Recap of the Debate & SF->L.A. Rail Plan

ICYMI: Chris Merrill fills in for Mo’Kelly, noting the irony of Fox News leading the 
viewership for a CNN debate and its election impact. He discusses the dubious $30 
billion high-speed rail plan between San Francisco and LA and whether Caltrans is 
liable for pothole damage.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
KM I am six forty. You'relistening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand
on the iHeartRadio app for Moke Kelly, and you can listen to anytime on
demand of the iHeartRadio App. Letme tell you how much I love radio.
I just love it. I'm giddy. I've been doing this for twenty

(00:20):
four plus years. I started Januaryof two thousand, so it made it
easy to remember it's my first timeon the radio. So I've been doing
this for almost a quarter century now. I still get all excited when I
hear somebody say Chris Merrill is comingup next. I heard Tim Conway Junior
say that. God, I getexcited about that stuff. Is that geeky?
Do you think that they do that? I mean, do you think

(00:41):
that Jake Tapper gets excited when WolfordBrimley, I mean Wolf Splitzer says that
Jake Tapper is next. I justget excited about it. No, I
got excited when he said Chris Merrill, yeah a little bit. I love
you best. That is excellent.Let's see the headline I've got here on
my show notes for this segment iscalled Mark Love's Political Talk. So,

(01:04):
oh, we're having some technical difficultiesright now. Oh yeah, nobody can
hear you. Chris. I'm sorry, we're gonna have to come back to
you. I know how it's Friday. I'm sorry. I loved it.
I know how much you loved goingthrough all of the debate stuff last night.
I know you were just giddy withit. Did you see that the
did you see what the viewership wasfor the debate of the actual numbers?

(01:27):
Let's see, I did when Iwoke up today, But it wasn't what
like forty million? Yeah, fortyeight you're pretty close. Yeah, okay,
all right, that surprised me.According to preliminary ratings from Nielsen,
it was forty seven point nine million, and they said it significantly down from
previous debates. We were sort ofbeing sold that this was going to be

(01:49):
the debate to end all debates.I mean, we thought this was going
to be The Springer Show, andif it was anything less than the Springer
Show, we'd be disappointed. AndI mean it wasn't the Springer Show.
It was memorable. I think that'sfair to say it was memorable. Here's
one thing that I think is reallyinteresting and may give pause to network sponsoring
the debate in the future, orat least sharing it in the future.

(02:13):
So the number one network for viewingthe debate that was sponsored by CNN,
called the CNN Presidential Debate number onenetwork Fox News. Fox News won in
the debate ratings over the network thatwas hosting. Hmm, yeah, I

(02:35):
thought that was remarkable. Well,I'd say they were performing a public service,
but it really didn't turn out thatway. No, no, And
for CNN, I know't the thelicensing didn't come through until last week.
They were still haggling with the differentnetworks about how it was going to be
done. And that's why everybody hadto brand it as the CNN Presidential Debate.

(02:57):
And you you know, you couldn'tsay this is our debate. You
couldn't say it was the president.You had to say the CNN Presidential Debate,
just like you have to say it'sat Staples Center or I guess not
Staple Center, whatever. You getmy point, right, You have to
set you have to give the brandname and or whatever the stadium name is.
That's how you're supposed to say thingsnow, And of course I screw

(03:19):
it up in my example. Istarted thinking more and more about that number
the total viewership forty seven point ninemillion. As far as people under the
age of thirty four, fewer thanfour million people watched. Eighteen to thirty
four year olds. The number wasjust shy of four million, and none
of them had any friends none.How many of those were watching it with

(03:46):
parents. I think, excuse me, gen Z lives at home at a
higher rate. More than fifty percentof gen Z lives at home. I
think it's about fifty seven percent ofmales and fifty five percent of females live
at home. Now. Granted,gen Z is age twelve to twenty seven,
but the ones twelve to eighteen ornot, that doesn't account for fifty

(04:10):
percent of that generation. So many, many, many men, many many
gen zs are living at home.I have a gen Z living at home.
He did not watch the debate.He didn't watch it, and I
said, what do you think ofit? I don't know. I was
watching YouTube, just completely disinterested.I don't think that it's gen Z doesn't

(04:30):
care. I think that's sort ofthat age group is not as engaged in
what's going on politically than older agegroups. I don't think that's unusual at
all. That said, there maybe a bit of an overreaction by those
of us in news media when youbreak these numbers down, A lot of
people are talking about Biden's performance andoh, it was bad. In fact,

(04:55):
I had a buddy of mine hesaid that Biden looked and sounded awful.
Trump seemed measured for Trump. Healso told me I took notes.
This is never have a conversation withme. I'm taking notes on what you
say. I do the same thing, do you. Yeah. He said
it's early and none of it isgoing to matter in a week. And

(05:16):
I thought that was really interesting,especially when the number is forty eight million.
I mean, you think about asuper Bowl. You're talking one hundred
to one hundred and ten hundred andfifteen million people watching. Those of us
in news media tend to believe thatthis is like, this is our super
Bowl. We hear it newsrooms,Oh, we gotta get ready for this.

(05:38):
This is our super Bowl. Imean, this wasn't even the AFC
championship game. This was like awild card. It's not the super Bowl.
And I think that newsrooms tend toget a news boner for this stuff.
Really, there you go about eightypercent of that nation didn't see any
of it. They're just hearing aboutit. We have what three hundred and

(06:00):
forty million people living in the country, Roughly I fewer than fifty million watched.
I mean, we didn't even hittwenty percent watching it. So I
don't know how much of a longterm impact this is going to have.
I really don't. As and asmuch as the wonks were really focused on
this, I'm left wondering how muchof an impact this will actually have on,

(06:27):
first of all, the November election, but certainly how much of an
impact is it going to have onthe how much of an impact is it
going to have on the new polling. You're definitely onto something something. Oh
no, no, no, Well, there's the beginning of an evening of
technical difficulties which we no, no, no, We're good. Okay,

(06:49):
we're good. Okay, let's justpick up where we left off. Should
I share those numbers that we weretalking about off the air? Yeah?
Please. I read about a seaand post debate poll that said over eighty
percent of respondence said the debate wasgoing to have no effect whatsoever on their
vote. But there's more CNN theyadmitted that their poll was kind of Republican

(07:10):
skewing. They said the number thatwould change their vote was five percent,
and that five percent was smaller thanthe margin of error, which is five
point five percent. So when yousay there was an overreaction, I think
you're dead on. Yeah, okay, let me play Devil's advocate for the
sake of what I do for aliving. Of course. Uh, we're

(07:33):
talking about basically a flat pole,right, You're within the margin of air?
Yeah, utterly meanis. But alsothis race has been pulling consistently within
five percentage points, so we reallyare talking about the margins here. And
honest to god, I know italways it's so cliche, but every vote

(07:53):
counts really does as much as everbefore, and way too early polls aren't
always accurate, all the other stuff. You can talk about, margins of
air, all those things. Basicallyit's still a coin flip, is my
takeaway from all of this. Well, you can't trust pulls that much either,
And I know we have to goin a second, but you got
to remember the way they conduct polls. A lot of them they call people

(08:16):
on landlines who still has landlines,and who will answer the phone for a
stranger, and who will stay onthe phone for a polster. That makes
a difference in these poles. Yeah, weirdos well, generally older people and
older people who tend to swing alittle to the right. Thing I worry
about is engagement. Political scientists usedto say, you go, you know,

(08:41):
if you're in a primary, yougo to the left or you go
to the right, and then ifyou get through the primary for the general,
you come to the middle. Thatused to be the thinking. Now
the thinking is you get through theprimary and then you try to make sure
that all of your voters show up. That's the political science right now,
get your voters to show up andare are they engaged? And that remains

(09:05):
to be seen. I don't know. This is where I think it may
have hurt Biden the most is engagement. And then he comes out today looking
like a totally different person. Ifthe guy that was, if the guy
that was campaigning today had shown uplast night, we would't even be having
this conversation. Well a big fundraisinghall today as well. So I don't
think you could chalk it up asa complete loss for Biden at all.

(09:26):
Though no very interesting. Okay,there is a major project going on in
California I still say we're never goingto see it finished. You're listening to
Later with Moe Kelly on Demand fromKFI AM six forty. I've told this
story numerous times in case you haven'theard it before. Let me recap briefly,

(09:48):
and that is that I came toCalifornia in twenty twelve, and at
that time I learned about a highspeed rail project that was set to begin.
High speed rail project was going togo oh all the way eventually from
San Diego up to the North Bayarea, and it was going to hit
speeds at two hundred miles an hour, was going to fly and the voter

(10:11):
said, listen, we'll give youeight billion dollars to get going on this
project to I think the total projectcost was supposed to be somewhere in the
twenty billion dollar range. That wasin I think two thousand and eight.
I got here in twenty twelve,and shortly after I arrived, we had
word that, uh, oh,that price is going to come in high

(10:33):
and they said, oh, itcould be upwards of fifty billion dollars.
I said, oh, you watchhow this goes. I'm a real cynical
guy when it comes to government spending. I said, no way, is
this fifty billion dollars. No way, They've already gone from twenty some odd
billion total. They only have eightbillion to build it. Now they're things

(10:56):
going to be fifty billion dollars.This sucker is going to be over on
hundred billion. You watch, thisthing is going to be more than one
hundred billion dollars by the time it'sdone. I was wrong because we're already
over one hundred billion dollars in theestimate and we are not even close.
Nope, price tag for the portionof the project that they expect. Let

(11:20):
me see which part of this Ithink this is the middle section or something
of the sort. The initial fromPalmdale to Burbank I believe was supposed to
be something like twenty million dollars twentytwo million dollars billion. Excuse me,
we're not even close. Nope,already skyrocketing prices. But you're supposed to

(11:45):
feel relieved now. Because one ofthe hang ups that stops a lot of
construction in California is the environmental clearances. The proposed total system is considered to
be among most the most challenging tobuild. This from Katla because it requires
boring out some of the longest tunnelsever constructed through some of the most mountainous

(12:07):
terrain along the entire system. Theroute approved Thursday, which was the preferred
option by the authority, features thirtymiles of tunnels, twenty eight of which
are going to go through mountains.Thirty eight miles segment runs along Highway fourteen,
separated from vehicle traffic. It's goingto be used exclusively for high speed
rail. And this part was supposedto be twenty two billion dollars. Now

(12:28):
they say, well, inflation,it's up to twenty eight twenty nine billion.
This whole thing's going to be wellover. I don't think I don't
think I'm stretching too much by sayingthis is going to be at least one
hundred and fifty billion dollars. I'lljust throw another fifty bill on it.
Why not. But the news isthat don't worry, everything is on track.

(12:50):
Get it, Robin. You wantto go ahead and play audio clip
one there. It gives us alittle bit of the background of what's going
on. California is ambitious project tobuild a high speed rail line between Los
Angeles and San Francisco has cleared amajor hurdle. The California High Speed Rail
Authority has received complete environmental approval forthe last remaining link awaiting approval in the

(13:11):
rail the route between Palmdale and Burbank. Officials say that will be the most
challenging stretch of the railway because itwill feature some of the longest tunnels ever
constructed. The price tag for thatalone will be twenty two point five billion
dollars. Yeah, and then adjustedup closer to thirty billion dollars because that

(13:31):
was the original estimate. Oh yeah, wait, you know flation and whatnot.
Yeah, well, it happened.This sucker is not getting built.
If it does, I don't knowthat you or I will ever be able
to use. I'm such a cynic, I really am. I get I'm
a cynic about government spending on acynic about the rail projects. The rail

(13:52):
project that will get done is theLa to Vegas project that's happened that I
have full faith and confident it's goingto happen. But this one giant boondoggle,
and it sounds great, Oh mygoodness. You could just ride the
rail at two hundred miles an hour. And a lot of people don't like
the rail. They said, well, yeah, but I can jump on

(14:13):
a plane and it goes faster thanthat, and nah, I get it.
You don't want to keep running planesback and forth and that's not very
environmentally friendly. In all those otherarguments, my issue here is just the
incredible cost the delays. What dothey like to say in construction on time
and under budget. This isn't goingto be either. This is not going
to be either on time or underbudget. Speaking of transit saw a story

(14:39):
today that the register head there,the OC Register, and people are going,
hey, man, I hit oneof your nasty potholes and it messed
up my car. So they didone of those Q and as they said,
I was traveling north in the slowlane. The six oh five talks
about where it is I blew atire. Truck in front of me had

(15:01):
blown a tire. I filed aclaim with Caltrans for the damage to my
car one six hundred and fifty twodollars ninety four cents. I got a
letter from cal Trans denying my claim, saying Caltrans cannot be held liable for
damages without prior notice of a dangerouscondition and sufficient time to have taken measures
to protect against dangerous conditions. Soare they going to pay? Probably not.

(15:31):
I mean, yeah, you couldkeep fighting for it. The thing
is and the answer from the registeredgreat answer, by the way, for
the register, they go, well, look, people have tried this before.
Here's what you would have to do. You have to through a public
records request asking for documents saying whenthat pothole was first discovered. How they
responded, How much time is necessary? Did they know about the problem?

(15:54):
And they say so, you don'thave to bounce around the internet. You
can get a link and they sendthe file and all this stuff. And
I thought, my god, whata pain. Call your insurance company file
the claim, because it is goingto take you, honest to god,
if you even get cal trance tofinally say okay without having to file some

(16:15):
sort of a lawsuit, probably twoto three years. So kiss that money
goobut it's a rite off at thispoint. And don't think government doesn't know
what they're doing, just like anyinsurance company knows. Health insurance company they're
like, what watch this, We'regoing to deny the claim and just see
if the patient pays it. Anyway, same thing, same thing, they

(16:38):
just deny whenever somebody. Whenever somebodysends a bill to government, first thing
they just deny, unless of courseit's one of their contractors or even somebody
they think might be a contract andthen they pay it out with that without
asking questions. But if it's you, the taxpayer, can I get rid
of it? Unbelievable. California isdoing as much as I'm going to bag

(17:02):
on our transit. They are doingsomething that I think is so smart and
something that the rest of the countryneeds to pay very close attention to.
I don't know anybody left right,middle in different Green Party. I don't
care. If you're an alien,you can't disagree. You're listening to Later
with Moe Kelly on demand from KFIAM six forty Again. I want to

(17:26):
thank everybody that's been a part ofit. Mark obviously, you know I
love you, buddy. It's justfrolling past, yeah, I know.
Foosh all week long has been aspectacular Tawalla who finally got a night off
and deserves it to Walla Sharp andMatthew helping out today. Matthew, what
a great, great introduction your firsttime I worked with you. You're impressive
of my friend, very impressive.So Thanks everybody, it's been a part

(17:48):
of this. There is something Californiais up to that the rest of the
country should pay very close attention to. Listen, country, follow what we're
doing. We got this, that'sright. This is not a right wing
left wing kind of thing. Thisis just a smart thing. Is there
a smart wing left in politics?You got right wing, you got left
wing. I want the smart wing. Here's what you have to do.

(18:12):
If you are in school in Californiaand you are set to graduate anytime after
twenty thirty one, right, yougraduate twenty thirty one or later, you
are going to have to complete acourse in pocket book economics. What the

(18:33):
hell is that you say? I'mglad you asked. That includes avoiding scams,
managing credit cards, balancing a checkbooklike it's nineteen seventy five or something.
In order to graduate, you haveto be able to show that you
have those skills. Can I avoidscams? Can I manage a credit card?
Can I balance a checkbook? Basicfinancial literacy? I love it.

(19:00):
There are some people who are criticizingthe bill, and why would they be
doing that? Well, because theyput more onerous demands on charter schools.
School districts and charter schools have tooffer a standalone one semester course in personal
finance. Oh, I'm sorry,other school district publics do. Okay,

(19:22):
So public school districts and charter schooldistricts have to offer a standalone one semester
course in personal finance to meet thatrequirement. The class cannot be combined with
any other course. When I wasin high school, we had two options.
They don't call it this anymore.You could take homeack. They don't
have homech anymore, they don't callit that, and you we could take

(19:47):
economics. So I took an ineconomics course HOMEAC. As we know,
it was a little bit like here'show to bake a cake. It was
very nineteen fifties with the bieber ofstuff. Here's how you do laundry,
Here's how you bake a cake.Here's how you arrange a silverware drawer,
you know that kind of thing.I didn't take that course. That was
an elective. I skipped that one. Economics was an elective. I took

(20:12):
that one. That one was morealong the lines of the basics of how
the stock market works. Right,what are some of the terms when it
comes to economics, you know,high school, top level stuff, simple
stuff. This would have previously beensimply a chapter in the economics course.

(20:33):
Now it expands out to an entiresemester personal finance. I love it.
I love it. We are seeingright now deck climbing to levels personal deck
climbing to levels that are nearly unheardof. I don't want to be all
superlatives like somebody that we saw onstage last night. I don't want to

(20:55):
say we've never seen it before,but the number of people who are taking
out loans against loans is outrageous.In fact, I don't want to jump
the gun here, I do wantto talk a little bit about housing.
I'm going to do that in amoment. But a number of people are

(21:17):
finding that the homes. If you'rea homeowner, you have more equity now
than you ever dreamed because of howmuch homes have skyrocketed and value. I
mean, it's like being in themid two thousands all over again, right,
which is a little scary because weremember what happened to mid two thousands,
although we didn't have the housing shortagethat we have now, which may
help to keep things elevated. Butit's entirely possible. If you bought a

(21:41):
house in twenty eleven or twenty twelve, that not only did you get an
interest rate that was below four percent, you also got a house for say
four hundred thousand dollars that's now worthnine hundred thousand to a millionllion dollars.
So you have a ton of equityin your home. What's happening, however,

(22:07):
is that people are taking out loansagainst their equity. Part of that
is lifestyle. Part of that isbecause they want to buy a boat,
get a new car, whatever elseit is. So that's not a great
idea because now you just turned afive year car loan into a thirty year
hey log. But many people aretaking out the home equity lines of credit

(22:30):
to pay off credit cards. Ifyou are disciplined enough, that's not a
bad idea. I've done that.By the way. It's not a bad
idea provided that you set up aplan and you say, look, my
credit card debt is getting to thepoint where my payments are crushing. I
have to lower those payments and I'mgoing to put it into I'm going to
get a he lock on it.So you take out a home equity line

(22:52):
of credit. And now what you'vedone is you've just given yourself basically a
thirty year loan to pay off yourcredit cards. That's going to cost you
a whole lot more in the longrun unless you stay focused and you make
more than the minimum payments and youtry to get that balance down very quickly.
That's a way to free up somecash flow, and if you're disciplined,
get rid of that debt without incurringmassive interest rate payments via the credit

(23:18):
card company. So you can comeout of head that way, but you
have to be disciplined. I don'tknow how many people are doing that,
and I don't know how many peopleknow those tricks without going through the basics.
We have so many people graduating highschool right now. They don't know
many of the basics of you shouldpay your credit card off. You should
not carry a balance if you canavoid it. If you have to carry

(23:41):
a balance, you should develop aplan to pay that balance off as quickly
as possible. Right. There area number of different things that you learn
through life that really we should giveyoungsters a head. Come dang, did
I just say youngsters. Let's saythe the the age challenged people should a

(24:07):
should have a chance, right,they should get a jumpstart on some of
this knowledge. Listen, we learneda lot of things after we get out
of school. I think most ofus would agree we've learned more since we
left high school than we learned beforehigh school. But the foundation of everything
had to come to those first eighteenyears. This is foundational information. This

(24:30):
is stuff you should know. Youshould be armed with this before you head
out into the quote unquote real world, because they can pile up on you.
In heard so California's financial literacy requirement. I hope other states that don't
have this requirement are paying close attentionbecause this is the kind of thing that

(24:51):
the whole country should be doing.This isn't left right, this is just
smart. Let's get ahead of it. Okay. I made mention of some
of the home values going up.There's actually a term for what's happening.
It's called equity rich. I don'twant to get too walky, I mean,
I want to get too deep intothe weeds on this, but many

(25:11):
of you know the term house poor. Is it possible to be both equity
rich and house poor? Yes?And I'll tell you how to thread the
needle of financial disaster. In otherwords, how you can really screw yourself
over next you're listening too later withMoe Kelly on demand from KFI AM the

(25:33):
rent is too damn hot. Imay mention a moment ago if you're just
joining us. I made mention amoment ago that we have what's called equity
rich going on. It's a termI was unfamiliar with until recently. Here,
So equity rich in California is oneof the highest in the country for
people who are equity rich, andreally it's a further divide between the haves

(25:57):
and have nots, is what itis. What equity rich means is that
you, oh less than fifty percentof the value of your home. So
nearly sixty percent of homeowners in Californiaoh less than fifty percent of their home

(26:18):
now. In the old days,oh days, you would do that by
putting twenty percent down and then makingpayments for a number of years, and
after about fifteen twenty years you wouldget beyond that fifty percent threshold. Today,
however, suppose just hypothetically follow meout a little follow me in a

(26:40):
journey. Suppose you bought a housein twenty twelve. And suppose you bought
that house on an interest only loan, which means you don't pay a dime
toward principle, you are only payingon the interest. But you got an
interest rate that was under four percent. So you bought a house. And
let's say that that house was I'mgonna say four hundred thousand dollars. And

(27:03):
I know what you're thinking. Youcan't afford anything for four hundred thousand dollars.
If you could in twenty twelve,you could get someplace that was all
right, You could raise a familyin someplace for four hundred thousand dollars today,
that house being that, that wasabout the median home price back then.
If we look at meeting home pricenow, meeting home prices in California
statewide are nine hundred and eight thousanddollars, and if you are in one

(27:30):
of the southern California counties, evenhigher than that. If you're in La
if you are in Orange County,if you're in San Diego, if you're
in Ventura, that your median valueis even higher than that. Okay,
so you bought a house, owyou paid interest only, all right,
you still owe the same four hundredthousand dollars that you owed in twenty twelve,

(27:51):
and yet now your home is worthmore than twice what it was when
you bought it. Congratulations, youare equity rich. Now you've probably heard
the term house poor before. Itwas something I hadn't heard until I moved
here coincidentally in twenty twelve, andI did not buy a house. God
do I wish I had. Irented sucker. So I learned about the

(28:19):
term house poor, something with whichI'm sure you were familiar. And that
is basically your take home meant thatif you wanted to get into the house
that you wanted, in the schooldistrict that you wanted, in the neighborhood
that you wanted, whatever it was, you tried to buy something at the
top end of your range. Maybein twenty twelve you were you and your
spouse were bringing home one hundred andfifty thousand dollars total, right, And

(28:45):
if you play the numbers out,that means you probably could have afforded maybe
a four hundred and fifty thousand dollarshome comfortably, but that wasn't in the
school district you wanted. I knowhow this goes because I ended up renting
for this very reason. The housesin the school strict I wanted, We're
going for way more than I couldafford. I couldn't afford six hundred thousand
dollars at the time, so werented. They were going for six seven

(29:07):
hundred thousand dollars. So we rented. But you found a place and you
were able to get in there.You got your loan for six hundred thousand
dollars, but that meant that youhad to tighten up everywhere else. It
was. It's been tough for youto make that mortgage payment. In fact,
that's why you got the interest onlyloan in the first place. And

(29:27):
so you still have to try toput together that interest only mortgage payment,
even though the home value has doubledmore than double. So you owe less
than half the value of the home. But you can't get out of it
because you'd have to move into someplaceelse. Right, So you sell your
home for a million dollars, Youwalk away with half a million dollars,

(29:49):
and you had to put that halfa million dollars into something else, And
still you're in the same place youwere when you left, only at a
higher interest rate. So a lotof people are still trying to finagle their
budgets and it is tough to makethat mortgage payment. And now your kids
are in college, or you've hadto buy a car, or you've had

(30:10):
these other expenses come along the way, and so now it is tough.
You are you are overburdened by yourhouse payment, your house poor, and
yet on paper you are equity rich. Okay, so you can be both
rich and poor at the same time. Is it going to get better?
Uh? Depends on your perspective.If you're trying to buy a house,

(30:34):
No, it is not. Bankof America says that the housing market is
stuck and will be until at leasttwenty twenty six or later. The bank
said that home prices are going tostay high and go even higher, the
housing shortage will persist, and mortgagerates may not fall much even if the
Federal Reserve finally delivers the long delayedinterest rate cuts. The latest economic numbers

(31:00):
we got showed that it listen,it's doing what the Feds wanted to do,
and those numbers should come down,But there's not going to come down
as much as they had predicted,which means we keep pushing out how long
it's going to be before this goesfrom being a seller's market to a buyer's
market. Housing affordability is considered oneof the biggest problems in America right now.

(31:21):
Fortunately, when it came to thec a UN presidential debate last night,
we were able to figure out whohad the better handicap and could drive
the ball further. But we didn'treally get much in the way of how
are we going to be able toafford a house during the next presidential term?
So, thank goodness, we haveour priorities straight. Whew. Really,

(31:41):
well, Sorry, Mark, Itold you I was only going to
talk about this debate twice tonight,and that actually was my second time.
I am going to talk about itone more. I'm sorry, buddy,
I had you potted down. Didyou say something, uh smart? That
is smart? I'm actually I'm housepoor in the sense that I am too
poor to own a house, andI keep seeing about private equity firms buying

(32:01):
up residential houses. Maybe that hassomething to do with it. Well,
listen, that's part of it.It's part of the reason that rents keep
going up. I think we couldend up with a situation here. Let
me just put on my karnac Pata. We could end up in a situation
where you've got these private equity firmsthat are buying up these houses, and
even though even if they're getting agood deal, suppose that we see the

(32:22):
housing market crash. It's not outsidethe realm of possibility considering how high the
housing prices are now compared to everythingelse. And I know everything else is
high right now, but at somepoint, you know how economies work,
right, they're cyclical, So atsome point those home values are going to
come down, and these private equityfirms are going to be kind of left
going, uh oh, we haveall these assets that don't add up to

(32:46):
what we owe on them. Andthat's a bad situation for private equity firms.
Now branded they think ahead and theyhedge things and all that other stuff.
But we have seen the economy somefunky things here in the last twenty
years. It's not beyond the realmof possibility that we see it do something
else funky. And if it startsto come down a little all of a

(33:07):
sudden, it could start snowball.Well who will shed a tear for those
private equity firms? Who who Iask? And in the meantime, Can
I interest you because I invest inthem? Oh? Well you uh,
maybe I should start looking into aspacious RV in the meantime, Yes,
yeah you could. Yeah, allright, listen, there are an awful

(33:28):
lot of people who are in apanic. As one Democratic consultant told me,
there is a circular firing squad goingon among the Democrats behind the scenes,
and it couldn't make him any sicker, is it? Maybe? Bye?
By Biden? Next Chris Merrill kfI AM six forty We're live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. You've beenlistening so later with Mo Kelly. You
can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty seven pm to ten pm

(33:52):
every Monday through Friday, and anytimeon demand on the iHeartRadio app.