December 9, 2025 • 41 mins
Kevin talks about his alma matre Xavier University's upset victory over the University of Cincinnati in the "Crosstown Shootout"; Indiana's stunning victory over THE Ohio State University; the College Football Playoff selection results; Cincinnati Bengals vs Buffalo Bills; the U.S. Commerce Department released the much anticipated Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index; local gas prices compared to the national prices; Kevin has the details, digs into the data, puts the information into historical perspective, offers his insights and of course, his opinions.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is America's Trucking Network with Kevin Gordon. Welcome aboard,
Thanks for tuning in on this Tuesday morning. Hope everybody
had a great weekend. I'll tell you what it was,
kind of an interest and what not, a kind of
it was a very interesting weekend this past weekend, and
we finally got our Christmas decorations up. And we thought
(00:25):
we were kind of late in terms of doing that
because we always, you know, driving around, you see people
that have already had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving.
I just don't I just don't buy into that. I'm
not into this early celebration because then by the time
Christmas comes around, you're pretty much tired of seeing the decorations.
A lot of people had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving,
(00:48):
which I think is a little bit early, but with
that weekend afterwards that generally when a lot of people
put their decorations up. But we were running well what
we thought was a little late. But then as we
started seeing some of the reports and talking to people
and listening and watching on Facebook, we're pretty much in line.
So don't feel too bad about getting our stuff up
(01:08):
the way we got our stuff up, which was a
lot of fun, big weekend as far as sports is concerned,
And normally I don't talk a lot about sports on
this program because after all, it is America's truck a network,
and so we generally stick to economic news because as
the reports from American Transportation Research Institute says that that
(01:31):
is one of the main concerns of you out there
on the road, that driving around and worrying about the economy.
And with my point has been along all along is
that what we're hearing from the spoon fed regurgitators of
the mainstream media is not what is going on, and
that looking at some of these stories and reading between
(01:51):
the lines and seeing the positives in there, the headlines
don't always match what the story says. And so my
point on this program is to try to not try
to but to get the truth out so that people
know where the economy is, how strong the economy actually
is despite all the negativity from the spoon federalc urgitators
(02:12):
in the mainstream media. So again with that and said
I don't normally talk a lot about sports, but it
was very interesting weekends. Starting off from Friday, I almost
hit the trifecta this weekend in terms of teams that
I thought were gonna win. Anyway, Friday night here in
Cincinnati was a Crosstown shootout. Now, this is a game
between University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, my alma mater,
(02:37):
and Xavier won the Crosstown shootout. They were not expected
to win. They were, you know, watching the pregame information
and you know, they have the panel it was the
show or the game was televised on TNT turna network television,
and the four panelists we're talking about, well who you
(02:58):
choosing tonight? Who do you think is going to win?
And all four of them thought, you see, was gonna win.
And on paper it appeared as though that they had
the stronger team, bigger team, better team, et cetera. However,
that's why you play the game. And you know they
were trying to downplay this, and you know, for those
of you who are not familiar with us, I mean,
this is a big game. And of course my alma mater,
(03:19):
Xavier on the Crosstown shootout. Now, just to kind of
give you a little bit of background on this, Zavier
University has a student body of six thousand students, you
see has fifty thousand. We are separated there, separated by
only three miles. A lot of these players in the
past used to play in these summer leagues around the
town and so the importance of this game was the
(03:42):
bragging rights on those during those games during the summer league,
which is kind of faded by the wayside. Before Xavier
University dropped football back in nineteen seventy three, that was
referred to as the Crosstown Shootout for the Xavier U
See football game every year and on par Xavier had
(04:02):
a pretty good record against UC. It's one of those
games kind of like the Ohio State Michigan game. It
really doesn't matter what the what the record is. When
you go into that game because of the rivalry, people
are playing a little bit better than what they normally
would pay play with a lot more intensity because they're,
you know, just because it's a rival. And leading up
(04:23):
to the game, Xavier's first year head coach head coach
for the first year, Richard Patino, who is Rick Patino's son,
they were interviewing him and they said, well, how are
you know, because the city really gets into this and
the of course the alumni that live in the city.
The Xavier alumni and U SEE alumni. It's kind of
a kind of a clash there type of thing. And
(04:46):
they were interviewing him and said, well, what are you
preparation for the game? And we don't prepare any different
for this game. Uh, it's just another game on this schedule.
We don't make any more emphasis on it more than
anything else. And a lot of the people that have
been here for a number of years and the sportscasters
and whatever said, you know, it's funny every time a
new coach comes in, whether it's for UC or Xavier,
(05:09):
they always say the same thing until after the game
and they say, I had no clue how big this
game was and the intensity and the rivalry, especially in
the student body and in the stands, and so from
that aspect, I think there was a little bit of
a surprise as far as Richard Patino was concerned in
terms of that. Now, what's interesting is that when I
(05:32):
was watching the game, we call it the Crosstown Shootout. Now,
the TNT sportscasters they were kept referring to it as
the Crosstown Showdown. I guess they're probably being a little
bit pc as far as that's concerned, a little politically
politically correct. I mean, because you know you can't well
you know, you can't have shots. You can't have shoot
(05:54):
it can't be a shootout for crying out loud. That
kind of kind of gives some sort of other connotation
to it, which is a load of crap, because if
you're going to do that, well then maybe you should
change some of the terms. You'd eliminate the shot clock,
don't talk about the three point shots, you don't talk
about the number of shots that a player made during
(06:15):
the game, and all that sort of stuff. But I
thought it was kind of interesting, just kind of an
a side note. So anyway, as far as the game
was concerned, Xavery won the game seventy seventy four, which
was very interesting. Xavier beat the Bearcats for the eight
sixth time in last seven meetings, which is very interesting. Again,
(06:39):
the team usually is on bragging rights, which is based
on bragging rights around the city. Forward Trey Carroll scored
a high career high thirty points as Xavier Musketeer has
defeated since Santy Baracats seventy nine seventy four in the
Crossdown shootout since at the Sintas Center of Friday Night,
(07:00):
Beat you again, bait beat you see, And somewhere in here,
I think I've got the note that Xavier has won.
Actually you See has not, And this was a home
game for Xavier, and the you See has not won
on x U's home court since two thousand and one.
(07:26):
So this is like because it's usually you know, home
and away. You know, one one year it's at you See,
one year it's at Xavier, and flip back and forth
and so on. So since two thousand and one, you
See has not beat Xavier on their own home court.
So that was interesting. It was bragging rights and so on.
This Trey Carroll and again they tried to downplay the
(07:47):
significance of this game and everything. But I think the
individual students themselves, even though some of them transferred in,
and I think they said at the beginning of the game,
only one player on either team had experienced the Crosstown
shootout before. And I don't know what happened as far
as Trey Trey Carroll is concerned, but he's a transfer
(08:08):
student in and I think he's going going to be
I think he's a senior, so he's only going to
be here one year. But apparently he really got into
the motivation of this game again a career high. And
at the end of the game, you could just see
the excitement on his face and he was just so
excited and just running around the court and you know,
showing the Xavier shirt and everything. I mean, it was incredible.
(08:31):
And then the interview afterwards, what a great young man.
He said, well, what are you gonna do? Are you
gonna go out with your friends tonight? And he goes, no,
he isn't. Any point he turned around, he pointed, and
he says, my family came in for the game, and
my wife is up there because he got married in
the off season, which is interesting. And he said, I'm gonna,
you know, just go out to dinner with my family,
(08:53):
get get some sleep tonight and go to bed early
and so on. I'm not going to do anything stupid
and so on. But and the after game or after
the postgame interview, a couple of the people on set,
I can't remember the two, but apparently they had played
college basketball before and they said, well, that is a
remarkable young man because he said he's not going to
(09:15):
go out and do anything stupid, which is certainly different
than what we did when we were in school, so
it was kind of interesting from that aspect. Also, going
into the weekend, we had the Indiana University OSU game,
both teams being undefeated, Big Ten Championship and a big
a whole lot on the line there, which was kind
of interesting, kind of interesting as far as some of
(09:36):
the backstory there, we'll pick that up on the other side.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred WLW, one
hundred WLW. I started at the beginning of the show saying,
you know, I usually don't talk a lot about sports
on this program, again because it is America's truck in Network,
And if you missed any of that or missing their
previous shows, make sure you hit up that iHeartRadio app
(09:58):
brought to you Buyer Friends at Rust Truck Centers. But
this weekend was interesting from the standpoint that again we
had the Crosstown Shootout x U versus UC University of Cincinnati,
Miama Maters Avery University won that game seventy nine seventy four,
which was an upset victory. Then on Saturday, we had
the Big Ten Championship Indiana University High State University ranked
(10:20):
one and two. A High State was ranked number one,
Indiana was ranked number two. Very interesting game the Big
Ten championship and the national title on the line, and
of course then on Sunday we had the Bengals versus
the Bills. So but anyway, the Indiana game was it
was very interesting. I grew up, I mentioned before, I
(10:41):
grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so I do have kind
of a soft spot in my heart for them. However,
my dad went to Notre Dame, so we were big
Notre Dame fans growing up, and not so much OSU
only from the standpoint that you know, if OSU is
playing any other team, I'm for OSU until they played
Notre Dame or something along those lines. But you always
(11:03):
want your hometown team or your home state team to
do well, and so you know, it wasn't necessary a
cheer for Ohio State, and of course I always want
them to beat Michigan and that type of thing. But
this particular game against Indiana was unique in a lot
of instances. The fact that they were able to win
thirteen to ten, which was a low scoring game between
(11:25):
these two teams, which is very interesting. It was the long.
It was the longest, very long. I don't know if
it was a record losing streak. Indiana had not beat
OSU Ohio State University since nineteen eighty eight, thirty seven years.
(11:46):
They hadn't beaten them, and of course, you know, again
according to statistics and according to the strength of schedule,
and even though they were ranked number one and number two,
I don't think anybody was really giving Indiana any chance
of winning that game, simply because as an overpowering offense.
Now High State won the national championship last year. So
(12:06):
kind of in heart of hearts, you know, living here
in the living in the Tri state area around the Ohio,
Kentucky and Indiana corner there in southwest Ohio, you know,
we do have some a little bit of an affiliation
or so on with Indiana, and I was kind of
hoping that Indiana would knock off OSU because they have
(12:26):
been getting a little cocky and so on. So I
was actually pleased to watch it, even though I knew
both teams were going to wind up in the playoffs
at college playoffs, you know, having Indiana win. And the
other thing too, is that Indiana has not won the
big Ten championship since nineteen sixty seven, fifty eight years,
(12:49):
Indiana has been one of these teams that has generally
a pretty decent record, but they have probably one of
the worst. I think they were saying that Indiana, in
terms of their record over the years, has one of
the worst in the Big Ten. You know, it's kind
of a so so program, never been very prominent and
so on. But the last couple of years, the new
(13:10):
coach there, his name escapes me now, but really built
up the university there, built up the team, really made
an effort here, and it was a It was an
exciting game, it was very interesting to watch. But the
mere fact that they had not beat Ohio State in
thirty seven years and had not won the Big Ten
championship in fifty eight it was a huge day and
(13:33):
a huge thing for Indiana IU Indiana University. Then we
had the of course, we had the Bengals game, and
then about six o'clock Sunday night, they did these college
rankings and who was going to be in and who
was going to be out of the college playoffs, which
to me wind up being an absolute joke. It's a
(13:54):
twelve team field, and again I don't talk much about sports,
but you know, these kind of things that's on my mind,
these kind of things that are of interest to me.
And I've found over the years that if I find
something interesting, there's a whole lot of people out there
that find it interesting as well. So well, anyway, it's
interesting to me, and I thought that some of the
(14:16):
dynamics behind this. Now there's a twelve team that were
selected and all during the Ohio State Michigan or Ohio
State Indiana game and some of the other games. Let
me see, it was BYU and off the top of
my head, I can't remember off the top of my
head who they played. But there were all these games
that were coming down to some of these teams that
(14:37):
were on the bubble whether they were going to get
in or not. And it was interesting to see a
couple of these teams actually got blown out and even
though that they were still high ranked. And during the game,
they were showing all these people that were part of
the selection committee and they were sitting there with their
computers and their notes and everything, and they were making
(14:58):
their determination. Team football field playoff was announced on Sunday
and Notre Dame was left out and a couple of
other teams that should have been in there were also
left out. The Fighting Irish to ten and to two
were the first team left out of the field, and
Miami ten and two received the last at large spot,
(15:21):
moving up two spots to number ten after the twelve
person CFP selection committee ultimately decided head had results. The
Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish of course first game of
the season, twenty seven to twenty four in their August
thirty first opener, so they kind of made that the
determining factor as to whether or not Notre Dame made
(15:43):
it in. But what was interesting is that if you
go to the AP rankings, which is interesting, the AP
did their rankings at the end of the season, and
they had the number one, number two, number three team.
As far as who was going to be ranked, and
(16:03):
if you go through the top twelve, in my opinion
for the college National Championship game, it should be the
top twelve teams in the country, and you start off
with Indiana and then Georgia and Ohio State. But you
have you know, at the end you had number twelve
was BYU. Yet in the championship games, there's going to
(16:27):
be and I don't know why they did this. I
don't know the backstory behind this, but they put in
these lower tier teams James Madison and Tulane. Now, as
far as the college rankings, Tulane is number seventeen in
the country and James Madison is number nineteen. And so
(16:48):
if you're trying to have an interesting playoff situation, wouldn't
you want to put the people in there that have
the best chance of winning the overall championship. And I'm
you know, James Madison may be a good team. Tu
Lane may be a good team, but they're probably going
to get blown out and blown out big in terms
of their individual game. And so it was interesting to
(17:11):
see how this played out. Who they moved ahead just
remembered BYU wound up losing to Texas Tech thirty four
to seven Saturday, and so that was a blowout. And
in order to determine nowech Texas Tech made it into
(17:33):
the playoffs and the fact that they blew out somebody
by twenty seven points in a game that should have
dropped them out, because again, how good are they if
they were beaten by this team that is in the
top ten by twenty seven points? So college football rankings
(17:55):
have always been kind of weird. It's been kind of
a weird system. The way they had it set up,
they thought that we're going to do something good as
far as these playoffs were concerned, Add more games to
the schedule and so on. So you don't have a
situation where just the college football writers, the Writers Association
or different AP of Associated Press did their rankings and
(18:16):
people would argue about who was number one, who was
number two, and so on. The playoff system is good,
but this time around it was I think screwed up.
And I think they screwed up royally because again, the
name of the game is number of eyes on the
TV sets. How many people are going to be watching
these games? And if the college rankings mean anything at all,
(18:37):
I mean, if the CFP college football people are going
to make the determination and who's going to play in
the tournament itself as opposed to you know, the college
rankings itself, then why have the AP rankings on a
weekly basis or even talk about that and just say, well,
it's just going to be up to the CFP committee anyway.
(18:58):
That's that's my two cents worth in than that, And
of course that's been devalued because they've stopped printing penny.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck in Network. Seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Here's your trucking forecast for the Try State and the
rest of the country and the Try State. Over nightclouds
increased the low down to twenty one, partly Sunday. Tuesday
high of forty three Claudie with rain Wednesday, then a
chance of rain mixing with snow by late afternoon, a
high of forty five. Thursday, mostly Claude, a slight chance
of afternoon snow a high of thirty three. Nationally, the
Pacific Northwest will see several days of heavy rain, while
(19:36):
snow falls in the Northern Rockies. A clipper system bringing
a period of snow across the Upper Midwest and Great
Lakes region through Tuesday, while a stronger clipper system expected
to bring heavy snow and high winds across the Upper
Midwest Tuesday, continuing across the Great Lakes Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Seven hundred w l W. I'm Kevin Gordon. This is
America struck in NETW. America's Trucking Network supports the mission
or rece across America. You can hear us every truck
and Tuesday at five am and ten am Eastern on
REES Across America Radio, available on the iHeartRadio app. Search
the word rease Now that's wr EA TS for Rees
(20:19):
Across America Radio. And thank you to all our truckers
for supporting the mission of Reese Across America. Also, the Saturday, Saturday,
December the thirteenth is the day that the reef will
be distributed to the individual cemeteries around the country. And
again this is geared more towards the fallen soldiers in
(20:41):
terms of these reefs. Now, if you have not joined yet,
or if you've not entered or wanted to participate, or
you want to participate in the ref laying ceremony, you
can go to recacross America dot org and you can
check that out receacross America dot org. And on there
(21:02):
you can register at a cemetery near you. It's pretty quick,
it's pretty easy. It's Saturday morning. It's only about two
three hour period of time out of your day to
give honor to these fallen soldiers. And again, their motto
is that or what they say is that a soldier
dies twice once when they take their last breath and
(21:23):
the other when their name is no longer mentioned. And
it's a beautiful cemetery ceremony taking these where hes, placing
them on the tombs, and what is done is the
wreath is laid and then that person's name is said
out loud by the person laying the wreath, and it's
really interesting. I'm not going to be able to participate
in it this year. We will be down when my
(21:45):
wife and I will be down in Nashville. We are
going to be attending the Tech Rodeo from Rush Truck
Centers and it's going to be a very interesting event
where they bring in all of the different technicians and
bodywork and people from the Bodyshop and it's going to
be this tech Rodeo that's going to be going on
over the weekend down in Nashville, the twentieth anniversary of
(22:06):
that three hundred and some thousand dollars in prizes, cash prizes,
and of course the overall trophy. So I'm really looking
forward to being down there and it's going to be
a very interesting event. Looking very forward to being there
and broadcasting from down there and doing the show from
down there. Of course, we'll have to record it because
you know it's during the day, and then of course
(22:27):
our show is at night, so I'm gonna have it
looking forward to a lot of fun. So anyway, that's
what's going on. I won't be there on Saturday, unfortunately.
I really wanted to really looking forward to being there
at the event. But again, if you want to go
to reescross America dot org, you can register, and I
think there's still time to sponsor a wreath. Even so, anyway, continuing,
(22:49):
it's gone on a little bit longer than I had expected,
but there's I just have a whole lot of thoughts
and so on about this that past weekend. As far
as sports are concerned, I mean, look at it. We
got college back, well college football, we got the overall
rankings in terms of this college football championship. In terms
of playoffs series that begins, I think it's I think
(23:11):
it begins this week. I don't know. I don't know
when it begins. I think it's December the thirteenth, is
what they said. So anyway, we got that going on.
Of course, Sunday afternoon we had the Bengals Bills game,
which you know, I again being you know, in the
Cincinnati Greater Since a Northern Kentucky area, you want your
team to do well. You want them to do, you know,
(23:35):
be good on the national stage and so on. And
the Bengals it just this season. A lot of years,
it's this build up of we've got this talent, we've
got that talent, and every year it seems like they
just figure out a way of breaking our hearts along
the way. And yesterday it was no different. They started
(23:56):
off the game just on fire and we're really doing
very well against the Bills. But then being the Bengals,
it seemed like they kind of didn't quite finish the game,
and the Bills stepped up their game, come from behind victory.
I mean, it was incredible. They beat the Bengals thirty
(24:16):
nine thirty four, which going into the last five minutes,
I thought the Bengals had it sewn up. I mean,
it looked like they were going to just absolutely go
away with the victory. But again they broke our hearts
and that's unfortunate. But what was interesting though, is looking
at the different headlines from the different cities. If you
(24:36):
look at the headlines from the Cincinnati in choir, it
says Joe Burrow, Bengals falter, late and snowy loss to
Josh Allen and the Bills, and the coverage of that.
As far as the Buffalo Bills were concerned, they met
their headline. Josh Allen carries Buffalo Bills to huge win
(24:59):
over Cincinnati Bengals. Now, going into the game, the Bengals
were four and eight, four wins, eight losses, and the
Bills had the exact opposite eight wins, four losses, and
so again, on paper, it appeared as though that it
wasn't even going to be a close game. But the
Bengals made a game out on the Bill's home turf,
(25:21):
which was even more remarkable. But at the end, there
were a couple of missteps, a couple of things that
got screwed up. The Bengals kind of screwed up in
the end. Their defense didn't quite hold up, although there
was a couple of really great plays on the part
of the defense where they actually were able to prevent
two touchdowns by fumbles. And then, of course Joe Burrow
(25:43):
throwing a couple two interceptions probably didn't hurt help the
game any either, especially when you throw it an interception
and it's run back for a touchdown. So again, but
it was an interesting game, was interesting to watch as
we were putting up Christmas decorations and doing all that
sort of stuff. It was kind of an interesting thing
to have that in the background and a little bit
of background noises we were going on. So anyway, that's
(26:06):
pretty much my weekend, and I hope you enjoyed listening
to that, and it's just something that was interesting to
me and I wanted to talk about it over the Actually,
last Friday we got the or actually it was it
Thursday or Friday Friday, I believe it was, we got
the information the personal consumption expenditures key inflation measure. Now,
(26:29):
of course, the Federal Reserve is set to start a
meeting with their final meeting of the year starting today
and into tomorrow, so tomorrow afternoon Wednesday afternoon is when
they will have their press conference and determine or announce
whether or not they're raising or not raising. They're not
going to raise, interesting whether they're going to hold interest
rates steady or whether they're going to lower interest rates.
(26:52):
And for all the talk that we've been hearing about
the Federal Reserve that they're you know that they're watchdogs
or stewards of the economy. That they have two mandates,
one to make sure that the job market is strong,
the others to make sure that inflation is down. And
they've set a target of two percent, even though inflation
(27:15):
over the years on average has been above two percent
except during the first term of the Trump administration. So
they've set the bar, in my opinion, kind of high
in terms of what their expectations are. But they've been
very stingy in terms of lowering interest rates. And the
thing that is interesting is that I was looking at
(27:38):
some headlines and so on, and I've been talking about
this for a number of weeks, number of months, even
that if you look at the overnight lending rate, which
is what the Federal Reserve controls, this is the overnight
borrowing that I certain banks need cash reserves or cash
on hand to cash checks or to give to different
(28:00):
their customers. If they're having a big, big weekend, you know,
transferring of money to like a you know, like a
grocery store or any kind of a store over the
weekend that is expecting a lot of cash transactions, they
have to have a lot of cash on hand. So
this cash is available, but if the local bank doesn't
have that, then they have to borrow that from another bank,
(28:22):
And so they've got that overnight rate, which is that
four point two five four point five percent, and so
but as a result of that, that also controls and
kind of starts affecting the credit card rate, what you
pay on your credit cards, what you pay in our
car loans, what you pay on your mortgage. Those interest
rates are all interconnected. You know, when one goes when
(28:45):
the overnight rate from the Fed goes up, then some
of these others go up. And of course your credit
card interest rate goes up, new car loans go up.
And what we're seeing in the housing market, and over
the last couple of last several months, I've been talking
about how in the rest of the developed world, Canada,
Europe and so on, that the interest rate is down
(29:05):
around one and a half to two percent, and here
we are at above four percent as far as our
overnight rate is concerned. And I think if you're trying
to stimulate the economy, which everybody says that if interest
rates are lower, people have more money in their pocket,
they're more inclined to spend money, they're more inclined to
(29:26):
expand the economy, and of course businesses tend to expand
as well. So again hoping that the Federal Reserve gets
in and through their thick skull to lower interest rates.
And by the way, there's some interesting well at least
a couple of places I know of where the interest
rate is a lot lower than what it is in
the United States. I'm Kevin Gordon, America Struck a Network
(29:46):
seven hundred Wlwright.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
News Radio seven hundred WLW and iHeartRadio station Guarantee Human
seven hundred WLW HI hard rating.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Run a business and not thinking about radio.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Think again, because more people are listening to the radio
on iHeart today than they were twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So looking at this Federal Reserve and what they're meeting
later on today and then tomorrow. In terms of interest rates,
one of the things supposedly they pay attention to is
this personal consumption expenditures. Now, in the previous segment, I
was talking about interest rates, and I mentioned before that
(30:29):
we have our daughter lives in the Netherlands, and we
got to talk in the other day about you know,
interest rates and what their mortgage is and what our
mortgage is, and so on. And it's interesting that mortgage
rates over in the Netherlands are anywhere between three and
a half to four and a half percent, and yet
(30:50):
the interest rates here in the United States as of
the other day that I checked, was about six point
three six percent. It's almost twice what it is in
the Netherlands. And if you're trying to spur the economy,
if you're trying to spur people to buy equipment expand
their business, then why are our interest rates so darn high?
(31:13):
And it's all because of lion Jerry Powell and his
inability or ineptness as far as running the Federal Reserve
in terms of not understanding supply side economics, the fact
that he was too late and as Trump called him,
too late, I call him lion Jerry Powell. Trump calls
him too late Jerry Powell, because when you look at
(31:34):
the Federal Reserve's track record over the years, even back
during Alan Greenspan and some of the other people who
are in charge of the Fed, they always seem to
be running a little bit behind what the normal what
the economy is actually doing. And if they can't keep up,
and if they're supposedly the so called experts. Why the
hell are they always so wrong? I mean, let's not
(31:55):
forget that for the first year and a half of
increasing inflation three percent, four percent, five percent thereabouts, which
culminated in a nine point one percent inflation rate in
June of twenty twenty two, the fact that they kept
calling it transitory inflation, which meant that it was temporary. Oh,
(32:15):
this is just a blip on the radar screen. It'll
come down, it'll come down, it'll come down. Well, when
it got the nine point one percent, obviously it wasn't transitory.
And in March before that happened, they started raising interest
rates to kind of slow things down, kind of slowed
things down, took them too long to slow things down.
So again, the Federal Reserve has always been behind in
(32:38):
terms of reaction, and sometimes they react too much in
one way or too much in the other way, whereas
a lot of times if they just you know, mind,
you know, just keep things steady instead of trying to
control things, things would be a lot better. But anyway,
that's again my opinion, and of course, as you know,
I have an opinion, I'm not afraid to use it.
Can inflation measure was lower than expected in September. Commerce
(33:01):
Department said Friday in a report delayed by the government
shutdown that gives further green light to the Federal Reserve
to lower interest rates. The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index,
which excludes volatile food and energy prices, indicated a point
two percent monthly rise, while the annual rate was two
point eight percent. The monthly rate was in line with
(33:24):
Dow Joon consensus, but the annual level was point one
percentage points lower. The core annual rate edged down from
two point nine percent in August. So again heading in
the right direction. Let's go back to Liberation Day, back
on April to second, and back then when the tariffs
were put into place, everybody was talking about this is
(33:46):
not everybody, but there was a bunch of people that
are talking about this is going to lead to a recession,
this is going to lead to high inflation, this is
going to do this, it's going to do that, and
the economy is going to go in the tank. Well
none of that came true, and yet they keep saying that, Well,
you know, it's just a matter of time. It's just
a matter of time. You know, at some point in
(34:06):
time you've got to look at what is instead of
what you hope it to be. You know, when you
have good economic your finger on the pulse, you should
know what's going on instead of this hoping and wishing
kind of stuff that we're seeing, and especially from the
spoon fed reggitators in the mainstream media, because again, in
my opinion, they have been always trying to manufacture recession.
(34:30):
In addition, the headline PCEE increase point three percent for
the month, putting the annual inflation rate at two point
eight percent. According to the Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis,
both range readings were in line with the expectations, though
the annual rate was up only one point one tenth
of a percentage point. But the core personal consumption expenditures
(34:51):
is what the FED generally looks at. Now, again, you
have the consumer Price Index, which takes a look at
everything in the economy, everything from avocados to zinc. Anything
that's in there A to z is reflected in terms
of what those prices have done over the period of time,
and they base that as far as the consumer price index.
(35:12):
Personal consumption expenditures, on the other hand, is what you
do in the day to day business you know, in
the new day to day life, you buy gasoline, You
go out and you buy food, you go out and
buy clothing, you buy all these things that are necessities
or the things that you do on a regular basis.
You don't, you know, every week, you don't go out
and buy a refrigerator. Every week. You don't go out
(35:32):
and buy a car. Every week, you don't go out
and buy a air conditioner or whatever. So these major
purchases are yes, they're part of the inflation rate, the
consumer price index, but in terms of personal consumption, what
you spend on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is what
is contained in that personal consumption expenditures because that is
(35:56):
the thing that people experience on a day to day
basis terms of their own kitchen table discussions, their own
kitchen table economy as to what is going on in
terms of their own individual budgets. So again that's why
it's such an important number. Goods prices serge point five
percent of the month, as they say, and here Trump's
teriffs continuing to work their way through the economy. Service
(36:20):
prices were up just two point two percent, food rows
point four, while energy was up one point seven and
now those last two. If you're talking, I guess this
is the numbers from September, because from September, when you
look at October, November, and then so far this month,
(36:40):
those prices have come down considerably. Food prices are down.
I just saw the other day as far as our
local store, eggs which had been up over three dollars
for a dozen, are now being sold at a dollar
forty nine. So that's basically in line with where they
were a couple of years ago. When you look at
(37:00):
things like eggs, when you look at things like beef
when they're subject to drought, when you're subject to a
bird flew, like the eggs, and you have to kill
off flocks of chickens, well, if you don't have the chickens,
the eggs aren't going to be laid. And if you
have drought conditions in certain parts of the world, certain
parts of the air and the country, you're going to
have less cattle. As a matter of fact, I've mentioned
(37:22):
this before, the size of the herds in the United
States are now down at the level where they were
back in nineteen fifty seven I believe it was, So
it's back down to the level it was in the fifties.
Our population has more than doubled since that period of time,
so you've got more people seeking a smaller quantity, and
of course those prices are going to go up. So
(37:44):
increasing the grazing, increasing the herds increasing, possibly the import
of good beef from other areas around the country, around
the world, are the things that are going to keep
those prices down. Now again, those are the factors that
need to be looked at. You know, if you've gotten
natural occurrences and you've got a disease that goes through,
that should be factored in and have a weighted factor
(38:07):
if you're talking about inflation and what that is doing.
As far as the economy is concerned, personal income rose
point four percent for the month, while spending was up
point three percent. Income was point one percent percentage point
above the forecas. So again they predicted what it was
going to be and it was a little bit better
(38:27):
than that. Odds of a rate cut when the Fed
convenes this week are at eighty seven percent. I've seen
numbers around ninety percent. Now, of course, there's going to
be a little bit of contention. This could be one
of the most contentious Federal Reserve meetings, because there's a
faction that says that interest rates should stay the same,
while there's others that say it should be cut. Kevin
(38:48):
Gordon faction says it should be reduced at least a
quarter percent, if not a full percentage point. And then
of course they had the University. We may have to
get into this tomorrow with the University of Michigan consumer survey.
Of course, they're down playing this. They keep talking about
these consumer sentiment, consumer surveys and so on as to
whether or not as far as the strength of the economy, well,
(39:09):
it's interesting that they throw here a side note at
the end, at the end of the story Consumer the
Michigan University of Michigan, the consumer survey came in at
fifty three point three, up four point five percent from November,
better than Wall Street's estimate of fifty two. So from
that aspect in terms of these economy and what people
(39:33):
are perceived as far as the economy is concerned, that's up.
We're seeing a lot of good economic news. And I
thought it was interesting in one of the stories that
usually there is a chart a companying the Personal Consumption
Expenditures Index, which shows the personal consumption expenditures index from
twenty twenty one up until the current date. And it's
(39:53):
interesting when you look at twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, when those numbers were above seven percent, the
consumer personal consumption all above the four point range up
until towards the tail end of twenty twenty three. So
I guess with this narrative that we're now talking about affordability,
(40:14):
I guess they want to forget what was done over
the last four years and talk about that in terms
of affordability as opposed to what it actually is. Interestingly enough,
in terms of affordability, taking a look at oil and
gas prices is kind of interesting that oil is falling.
But on a side note, I want to mention the
fact that when you look at the national average for gasoline,
(40:35):
national average is now below three percent or three dollars
on across the board. Interesting in my neighborhood gas is
at two dollars and sixty two cents, which the national average.
If you look at that, we are actually at one
of the low ends, at least in our county in
terms of the entire country. Well, just some very good
(40:58):
economic news there. So anyway, folks, We're up against glockhair.
Stay tuned for red Eye Radio, a top the hour.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW
This is America's Trucking Network with Kevin Gordon. Welcome aboard,
Thanks for tuning in on this Tuesday morning. Hope everybody
had a great weekend. I'll tell you what it was,
kind of an interest and what not, a kind of
it was a very interesting weekend this past weekend, and
we finally got our Christmas decorations up. And we thought
(00:25):
we were kind of late in terms of doing that
because we always, you know, driving around, you see people
that have already had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving.
I just don't I just don't buy into that. I'm
not into this early celebration because then by the time
Christmas comes around, you're pretty much tired of seeing the decorations.
A lot of people had their Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving,
(00:48):
which I think is a little bit early, but with
that weekend afterwards that generally when a lot of people
put their decorations up. But we were running well what
we thought was a little late. But then as we
started seeing some of the reports and talking to people
and listening and watching on Facebook, we're pretty much in line.
So don't feel too bad about getting our stuff up
(01:08):
the way we got our stuff up, which was a
lot of fun, big weekend as far as sports is concerned,
And normally I don't talk a lot about sports on
this program because after all, it is America's truck a network,
and so we generally stick to economic news because as
the reports from American Transportation Research Institute says that that
(01:31):
is one of the main concerns of you out there
on the road, that driving around and worrying about the economy.
And with my point has been along all along is
that what we're hearing from the spoon fed regurgitators of
the mainstream media is not what is going on, and
that looking at some of these stories and reading between
(01:51):
the lines and seeing the positives in there, the headlines
don't always match what the story says. And so my
point on this program is to try to not try
to but to get the truth out so that people
know where the economy is, how strong the economy actually
is despite all the negativity from the spoon federalc urgitators
(02:12):
in the mainstream media. So again with that and said
I don't normally talk a lot about sports, but it
was very interesting weekends. Starting off from Friday, I almost
hit the trifecta this weekend in terms of teams that
I thought were gonna win. Anyway, Friday night here in
Cincinnati was a Crosstown shootout. Now, this is a game
between University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, my alma mater,
(02:37):
and Xavier won the Crosstown shootout. They were not expected
to win. They were, you know, watching the pregame information
and you know, they have the panel it was the
show or the game was televised on TNT turna network television,
and the four panelists we're talking about, well who you
(02:58):
choosing tonight? Who do you think is going to win?
And all four of them thought, you see, was gonna win.
And on paper it appeared as though that they had
the stronger team, bigger team, better team, et cetera. However,
that's why you play the game. And you know they
were trying to downplay this, and you know, for those
of you who are not familiar with us, I mean,
this is a big game. And of course my alma mater,
(03:19):
Xavier on the Crosstown shootout. Now, just to kind of
give you a little bit of background on this, Zavier
University has a student body of six thousand students, you
see has fifty thousand. We are separated there, separated by
only three miles. A lot of these players in the
past used to play in these summer leagues around the
town and so the importance of this game was the
(03:42):
bragging rights on those during those games during the summer league,
which is kind of faded by the wayside. Before Xavier
University dropped football back in nineteen seventy three, that was
referred to as the Crosstown Shootout for the Xavier U
See football game every year and on par Xavier had
(04:02):
a pretty good record against UC. It's one of those
games kind of like the Ohio State Michigan game. It
really doesn't matter what the what the record is. When
you go into that game because of the rivalry, people
are playing a little bit better than what they normally
would pay play with a lot more intensity because they're,
you know, just because it's a rival. And leading up
(04:23):
to the game, Xavier's first year head coach head coach
for the first year, Richard Patino, who is Rick Patino's son,
they were interviewing him and they said, well, how are
you know, because the city really gets into this and
the of course the alumni that live in the city.
The Xavier alumni and U SEE alumni. It's kind of
a kind of a clash there type of thing. And
(04:46):
they were interviewing him and said, well, what are you
preparation for the game? And we don't prepare any different
for this game. Uh, it's just another game on this schedule.
We don't make any more emphasis on it more than
anything else. And a lot of the people that have
been here for a number of years and the sportscasters
and whatever said, you know, it's funny every time a
new coach comes in, whether it's for UC or Xavier,
(05:09):
they always say the same thing until after the game
and they say, I had no clue how big this
game was and the intensity and the rivalry, especially in
the student body and in the stands, and so from
that aspect, I think there was a little bit of
a surprise as far as Richard Patino was concerned in
terms of that. Now, what's interesting is that when I
(05:32):
was watching the game, we call it the Crosstown Shootout. Now,
the TNT sportscasters they were kept referring to it as
the Crosstown Showdown. I guess they're probably being a little
bit pc as far as that's concerned, a little politically
politically correct. I mean, because you know you can't well
you know, you can't have shots. You can't have shoot
(05:54):
it can't be a shootout for crying out loud. That
kind of kind of gives some sort of other connotation
to it, which is a load of crap, because if
you're going to do that, well then maybe you should
change some of the terms. You'd eliminate the shot clock,
don't talk about the three point shots, you don't talk
about the number of shots that a player made during
(06:15):
the game, and all that sort of stuff. But I
thought it was kind of interesting, just kind of an
a side note. So anyway, as far as the game
was concerned, Xavery won the game seventy seventy four, which
was very interesting. Xavier beat the Bearcats for the eight
sixth time in last seven meetings, which is very interesting. Again,
(06:39):
the team usually is on bragging rights, which is based
on bragging rights around the city. Forward Trey Carroll scored
a high career high thirty points as Xavier Musketeer has
defeated since Santy Baracats seventy nine seventy four in the
Crossdown shootout since at the Sintas Center of Friday Night,
(07:00):
Beat you again, bait beat you see, And somewhere in here,
I think I've got the note that Xavier has won.
Actually you See has not, And this was a home
game for Xavier, and the you See has not won
on x U's home court since two thousand and one.
(07:26):
So this is like because it's usually you know, home
and away. You know, one one year it's at you See,
one year it's at Xavier, and flip back and forth
and so on. So since two thousand and one, you
See has not beat Xavier on their own home court.
So that was interesting. It was bragging rights and so on.
This Trey Carroll and again they tried to downplay the
(07:47):
significance of this game and everything. But I think the
individual students themselves, even though some of them transferred in,
and I think they said at the beginning of the game,
only one player on either team had experienced the Crosstown
shootout before. And I don't know what happened as far
as Trey Trey Carroll is concerned, but he's a transfer
(08:08):
student in and I think he's going going to be
I think he's a senior, so he's only going to
be here one year. But apparently he really got into
the motivation of this game again a career high. And
at the end of the game, you could just see
the excitement on his face and he was just so
excited and just running around the court and you know,
showing the Xavier shirt and everything. I mean, it was incredible.
(08:31):
And then the interview afterwards, what a great young man.
He said, well, what are you gonna do? Are you
gonna go out with your friends tonight? And he goes, no,
he isn't. Any point he turned around, he pointed, and
he says, my family came in for the game, and
my wife is up there because he got married in
the off season, which is interesting. And he said, I'm gonna,
you know, just go out to dinner with my family,
(08:53):
get get some sleep tonight and go to bed early
and so on. I'm not going to do anything stupid
and so on. But and the after game or after
the postgame interview, a couple of the people on set,
I can't remember the two, but apparently they had played
college basketball before and they said, well, that is a
remarkable young man because he said he's not going to
(09:15):
go out and do anything stupid, which is certainly different
than what we did when we were in school, so
it was kind of interesting from that aspect. Also, going
into the weekend, we had the Indiana University OSU game,
both teams being undefeated, Big Ten Championship and a big
a whole lot on the line there, which was kind
of interesting, kind of interesting as far as some of
(09:36):
the backstory there, we'll pick that up on the other side.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred WLW, one
hundred WLW. I started at the beginning of the show saying,
you know, I usually don't talk a lot about sports
on this program, again because it is America's truck in Network,
And if you missed any of that or missing their
previous shows, make sure you hit up that iHeartRadio app
(09:58):
brought to you Buyer Friends at Rust Truck Centers. But
this weekend was interesting from the standpoint that again we
had the Crosstown Shootout x U versus UC University of Cincinnati,
Miama Maters Avery University won that game seventy nine seventy four,
which was an upset victory. Then on Saturday, we had
the Big Ten Championship Indiana University High State University ranked
(10:20):
one and two. A High State was ranked number one,
Indiana was ranked number two. Very interesting game the Big
Ten championship and the national title on the line, and
of course then on Sunday we had the Bengals versus
the Bills. So but anyway, the Indiana game was it
was very interesting. I grew up, I mentioned before, I
(10:41):
grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so I do have kind
of a soft spot in my heart for them. However,
my dad went to Notre Dame, so we were big
Notre Dame fans growing up, and not so much OSU
only from the standpoint that you know, if OSU is
playing any other team, I'm for OSU until they played
Notre Dame or something along those lines. But you always
(11:03):
want your hometown team or your home state team to
do well, and so you know, it wasn't necessary a
cheer for Ohio State, and of course I always want
them to beat Michigan and that type of thing. But
this particular game against Indiana was unique in a lot
of instances. The fact that they were able to win
thirteen to ten, which was a low scoring game between
(11:25):
these two teams, which is very interesting. It was the long.
It was the longest, very long. I don't know if
it was a record losing streak. Indiana had not beat
OSU Ohio State University since nineteen eighty eight, thirty seven years.
(11:46):
They hadn't beaten them, and of course, you know, again
according to statistics and according to the strength of schedule,
and even though they were ranked number one and number two,
I don't think anybody was really giving Indiana any chance
of winning that game, simply because as an overpowering offense.
Now High State won the national championship last year. So
(12:06):
kind of in heart of hearts, you know, living here
in the living in the Tri state area around the Ohio,
Kentucky and Indiana corner there in southwest Ohio, you know,
we do have some a little bit of an affiliation
or so on with Indiana, and I was kind of
hoping that Indiana would knock off OSU because they have
(12:26):
been getting a little cocky and so on. So I
was actually pleased to watch it, even though I knew
both teams were going to wind up in the playoffs
at college playoffs, you know, having Indiana win. And the
other thing too, is that Indiana has not won the
big Ten championship since nineteen sixty seven, fifty eight years,
(12:49):
Indiana has been one of these teams that has generally
a pretty decent record, but they have probably one of
the worst. I think they were saying that Indiana, in
terms of their record over the years, has one of
the worst in the Big Ten. You know, it's kind
of a so so program, never been very prominent and
so on. But the last couple of years, the new
(13:10):
coach there, his name escapes me now, but really built
up the university there, built up the team, really made
an effort here, and it was a It was an
exciting game, it was very interesting to watch. But the
mere fact that they had not beat Ohio State in
thirty seven years and had not won the Big Ten
championship in fifty eight it was a huge day and
(13:33):
a huge thing for Indiana IU Indiana University. Then we
had the of course, we had the Bengals game, and
then about six o'clock Sunday night, they did these college
rankings and who was going to be in and who
was going to be out of the college playoffs, which
to me wind up being an absolute joke. It's a
(13:54):
twelve team field, and again I don't talk much about sports,
but you know, these kind of things that's on my mind,
these kind of things that are of interest to me.
And I've found over the years that if I find
something interesting, there's a whole lot of people out there
that find it interesting as well. So well, anyway, it's
interesting to me, and I thought that some of the
(14:16):
dynamics behind this. Now there's a twelve team that were
selected and all during the Ohio State Michigan or Ohio
State Indiana game and some of the other games. Let
me see, it was BYU and off the top of
my head, I can't remember off the top of my
head who they played. But there were all these games
that were coming down to some of these teams that
(14:37):
were on the bubble whether they were going to get
in or not. And it was interesting to see a
couple of these teams actually got blown out and even
though that they were still high ranked. And during the game,
they were showing all these people that were part of
the selection committee and they were sitting there with their
computers and their notes and everything, and they were making
(14:58):
their determination. Team football field playoff was announced on Sunday
and Notre Dame was left out and a couple of
other teams that should have been in there were also
left out. The Fighting Irish to ten and to two
were the first team left out of the field, and
Miami ten and two received the last at large spot,
(15:21):
moving up two spots to number ten after the twelve
person CFP selection committee ultimately decided head had results. The
Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish of course first game of
the season, twenty seven to twenty four in their August
thirty first opener, so they kind of made that the
determining factor as to whether or not Notre Dame made
(15:43):
it in. But what was interesting is that if you
go to the AP rankings, which is interesting, the AP
did their rankings at the end of the season, and
they had the number one, number two, number three team.
As far as who was going to be ranked, and
(16:03):
if you go through the top twelve, in my opinion
for the college National Championship game, it should be the
top twelve teams in the country, and you start off
with Indiana and then Georgia and Ohio State. But you
have you know, at the end you had number twelve
was BYU. Yet in the championship games, there's going to
(16:27):
be and I don't know why they did this. I
don't know the backstory behind this, but they put in
these lower tier teams James Madison and Tulane. Now, as
far as the college rankings, Tulane is number seventeen in
the country and James Madison is number nineteen. And so
(16:48):
if you're trying to have an interesting playoff situation, wouldn't
you want to put the people in there that have
the best chance of winning the overall championship. And I'm
you know, James Madison may be a good team. Tu
Lane may be a good team, but they're probably going
to get blown out and blown out big in terms
of their individual game. And so it was interesting to
(17:11):
see how this played out. Who they moved ahead just
remembered BYU wound up losing to Texas Tech thirty four
to seven Saturday, and so that was a blowout. And
in order to determine nowech Texas Tech made it into
(17:33):
the playoffs and the fact that they blew out somebody
by twenty seven points in a game that should have
dropped them out, because again, how good are they if
they were beaten by this team that is in the
top ten by twenty seven points? So college football rankings
(17:55):
have always been kind of weird. It's been kind of
a weird system. The way they had it set up,
they thought that we're going to do something good as
far as these playoffs were concerned, Add more games to
the schedule and so on. So you don't have a
situation where just the college football writers, the Writers Association
or different AP of Associated Press did their rankings and
(18:16):
people would argue about who was number one, who was
number two, and so on. The playoff system is good,
but this time around it was I think screwed up.
And I think they screwed up royally because again, the
name of the game is number of eyes on the
TV sets. How many people are going to be watching
these games? And if the college rankings mean anything at all,
(18:37):
I mean, if the CFP college football people are going
to make the determination and who's going to play in
the tournament itself as opposed to you know, the college
rankings itself, then why have the AP rankings on a
weekly basis or even talk about that and just say, well,
it's just going to be up to the CFP committee anyway.
(18:58):
That's that's my two cents worth in than that, And
of course that's been devalued because they've stopped printing penny.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck in Network. Seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Here's your trucking forecast for the Try State and the
rest of the country and the Try State. Over nightclouds
increased the low down to twenty one, partly Sunday. Tuesday
high of forty three Claudie with rain Wednesday, then a
chance of rain mixing with snow by late afternoon, a
high of forty five. Thursday, mostly Claude, a slight chance
of afternoon snow a high of thirty three. Nationally, the
Pacific Northwest will see several days of heavy rain, while
(19:36):
snow falls in the Northern Rockies. A clipper system bringing
a period of snow across the Upper Midwest and Great
Lakes region through Tuesday, while a stronger clipper system expected
to bring heavy snow and high winds across the Upper
Midwest Tuesday, continuing across the Great Lakes Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Seven hundred w l W. I'm Kevin Gordon. This is
America struck in NETW. America's Trucking Network supports the mission
or rece across America. You can hear us every truck
and Tuesday at five am and ten am Eastern on
REES Across America Radio, available on the iHeartRadio app. Search
the word rease Now that's wr EA TS for Rees
(20:19):
Across America Radio. And thank you to all our truckers
for supporting the mission of Reese Across America. Also, the Saturday, Saturday,
December the thirteenth is the day that the reef will
be distributed to the individual cemeteries around the country. And
again this is geared more towards the fallen soldiers in
(20:41):
terms of these reefs. Now, if you have not joined yet,
or if you've not entered or wanted to participate, or
you want to participate in the ref laying ceremony, you
can go to recacross America dot org and you can
check that out receacross America dot org. And on there
(21:02):
you can register at a cemetery near you. It's pretty quick,
it's pretty easy. It's Saturday morning. It's only about two
three hour period of time out of your day to
give honor to these fallen soldiers. And again, their motto
is that or what they say is that a soldier
dies twice once when they take their last breath and
(21:23):
the other when their name is no longer mentioned. And
it's a beautiful cemetery ceremony taking these where hes, placing
them on the tombs, and what is done is the
wreath is laid and then that person's name is said
out loud by the person laying the wreath, and it's
really interesting. I'm not going to be able to participate
in it this year. We will be down when my
(21:45):
wife and I will be down in Nashville. We are
going to be attending the Tech Rodeo from Rush Truck
Centers and it's going to be a very interesting event
where they bring in all of the different technicians and
bodywork and people from the Bodyshop and it's going to
be this tech Rodeo that's going to be going on
over the weekend down in Nashville, the twentieth anniversary of
(22:06):
that three hundred and some thousand dollars in prizes, cash prizes,
and of course the overall trophy. So I'm really looking
forward to being down there and it's going to be
a very interesting event. Looking very forward to being there
and broadcasting from down there and doing the show from
down there. Of course, we'll have to record it because
you know it's during the day, and then of course
(22:27):
our show is at night, so I'm gonna have it
looking forward to a lot of fun. So anyway, that's
what's going on. I won't be there on Saturday, unfortunately.
I really wanted to really looking forward to being there
at the event. But again, if you want to go
to reescross America dot org, you can register, and I
think there's still time to sponsor a wreath. Even so, anyway, continuing,
(22:49):
it's gone on a little bit longer than I had expected,
but there's I just have a whole lot of thoughts
and so on about this that past weekend. As far
as sports are concerned, I mean, look at it. We
got college back, well college football, we got the overall
rankings in terms of this college football championship. In terms
of playoffs series that begins, I think it's I think
(23:11):
it begins this week. I don't know. I don't know
when it begins. I think it's December the thirteenth, is
what they said. So anyway, we got that going on.
Of course, Sunday afternoon we had the Bengals Bills game,
which you know, I again being you know, in the
Cincinnati Greater Since a Northern Kentucky area, you want your
team to do well. You want them to do, you know,
(23:35):
be good on the national stage and so on. And
the Bengals it just this season. A lot of years,
it's this build up of we've got this talent, we've
got that talent, and every year it seems like they
just figure out a way of breaking our hearts along
the way. And yesterday it was no different. They started
(23:56):
off the game just on fire and we're really doing
very well against the Bills. But then being the Bengals,
it seemed like they kind of didn't quite finish the game,
and the Bills stepped up their game, come from behind victory.
I mean, it was incredible. They beat the Bengals thirty
(24:16):
nine thirty four, which going into the last five minutes,
I thought the Bengals had it sewn up. I mean,
it looked like they were going to just absolutely go
away with the victory. But again they broke our hearts
and that's unfortunate. But what was interesting though, is looking
at the different headlines from the different cities. If you
(24:36):
look at the headlines from the Cincinnati in choir, it
says Joe Burrow, Bengals falter, late and snowy loss to
Josh Allen and the Bills, and the coverage of that.
As far as the Buffalo Bills were concerned, they met
their headline. Josh Allen carries Buffalo Bills to huge win
(24:59):
over Cincinnati Bengals. Now, going into the game, the Bengals
were four and eight, four wins, eight losses, and the
Bills had the exact opposite eight wins, four losses, and
so again, on paper, it appeared as though that it
wasn't even going to be a close game. But the
Bengals made a game out on the Bill's home turf,
(25:21):
which was even more remarkable. But at the end, there
were a couple of missteps, a couple of things that
got screwed up. The Bengals kind of screwed up in
the end. Their defense didn't quite hold up, although there
was a couple of really great plays on the part
of the defense where they actually were able to prevent
two touchdowns by fumbles. And then, of course Joe Burrow
(25:43):
throwing a couple two interceptions probably didn't hurt help the
game any either, especially when you throw it an interception
and it's run back for a touchdown. So again, but
it was an interesting game, was interesting to watch as
we were putting up Christmas decorations and doing all that
sort of stuff. It was kind of an interesting thing
to have that in the background and a little bit
of background noises we were going on. So anyway, that's
(26:06):
pretty much my weekend, and I hope you enjoyed listening
to that, and it's just something that was interesting to
me and I wanted to talk about it over the Actually,
last Friday we got the or actually it was it
Thursday or Friday Friday, I believe it was, we got
the information the personal consumption expenditures key inflation measure. Now,
(26:29):
of course, the Federal Reserve is set to start a
meeting with their final meeting of the year starting today
and into tomorrow, so tomorrow afternoon Wednesday afternoon is when
they will have their press conference and determine or announce
whether or not they're raising or not raising. They're not
going to raise, interesting whether they're going to hold interest
rates steady or whether they're going to lower interest rates.
(26:52):
And for all the talk that we've been hearing about
the Federal Reserve that they're you know that they're watchdogs
or stewards of the economy. That they have two mandates,
one to make sure that the job market is strong,
the others to make sure that inflation is down. And
they've set a target of two percent, even though inflation
(27:15):
over the years on average has been above two percent
except during the first term of the Trump administration. So
they've set the bar, in my opinion, kind of high
in terms of what their expectations are. But they've been
very stingy in terms of lowering interest rates. And the
thing that is interesting is that I was looking at
(27:38):
some headlines and so on, and I've been talking about
this for a number of weeks, number of months, even
that if you look at the overnight lending rate, which
is what the Federal Reserve controls, this is the overnight
borrowing that I certain banks need cash reserves or cash
on hand to cash checks or to give to different
(28:00):
their customers. If they're having a big, big weekend, you know,
transferring of money to like a you know, like a
grocery store or any kind of a store over the
weekend that is expecting a lot of cash transactions, they
have to have a lot of cash on hand. So
this cash is available, but if the local bank doesn't
have that, then they have to borrow that from another bank,
(28:22):
And so they've got that overnight rate, which is that
four point two five four point five percent, and so
but as a result of that, that also controls and
kind of starts affecting the credit card rate, what you
pay on your credit cards, what you pay in our
car loans, what you pay on your mortgage. Those interest
rates are all interconnected. You know, when one goes when
(28:45):
the overnight rate from the Fed goes up, then some
of these others go up. And of course your credit
card interest rate goes up, new car loans go up.
And what we're seeing in the housing market, and over
the last couple of last several months, I've been talking
about how in the rest of the developed world, Canada,
Europe and so on, that the interest rate is down
(29:05):
around one and a half to two percent, and here
we are at above four percent as far as our
overnight rate is concerned. And I think if you're trying
to stimulate the economy, which everybody says that if interest
rates are lower, people have more money in their pocket,
they're more inclined to spend money, they're more inclined to
(29:26):
expand the economy, and of course businesses tend to expand
as well. So again hoping that the Federal Reserve gets
in and through their thick skull to lower interest rates.
And by the way, there's some interesting well at least
a couple of places I know of where the interest
rate is a lot lower than what it is in
the United States. I'm Kevin Gordon, America Struck a Network
(29:46):
seven hundred Wlwright.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
News Radio seven hundred WLW and iHeartRadio station Guarantee Human
seven hundred WLW HI hard rating.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Run a business and not thinking about radio.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Think again, because more people are listening to the radio
on iHeart today than they were twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So looking at this Federal Reserve and what they're meeting
later on today and then tomorrow. In terms of interest rates,
one of the things supposedly they pay attention to is
this personal consumption expenditures. Now, in the previous segment, I
was talking about interest rates, and I mentioned before that
(30:29):
we have our daughter lives in the Netherlands, and we
got to talk in the other day about you know,
interest rates and what their mortgage is and what our
mortgage is, and so on. And it's interesting that mortgage
rates over in the Netherlands are anywhere between three and
a half to four and a half percent, and yet
(30:50):
the interest rates here in the United States as of
the other day that I checked, was about six point
three six percent. It's almost twice what it is in
the Netherlands. And if you're trying to spur the economy,
if you're trying to spur people to buy equipment expand
their business, then why are our interest rates so darn high?
(31:13):
And it's all because of lion Jerry Powell and his
inability or ineptness as far as running the Federal Reserve
in terms of not understanding supply side economics, the fact
that he was too late and as Trump called him,
too late, I call him lion Jerry Powell. Trump calls
him too late Jerry Powell, because when you look at
(31:34):
the Federal Reserve's track record over the years, even back
during Alan Greenspan and some of the other people who
are in charge of the Fed, they always seem to
be running a little bit behind what the normal what
the economy is actually doing. And if they can't keep up,
and if they're supposedly the so called experts. Why the
hell are they always so wrong? I mean, let's not
(31:55):
forget that for the first year and a half of
increasing inflation three percent, four percent, five percent thereabouts, which
culminated in a nine point one percent inflation rate in
June of twenty twenty two, the fact that they kept
calling it transitory inflation, which meant that it was temporary. Oh,
(32:15):
this is just a blip on the radar screen. It'll
come down, it'll come down, it'll come down. Well, when
it got the nine point one percent, obviously it wasn't transitory.
And in March before that happened, they started raising interest
rates to kind of slow things down, kind of slowed
things down, took them too long to slow things down.
So again, the Federal Reserve has always been behind in
(32:38):
terms of reaction, and sometimes they react too much in
one way or too much in the other way, whereas
a lot of times if they just you know, mind,
you know, just keep things steady instead of trying to
control things, things would be a lot better. But anyway,
that's again my opinion, and of course, as you know,
I have an opinion, I'm not afraid to use it.
Can inflation measure was lower than expected in September. Commerce
(33:01):
Department said Friday in a report delayed by the government
shutdown that gives further green light to the Federal Reserve
to lower interest rates. The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index,
which excludes volatile food and energy prices, indicated a point
two percent monthly rise, while the annual rate was two
point eight percent. The monthly rate was in line with
(33:24):
Dow Joon consensus, but the annual level was point one
percentage points lower. The core annual rate edged down from
two point nine percent in August. So again heading in
the right direction. Let's go back to Liberation Day, back
on April to second, and back then when the tariffs
were put into place, everybody was talking about this is
(33:46):
not everybody, but there was a bunch of people that
are talking about this is going to lead to a recession,
this is going to lead to high inflation, this is
going to do this, it's going to do that, and
the economy is going to go in the tank. Well
none of that came true, and yet they keep saying that, Well,
you know, it's just a matter of time. It's just
a matter of time. You know, at some point in
(34:06):
time you've got to look at what is instead of
what you hope it to be. You know, when you
have good economic your finger on the pulse, you should
know what's going on instead of this hoping and wishing
kind of stuff that we're seeing, and especially from the
spoon fed reggitators in the mainstream media, because again, in
my opinion, they have been always trying to manufacture recession.
(34:30):
In addition, the headline PCEE increase point three percent for
the month, putting the annual inflation rate at two point
eight percent. According to the Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis,
both range readings were in line with the expectations, though
the annual rate was up only one point one tenth
of a percentage point. But the core personal consumption expenditures
(34:51):
is what the FED generally looks at. Now, again, you
have the consumer Price Index, which takes a look at
everything in the economy, everything from avocados to zinc. Anything
that's in there A to z is reflected in terms
of what those prices have done over the period of time,
and they base that as far as the consumer price index.
(35:12):
Personal consumption expenditures, on the other hand, is what you
do in the day to day business you know, in
the new day to day life, you buy gasoline, You
go out and you buy food, you go out and
buy clothing, you buy all these things that are necessities
or the things that you do on a regular basis.
You don't, you know, every week, you don't go out
and buy a refrigerator. Every week. You don't go out
(35:32):
and buy a car. Every week, you don't go out
and buy a air conditioner or whatever. So these major
purchases are yes, they're part of the inflation rate, the
consumer price index, but in terms of personal consumption, what
you spend on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is what
is contained in that personal consumption expenditures because that is
(35:56):
the thing that people experience on a day to day
basis terms of their own kitchen table discussions, their own
kitchen table economy as to what is going on in
terms of their own individual budgets. So again that's why
it's such an important number. Goods prices serge point five
percent of the month, as they say, and here Trump's
teriffs continuing to work their way through the economy. Service
(36:20):
prices were up just two point two percent, food rows
point four, while energy was up one point seven and
now those last two. If you're talking, I guess this
is the numbers from September, because from September, when you
look at October, November, and then so far this month,
(36:40):
those prices have come down considerably. Food prices are down.
I just saw the other day as far as our
local store, eggs which had been up over three dollars
for a dozen, are now being sold at a dollar
forty nine. So that's basically in line with where they
were a couple of years ago. When you look at
(37:00):
things like eggs, when you look at things like beef
when they're subject to drought, when you're subject to a
bird flew, like the eggs, and you have to kill
off flocks of chickens, well, if you don't have the chickens,
the eggs aren't going to be laid. And if you
have drought conditions in certain parts of the world, certain
parts of the air and the country, you're going to
have less cattle. As a matter of fact, I've mentioned
(37:22):
this before, the size of the herds in the United
States are now down at the level where they were
back in nineteen fifty seven I believe it was, So
it's back down to the level it was in the fifties.
Our population has more than doubled since that period of time,
so you've got more people seeking a smaller quantity, and
of course those prices are going to go up. So
(37:44):
increasing the grazing, increasing the herds increasing, possibly the import
of good beef from other areas around the country, around
the world, are the things that are going to keep
those prices down. Now again, those are the factors that
need to be looked at. You know, if you've gotten
natural occurrences and you've got a disease that goes through,
that should be factored in and have a weighted factor
(38:07):
if you're talking about inflation and what that is doing.
As far as the economy is concerned, personal income rose
point four percent for the month, while spending was up
point three percent. Income was point one percent percentage point
above the forecas. So again they predicted what it was
going to be and it was a little bit better
(38:27):
than that. Odds of a rate cut when the Fed
convenes this week are at eighty seven percent. I've seen
numbers around ninety percent. Now, of course, there's going to
be a little bit of contention. This could be one
of the most contentious Federal Reserve meetings, because there's a
faction that says that interest rates should stay the same,
while there's others that say it should be cut. Kevin
(38:48):
Gordon faction says it should be reduced at least a
quarter percent, if not a full percentage point. And then
of course they had the University. We may have to
get into this tomorrow with the University of Michigan consumer survey.
Of course, they're down playing this. They keep talking about
these consumer sentiment, consumer surveys and so on as to
whether or not as far as the strength of the economy, well,
(39:09):
it's interesting that they throw here a side note at
the end, at the end of the story Consumer the
Michigan University of Michigan, the consumer survey came in at
fifty three point three, up four point five percent from November,
better than Wall Street's estimate of fifty two. So from
that aspect in terms of these economy and what people
(39:33):
are perceived as far as the economy is concerned, that's up.
We're seeing a lot of good economic news. And I
thought it was interesting in one of the stories that
usually there is a chart a companying the Personal Consumption
Expenditures Index, which shows the personal consumption expenditures index from
twenty twenty one up until the current date. And it's
(39:53):
interesting when you look at twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, when those numbers were above seven percent, the
consumer personal consumption all above the four point range up
until towards the tail end of twenty twenty three. So
I guess with this narrative that we're now talking about affordability,
(40:14):
I guess they want to forget what was done over
the last four years and talk about that in terms
of affordability as opposed to what it actually is. Interestingly enough,
in terms of affordability, taking a look at oil and
gas prices is kind of interesting that oil is falling.
But on a side note, I want to mention the
fact that when you look at the national average for gasoline,
(40:35):
national average is now below three percent or three dollars
on across the board. Interesting in my neighborhood gas is
at two dollars and sixty two cents, which the national average.
If you look at that, we are actually at one
of the low ends, at least in our county in
terms of the entire country. Well, just some very good
(40:58):
economic news there. So anyway, folks, We're up against glockhair.
Stay tuned for red Eye Radio, a top the hour.
I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com