0:00

You're listening to a market update brought to you

0:02

by Glenn Least of WT Wealth

0:05

Management .

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Glenn Least is with us as well . Mark Howitz

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here , love to hear from you . Talk

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with Jeff at iCloudcom . No , but America

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is running . Here's what's interesting . I think I alluded

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to it last hour . There

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is a sense amongst

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the people that's called

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people like me , tinfoil

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hat wearing conspiracy theorists just

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a few years ago . You know cause ? How long have we been

0:32

pounding on the debt and the and

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the spending problems in this country ? Right , forever

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Right .

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And we've always been oh , shut up , shut up , Go

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ahead .

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There's a couple things .

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There's the debt , that's one thing , yeah , but the

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other thing is printing money isn't necessarily

0:45

bad , because we're not on the gold standard , we're

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on the GDP standard . If you

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make more product , you have to print

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more money to represent that product . We're

0:54

on the debt standard , so there's two different reasons to print money . One is to pay

0:56

off our debt , but the other is just to simply represent

0:59

all the stuff we create .

1:01

Yeah , and you're 100% correct . I got a lot to say about that

1:03

, but go ahead .

1:04

Yeah , so because in theory

1:06

the government can print up a whole bunch of

1:08

money and pay off our debts tomorrow , but that would

1:10

cause massive inflation . But

1:12

I think it's a modern monetary

1:15

theory looks at debt as

1:17

a nation compared to their GDP , compared

1:19

to inflation , and that's going to be more

1:21

of the important metric . So if you have

1:23

, say , really high inflation

1:25

numbers but you have low economic growth

1:27

, that's not good . You know they'll call that , you know

1:29

, deflation or stagflation . So I

1:32

think Mark's right is what does the

1:34

GDP numbers look like ?

1:36

Well here's , here's the deal

1:38

. You've got people in charge that think they

1:40

can print our way out of the debts

1:42

. There is a guy that works

1:45

for the Biden administration . He's

1:47

one of their lead economic guys

1:49

. I played his . I think I can't remember his last name , but

1:51

I played a clip of it last week

1:53

.

1:54

Oh , that was one of the worst clips I've ever heard

1:56

, I remember he couldn't explain this guy's

1:58

like the lead advisor to Biden .

2:02

He couldn't explain the national debt , how you pay for

2:04

things , treasuries he had . No , he was

2:06

utterly clueless . But this is the same guy

2:08

that also said that he'd like to see , prior to

2:10

he was to to him being in the biden administration

2:13

. This is one of the top guys leading the

2:15

economic way here for the country folks . He

2:17

said something like I want america not to be

2:19

the reserve currency anymore . I mean , I think

2:21

they're . They're doing a , you know they're setting

2:23

out on their goal . They're doing pretty good

2:25

why would you say that , though ?

2:27

Why would you want that for your country ?

2:29

I don't know . I don't think they like

2:31

our country is the problem ?

2:34

That ?

2:34

seems to make more more sense than anything . I

2:36

wish I could answer some of these questions . Some of these guys are

2:38

just out of their out of their mind , crazy . But

2:41

no , okay , check this out . Back to this article . So America's

2:43

running out of money and nobody cares America's

2:45

running ? Did I repeat that

2:47

? I might've repeated that An economic specter

2:50

haunts America . It's also one that many

2:52

American politicians Republican

2:54

and Democrats say a great deal about

2:56

but are reluctant to address . The name of that shadow

2:59

is the United States national debt . What

3:01

the US Treasury Department defines as quote the

3:03

amount of money the federal government has borrowed to cover

3:05

the outstanding balance of expenses incurred

3:07

over time . If you go to the Treasury's website

3:10

, they put it at $34.2 trillion . The

3:13

article goes on to and this is a regular

3:15

guy that wouldn't have addressed the debt

3:17

issue and the spending problem in this country and all of a

3:19

sudden they actually care about it , which concerns me , because

3:22

the fact that they're now bringing it up , I

3:24

think , means that we're in a heck of a heck

3:26

of a big problem here . It goes

3:28

on to say that both parties know what the problem

3:30

is , but they're not solving it . I don't think they do

3:32

. I don't think they recognize it anymore

3:34

. I think they think that we can just keep printing the money

3:37

, keep spending the money , keep borrowing

3:39

the money .

3:39

So let me get this straight they want

3:42

to keep spending more money than they have

3:44

, so they have to find buyers of that debt , but

3:46

simultaneously they want us to not be the reserve

3:48

currency .

3:51

That's why people do buy our debt .

3:52

We have the . You know the best you

3:54

know . We have good ratings . We have a good military

3:56

, good economy , stable government

3:58

. These are all things that are important . So , yeah

4:01

, what would you have as a reserve currency instead

4:03

?

4:03

I mean , I don't know what they would go

4:05

back to . It's not . Is it going to be the Chinese

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or NIMBY ? Is it going to be the British pound

4:09

? No , they already did that . They lost their status as

4:11

reserve currency . I

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don't know what these people are talking about , but the bottom line is , the concern

4:18

here is that these people are finally recognizing this

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is something a brewing you know is it is . Is something

4:22

a brewing you know is it is . Should we be alarmed , glenn

4:24

, you know ? Should I be heading for the hills

4:26

? Should I be , you know , buying more bullets and

4:28

beans ?

4:29

Gas Never . Never a bad thing to buy more

4:31

ammo obviously , and beans , that you know

4:33

, as long as it bushes baked beans , I

4:37

, I don't know . It is kind of worrisome

4:39

that now they're bringing it up , because it is always never

4:42

really that big of an issue , like , oh , we can just spend

4:44

more than we make and we'll print more money

4:46

. But I think it was during the pandemic

4:48

. They printed 40%

4:50

of all money that's ever been in circulation . They

4:52

created out of thin air .

4:54

In that short period , yeah .

4:55

Let that sink in of all time .

4:57

So we went from a point of our national

5:00

debt was smaller than our annual GDP

5:02

to now it's way bigger than our

5:04

annual GDP to

5:10

the national debt and we're at 120

5:12

plus percent debt to gdp

5:15

as far as that that ratio goes

5:17

, which is extremely high .

5:18

Uh , we , the last time we're

5:20

at this , we're close to world war ii levels , you know , like

5:22

when we were fighting imperial japan

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and nazi germany . We're not fighting them

5:27

anymore I mean , we've got all kinds of wars going

5:30

on , but we're not of that world scale

5:32

.

5:32

I see the problem here is not so much how much we owe

5:34

or printing money , but how much inflation

5:36

is and how that's killing the average person . Yeah

5:39

, it's a silent tax . That's the real issue .

5:40

Yeah , cause people look at their taxes and they go I paid

5:42

12% or 22, . but if inflation

5:45

goes up cumulative , which it has

5:47

since 2020 to about now , it's around

5:49

cumulative 25% or so

5:51

Think about that , as that's an extra tax

5:54

on top of whatever you're paying before , because

5:56

when you go to the grocery store , you're feeling

5:58

it and you're you're feeling it everywhere . And

6:01

when you talk about the national debt , the

6:03

one thing I've realized over the years is politicians

6:06

have it's almost near impossible for them

6:08

to spend less money because they have

6:10

to cut programs . When they cut programs or constituents

6:12

say we're not going to vote you in and

6:16

they're going to vote you out , and so they can either spend less

6:18

or tax more , which taxing

6:20

more is also unpopular . Drag

6:22

on the constituents and yeah , it's a drag on the

6:24

economy , it hampers economic

6:27

output and anyone that says contrary

6:30

hasn't made a decent amount of money or hasn't been a business

6:32

owner and paid a lot of taxes . You go man . More

6:34

taxes I pay , that's less I can put back into the

6:36

economy and I think I'm a better spender

6:39

of my money than the government .

6:40

But one thing they could do , which I'm not hearing

6:43

anyone talk about is

6:50

open up the floodgates for drilling and get more oil and send it and

6:53

sell it across the world . He's saying exactly what Larry

6:55

Barron's just said last hour , glenn , our energy expert said what

6:57

you're saying , go ahead . Well , I've been saying that for a while

6:59

.

6:59

Like I had in my 2024

7:01

market outlook , and I was just talking about certain

7:03

things the current government can do

7:05

to juice the economy , and there's three things I

7:07

was naming . One was student loan debt forgiveness

7:10

. Or pressure the Federal Reserve to

7:12

lower interest rates , or drill baby

7:14

. Drill , you know . Just open up the floodgates

7:16

, you know . Finish the Keystone pipeline

7:18

. We've got tons of oil , more than

7:20

we know what to do with . Let's sell a little bit , maybe

7:23

even knock down our national

7:25

debt a little bit and have economic expansion

7:28

. But if you do that , it means

7:30

you don't care about the earth or something Right ?

7:36

I just don't understand why there's such a hesitancy to not want to go down that route

7:39

. Yeah well , we had Larry Barron's on last hour from Power of the Future and

7:41

that was his op . Ed in townhallcom

7:44

was exactly what you're saying and

7:46

he says open the floodgates up . And

7:48

he was more equating it to

7:50

the Russia and

7:52

, you know , dealing with Russia and

7:54

stuff . Because Russia is making a ton of money , their

7:57

economy is growing , he's saying , because they're making

7:59

so much money , even after the sanctions

8:01

, right , they're making so much money .

8:02

So on oil to China , I'll

8:05

be the left wing devil .

8:06

Okay , please , why don't we ?

8:07

just say so , go ahead . Why don't we just build more

8:09

solar panels and sell solar energy

8:12

to foreign countries ?

8:13

because , because it won't work , because

8:16

oil is a very efficient resource

8:18

. A lot of people forget how you can't package

8:20

yours up easy . Oil is to extract

8:22

to uh , it's energy dense

8:24

.

8:24

Yeah , it's energy dense to transport

8:26

, to use .

8:27

It's very versatile . Um , it doesn't

8:29

have anywhere near .

8:31

It's just a liquid and it's very more

8:33

bang for your buck in that , in that symbol

8:36

of energy .

8:37

Yeah , um , yeah . So I've always wondered

8:39

why , instead of us drilling our own oil

8:41

and being self-sufficient and not being reliant

8:44

, we're buying oil from our enemies , like

8:46

our people that are at least not you know

8:48

, you kind of venezuela

8:50

russia , venezuela yes okay , so we don't want to be

8:52

buying venezuela . That that just seems wrong

8:54

to me , because all that money goes directly

8:56

to the dictator who then does

8:58

terrible things . And even like some

9:00

of these Middle Eastern countries

9:03

, it's like , yeah , we're in good terms

9:05

with maybe some of them now , but I don't know

9:07

.

9:07

But they really don't like us . Yeah , they

9:09

really don't like us .

9:18

It just comes back to .

9:18

Why are we even doing that ?

9:18

like we're helping their economies or helping all these other economies build themselves

9:21

up . For what reason ? Well , here's the thing if we look at our oil production , we actually produce enough for america

9:23

, but we actually export our oil , currently sell

9:25

it , but then we buy saudi , venezuelan

9:28

etc . Oil and bring it

9:30

in because we get that oil cheaper

9:32

and we can sell our oil for more there's different refinery

9:35

capabilities too for different oil and

9:37

stuff like that . Yeah , so we actually do

9:39

export oil .

9:40

We probably could do more , but uh

9:42

, and then we import cheap we still consume

9:45

more than we produce as a nation . We could

9:47

, and I think what glenn is saying and what larry

9:49

said , that we could ramp it up even more , oh yeah

9:51

, and flood it . The only flooding it , though , to

9:53

play the devil's advocate , there is you flood the market

9:55

. Technically . You would

9:57

think that there would be a huge

10:00

supply and then prices would

10:02

come down , and then that would put people out

10:04

as far as being able to produce oil in

10:07

the US .

10:07

Well , it gets really weird If we look at the Russian situation

10:09

with Germany . Germany was relying on Russia for

10:11

natural gas but Germany

10:14

had contracts with poland , so that natural

10:16

gas actually made it to germany , and then

10:18

they turned around how to export it to poland and

10:21

so , oh yeah , they , they find back doors , is

10:23

what you're saying ?

10:24

yeah , you and germany stupidly

10:26

put up a bunch of solar panels . Have you ever been to germany

10:28

? I have the sun shines twice

10:31

a year , it's very cloudy you three times

10:33

a year or something like that . It's a

10:35

ridiculous way to go , so I

10:37

don't know . So it's just interesting , though that

10:39

is a way that we could probably ramp this up . I

10:41

disagree . I don't think we're never paying off the national

10:43

debt and

10:57

we have a huge problem with and this article even admits that 68 percent of the federal government spending is now going towards

10:59

the , the social security , uh , medicare and what's the other big one ? They didn't include

11:01

national debt . That's going to surpass uh . Yeah , defense is a discretionary item

11:03

, believe it or not . You've got your mandatory social security

11:05

, medicare and now , um

11:07

, interest on the national debt , which is over

11:09

one trillion dollars a year . Now just hasn't really pinged

11:11

yet , uh , but as the treasury is mature

11:13

, we're in this kind of

11:16

death debt spiral with the federal government

11:18

.

11:18

So , Glenn , I want to ask you inflation's

11:20

killing people . What can we do ? What

11:22

can you get some basic advice ? What

11:24

can people do to beat inflation ? Help us out here

11:26

, Glenn .

11:26

Invest in things that are going to stay

11:28

ahead of inflation , right ? So if you're putting

11:30

money in the bank account , that's not going to stay ahead of

11:33

inflation Falling behind , right , yep , falling behind . If

11:35

you're putting money into real estate , that's

11:37

probably going to keep pace to inflation and maybe

11:39

a whole lot more Real estate is . You

11:41

know , for most people it's always a pretty

11:44

good investment , you know caveat a couple of situations

11:46

. They

11:52

could buy stocks and companies because as they print more money and there's

11:54

more money out there , inflation goes up . Well , these companies are now charging more

11:56

money too . So , uh , ownership of companies is another big one . And you can also

11:58

do like commodities too . So like

12:00

oil , timber , steel , wheat , soy , coffee

12:02

. Those aren't as easy for people to get exposure

12:05

to . Most of the time it's going to be the

12:07

stock market or real estate

12:09

. So those are great ways to hedge against inflation

12:11

. But you know it's a inflation's

12:13

a tough beast . It's a , like

12:16

I said , 25% more than

12:18

you know two or three years ago

12:20

, and we're not making 25% more .

12:22

Here's what I hang on , here's what I would do , because if you can't

12:24

buy stocks , you can't buy real estate . You know you can't

12:26

go and buy $900,000 home and flagstaff

12:28

. Buy the canned goods Now

12:35

. I've been saying this for a year or two . If you're going to eat it later , buy it now , because I think

12:37

it's just , you know it's a non-perishable item .

12:38

Food prices are going up .

12:39

I mean , you're not going to be able to save a steak and you freeze

12:41

it for a while , right ? I guess you could do that .

12:43

Yeah .

12:43

Yeah , but I mean the stuff you use , the consumable

12:46

kind of non-per Stuff

12:50

you like , Remember in Y2K people

12:52

stocked up on pinto beans and the

12:54

little weenies that people think you eat

12:56

when you're camping .

12:58

Things like that . You're

13:04

listening to a market update brought to you by Glenn Least of WT Wealth Management .

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Exuberance is back in the stock market

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, jeff Orbitz here , and a frenzy over artificial

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and even Bitcoin is threatening to set a new

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high no-transcript

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. With over six decades combined experience , glenn Least

13:25

and his investment committee at WT Wealth

13:28

Management factor in your risk tolerance , time

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horizon and financial goals to create a

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balanced portfolio for superior risk-adjusted

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returns . Greatly mute the impact

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great again . Call 928-225-2474

14:07

.

14:10

You're listening to a market update brought to you

14:12

by Glenn Least of WT Wealth

14:14

Management .

14:15

How are bonds doing ? Is that worthwhile ?

14:18

And we don't get financial advice on this show , but if

14:20

Glenn was buying bonds personally ?

14:22

So the bond market is a whole another animal

14:25

as opposed to the stock market and so very

14:27

different . You know area

14:29

of expertise , and so me personally

14:31

, you know I kind of track the domestic

14:34

. You know treasuries and domestic debt

14:36

, more so than international , yep

14:38

, but it'd be the same basic

14:40

concept . You know what's the stability of their government

14:42

, you know what's their military

14:44

look like , what's their economy look like and what's

14:47

the value of their currency , and so all those

14:49

things are factored into what

14:51

people are willing to pay for their , for their bonds .

14:53

So even US bonds ? Is that an inflation beater

14:56

right now ?

14:56

Yeah , yeah , right

14:58

now , if they lower interest rates

15:01

5 percent . Yeah , like your

15:03

basic money market is going to pay around 5 percent%

15:05

and then three months CD like 5.4

15:08

. And then you can get some treasuries

15:10

you know closer to six .

15:11

It's tough getting ahead of that curve when

15:14

the inflation kicks in , and that's where the word stagflation

15:16

comes in . It's a , you know , an economy

15:19

that's not growing while prices

15:21

and stuff's going up , so

15:23

you're not getting the wage increases

15:25

or it's at least not keeping up with

15:27

what it actually costs . You know you're getting wiped out

15:29

with inflation and the economy slowing down . It's

15:31

kind of the situation right now . I want to tell you about

15:33

the Fed chair meeting . So Federal

15:35

Chair Reserve Powell came out

15:37

today . Well , the producer price index

15:40

came out today . This is like the wholesale prices

15:42

and they were expecting I think the number

15:44

was point two percent month over

15:46

month increase , which doesn't sound like a lot

15:48

right , but it is . It's an increase . They

15:51

were expecting that and they got 0.5%

15:53

month over month increase , which is a huge

15:55

, huge , huge miss , and that

15:57

means more than double what they thought

16:00

.

16:01

So if you compound , that number , just simple

16:03

math . You're at over . That's 6% a year Over

16:05

6% if you compound it month by month .

16:06

Right , you know simple math , You're at 6% a year , over 6% if you compound it month

16:08

by month . Right , that's the problem here . They told us that inflation

16:10

was going to be transitory . You remember I was saying

16:12

that was BS when that was coming out . I think you were on

16:15

too and I was saying no , transitory , yeah , we're transiting

16:17

to the new , higher level is what we're doing , because it's never

16:19

your rent is not going to go . But

16:24

I mean

16:26

, I guess , if the economy absolutely dumped

16:28

and we got into a really bad situation

16:30

where people had to compete and say , yeah

16:37

, I'll come do that for this amount . However , they've put backstops in like I can't go work legally Like

16:39

Mark , if Mark has a construction company , or Glenn , if I came

16:41

to you and said , glenn , mark

16:43

, I'm going to do this for me , just give me 10 bucks an hour

16:46

, just give me 10 bucks . Look

16:48

, I know Mark's over there and he wants the job too

16:50

and he's like 20 bucks an hour , I would do the same thing . I need

16:52

to put food on the table . Glenn , 10

16:55

bucks an hour , I'll do some part-time

16:57

work for you . You're not allowed to do that .

17:04

So what you just said ? You don't have a lot of skills to offer

17:06

. The one thing you can negotiate or

17:08

you used to be able to negotiate is how much they pay you

17:10

. So that was where the minimum wage , you

17:13

know , was never meant to be a livable wage . But you can say

17:15

, hey , pay me 10 bucks an hour and I'm

17:17

gonna get skills , and then one day I'm gonna be worth

17:19

12 or 13 an hour worth of my labor

17:21

. But if you have an artificial floor

17:24

set by the government saying you have to pay

17:26

people 18 plus an hour , well

17:28

shoot .

17:29

Yeah , you can't . You can't go lower , you can't say

17:31

in

17:33

a downturn economy . They've set up

17:35

a situation now where workers can't go

17:37

and say I will work for less , I will

17:40

compete and the market will set the labor

17:42

rate , set the wage , because

17:44

I need to put food on my table . I know that I'm worth

17:46

20 bucks an an hour , but right now I'll

17:48

take 10 because I got to get this done . What

17:51

a bad situation . So what are those people gonna do ?

17:52

just sit at home wait for a government check

17:54

in that situation .

17:55

Government check- so , anyway , the stupidity of government

17:58

is awe-inspiring on so many levels all the

18:00

time for me . But here's what jerome powell

18:02

said , chairman of the federal reserve , who I

18:04

believe to be a smart person , but

18:06

I just think he's full of crap because

18:09

he's in the middle of the government and you got to say this

18:11

stuff , I guess , and they have a special

18:13

kind of language that they use

18:15

, like at the federal , like you work for the government . All

18:17

of a sudden they must send them to like some kind of finishing

18:19

school to come up with this kind of speak

18:22

I don't know what it is for this stuff total

18:24

orwellian , but anyway , quote . It's

18:26

like when he said his last comments were

18:29

inflation was like we , we failed

18:31

to do so . It was like they

18:33

totally failed , but he worded in a way that sounded like

18:35

they succeeded . You know total nonsense . So

18:37

anyway , quote , we did not expect this

18:39

to be a smooth road . Okay , I

18:41

thought they said soft landing , but that's okay . But

18:44

these inflation readings were higher

18:46

than I think anybody expected . Not

18:48

true , not true . There was . There

18:50

is literally millions of us out

18:53

there that were saying it's getting

18:55

pretty expensive out here .

18:56

Just went to the store . Yeah , what is anyone

18:58

? What ?

18:59

some idiot that has too many plaques

19:02

on their wall in some corner

19:04

office in DC or New York or something

19:06

, those people , or the people going

19:08

to the store and actually buying crap and trying

19:10

to put food on their table . But anyway , he said that , so

19:13

I don't think anybody expected

19:15

what . Okay

19:17

. Then he goes on to say what that

19:19

has told us is that we'll need to

19:21

be patient and and let restrictive

19:24

policy do its work .

19:26

Higher interest rates for longer ? Yeah

19:28

, thank you .

19:29

Thank you for translating that . The

19:31

bureaucrat crap speak .

19:32

Interest rates are not going down , but that's

19:34

not necessarily great

19:36

for the US economy long term , because

19:38

the interest rates

19:40

that we had and the inflation that we had maybe

19:42

in the 80s , was a whole different

19:45

ballgame than what we have today . I've

19:47

heard stories of people like oh yeah , I got my first eighties . It was a whole different ballgame than what

19:49

we have today . You know , I've heard stories of people like oh yeah , I got my first mortgage and it was at 12% and I got a steal

19:52

. Yeah , yeah , but your house is 50,000

19:54

. Yeah , if it's 500,000

19:56

, you know , even translating , for you

19:58

know , uh , you know , adjustment

20:00

for inflation , it's still going to be a whole lot more

20:02

. And so that is very problematic

20:05

because I think the real estate market itself

20:07

has been sort of stagnant because the

20:09

higher interest rates , because you think about it , so

20:11

if you're going to go sell your house and you're not able

20:13

to sell it a top dollar because the person

20:16

on the other side buying it doesn't have as

20:18

much buying power , yeah so , so these

20:20

eight percent , seven and a half percent interest rates are

20:22

pretty restrictive on the end

20:24

that marketplace and then across the board , you

20:27

, you even look at corporate debt . So it's

20:29

this hard situation where we need to keep

20:31

the interest rates higher , but we also

20:33

need them .

20:34

Right , you can get in touch with Glenn Least

20:36

. He's with WT Wealth Management . I'll throw out your email

20:38

here G-Least , g-l-e-e-s-t , g-least

20:41

at WTWealthManagementcom

20:43

. Managementcom .

20:52

You've been listening to a market update

20:54

from Glenn least with WT wealth

20:56

management .

21:04

Remember to seek out professional help for any of your investments and any kind of decisions

21:06

you make going forward . This is for informational purposes only . If you want to

21:08

talk with Glenn Least of WT

21:10

Wealth Management , give him a call at 928-225-2474

21:15

. That's

21:23

Glenn Least at WT Wealth Management at 928-225-2474

21:26

.

21:26

Or send Glenn an email at G-Least G-L-E-E-S-T G-Least at-E-S-T , g-l-e-e-s-t at WTWealthManagementcom

21:29

.

21:29

Hope you all have a great rest of your day and

21:31

we'll be you next time .