August 29th, 2026 - Rates, Debt, and Dollars

Adam and Steve host a lively radio hour, bouncing between market moves, Fed policy rants, oil and housing, and the runaway national debt while bantering with callers. They unpack inflation data, interest-rate risks, rollovers vs. transfers, and even the cost of gas over generations, all in plain English. The result feels like sitting at a kitchen table with two pros who mix hard numbers, strong opinions, and everyday analogies to make economics feel real.

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Steven Van Wie 0:00

It's Saturday morning. It's 10 o'clock. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 0:06

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 0:43

And once again, Joey is out. We had pre-announced that it would be 2 weeks. This is the second one. So next week we will all be together right here at this particular time. I imagine that he's getting some final vacationing in with the kids before everybody goes back to normal. And that's great. Should. Let's see. Well, how about we start out? My wife always tells me give out the phone number more often. So if you would like to talk to us, it's 904-222-8255 or 904-222-TALK.

Steven Van Wie 0:46

Welcome back to all of the regulars. We're well into year 12 now by my count. And because you're there, you keep listening, we'll keep talking. If you're new to the show—

Adam Van Wie 0:59

But I think we should mention, we really, really enjoy phone calls. The show's always better when we get phone calls. Like last week we had a new caller, Anne. That was great. Like, if there's something on your mind, please reach out and call us. We'd love to talk to you and we'll be nice, I promise.

Steven Van Wie 1:05

Absolutely.

Steven Van Wie 1:16

And I'll have your mother put that on the list of things that she should remind me of frequently. 'Cause she's very good at that. If you're new to this show, then try to stay for the whole hour. You'll probably learn something. And if you're one of those people who has questions and you're not afraid to use them, pick up the phone. We don't bite. We don't ridicule people. One exception, but we don't take his calls anyway.

Adam Van Wie 1:21

There you go.

Adam Van Wie 1:44

Adam knows.

Steven Van Wie 1:46

So don't ever fear that. But if you are timid and don't like the concept of being on air, you can always email us at info@strivuswealth.com.

Steven Van Wie 1:59

And by next Saturday, we'll have answered your question if it doesn't get picked up during the show. And all that said, this is, um, as usual, a week where things happened. It's amazing how often by Saturday, a whole bunch of stuff has happened since last Saturday, isn't it?

Speaker 3 2:17

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 2:17

But it was, it was action-packed this week. It was.

Steven Van Wie 2:20

It really was. So I'm, I'm going to let Adam tell you how that impacted the market, because as if you were listening to Angela sign off, she said the market wound up up, and it did. And we were remarking to each other on the way in here, it didn't necessarily feel like a great week, but when you look at the numbers, pretty satisfactory.

Adam Van Wie 2:42

It was positive. Yeah, I, I don't know why it felt So it was an up and down week, and that I guess that never helps. And then ending on a down day on Friday always kind of sours your your mood a bit. But but overall, it was positive. The Dow and the S&P were up a half a percent, and the Nasdaq was up point eight percent. This came while the new Fed chair Kevin Warsh was in Jackson Hole delivering a speech where he all but said that the Fed would rate hike. Rates in September if inflation doesn't come down before then. I don't think that's a very realistic thing, that inflation will become— be coming down between now and then. Oil closed the week over $83. And I just don't think Iran is going to change their current trajectory anytime soon, although reports about their economy being in shambles are becoming more prevalent. I just don't see it. They're driven by something bigger than, in their minds, bigger than anything else. And it's a religion-based thing. I don't see them changing. I just don't.

Steven Van Wie 3:55

There's one more influence on that side, too. The administration announced a big deal with Venezuela for oil. Right at the last minute in the week. And that hasn't had a chance to sink in yet, but it's going to take some pressure off the price of oil, I think. Will it have

Speaker 4 4:12

Perhaps.

Steven Van Wie 4:15

a— within a month, will it have an effect? I wouldn't guarantee that.

Adam Van Wie 4:19

You have to remember that oil is a global commodity. It's, it's used everywhere in the world and it is It— well, that may increase supply for the US. That would directly take away from another country that's currently using it. So it's— it's— I just don't know how much of an effect that will have on the price now.

Steven Van Wie 4:42

Although their production had ramped down so far under Maduro. It's going to be— you don't start drilling oil in a day or two. But it's going to be ramping up.

Adam Van Wie 4:45

True, true.

Adam Van Wie 4:50

No.

Adam Van Wie 4:52

Yeah, but that could take years to put in the infrastructure.

Steven Van Wie 4:55

And plus they had the the earthquakes down there that took out a lot of stuff. They're, they're not going to be producing for us gazillions of barrels a day for a long time.

Adam Van Wie 5:09

Yeah, no doubt about it. So the real key to all of this is Iran in the strait. So anyways, I just, I want to get back to the Fed policy. I really disagree with the rate hike in September. It's for 2 main reasons.

Adam Van Wie 5:25

Just in case you're wondering, Kevin has not called me for my thoughts on the matter. Hopefully he will.

Steven Van Wie 5:29

That's strange. I thought that's why I didn't get my call, 'cause he just decided to talk to you instead.

Adam Van Wie 5:34

It's really disappointing. He should, he hasn't. So my first reason is that inflation is running above 3%, but less than 4%. The hundreds of years of historical data tell us that 3% 3% inflation is the norm.

Steven Van Wie 5:51

I've got an exact number for a period of time if you'd like it. I did a little research on this because I knew—

Adam Van Wie 5:56

I've done it before too, and I've got the same thing.

Steven Van Wie 5:59

Okay, in the U.S. over the past 60 years, okay, average inflation is 3.2%.

Adam Van Wie 6:06

And that includes 20 years of 2% or less. So yeah, so that tells me that if you take away the last 2 decades, that number is probably 3.5%.

Speaker 4 6:09

Yeah.

Speaker 4 6:16

Yeah.

Speaker 4 6:19

Ish.

Adam Van Wie 6:19

So we're right there.

Steven Van Wie 6:21

And yeah, and have we suffered over that time?

Adam Van Wie 6:24

No, it's been the greatest period of economic expansion of any country in history. So why are we now arbitrarily, seemingly, 'cause I've never heard a good explanation as to why this number has changed, but now arbitrarily we have to hit 2%?

Adam Van Wie 6:44

Why? I don't understand.

Steven Van Wie 6:44

Beats me. We have openly been calling for that to be changed back to 3%.

Adam Van Wie 6:51

It makes no sense. It's just, it's an arbitrary target that we are not at. And yet they're treating it like it is the— like this has been the policy for 100 years. It has not. So anyways,

Adam Van Wie 7:06

I just don't get it. The second reason is that the economy is good, but it's not rate hike good. It's not so much on fire that we need to just slow everything down. If you ask the average person on the street right now, I believe that the average person would tell you we're in a recession. If you just went out and polled, you would get maybe 60% of people, if you ask them, are we in a recession? They would say yes. That is not rate hike territory. Rate hike territory— rate hikes are meant to slow an overheated economy that has experienced inflation because everyone is making so much money that they're spending it to chase too few goods. Does that sound like the current economy?

Speaker 3 7:26

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 7:52

Not to me.

Adam Van Wie 7:53

Not to me either. And so I don't— them hiking rates is not going to drop the price of oil to $50 tomorrow. It's not gonna do anything to the price of oil.

Steven Van Wie 8:03

It's not gonna do anything to the price of a bunch of Anything that—

Adam Van Wie 8:06

and but oil is what's driving all of the inflation that we're seeing right now. So I just don't understand the motivation behind this rate hike. I think it's a huge policy mistake. I think it's a big misstep for Kevin in his first 6 months on the job. And that's— let's be frank, that's not what he was hired to do.

Steven Van Wie 8:25

No, I think he took a test vote there out in Jackson Hole. And what I read was he's now in the minority. Not wanting to raise.

Adam Van Wie 8:36

Yeah. And let's remember too that he has the loudest voice, but his vote counts exactly the same as everyone else's vote.

Speaker 4 8:42

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 8:43

And if he got overruled, it would show that he is a true leader, in my opinion. All right. Lots more on the other side. We've got to take a short break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 8:58

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 9:20

 In case you tuned in a minute late, Joey will rejoin us next week. All right, we have this week, as usual, a trivia question, and brought to you by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. Call Paul at 904-636-7888. One of our looming problems in this country right now Obviously, since about a week and a half ago, we hit the debt level of $40 trillion.

Steven Van Wie 9:33

That's more zeros than almost anybody would ever think. I want to know, what is the increase in the national debt every second of your life as of today? As of right now. Every second. How much further does our country go in debt?

Speaker 4 9:52

Okay.

Speaker 4 9:58

All right.

Steven Van Wie 9:58

Um, back to— lines are open.

Steven Van Wie 10:02

904-222-8255. See, I'm educatable, as they say. I remembered to do that. Um, back to the market. There's, there's still quite a bit left to say because there's so many things going on and some of us have some opinions about it.

Adam Van Wie 10:18

Yep. And yeah, I got on, got on a little bit of a rant there. And, you know, that I'm also ranting against my best interests because higher rates are good for people who save and investors. So—

Steven Van Wie 10:31

Yeah, in the business we're in, we have a lot of net savers.

Adam Van Wie 10:33

Yep. And so it's not like I'm doing this to, to, to arguing against a rate hike in my own best interest. I truly just feel that it's not the right thing for the economy. So I just wanted to make that clear.

Adam Van Wie 10:48

Much of the positive movement in the market this week actually came from the Mag 7, which I haven't said in a while. It's been a lot of other things driving the market, but we can all thank our good old friend Nvidia for that one. On Wednesday after the close, Nvidia posted their 2nd quarter earnings, which of course were nothing short of stellar and beat on both revenue and earnings. Their revenue was Almost $100 billion for the quarter, $96.2 billion. It's up 106% from a year ago. Their earnings per share was $2.46. The estimate there was less than $2, so they crushed that as well. And the gross margins were at a ridiculous 75%.

Steven Van Wie 11:31

And

Steven Van Wie 11:33

Jensen Huang said If I could build factories faster. This is just the beginning of the demand.

Adam Van Wie 11:38

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 11:42

So 75% gross margin is absolutely ludicrous. The politicians point to oil companies when they make like 20%. This is insane. So why do politicians single out— why aren't they singling out Nvidia for excess profits or whatever they want to call it? This is nuts.

Steven Van Wie 12:03

We have a caller which we will take immediately.

Steven Van Wie 12:07

Good morning, Grace.

Speaker 3 12:09

Hey, thank you for taking my call.

Steven Van Wie 12:12

Our pleasure. What's up today?

Speaker 3 12:15

I am following up on my previous phone call about the, um, rolling over, transferring the qualified pensions. Um, they are sending me a check, um, payable to my broker and for benefit of me. But they said it's a rollover, but even though it's a transfer, you had mentioned it, um, is a— so I'm concerned in terms of doing the taxes. Um, so do I select transfer?

Adam Van Wie 12:46

No, we actually meant to address this today. Um, my dad misspoke last week, uh, that it actually is a rollover, and he was, he was incorrect about that one thing when we were speaking with you, and we were gonna actually talk about that later today, so I'm glad you called.

Speaker 3 13:02

Oh, okay.

Adam Van Wie 13:03

But that still, it doesn't change the tax consequences of the move. It's the same. There are no tax consequences because you're going from one qualified account to another. It is still no taxes due. But what it will do is impact your ability to do another rollover for one calendar year.

Speaker 4 13:26

That's all.

Speaker 3 13:27

Right.

Steven Van Wie 13:27

Yeah, yeah, that was my point last week, that there's— there are limits on the number of times you can do things, and you have to watch them very carefully.

Speaker 3 13:37

But so it's a rollover, not a transfer then?

Adam Van Wie 13:43

Unfortunately, yes, that is correct.

Speaker 3 13:45

Okay, I just want to know in terms of taxes, um, like, um, that I won't be taxed Right, right.

Adam Van Wie 13:55

You will not be taxed on it again, or at this time. You will when you remove the money from the IRA.

Steven Van Wie 14:01

But yes, there's one more little point in here. The limitation on rollovers only occurs among IRAs. If one of the— one side or the other of the deal is a company-sponsored ERISA plan, it is not included in that limit.

Adam Van Wie 14:20

Oh, really? Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 14:21

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 14:22

I did a lot of research after last week's call. So you don't even have to worry about it. In fact, you can call it whatever you want if one side of it is a company plan. The only warning shot here is if you're going IRA to IRA, and then you have to be very, very careful about that one year or one time per year limit. But that's what I discovered.

Adam Van Wie 14:46

Yeah. But as far as the taxes, you're, you're still in the same, same scenario that you were, uh, so that you will not have to cut Uncle Sam a check. So that's good news.

Speaker 3 14:57

Okay. Because, um, it is coming from a pension, like, uh, and they said it's qualified. I did ask them specifically about that. So, so that's why I knew it has to be deposited into a traditional IRA and not a Roth. Um, but then also another question is, um, in terms of the 1099-R,

Speaker 3 15:22

would it indicate G on it? Um, I'm assuming—

Steven Van Wie 15:30

Indicate what? It'll indicate what came out of the plan and into your hands.

Speaker 3 15:38

Okay.

Steven Van Wie 15:38

In other words, that's how much income you get from it, but you're deferring that income by redepositing the money into a qualified IRA.

Speaker 3 15:48

Right, right, right.

Adam Van Wie 15:49

Because, um, it should indicate a Code G, um, which, right, what that means for people that don't know is that it stands for a direct rollover or direct payment, meaning funds move between financial institutions without you touching the money. I think that's what it will indicate, but I'm not 100% sure of that. I'm not a tax professional.

Steven Van Wie 16:12

We are not CPAs and we don't play one on the radio, but we always tell you to verify it with your tax counsel.

Adam Van Wie 16:19

Yeah, definitely ask your CPA about it. But it will, the money went from one qualified plan to another. And that's the most important thing is that it did not land in a non-qualified account. Causing a potential tax situation for you.

Steven Van Wie 16:34

And we, we said last week that that will be followed up by a Form 5498 that shows that that same money, all of it, wound up in a qualified plan. And that, that is very important for 2 reasons. Not because you have to wait to file your taxes. If that were true, they would send it to you sooner. It could arrive by tax filing day, but it doesn't have to. But that's important for if you ever get asked by the IRS to show that it actually got there. And it should show that there was a timely deposit made, meaning 60 days or under.

Speaker 3 17:16

Okay. Because, um, because they're sending the check directly to me, um, not directly to the institution.

Adam Van Wie 17:25

Right. So you may— that's the only reason I think you may not get the Code G, 'cause that would've been direct from one custodian to another. Because you're actually gonna touch it, it may be a different code, but it doesn't change the tax consequences. They're the same.

Steven Van Wie 17:40

Yeah, the 4 numbers of 1099,

Steven Van Wie 17:43

that matters. Nothing else does. If it's accurate. You always have to check the accuracy of the 1099.

Speaker 4 17:48

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 17:51

When you file your taxes, work with your CPA, but just make sure to explain to the CPA that Or if you do it yourself, just make sure that you indicate that that was not income to you this year, that it was a rollover instead. And that is what would keep it from being a taxable event. It's how you, how you declare it on your taxes more than anything else.

Speaker 3 18:12

That's what I'm concerned about. I'm, um, I'm not, well, I don't have a CPA, but, but, um, I remember,

Speaker 3 18:19

um, the one time, you know, at the time when I did my taxes, Um, they did ask about a rollover. I didn't do a rollover then, but I did see something on the program, um, and I wasn't sure. Yeah, I guess I should select rollover.

Adam Van Wie 18:34

In my experience, TurboTax, if you've used TurboTax or one of the equivalents, they'll ask you, was this a rollover? Or like when you're entering your 1099s, it will ask you, was this, you know, did you take, did you remove this from a qualified account? Did you put it into another qualified account? Or AKA, was it a rollover? If you select yes, it will not add it to your income for the year.

Speaker 3 18:59

Okay. Okay. And that's, that's good to know then. And then, um, I have one more question about the IRS, 'cause I remember hearing it from your show that you mentioned when you make an account with the IRS, They automatically give you a PIN number? But that didn't happen. Okay.

Adam Van Wie 19:20

No.

Steven Van Wie 19:22

Yeah, that's, that's called the IRS personal PIN number, and it means nobody can do business in your account at IRS unless they know that number. Now, they were voluntary. I do not know today. I haven't— I've had mine since the day it was announced, so I do not know that it's automatic. If it doesn't give you one, ask for it. That's—

Adam Van Wie 19:43

Yeah, you can go online and request one. I, I did that years ago, so now I have one. Um, and they— I think it changes every year. I think they mail me something that says this is yours for the year, if I'm not mistaken.

Steven Van Wie 19:55

And it— yeah, it has to be updated every year. That's just a simple safety thing, of course.

Speaker 4 20:01

Okay, get one.

Speaker 3 20:02

All right, I hear the music, but okay. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your Of course.

Adam Van Wie 20:10

We're so glad you called back. Thank you.

Steven Van Wie 20:12

Yes, our pleasure. Take care of yourself.

Speaker 3 20:15

Okay. Okay. Thanks so much.

Steven Van Wie 20:17

Thank you. 

Speaker 4 20:18

Bye-bye.

Steven Van Wie 20:19

Yeah, we've only got a few seconds left here, so we'll wait to get back into it. But for anybody who heard the call last week, there is a little confusion in there as to the actual terminology. But the thing that I took away from all this and my research is it doesn't matter as long as you're dealing with one IRA and one Qualified plan, there are no limits. So just do it and do it right. All right, we'll be right back after a short break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 20:49

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 20:55

And lines are open, 904-222-8255, where if you would like to, you could take a shot at the trivia question this week, which is how much does the national debt increase Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, right at this moment in time. And I will tell you, it is not huge number like millions, but it's not close to zero either. If you look at the debt clock, you'll see that. All right. Um, we have a little bit more to say about the market, and I'm going to let Adam just pick up where he left off.

Adam Van Wie 21:30

Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about home sales. The new home sales for July number came out this week, and once again, it was not the best news on the housing front. Economists estimated that new home sales would fall 1.4% month over month, but instead the drop was 10.5%.

Speaker 4 21:46

Ouch.

Adam Van Wie 21:47

That's pretty bad. There was a positive revision to June that offset a bunch of the loss, so that wasn't— the headline number wasn't as bad as it looked, but— Still pretty bad. Yeah. Sales are back to pre-COVID levels and trending lower, and future rate hikes are gonna make this problem even worse. The months of supply of houses on the market is sitting around 9 months, signals a buyer's market. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but not great. Despite all of that, home sales continue to defy logic and move higher. Case-Shiller Index has shown 11 straight months of appreciation, and the last 3 months are showing annual gains of around 2%. is this even possible?

Speaker 4 21:55

Right.

Steven Van Wie 21:56

Still wasn't good.

Steven Van Wie 22:29

Oh, for those who are not familiar with Case-Shiller, it is the only major index that compares one given property to its own self a month later and a month later, instead of averages or medians or any of that. It's an actual track the property price. So it's accurate. We have—

Speaker 4 22:49

All right.

Steven Van Wie 22:51

good morning, Leroy.

Speaker 4 22:53

Good morning, folks. How are you all doing today? And you? Good, good, great. Good. Sunny day.

Steven Van Wie 22:55

Excellent.

Steven Van Wie 22:59

What's happening?

Adam Van Wie 23:01

It is beautiful out and first day of college football, first official day.

Steven Van Wie 23:05

Oh, that makes it a good day.

Speaker 4 23:09

Okay. Did the Jaguars play last night? Did they?

Steven Van Wie 23:12

19-nothing.

Adam Van Wie 23:13

Yeah, they looked pretty good.

Steven Van Wie 23:14

Shut them out.

Speaker 4 23:15

Did they win?

Speaker 3 23:17

Yep.

Steven Van Wie 23:17

Total shutout against Tampa, right?

Speaker 4 23:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 23:20

And they looked good doing it.

Speaker 4 23:22

Well, that's great.

Steven Van Wie 23:24

Yeah, they're a little up and down lately, but they have some talent, no doubt about it.

Speaker 4 23:30

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I thought I'd call early and get my bid in on the trivia question. At least we could start a bracket.

Steven Van Wie 23:37

The world appreciates it.

Speaker 4 23:39

I got $91,549.

Steven Van Wie 23:43

$91?

Speaker 4 23:43

$91,549.

Steven Van Wie 23:49

Well, let's see. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

Steven Van Wie 23:55

It rounds off to 90. So of course I always do a little bracket on them. 88 to 92 is the bracket. You're right there. Every second. So in this phone call, we are all how much, broker?

Adam Van Wie 24:09

Yeah, a lot.

Steven Van Wie 24:12

It's amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Speaker 4 24:16

You know, I guess they just— I just read that it tripled under, uh, Trump and, uh, knucklehead before him, Biden. But, you know. Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 24:26

Yeah. And we had some interesting things going on just recently too, like when the, when the judge overturned the tariff, or I guess that was actually the Supreme Court that overturned it. We had to go from Tariff A to Tariff B. So we had to refund Tariff A and those billions that is going out big time.

Adam Van Wie 24:47

Messing with some of the numbers. So, but yeah, it's a, it's a little bit of a blip, honestly.

Steven Van Wie 24:53

Even if you took all of that out of there and got the actual real honest-to-goodness number, it would still suck.

Adam Van Wie 24:59

Yeah, it's still terrible. It's, it's that number per second. The national debt increases more than the average household family income in the United States.

Steven Van Wie 25:11

It's like every second we're putting one more household under.

Adam Van Wie 25:15

Yeah. Every second. That's insane.

Steven Van Wie 25:17

Every second. It's truly, it's just unbelievable. So out of control that I don't, I literally don't have any concept of how it might possibly change.

Speaker 4 25:30

Yeah. Well, Trump was talking this morning already about, you know, this big deal with Venezuela and it is a big deal. But like you said, I think you guys said, I don't know. I don't think this is going to have a huge— not— it's not going to have any immediate effect right now anyway, because this takes a lot of time.

Steven Van Wie 25:31

I wish I did.

Steven Van Wie 25:38

It is.

Steven Van Wie 25:49

But what it does is it secures our position. You know, we've been running down the Strategic Reserve lower and lower. The first thing they're going to do pumping that oil out of there is get it back in the Strategic Reserve.

Speaker 4 26:02

But the other thing this week, I wasn't— I'm not crazy about at all. As the 25% reduction in, in the beef price, because bringing this imported beef in, I don't know that that's a good idea.

Steven Van Wie 26:20

I got mixed emotions on that.

Adam Van Wie 26:22

On the one hand, I really like steak, and I like paying less for it. But I kind of agree with you.

Steven Van Wie 26:28

It's only 90 days. But it kind of interrupts the cash flow of the people who are trying to rebuild the herd. So our herd is the size— the herd is kind of like the layoffs, the new layoffs. These are numbers that go back to the 1960s. That's how low our herd is. And that's how few layoffs are going on, which is quite amazing. Yeah. I mean, any, any, any resemblance we have to the '60s right now, I thought was only in the lunatics that are marching on the streets complaining about everything. Yeah, but that's me.

Adam Van Wie 26:52

That is amazing.

Speaker 4 27:05

So, but everything, you know, the price of fuel affects it. The price of fertilizer has been absolutely crazy. Yeah, they talk about a bag of fertilizer that used to cost you for your lawn was $11, now it's $50. Well, farmers buy fertilizer by tons. They don't buy it by bags. Exactly.

Steven Van Wie 27:12

Big time.

Speaker 3 27:27

So—

Steven Van Wie 27:27

Do you remember, you've been in Florida long enough to remember All the fertilizer farms that closed down down in the Tampa area? Me too. I hear, and I don't know if it's reliable, but I hear we're reopening some of those.

Speaker 4 27:35

Oh yeah.

Adam Van Wie 27:43

Well, when the price goes up, that's what happens. It's economics. I mean, yeah, of course, if it became too expensive to mine it in Florida, and suddenly the price is, you know, what Leroy just said it was, That would be an incentive to reopen some of those for sure.

Speaker 4 27:47

Right.

Steven Van Wie 27:59

You know the old expression, the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. The key for high fertilizer

Steven Van Wie 28:08

prices is high fertilizer prices. It's amazing what happens when people can follow the money.

Speaker 4 28:16

Well, you know, everybody talks about, you know, the cost of what it costs for diesel fuel to truck this stuff to market. Well, It's got to be planted and grown and tilled and harvested first before you even get to that.

Steven Van Wie 28:31

That's very true. And we're waking up little by little. I honestly believe that if, if the— we don't give the wackos a chance to shut it all down, that in the next few years this country is going to be back to the powerhouse of Not just manufacturing, but mining and production of all sorts, food growing, all that. We are positioning, repositioning ourselves, I would say, to become the superpower that we actually are. And I'm kind of optimistic long term.

Speaker 4 29:10

I wish more people were. Well, I guess it's called wait and see.

Steven Van Wie 29:14

Yeah, afraid so. People don't have much patience these days.

Speaker 4 29:19

No, very, very little. You know, if they would have had this kind of patience in World War II, then we'd be marching under the Nazi trees.

Steven Van Wie 29:29

Yeah. And you know, the old political question is, what have you done for me lately?

Adam Van Wie 29:37

Always.

Speaker 3 29:38

Always.

Steven Van Wie 29:39

Yeah, we'll see. But meanwhile, we have your address and we'll send you a little something. from the, uh, Publix, I think.

Adam Van Wie 29:48

Yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 4 29:49

Yeah, whatever.

Steven Van Wie 29:50

All right, very good. Take care of yourself, Leroy. And if you're a football fan, have a good time this weekend.

Speaker 4 29:57

Okay, thank you.

Adam Van Wie 29:58

Bye-bye. You know, I was, I was having this discussion with— I can't remember who it was— someone this week about the price of gas and what you can afford today versus when you were younger. And we were both kind of laughing because our first jobs paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 an hour. That was my first job at Publix, ironically, in high school. I'd made, I think it was like $3.85, something like that. It was a very meager wage.

Steven Van Wie 30:28

Hell of a lot more than I was making when I married your mother.

Adam Van Wie 30:31

Yeah, but back then gas was about a buck and you could afford about 4 gallons based on an hour's worth of work. Today, my son was working at a local restaurant and he was routinely making close to, if not over, $20 an hour on average. So his salary wasn't— Yeah. But let's call it $15, $16 an hour for the slow nights. But still, he was able to buy 4 gallons of gas with his hour of work. Well, it feels really expensive. You know, I don't know. I found that really interesting that that was such a direct parallel between when I was his age and where he is now.

Steven Van Wie 30:52

With a $4 gallon of gas?

Steven Van Wie 31:18

Yep. Well, you know that since the inception of the Fed in 1913,

Steven Van Wie 31:25

the value of the dollar has lost about 96.5%.

Steven Van Wie 31:30

It's very difficult when you're just kind of shooting the bull with yourself or other people about money and the value of things, how much things cost now and then, to realize that if you got a nickel in your pocket right now, it was $1.25 or something like that 120 years ago, 110 years ago. The comparisons just don't work anymore. So we've got to have people doing the numbers like Adam just did. And that's not going to change. There is no impetus out there that's going to change that. It'll continue to get worse. So best advice I've got to young people today is go out and make all the money you can and stay out of debt doing it.

Adam Van Wie 32:21

And save as much as you can. That's the key.

Steven Van Wie 32:24

I'm, I'm in the throes of writing all kinds of stuff about that. But when we get back, we'll go back to current events and so on. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 32:38

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven Van Wie 32:42

And lines are open, 904-222-8255. And we have gotten into several little details. Got anything else on the market?

Adam Van Wie 32:52

Uh, there was just one other thing that I wanted to quickly address. It was personal income and spending. That report came out this week and it showed a better than expected 0.4% month over month growth in income. However, it was offset by inflation, which was kind of a bummer. Overall, I thought the report painted a picture of a consumer that's in decent shape but not thriving.

Adam Van Wie 33:21

So my takeaway from the report was basically this is not rate hike territory. If you hurt this economy, that person who's in decent shape is going to be in less decent shape. And that is not the goal of the Fed, to hurt the American consumer. It just— again, it just doesn't. It's not the time.

Steven Van Wie 33:40

I've been doing radio like this for 25 years, and one of the original things from way, way back. One of the original things I was looking at was the Fed. Now, the Fed used to have a mission statement on their webpage, which is long gone, but it was very succinct that they had 2 missions and they directly conflict with each other. They still have those and they still conflict. They just don't write it that way anymore. But how are you supposed to achieve price stability and full employment. That's very difficult. They fight each other economically. We've— one of the things that Adam and I were discussing in one of the BRICS is that there's a problem with economic numbers and nobody will explain it to you. You actually have to just go look it up or listen to us once in a while. But, you know, I've been complaining about using median for some things and average for other things. This is particularly true in the housing market. But another one equally bad is real dollars and nominal dollars. And for those of you unfamiliar with the definitions in the world of economics, a nominal dollar is if somebody gives you a $10 bill today, Your nominal income from that transaction was $10. But if you were to get that same $10 bill next year, the nominal dollar would be $10, but compared to today's rates, the actual dollar might be $0.97, $0.97

Adam Van Wie 34:18

Very difficult.

Steven Van Wie 35:30

on the dollar. Nominal things

Steven Van Wie 35:35

They sound good or they sound bad and it depends what side you're on. The numbers are bigger than the real dollar numbers. So if it's something that you want to show as bigger, well, chances are your naysayers will wanna show it smaller. But nobody tells you that consumer sales that Adam was just talking about, those are always presented in nominal dollars. You could take that 4% roughly increase in consumer spending in nominal dollars and cut down the— cut it down to almost zero by saying, well, in real dollars, it held its own but it didn't really go up. And these are things— it's complicated. It's not fun to try to explain it to people and it's never gonna change in the media, period. All right. Let's talk a little bit I wanted to— again, we were talking on the break. There are so many things that interact.

Steven Van Wie 36:38

And one of them that's gaining status, and everybody knows about this, is AI. AI is a brilliant tool for some things. But way too many people are going to rely on it. You know, you all know if you've been listening to me long enough that one of my goals, I guess, I want to interest young people in becoming financial advisors. I don't think that most people would understand that I want competition out there. It's not for any reason except for one thing. Having a financial advisor is good for you. There's about 100,000 financial advisors that are going to retire in the next year in this country— next 10 years, excuse me. I want them not just to be replaced, but as the population grows, I want more of them. I want to steer kids into the the life of the financial advisor, because this is, this is really the greatest job you can imagine. As I always say, it's heated and air-conditioned because you do the job inside. If you like people and you like money and you like math, this is an entirely wide-open,

Speaker 3 36:43

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 38:05

uh, I guess, opportunity for young people. But as we explained last week, 80% of high school students have never heard of a FICO score. How do we get people interested in financial advising? Well, the first thing you got to do is get them educated in finance. And I'm happy to say that 30 states now have put it back into their curriculum. And I thank our governor right here because he got that ball rolling. But if you have kids or grandkids and they ask you about things, One of the things some people are going to hear is, well, nobody's going to need that anymore because AI is going to do it. Adam, why don't you give your opinion of AI and financial advising, which you was explaining to me?

Adam Van Wie 38:52

Yeah. So I think there's 2 different questions. What do I think about it for use in our business? It's been nothing short of remarkable. It's so helpful. But We are not using it to do financial planning for us because there are, well, first of all, it's very error-prone. And it is, it just, it doesn't take into account people's emotions. It doesn't take into account their desires or just the individual nature of every financial plan. So while it is extremely helpful to our day-to-day operations, It is not something that is going to replace my job in the short term. And I mean that probably through my retirement.

Steven Van Wie 39:41

Oh, pretty much guaranteed.

Adam Van Wie 39:42

Yeah, it's just not. But I think the other question is, what do I think about it being used by the average person to answer financial questions? I think it's really good at answering basic financial questions. It can tell you the math behind it, what makes even like what, if you're looking at 2 different options, what could make the most sense. But even then, you'll find mistakes. I find mistakes in AI all the time. And we pay for the better AI. And there's still mistakes, but it is very helpful to answering questions. So, but if you don't know anything about it, and you're relying 100% on it, you're going, it's going to lead you in the wrong direction some percentage of the time. And so I don't think it's a good idea to have it answer questions for you that you absolutely have no idea about. If you already have a pretty good idea and need to check on it, then yes, I think it's a very good tool.

Steven Van Wie 40:40

And there are a couple other little highlights in here. Ford Motor announced this week that the Lincoln is coming home from China. See that? They, they didn't say exactly where it's going to be built, but they're going to have it ramped up by 2030, which used to sound like forever from here.

Adam Van Wie 40:51

Nice. I did not see that.

Adam Van Wie 41:02

Maybe that's what they're doing with the Lightning plant in— was it Kentucky? Yeah, it could be.

Steven Van Wie 41:06

It would only make sense. So there's one of them. It's not the Navigator, I don't think. And I'm not that familiar with it. But when I read it, I knew it. But That's built solely in China and it's going to be returning home. I'm very happy about that. And as we also mentioned last week, sort of in passing, the number of semiconductors in Adam's new truck, like 1,000 or something like that.

Adam Van Wie 41:24

That is cool.

Adam Van Wie 41:36

No, it's— that's the average for all new cars, over 1,000.

Speaker 4 41:39

Okay.

Steven Van Wie 41:40

And the— by the time Ford gets the The Lincoln plant up and running. They're going to be obtaining all of those semiconductors from this country. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 41:51

Oh, nice.

Adam Van Wie 41:53

Pretty cool.

Steven Van Wie 41:55

I think it bodes well for probably the state of Kentucky.

Adam Van Wie 42:00

That's a guess, but yeah, could be.

Steven Van Wie 42:03

See, Japan is remarkable these days. Their stock market. Their capital equipment spending. Things are really going well.

Adam Van Wie 42:15

Except, except they have this one enormous problem.

Steven Van Wie 42:22

Uh, they're in debt?

Adam Van Wie 42:24

No, they don't have kids and they don't allow immigration.

Steven Van Wie 42:29

That's an enormous problem that's getting more enormous as the number gets smaller. They're, they're really—

Adam Van Wie 42:35

It's Bad. yeah, they are. They are basically not having kids so much that they're going to go extinct if they don't change their behaviors or allow immigration.

Speaker 4 42:45

Yep.

Steven Van Wie 42:46

And the industrial

Steven Van Wie 42:51

machine business,

Steven Van Wie 42:55

metalworking machines in particular, and a lot of them computerized, of course, that business is booming.

Speaker 4 43:02

There.

Steven Van Wie 43:03

My point in all this is very simple. That didn't happen when interest rates were at zero. That really didn't start happening until interest rates got lifted off of zero. People attribute way, way too much power to the zero or almost zero interest rates. It is not healthy for an economy to have interest rates that low. Which is kind of the basic argument that we've been giving for what the Fed is looking like they might do here. I fear very much that they might be in the throes of making a mistake. Now, maybe numbers will come in a little better. I don't know what Trump will probably be jawboning them, but I don't know that that'll make any difference. But be wary if you start seeing these interest rates ticking up. That it's not always good news.

Adam Van Wie 43:56

No, definitely not.

Steven Van Wie 43:58

When, when it comes to interest rates, it's a slam dunk guarantee that there are 2 types of people, winners and losers. The net savers lose when they go down, win when they go up, and it's the opposite for the net spenders. Well, this went by awfully fast and we'll do it again next week. Joe, you'll be back same time, same station. Thanks for listening. Have a good weekend. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.