Is Keith Gill manipulating the stock market?

Mike Armstrong and Marc Fandetti debate if Keith Gill, Roaring Kitty, is manilpulating the stock market with his recent activity. Majority of Middle-Class Americans say they are financially struggling. Own a 401(k)? You could soon vote on issues like Elon Musk's pay. Many Americans are still shying away from EVs despite Biden's push. Car deals vanished during the pandemic. They're coming back.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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the Financial Exchange with Mike Armstrong andMark Fandetti. Good morning and welcome back
to the Financial Exchange. Markets areopen and uh, not much going on.
Leading up to this Friday jobs report. The SMP and NAZAC both off
by about a third of a percent, the Dow off one tenth of a

(01:23):
percent, Russell two thousand down byeight tenths of percent, yield in the
ten year treasury sitting at four pointthree five percent. That has been on
the move downward recently, as hasthe price of oil, which is now
sitting at one point down by onepoint six percent, or down to seventy
three dollars per barrel, which Iwill take and uh what if it means

(01:45):
economic slowdown? Will you still takeit? Uh? No, I will
not. I want one without theother. Mark. I want cheak gas
and a roaring economy that's right,low unemployment and low inflation if you don't
mind, and a cherry on top, and world peace if you could game
stop Stock I'm bringing up because whynot. Stock is down by two percent

(02:08):
today. However, over the lasttwelve months is up now sixty seven percent.
With Keith gil getting back into thewe stop using his name? Can
we stop crediting him? Can westop? No? We can't. We
have to say his name, callhim the market manipulator. There's a fella
out there who's posting incendia, callingGil because I don't want to say or

(02:32):
deep value. I can't say yeaheverything else? What else am I to
refer to him? As well?There's a fella out there who has made
a fortune, not a small fortune, but potentially hundreds of millions of dollars
by exhorting people to buy a companywith very questionable fundamentals. He's created this

(02:57):
online following Yes Young Day Traders,and a couple of weeks ago, after
disappearing for a couple of years,posted a picture of himself suggests that he's
getting engaged in trading again. Setsthe price of this stock. Now we
now know he bought options on thestock immediately before doing this made hundreds of

(03:19):
millions of dollars. And the questionwe were asking the last segment was does
that constitute manipulation? Mike, youmade a good argument that it's really no
different than what any portfolio manager does. They buy something, then they go
out on CNBC and talk about it. That's what I was going to say
is my counterpoint, And look,I'm not an sec regulator, so I'm
going to leave this to them interms of what they believe is or is
not market manipulation. But every singleday there's a portfolio manager on Bloomberg or

(03:43):
CNBC or Fox Business out there talkingabout some company that they own, and
it turns out, you know,they don't really give a whole lot of
disclosure about but they own prior togetting on there, and they tell you're
usually longer term investors too. Hissituation is a little bit different. Yep.
You know, he is very youknow, this is a very specific
strategy and it is not very clearlynot based on the fundamentals of the business,

(04:09):
but he may plan that it is. Even Let's take a step back
and let's talk about a much morefamous investor who does not go on CNBC
and do this sort of thing.But let's talk about Warren Buffett. Right,
he goes Let's just hypothetically say thatWarren Buffett saw real tremendous value in
game Stop stock and decided to loadup on it. Again, hypothetical to

(04:31):
my knowledge, Warren Buffett does notown any game Stop, just want to
clear that up here. We wouldfind out about that depending on how much
he bought at their next regulatory filing, usually a quarter later, unless he
bought over a certain percentage of theoutstanding shares of the company, in which
case I think it's an immediate disclosure. He's not doing anything. He's not

(04:53):
doing what Keith Gill is doing,which you know we're talking about here.
But even in those cases, wouldyou expect game Stop stock to go through
the roof? If Warren Buffett suddenlybought a whole bunch of shares, I'm
not sure. I love the analogy. If he instead bought options and then
that very morning tweeted a picture ofhimself, do I want to I'm gonna
keep it specific to these facts.There is, I admit, Mike,

(05:13):
there's a much like Potter Stewart saidabout pornography, there's a gray line.
But I know it when I seeit. I would say this isn't my
area. I'm a little unomfortable sayingdefinitively, this is market manipulation. What
the heck do? I know itdoesn't feel right though, that this feels
different if it is. If itis market manipulation, that I think we
have a serious problem with all thepeople that show up on CNBC and Bloomberg

(05:34):
every day. It shot their bookwhen they Mike again, the facts here
seem to be a little bit different. None of those people are buying options
on a stock which is a shortterm, right do you know that they
would presumably have to disclose that thatwould be part So I'm gonna I think
these guys large which, by theway, Keith gild just did right he
posted his position. Did Maybe hethought that constituted disclosure, he had he

(05:58):
done it before. Perhaps this again, the facts do, and the facts
and the timing I think that arehere. He bought options, then he
made the post, and then maybeto his credit, disclose the amount of
property made few days that a goodweek later. That was okay, I
didn't realize thought it was the sameday. See, so this makes it
worse. Mike. The post abouthis position in Game Stop, I think

(06:23):
was at least a week after,almost suggesting that he just sorry, God,
maybe someone advised him, hey,disclose that, cover yourself almost that
that that seems so disjointed relative tothe initial sequence that maybe somebody advised him
to. Look, I'm speculating here. It's not my area. This just
doesn't feel right, Mike. Itfeels like something that could undermine confidence in

(06:45):
financial markets, given how little confidencepeople have in institutions generally these days.
This is not helpful. Please regulatorsclamp down on this. By the way,
this is why, however, hegets such a following, I think,
is because, oh, sure he'she appears to be. He's the
Robin Hood anti authority right like,he's kind of you know, I,
I'm robbing Peter to pay, youknow, I am going after the big

(07:08):
guy. That was the initial pushfor this guy, was Ham. But
he's not sure he's it's solely forpersonal gain, Unlike that's what this looks
like. Unlike the counter institutionalists ofsay that I just invented that term.
I don't think it's particularly descriptive.But the anti authority folks of the nineteen
sixties, there's no principle here.It's solely about personal gain. Is that
noble? I mean, what isthere about this person to admire? What's

(07:30):
he trying to prove other than thathe can get rich quickly at the expense
of a bunch of dupes, notsaying they will not make money. I'm
not saying that's not saying we shouldadmire him. I'm not. I'm just
not sure that's illegal. That's whereI'll lie. I'm no, I don't.
I think plainly it's not because he'snot in jail right now. I'm
saying it should be. It can'tbe made illegal retroactively. But if it's
not captured in the definition of marketmanipulation, then we got a loophole.

(07:54):
Yeah. Uh. The majority ofmiddle class Americans say they struggle financially.
This is according to a poll commissionedby the National True Cost of Living Coalition.
It found that two thirds almost twothirds of Americans considered middle class,
so they're facing economic hardship and don'tanticipate a change for the rest of their
lives. That is about as depressinga pole result as you can get.

(08:16):
About forty percent of respondents were unableto plan beyond their next paycheck. Forty
six percent didn't have five hundred dollarssaved. This was a poll of two
thousand, five hundred adults and sixtyfive percent of people who earn more than
two hundred percent of the poverty level, which is at least sixty thousand dollars

(08:37):
for a family of four are consideredto be middle class, and like I
said, two thirds of them arestruggling significantly financially. Oh sorry, And
then one more piece, about onein five respondents have at least ten thousand
dollars saved, but twenty eight percenthave no savings at all. I think

(08:58):
my conclusion on all of this wouldbe a fewfold one. This problem has
almost definitely gotten worse for these peopleover the last couple of four years,
would be my guest. Based onevery other poll that I've read, I
think people's middle class folks financial situationhas deteriorated during the last four years.

(09:20):
That having been said, I donot believe that we've gone from say,
twenty percent in twenty nineteen to twothirds at this stage. My guest would
be if you'd done this poll andthey didn't do this pole in twenty nineteen,
that you probably would have gotten prettybad results back then as well,
because what we have been experiencing inthe United States for a few generations now

(09:41):
has been a severely widening wealth gapincome gap, and any way that you
measure the wealth gap and income gap, it has gotten substantially worse over the
last few decades, and for themiddle class in particular, it has been
a very difficult economy to succeed inin the last few years of growing asset

(10:05):
prices with higher inflation for a largeportion of that middle class, I think
has probably made it worse. Wouldbe my would be my overall summation.
Yeah, this is consistent with othersurvey results. People on average feel squeezed.
The other conclusion I'll come to isin and of itself, probably bad

(10:26):
news for the current administration with electionsright around the corner. So those are
my two major conclusions here is thisis bad. It's been bad for a
while, it got worse over thelast few years, and I don't really
see much that's going to make itchange to be less bad. Changing presidential
administration ain't gonna do anything, folks, that would be my guest, But
it might make feel some people feelgood. This is your home for the

(10:50):
most comprehensive coverage of the economy andthe trends on Wall Street. Face is
the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Thanksto US six one seven to thirteen eighty
five with your comments and questions abouttoday's show and let us know what you
think about the stories we are covering. This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
In twenty twenty one, ESG waskind of in its heyday, and

(11:16):
ESG, if you're unfamiliar, Ithink you are at this stage. Environmental
social governance is what ESG stands for. And in twenty twenty one, Blackrock
CEO Larry Fink told his shareholders thathis firm's fund managers would influence company boards
to promote racial and social justice.Today we know three years later there's been
quite a bit of backlash against LarryFink and Blackrock on this overall idea.

(11:41):
There have been state laws that havebeen passed to attempt to divest of Blackrock
in many pension funds, et cetera. And I think partly in response to
this, Blackrock and other fund companiesare trying something new out which might be
anchored in I don't know good intentions, but is probably going to be a

(12:07):
cluster if rolled out. So here'sthe idea. You might have a four
oh one K. Within that fouroh one K, there are probably between
five and fifty different funds that youcan choose from, all of which own
a whole bunch of different stocks Ina lot of cases, sometimes bonds too.
Those companies vote on their board ofdirectors, vote on all sorts of

(12:30):
issues, and you, as ashareholder, if you own the company stock,
technically have a vote on those matters. Maybe you don't own enough shares
to really have an impactful vote,but every vote ultimately matters to these things.
And today, if you own thatcompany stock, let's say you own
Apple shares through your four oh onek in a mutual fund, you have
no vote on that matter. Youbasically defer that vote to whoever runs that

(12:54):
mutual fund. And they may electto say, hey, for really big
institutional share classes or very big institutionalinvestors, will let them guide the vote,
but generally speaking, they vote foryou. The new idea is,
say, hey, shareholder in thismutual fund, you can opt in to
vote on these decisions rather than usdoing it for you. Makes sense a

(13:20):
democratic process. Ultimately, the realityof this is one, I don't think
a lot of people are going toopt in to do this if they were
given the option, and I'll coverwhy. Two. It sounds like it
would be quite messy to try andfigure this all out and get it all
out to people. So let's justthink about like the average mutual fund.

(13:41):
I actually don't know. I couldn'tfind any good data on how many individual
stocks the average equity mutual fund owns, but I would think in a lot
of cases it's over one hundred.Each of those companies, at a very
minimum, usually has at least oneissue that they're voting on per year.
So at a minimum, if you'reopting in to vote on proxy issues,

(14:03):
then you know, the average mutualfund owning two hundred stocks, let's say
at least one issue per year,you're saying, Okay, if I own
one mutual fund, I'm going tobe sent details on and information on two
hundred potential voting issues per year permutual fund that I own. This sounds

(14:24):
like, again, good intentions withoutany real real impact at the end of
the day, because I mean,look, I know people today that own
individual companies and have those rights tovote on proxies, and in my experience,
ninety nine times out of one hundredthey throw them in the trash.
Yeah, the motivation here is political, it's not financial. Yeah, it's

(14:45):
abdicating. I think it's, Hey, we don't want to be responsible for
these decisions we're facing a bunch ofblowback. So let's let the shareholders do
it, abdicating some of the decision. I think I get that. Yeah,
I would too. I don't thinkit's the wrong move. I just
don't think people actually want to dothis. I don't think so either,
And it could sway these votes infavor of the wealthy, who own more

(15:09):
shares therefore have get more proxy votes. It is proportional to ownership. It's
not like votes in a democratic societylike we're used to yep, one person,
one vote, right, more sharesyou own, the more votes,
of course, so I had tolook that up. I had to make
sure. So I'm reading this froma reasonably good authority. I think I
just don't know how in practice youmake this manageable. Professional or institutional investors

(15:33):
like pension funds and college endowments hirea proxy voting agent to do this for
them. They give them broad guidelines, but they don't vote. Proxies,
which is what the expression used.They don't vote them themselves be too unwieldy.
You'd spend all your time just analyzingproxies. These are things like board
composition, shareholder compensation, mergers andacquisitions issues. Like that. The good
news is that no regulators requiring this, and I think that part would be

(15:54):
a mistake. If I suppose Blackrockand van Guard and others want to allow
people to opt into this, Idon't really see an issue with it.
Just understand how overwhelming this would likelybe. For the average person to suddenly
start voting their shares on every mutualfund they own would be a very unwieldy

(16:15):
and arduous process for people that likeevery day I get calls from people that
say, my god, I amgetting inundated with all the mail that I
get from, you know, justa relatively simple portfolio. In most cases,
I can't stand how much mail I'mrequired to receive. I can't imagine
what it would be if all ofa sudden you were getting proxy votes on

(16:37):
all these different fund classes that youown. So that's that's an interesting potential
change coming to the four oh oneK and mutual fund space. I guess
in general is where it's being pushed. And again I get why. Look,
if you're a black Rock and you'refacing all this blowback, this is
kind of the perfect solution for you. You know what's gonna happen is there's
gonna be little entities cropping up,little proxy voting services politically themed. If

(17:00):
you're a right winger or a leftwinger, go to proxy voting service A
or B will vote all these proxiesaccording to conservative or liberal. I'm not
saying this is a bad idea,by the way, I'm halfway thinking I
ow to do it. It soundslike a profitable day, nice little cottage
industry. You just have to hirethe you have to pay them. Sure,
but it could be, you know, modest, but the volume potential

(17:22):
could be huge if properly. Irend you to vote all of these things
with this ideology in mind. Theseare the principle deep Christian values. That's
all. I want you to voteon every proxy or whatever and most important
to you. Yeah, it's asI have said. Anything other than purely
return to me on any of thesethings is just an opportunity for I think

(17:45):
somebody like this to inject and makea whole bunch of money, as was
kind of my cynical view of ESGfrom the first place of Hey, this
is a great way for Blackrock tocharge a whole lot more on their mutual
funds that they manage. Bringing thelatest financial news straight to your radio every

(18:11):
day. It's the Financial Exchange onthe Financial Exchange Radio Network. Missed one
of our shows. Catch up anytimeby asking your Alexis smart speaker to play
the Financial Exchange. This is theFinancial Exchange Radio Network. Mark. You
bought a new car last year,didn't you? I did? Why didn't
you buy an evy? I don'tmean this as a joke, like,

(18:33):
you know, actually, was ita consideration for you to go high right
or av And if not, why? I guess range anxiety as they call
it. Price nothing cited in thearticle that I think you're segueing into.
Okay, I share those concerns.Yeah, yeah, So I bought a
car two years ago now I thinkmight have been three. Uh And at

(18:59):
that point time we were also inthe midst of that like quasi vehicle shortage
where every car you bought had tohave an extra you know, five thousand
dollars on the sticker price. SoI was not willing to go for one
of the trendy cars at that pointin time. But having a few years
now to think about my purchase,I feel similarly similarly, that's what you
get for ragging on Tucker I know, yeah, uh, And that's in

(19:23):
spite of the new EV tax creditsthat Biden has been that the Biden administration
has been pushing. Now. Tobe clear, the EV tax credits have
been put into place, are notavailable on that many vehicles because there are
very specific requirements when it comes towhere the battery was manufactured. So I
think that perhaps it's a little bitearly to measure the impact of these EV

(19:45):
subsidies, if you will. Butthus far they have not had that much
of an impact, and h ormaybe they have, maybe sales would have
been half as much. It's veryhard to control for all true factors.
True, I'm not defending it,by the way, I personal hate it,
but I understand you just don't knowwhether or not it's been effective.
Only about thirteen percent of US adultssay they or someone in their household owns

(20:07):
or leases a gas hybrid car.Just nine percent own or lease an electric
vehicle. That's according to a pollfrom the Energy Policy Institute at the University
of Chicago. And then furthermore,forty six percent say they are not too
likely or not likely at all topurchase an electric vehicle right now. I
would not put myself into the notat all likely category. But yeah,

(20:29):
when I look at the options tome available right now, and we're fortunately
not in the market for a carat this point in time, but I
still don't think I'm there with anAV. I think that I would prefer
I am very interested in a hybridvehicle. Specifically, I'm very interested in
a plug in hybrid, you know, for my type of driving. I
find that to be predictable, useful, and helpful. But the idea that

(20:56):
with my poor lack of with mypoor planning that I put into you know,
some of my everyday personal life stuff, that I might need to hop
in the car to drop one ofthe kids off at a birthday party and
find out that I'm almost out ofa charge and need to go park at
a Tesla charging station for fifteen minutes. Just I'm not I'm just not there.

(21:17):
And that has nothing to do reallywith range anxiety. It's just convenience
and not really fitting my current lifestyle. That's range anxiety, isn't it.
You're afraid that the thing's gonna crapout halfway three year ride? Yeah,
Yeah, that a definition. Yeah, I guess that's the definition of range
anxiety. You be sitting there embarrassed, your kids, friends in the back
seat saying, oh, the batteryis low, it's not moving a loser.

(21:40):
Yeah, mister arm around half anhour. If you don't know,
kid, we get stuck with misterArmstrong and an intersection. Everybody was laughing
at anybody that's ever been to adinner day with Michael Armstrong has been stuck
with Michael Armstrong? What do youhave for us? Revocable and irrevocable us
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or Armstrong Advisory may contact you offeringlegal or investment services. Cushing and Armstrong
did not endorse each other and arenot affiliated the The one interesting piece that

(23:11):
I found in this article about EVSthat I was a bit surprised by,
honestly, the according to Kelly BlueBook, the average price for all new
vehicles was forty seven two hundred andforty four dollars, which I guess,
you know, cheer me. That'sa lot more expensive than I paid for
my car even during the car shortage. The average price for electric vehicles in

(23:37):
February fifty three hundred and fourteen dollars. That is not as significant. Again,
I think both of those prices areridiculous for a car, and I'm
not good about to buy one forthose prices. But that is not as
significant a price gap as I wouldhave anticipated. It's closed a bit.
That's closed quite a bit in myview, again for other reasons. I'm

(23:59):
still not interested, and that averagenew vehicle price is being dragged up because
evs are part of that equation.So I'd be more interested in pure gas
versus pure electric vehicles. But thatis a narrowing gap, and I do
find that intriguing, and the closerat narrows, the more interested I would
potentially be. Speaking of car deals, they seem to be making a bit

(24:22):
of a comeback right now in somespecific situations, and I really want to
get somebody from maybe like Edmonds orKelly Bluebook on the line here to kind
of talk to us about this.Are we yeah, don't worry about it?
Well? Should I not blow thelead? Then? Here? Long
story short, we're gonna be havingsomebody on the program maybe sometime in the

(24:45):
near future, according to our producerThomas. But there's a piece from the
New York Times today that some ofthese deals are coming back. Thomas,
that's his legal name. What okay, so security number two? I got
that? Yeah? Yeah, whatelse do you want? Dodge challengers and

(25:06):
chargers were eligible for eleven thousand dollarsdiscounts from Stillantis. Uh, your name
is Tom Silva, Like, isn'tthat the guy on this? Yeah?
Yeah, I am not anywhere nearNo, I know that I wouldn't anywhere
near screw. I mean I didinstall a door knob recently, so you
know I'm pretty much him on adoor. Correct. Okay, that's right,

(25:30):
got it a door that needed adoorknob? Got you covered? Did
you? Thanks? Tommy? Didyou install the the locking mechanism the wrong
direction? Because I've done that one? TBD? Why this door stay shut?
Oh? Yeah? Yeah. Doyou go by Tucker Silva when you
sign your name or is it justis Tuker the middle name? No?
It is not. Okay, soit's kind of a nickname. Yes.

(25:51):
Should we all have them different differentsubjects? Very good? Go ahead,
Quirky, back to back to youcars. Are you're getting discounts? We're
going to try and find a guestto tell us where you're finding the discounts
later this week on the show.But we're gonna take a quick break now
because I can't talk about this.What's Armstrong? Will be right back without
Do you call me footz. Ithink I heard that on Larry David.

(26:14):
We'll be taking a quick break andwhen we come back some stacker Scooter Armstrong
on the back in a minute changemiss any of the show. The Financial
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(26:37):
YouTube page. Like us on YouTubeand get caught up on anything and everything
you might have missed. This isthe Financial Exchange Radio Network. Time for
a bit of stack rou let hereon the Financial Exchange mark. I'm interested

(26:59):
in your opinion of congestion pricing asan economic concept. I don't know that
you've given it much thought in thepast, but generally when we talk about
congestion pricing, traffic is one areathat it applies to most commonly. There's
a case in Florida where they havea high speed congestion toll lane where you

(27:21):
pay a certain fee to be ableto go in this specific lane. New
York is going to be testing thisout, or not testing out, implementing
new congestion pricing on the island ofManhattan. Specifically, anything south of sixtieth
Street, which is basically the verysouth end of Central Park, will face
new fifteen dollars per car and twentyfour to thirty six dollars per truck pricing

(27:44):
on weekdays if you want to gointo basically most of Manhattan starting. I
think this was June or July,and I guess I'm just interested in your
take on the idea of congestion pricingin general. Does it have I feel
like some political ideas are rooted inreally stupid economic ideas, and I don't

(28:04):
consider this to be necessarily one ofthem. Depending on how you spend the
money. No, I think economistslove, generally speaking, charging people for
what they use. It prevents overuse. That's the simple principle at work here,
and it can also be used notin this instance, though this may
be a side effect. I don'tknow if it's a benefit we'll see to
mitigate some so called externality like pollutionsand externality. I have no incentive to

(28:29):
control my own level of pollution ifother people don't, so again, charging
people for what they use is oneremedy for that. The author of the
piece that this topic comes from todayis a professor finance at NYU Stertin,
which is an awesome program. Sothis guy's presumably a brainiac, and he
hates the idea of congestion pricing.Although I believe in NYU campus is north
of sixtieth Street, so I don'tthink he's going to be impacted by yeah,

(28:52):
oh interesting, Okay. Nevertheless,he seems to hate it. Though
he doesn't cite traditional economic arguments foror against. He seems to think it's
a bad time for the New YorkCity economy to be making it more onerous
for people to get in and out. I don't know. I've not driven
through New York in the past fouryears. You have, it was traffic

(29:14):
any like this is too you'd havetwo small By the way, I was
way off on that. NYU isnowhere near north of sixtieth Street. It's
in Lower Manhattan, so I'll stand. Okay, So he's getting he's going
to be but he's personally incentive tooppose this. Maybe I'm I don't think
that affects it. His main argumentis that, hey, New York has
taken that hit since twenty twenty,this is not the time to be implementing
a tax on coming in and outof New York, But the traffic problems

(29:38):
there, like here, are stillpretty severe. I imagine in my experience,
Yes, it was still a prettysignificant traffic traffic issue getting in and
out of Manhattan, and that wason Memorial Day weekend when nobody was there.
And honestly, maybe if it wereI haven't looked into this, not
my area. He presumably has,But if it were easier to get in
and out of, that might sortof paradoxically, making it harder to get

(29:59):
in and out of by car,might make it easier to get in and
out of by other means, ormight make it more tolerable for, you
know, people considering relocating a businessthere because commuting there is easier. I
don't know, Mike. I thinkhe may be right that overall there could
be a net detrimental impact to theNew York economy from this new tax.

(30:22):
I think if you use this tobetter expand the New York public transportation,
then you know, perhaps that getsmitigated some. But you know, certainly,
if you're charging trucks thirty six bucksto get onto Lower Manhattan, that
I would expect those shippers to haveto charge their customers more money, meaning
you know, prices could go upin New York for all sorts of different

(30:44):
goods, and I would acknowledge that. But I think Manhattan's also one of
the few places where you could successfullya successfully do this right, there's only
I think going south, there's probablyonly like ten roads that you would actually
have to place holes on. Andtwo, Manhattan is one of the few
areas in the country that there isa very reasonable alternative to driving there.

(31:08):
You can't do this in Phoenix,Arizona, because you can't go anywhere without
a car. You can barely dothis in Boston because the public transit system,
I don't know, in my view, is so inferior to New York's
that it's barely serviceable. Although ifyou're serious about cutting down on traffic in
the one twenty eight area, likethis type of thing is a way to

(31:30):
accomplish that. And so again,it's not to say the money won't be
squandered. I'm sure in many waysit will be squandered. This new toll
that is going to be put intoplace here, But I generally speaking,
like this concept of you know,slap a whole bunch of penalties on people.
And at the same time, ifyou can put in HOV lanes,
for example, to increase, youknow, or incentivize other types of driving

(31:53):
behavior, then I'm on board withthat too. And I would not necessarily
be opposed to this type of thingin Boston area as well if it weren't
for such a poorly run public transitsystem over the last decade and a half.
Yeah, generally speaking, you chargepeople up to their maximum pain point,
and right now we don't do thatwith driving in highly trafficked urban areas.

(32:15):
I still cannot fathom why in thecity of Boston it cost me something
like six bucks to enter the cityof Boston via I ninety, but if
I want to come from the northor south on ninety three, it cost
me zero dollars. I don't understandit. It makes no sense to me.
There's a toll on the Masspike.There's no toll on ninety three,
other than well that's the way it'salways been, which is the answer I
always get. I don't understand whywe do that. What do you have

(32:37):
for us for stack with that mark? Oil prices continue to fall. They're
down about thirteen percent in the lastmonth. Some of the recent the most
recent phase of the slide is apparentlydue to OPEK. Yeah, they've maintained
their cuts, but they did not, so they're always that's always a variable

(32:59):
and a factor one way or theother. I wonder how much of it
is related to concerns about the realityof a slong economy. Yeshentially. So
there's two pieces of this, right, they're supply and demand. On the
supply side, well one, OPEC'sinfluence just isn't as great as it used
to be, right when you've gotas much drilling as happens in my favorite

(33:21):
I haven't seen favorite training data suggestingconsumption has fallen. But this is a
future so I don't agreed. Idon't know, But the futures is supposed
to be forecasting future demand. That'spartly what that market exists for. But
I was hitting on the supply sideof things, which is today OPEC's influence
compared to thirty years ago is farless significant in my view, in terms
of their and I would think measurably. But yeah, we're doing thirteen plus

(33:45):
million bar where the world's biggest producerby I was going to say, by
far, it's not quite by far, but easily the world's biggest producer.
I would think it is by far. I mean, what is Russia do
like ten? I don't know,no idea. Yeah, would Saudi do
so? Ooh several h I don'tthink it's Maybe it is ten. Yeah,
I could google. But today,compared to thirty years ago, in

(34:07):
terms of their impact, it's notthat significant for them to say, hey,
you know, we're maintaining the cuts, but we're not extending them.
On the margin. Everybody matters,sure, yeah, we it matters less
maybe than it used to. It'snot like we could just turn the dial
and crank up our output either,if they decide to. True. Uh.
The point that I think you madesuccessfully, but I'll reiterate, is
that falling gas prices and falling oilprices can be you know, good news.

(34:31):
And I like to fill up mycar for cheaper gas. I right.
You know gas was really cheap duringthe Great Depression. Yeah, and
during the Great Recession. Yeah,really cheap. Yeah, will someone will
say you you jerk. It wasalso really cheap in the late nineties.
Things were fine then, Yep,slightly different circumstances, but yeah, that's
true. But generally speaking, Mike, like you said, cheap gas is

(34:53):
not a sign necessarily of a robustworld economy. No, no, it
is oftentimes not, And according toTriple A, right now, the average
price for a gallon of gases againcontinue to come down, sitting at three
dollars fifty two cents per gallon.A month ago you were up at three
dollars and sixty six cents, anda year ago were about where we were,

(35:14):
three dollars and fifty five cents again, all according to Triple A for
a gallon of regular Taking a lookaround at markets here, we've got all
three major indices in negative territory.As we close out the show and head
towards the noon hour, the Dowoff fifty three points, the SMP off
twenty points, are about a thirdof a percent, the Nasdaq off fifty
seven points, again about a thirdof a percent. As we wrap up

(35:37):
today's addition to the financial exchange,we'll be right back at it tomorrow,
folks, so tune in and havea great rest of your day.