Economic Reality and Tariffs

Chris breaks down economic reality and Trump’s tariffs. Media predicts recession, but unsustainable spending and debt fueled the boom—not growth. Credit delinquencies soar, savings plummet, and uncertainty looms. Subscribe for unfiltered economic insights! www.watchdogonwallstreet.com 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast, explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, little economic reality and tariffs now, and I
come down hard on the Wall Street Journal and mainstream
media and general on a regular basis. But without a doubt,
they have some great writers on the opinion pages, and
I do one of the best, quite frankly, in my opinion,
and also one of the younger ones. Alissa Finley, does

(00:36):
a really good job today her column. I want to
discuss her column because she makes a lot of points
that we have made here on the podcast for a
very long period of time, and quite frankly, these are
points that the mainstream media has ignored for a very
long period of time. So right now, you watch the news,

(00:59):
you watch a Sunday programs out there, Scott Descent is
on and he's basically explaining how the markets work. Because
again you get these the talking heads, these about the margets,
the markets, and most of them don't even understand how
the stock market works. They just don't Okay, most of

(01:20):
these people that you think are smart are glorified teleprompter readers. Okay,
the movie Anchorman was spot on. You put it in
the teleprompter, they're going to read it. They're going to
read it. They have no understanding of how economic factors
anything like that. They have their narrative, they understand what

(01:42):
they're supposed to be pushing. And again, it's been amazing
because I have to hand it. I have to hand
it to the people that have been going on from
the Trump administration descent Rubio on a myriad of different topics,
making these uh, these dufices look like fools. But anyway, again,

(02:02):
we are being warned by the media that a recession
is coming. In search of recession. You get a lot
of this. You get a lot of this from the
media when you have a Republican in the White House,
Republicans in power, automatically it's in search of recession. If

(02:26):
it's brought up when Democrats earn power, it's people talking
down the economy. And I remember this, and again he
was right. George W. Bush when he was running for
the presidency the first time against Al Gore warned, he said, listen,
I got a bit of a you know, some issues

(02:47):
underlying issues with the economy in the stock market's a
little bit overvalued. Al goredon all right, talking down the economy.
I mean it happens every single time. But anyway, Yep,
the media is back and they're talking up the session
right now now for all until we've broken this down.
And actually Alyssa Finley does a good job today in

(03:07):
her piece as well. The idea that MET is putting
out there because the stock market's up, that you got
some sort of economic boom. We haven't had an economic boom. Okay.
We have been working with absolutely ridiculous, unsustainable, moronic levels

(03:35):
of government spending, not to mention ridiculous levels of consumer
spending debt, which was fueled by what one hand out
after another handout after what you name it, you name it,
and let's be honest. This helped the stock market along

(03:59):
so led to inflation, which is hurt what hurt the
middle class and the lower classes. Again, we've broken this down.
We've explained this over the years. Some numbers to you,
and I'm gonna take them from Alyssa's column today. After
adjusting for inflation, consumer spending has grown seventeen percent more

(04:19):
than personal income over the past three years, forty four
percent more over the past twelve. Now correct me. If
I'm Americans can't spend more than they earn forever and
ever and ever. That's just the reality. Okay, you're gonna

(04:40):
get You're gonna get some issues popping up when that's
the case, especially after all the handouts and giveaways and
pandemic money was spent and people start hitting their credit
card limits. And let me tell you something, they put
a top on credit card interest rates at ten percent.
People are gonna get cut off again. It's again. You

(05:02):
got I think you got Anna Paulina from Florida's a
Republican in aok pushing this right now. And you have
other Republicans that just don't understand what's going to happen. Okay,
credit card companies will be like, you know, your your
card's canceled. Only the top people with top credit scores
are going to get credit cards. If they're going to

(05:22):
tap rates at ten percent, that's you know, something for
another day, as I get off the beaten track here.
But anyway, you didn't hear about how serious delinquencies on
credit card and auto debt had hit levels seen before
the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine downturn. Yeah,
they did, Alyssa, they heard it here on this program.
Or how the personal savings rate has Hubbard below five

(05:44):
percent for most of the last three years. Yeah, Lissa,
you gotta start listening to the show. We talked about that.
The last time this happened was in a late nineteen nineties. Again,
recession coming mid two thousands, recession coming. Home mortgage delinquencies
have sky rocketed, and again the Biden officials, a Biden

(06:07):
administration has kept people in homes to prevent foreclosures. I
don't know how long that's going to last. Again, the
same crap they did with student loans. They waived payments
until twenty twenty three and then gave a one year
grace period so you face no consequences for not making payments.

(06:32):
So this the Biden student loan forgiveness program has been blocked.
But I got to tell you something. Most people don't
have to make payments until December. Okay, that's going to
take some more money off the table. That again, that's
boosted consumer spending. Business investment slow during the Biden administration

(06:54):
because of regulations. Again, this happens during every single time.
Red tape. Red tape tape happened during the Obama years,
happened during the by and years. Takes away all sorts
of animal spirits also unless, of course, you are a
favored industry like green crap. Yeah, green crap got their
money anyway. Again, in the absence of animal spirits, Ulyssa

(07:20):
writes today, moral hazard supported the economy. Again. We witnessed it,
did we not. Did we not watch the f d
i C bailout Silicon Valley Bank? Didn't we watch that? Yeah?
We did. That's again it was moral hazard right there.

(07:42):
And again the values of many things have gone through
the roof. Again. You can take a look. Yeah, you know,
whether or not we were due for a self, which
I believe we were, we claimed it here, we got
one and it happened very very quickly. Again, the issue

(08:03):
was is that after Trump came in and everyone was happy, happy,
joy joy, We're going to get all sorts of deregulation
out there, lifted the markets even more, but the breaks
came on. This is the reality people, because of tariffs.
Tariffs are regulations, their regulations, and quite frankly, again, people

(08:26):
don't know what's going to be tariff, how they're going
to be tariff is again all sorts of uncertainty. And
right now, right now, the argument is, the argument's being
made by the media is whether or not the uncertainty
caused by Trump's tariff threats or Biden's regulations are worse.

(08:48):
But currently, right now everyone is saying Trump's tariffs are
because it's the market reaction, are worse than Biden's regulations.
But they know what Biden's regulations are. Again, this is
why we have to get to some sort of clarity
when it comes to this again. Trump Trump is cutting
government spending. Biden was able to boost the markets and

(09:14):
keep keep the economy afloat by borrowing money and spending
government money. Trump is looking to do away with that.
What that means again, we definitely need we definitely need
some semblance of understanding of what the tax code is
going to look like moving forward, and we must know

(09:35):
what's going to happen with these tariffs sooner rather than later.
With that being skeed, Okay, again, you watch Scott sent
do his you know, basically his Chris Markowski Watchdog on
Wall Street Act. This past weekend on the Sunday Talkers,
it's like, are you kidding? Okay, yeah, again, I'm paraphrasing.

(09:56):
You know, markets are down ten percent? All right, that's
not a big deal. I mean markets, And he basically
pointed markets don't go up in a straight line. When
they go up in a straight line, you should be scared,
which is one of my Markowski investments rules of the road.
Markets raced through the roof, you get nervous, markets come

(10:18):
back down, you sense opportunity. This again, is how you're
going to be successful when it comes to investing. Again.
Put that aside. The reality right now is there's still
still a lot of uncertainty out there. Hopefully sooner rather
than later, we'll get that. We'll get that hopefully we
got reduced regulations again. Trump's overall approval ratings on everything

(10:42):
outside of the economy right now it's getting a hit
because of the stock market is very good again, giving
him an opportunity to get things done again. What they
really need to move on, okay, is most certainly getting
all of these doze spending cuts written into the spending bill,
get some semblance of where we're going to be on taxes,

(11:04):
so we can get those animal spirits back in and
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