In Search of… Recession!

In Search of… Recession! 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):
In Search of Recession, Yeah, I had one of my
favorite shows as a kid in the nineteen seventies. I
used to look forward to it every week. It was
kind of like a precursor to some of the stuff
that you have today. Was Leonard Kniemoy In Search Of

(00:39):
and In Search Of had Leonard Nimoy looking after trying
to find Bigfoot or UFOs or the Lockness Monster or
ghosts or Amelia Earhart, whatever it may be. I found
the show pretty interesting as a kid, constant back and
forth being played in the mainstream media all the time.

(01:02):
Got to find recession. When's the recession coming? What is
a recession? We've actually kind of lost the definition of it.
Traditionally it would be two quarters of negative economic growth.
Now we had that, but the high priests at the
National Bureau of Economic Research they didn't call it a recession.

(01:24):
And some are saying, well, the jobs market was too
strong again, How do you, how do you account for
a recession when you're constantly changing the metrics, the measuring stick.
If you will, imagine if they changed they changed what

(01:49):
a pound is. For example, they changed what a pound
actually is. And let's just say that a pound from
the nineteen seventies is well is actually I don't know,
a quarter pound today or less. Then everybody say, wow,

(02:14):
gee whiz. You know I could fit into these pants
back in the nineteen seventies, but I can't fit into
them today. I don't understand why I keep thinking of
South Park and Cartman. I'm not fat, I'm just big boned. Well, essentially,
that's what's been done with our metric, our economic numbers.

(02:35):
The government has changed the consumer price Index and how
it is calculated. They don't account for housing properly, in
particular the price of homes. They don't even account for
it's like equivalent rental income via these homes. And there's

(02:55):
a myriad of other things. I mean, back when inflation
was running very hot, we did a podcast at radio
show on the fact that if we were actually using
the economic you know that the CPI numbers of calculations
that were used back in the seventies. It wasn't inflation
at nine percent. It was inflation running hotter than eighteen percent. Now,

(03:18):
the government likes messing around with these numbers because they
can go on TV and tell you that everything is awesome.
But it didn't work. It didn't work this time around.
People saw through the bs. They said, wait a second,
you're telling me the economy is great, got a strong economy.

(03:40):
Things are going swimming with all this stuff, and yet
you know, I can't afford this that or the next thing,
or I take a look at my bills and they're
completely out of control. I've said this for some time,
and you got other people now starting to come out
and follow suit. It's been my belief that we have
been in a session for almost three years now almost

(04:05):
you know, you want to call it. You want to
call it, call it a private sector recession. And quite funly,
that's the only recession that matters. We not as bad,
but we've basically taken the same tact as China in
over stimulating the economy, pumping money into the system, you know,
creating government jobs, not real jobs, not private sector jobs,

(04:30):
and the private sector hasn't done that well at all.
We are in a private sector recession. And again you
can actually can see this in you know, you take
a look at the Russell two thousand index. So you
take a look there's obviously some of the smaller cap companies,

(04:51):
mid to smaller cap companies, and you take a look
at the growth that they've had and it's been minis
school hasn't been that great at all, and quite fair,
that's a pretty good reflection on the overall economy. Something
to most certainly take into consideration. How people say, well,

(05:12):
gee whiz, if we're in a recession, how come the
market did so well. We've pointed out that markets actually
outperform during recessions in an anticipation of coming out of
the recession. This is a good news. It's a good news.
If we can get the government out of the way,

(05:36):
if we can put elon Musk and Vivec to work
and the whole doge in cutting government spending down to size,
we can get rid of all the inflationary pressures, and
we could we could see some unbelievable growth. I mean,
I thought you can harken back to the days where
it was three four percent and real not not based

(06:02):
upon government spending. We still have some time here people.
You know, it's funny Commerce Secretary Real Mundo. She's doing
everything and anything she can right now to push as
much money out the door from the Chips Act. Yeah, yeah,
because you're worried that Trump's going to pull that back.
Basically taking our tax dollars and just handing it out

(06:25):
to billion dollar corporations. Again makes no sense to me,
but again, this is something that they're pushing for. Getting
the government out of the way, getting spending down, getting
inflation under control. That's that's what's going to drive growth
for the future. In search of recession, we're in one

(06:50):
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