solos that also has a steel drum solo
or vice versa. I think this is a great song
to revisit in your courtyard over a cigar and a
two finger poor. I like the way the female background
singers enunciate the sound in US. These are two classy

(18:25):
ladies in sparkling white dinner party dress, heels, hair pinned
up with small black verses. Also, they don't name folks
Grover anymore. I think Sesame Street ruined that trend. And
we look for love no time.

Speaker 6 (18:44):
For ten we did.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Water Yeah, go back, rewind to the.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Building in the sky, kind of sultry, sultry, hissor God.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
And just got an email that we have added a
station in Kerrville, Texas, the Hill Country Patriot one O
four point three FM, one O two point one FM
and ninety two point three HD two reminds me of
our late friend Kinky Friedman, who ran for mayor of Kerrville,

(19:35):
and he would begin his speeches my fellow Kerverts. He
also promised, as your first Jewish mayor, I will reduce
the speed limit to fifty four point ninety nine. He
had a lot of other good, good lines. Those of
you who've been with us for a while when we
were on KPRC nine to fifty am, well remember that

(19:57):
for a couple of years there, about five six, we
used to have Kinky on for an entire hour every
Friday morning. I think it was nine to ten. Is
that what our errow was that he would come on
with and we had so much fun with that. Brian writes, Zara,
this is homeless Brian in the Spring Walmart parking lot.

(20:20):
Hope you remember me. I'm actually your number one homeless fan, Sir.
I told him not until we find out if Homeless
Victor is still alive. He's our number one for now.
Chris writes, regarding the one hundred dollars burger you mentioned,
there's a gal on YouTube who's a professional pilot. She
does videos of her flights in her personal aircraft, and

(20:42):
she has mentioned the one hundred dollars burger before. She's
done such trips around Texas. She's based out of Houston
and she flies a Piper Seneca two, a twin engined aircraft.
Her name is Kay Hall, and she's a typical Texas girl,
twenty five, cute, and a very competent pilot, which you
see the first time you watch one of her videos.

(21:04):
You can see her YouTube videos under the Moniker fly
with k There you go, Sandy writes. On December one,
seven year old Ivory Smith was killed when a drunk
driver slammed into the car driven by her mother. To
be fair, the drunk driver did stop after the accident

(21:27):
to take pictures. Turns out the drunk driver was an
illegal alien from Venezuela who had just gotten out of
jail for battery of a family member. Ice had put
a detainer on his ass for that, but the judge
reduced the charge to a misdemeanor and time served, so

(21:48):
sheriff Ed Gonzalez let him out of jail without informing Ice,
something old Ed's been doing since twenty seventeen, and yet
he still wins reelection. How many more babies have to
die because of this? Pos Amen to that, I think
Ivory Smith was a little girls in the back seat
of her mom's car while her mom was working traffic

(22:11):
on extra job. Drake writes Zar. I'm a commissioned security
guard near NRG Stadium. On Friday afternoon, I suspect while
I was at lunch, my catalytic converter was stolen. And
it's not the first theft that has happened in that
parking lot, nor will it be the last. People think
that we go too hard on criminals, but those same

(22:33):
people don't take into account how hard it is on
us regular citizens when crime happens to us. I am
now stuck having to figure out how to pay for
an expensive car repair bill when I don't have the money.
Keep up the good work, thanks for all you do.
Your friendly neighborhood security guard Drake and Joe writes, you

(22:54):
were talking about Rush earlier. I found him sometime around
eighty nine, being a talk radio junkie. I think he
was on KSV. Almost had to be in the parking
lot to hear the signal. Listened all the way up
to the end. Best friend. I never met Alvin Van
Black on nine point fifty in the morning, Paul Harvey
at noon, and some guy named David Fowler in the afternoon.

(23:17):
I don't know you know, Dave David Fowler. I never
heard that us. That's a new one.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
Tom.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
You're on the Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 7 (23:25):
Go ahead, good morning, Michael. I just caught you talking
to one of the listeners there, you know about He
was talking about that song, just the two of us,
and I wanted to pass on. I probably should have
done this, gotten a hold of you earlier and stuff,
but we were fortunate to attend a real neat concert

(23:47):
last night out at Collin Hall and uh Herbalpert.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Perform and the Tiajuana Brass.

Speaker 7 (23:55):
No, it was just he and his wife Laney Hall
think is her name?

Speaker 5 (24:01):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (24:02):
How cool it was. He's got to be one hundred
years old.

Speaker 7 (24:06):
It's unreal. He's going to be ninety in March.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Okay, well close enough, you know, Yeah, that it I got.

Speaker 7 (24:15):
It was nostalgic.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Wow, how cool is that? And that was at Colin Hall.
You know, the thing about living in a big city.
I used to say this when we had the RCC.
When you live in a small town, you don't have
forty things going on every weekend. So you know, if
herb Albert is coming to town in Houston on any

(24:40):
given weekend, we would have Jamie Johnson or Willie Nelson
and people would find out and they're like, oh, well,
we're going to this, this, and this already. And the
good news is there's a lot going on. The bummer
is you can't possibly keep up with all the things

(25:01):
that are happening, and if you're trying to program. You know,
when we paid when we hired Willie, it was one
hundred and fifteen thousand plus. There was a h I
think ten or fifteen thousand dollars bonus if he sold
out and you have to pay him that bonus. You
don't any think and you know you're you're programming, like
you want to make sure nothing else is going on
in this town. No chance enjoy it. Who looks at

(25:32):
you the way I do.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
When you small a gain?

Speaker 3 (25:42):
No Herb in the tia one brass. Okay, you know
people will remember him. He's born in thirty five. People
remember him from the sixties, but you know it was
maybe late eighties, early nineties. He created a song for

(26:04):
Janet Jackson that was her comeback Herb Albert. Yes, you
know the story. I forget what the song was. I
think it was that stupid one where she's dressed like
a stormtrooper, remember, and she's punching everything that's not it.
I'm pretty sure that's it. I think Michael was involved

(26:27):
in it one way or another. But that was kind
of her comeback and she credits herbut Albert with a P,
not a B. It's easy to mess up. Yeah, anyway,
I would have liked to have met him. I wonder
I would love to see what his song list was.
I bet he did some cool covers and then all
of his stuff. When I was running for city council,

(26:48):
I set out to go visit every living city councilman,
current and past, in every living former man, and I
think I got to almost every one of them, and
by far the most fascinating was bobblin Air. And he

(27:12):
was living at the Huntingdon at the time. And you
would get on the elevator, which which is this, Which
is this elegant old high rise over on Kirby just
north of West Timer And you've driven by it one
hundred times and didn't know. No, it's not north, Maybe
it's south of West Timer. It's in between West Timer

(27:34):
and West Alabama, close to Breathe, MD. And when you
got off the elevator, you had to get the guard
to get you in the elevator. When you got off
the elevator, you were in his suite. So he had
the whole floor and it was the coolest thing. And
there he was in his in his sweater. And this

(27:55):
was this would have been ninety nine, So it's two
years before the election where I'm running and I'm lining
up Sport. We go in and we start and he
sits across from me on the on the in his chair,
big chair and big desk in his all wood study,
and he asked me why I'm running. And he starts

(28:16):
asking me details about city finances and all these things,
and he was shocked. He said, you know, nobody reads
the budget, watches the municipal channel and knows what all.
And I said, well, I'm very serious about this. And
he liked that, and he liked it a lot. And
then at some point he said, here, come on, come on,

(28:36):
come around here. He was he was quite old at
the time, and come on, run, come on around there,
the desk over, come, come over here, come on here,
just just dandstand right here. He tapped on the page
and he had the current city budget compared to his
city budget. And this is when that dumb ass lead
Brown was there. Look look at look at it right

(28:58):
Look what's that to you right now?

Speaker 7 (29:00):
What I Dearren?

Speaker 3 (29:01):
And he kind of exhaled as he spoke, and he
spoke kind of soft and in jerky fashion, and I'm
told I do a good late Bob Lanier. And it
was that the budget was out of control. They were
spending money on stuff that shouldn't be spending money on
and he sent me on my way, and he walked
me to the elevator. And as I got on the elevator,

(29:24):
I always asked two things with three things, Can I
get your support?

Speaker 7 (29:32):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Can I put that in writing? Hey, this person has
supported me in number three? Can you give me somebody
to go talk to that I couldn't get to otherwise,
Jack Trotter or you know, Gordon Bethune, somebody big, and
they would always do it well. For whatever reason, I
chickened out and didn't ask him to support me. And

(29:55):
I got to the elevator and I'm feeling like such
a chicken. And the elevator opens and I stepped onto
the elevator and he put he's a big man's about
six four or sixty five, and he puts his arm
ound and even at an older age, he's still a
big man. Puts his arm out to hold the elevator,

(30:16):
and he said.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
You can tell people I support you. You can tell
people you can put in riding. And I just melted,
Oh my god, Bob, Bob Lanier. And he's two years
out of being the mayor, and this is gonna be huge.
So my elevator ride down three or four or five,
whatever it was. And later Elise Lanier, his wife, would

(30:43):
tell me, you know, Bob just loved you. He just
loved you, and it I mean stuff like that, Jack Blanton,
there were a lot of people that didn't have to
support me.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
That did that made a world of difference to my life.
We tracked down the two officers. If you've been listening
to the show, if you haven't, there was a guy
who called in to start the show and lives out
in Huffman and his son called him on Saturday morning,
seven o'clock and said, hey, I just got a call

(31:13):
from HPD that my business card was found in your truck.
They called the business card and said your truck is stolen,
and he said, is your truck? He looked out the
window and he goes, it's not here. It hadn't even
been reported stolen yet. So we endeavored to persevere to

(31:34):
find the HPDA officers who caught the turd in this
stolen truck. And he got his truck back in perfect condition.
And it's Officer Rivera and Officer Warez. It's Benito Warez.
And I don't know what Rivera's name. I think Benito

(31:55):
Warez was the first Governor General of Galveston. I'm not
positive on that, and now he's at HPD. Yeah, No,
I don't think it's the same one. But somewhere out
there I'm going to see. I'm gonna ask Big City Wings, Gringo's,
tex Max, and Federal American Grill if they will each

(32:17):
give me a gift card. They're probably not allowed to
accept a freebie from us, so I'm not officially going
to give him a gift card, but I'm going to
give them each a gift card. And I think I
hope somewhere out there their mother, father, brother, sister, husband,
their wives, they're both male or one of their buddy.

(32:38):
We got a lot, lot lot of cop listeners. So
if you know Benito Warrez, I don't have Rivera's first
name yet, but that's pretty good policing right there. Now.
They didn't pull the guy over because they knew his
truck was stolen. They pulled the turd over for probably
shooting in somebody's window or drive by or whatever. And
they ran the plates and they're like, you ain't John Smith,

(33:01):
Uh Demarius, Uh you might. Yeah, we're gonna have to
hold you. And I bet this truck is stolen, and
it was. How would you like that you wake up
in the morning, Hey, we've recovered your stolen truck. My
truck's and I sep oh wow, I'm gonna call Michael
Barry on that one. Yeah, how about that? John Plaster

(33:26):
was the guy who had his truck stolen. Anyway, how
are you gonna slug today's show? What would you say?
Today's show was about ramon about three hours. Kay good
Coll