BREAKING: Trump Misreads Jobs Report, Threatens To Cut Off Trade | Receipts Live

- Hey, everyone, I'm Catherine Rampell, the economics editor here at The Bullwork, and I am joined as I am every week by my pal JVL to talk all things, economics, rule of law, how we are destroying both of those things with one fell swoop, and also some economic, basic economic literacy issues, which apparently our president has struggled with, despite surrounding himself with the A team, of course, of economic advisors. So JVL, let's start by talking about. - We also talk theater, for some time. - We also talk theater. I don't know if I don't have or like a theater thing planned, well, I mean, I can't always happy, but we're not talking about it. It's a thing that might be on the menu sometimes. - Yeah, and we'll find an excuse. Yeah, I can always find an excuse to talk about that. - Okay, but first, we're gonna talk about this Trump tweet that literally went out, I think seconds before we went live. Yes, minutes, 12.30, okay. So this is Donald Trump, - You know, you paid $100,000, you could have seen that like four microseconds faster. - That's true, I missed out on what a terrific opportunity to engage in collaborative corruption with our president. - In the meantime, we are laggards and are seeing this at 12.35, even though it came out 12.30. Okay, so this is Donald Trump by adjusting the jobs numbers that came out this morning. They were better than expected. He says, "How crazy is this?" We just got great numbers on jobs. The market should go up because our credit and economy are better, but as always, for the past 25 years, the stock market goes down because we're living under false reality, capitalized, that if things are good, you've got to kill it because of a quote unquote fear of inflation. I like that there are scare quotes around fear for inflation as if nobody actually cares about inflation. He says, "It should be the opposite and always was until 25 years ago, wrong. If we stay with this theory, we will never be able to have the true economic greatness for our country that it deserves because every time we do well, the stupid people want to immediately stop this great upward momentum growth does not cost inflation." Yes. I thought we already had true economic greatness because this was the golden age now. Oh, the golden age started. Yeah, obviously, the golden age started on January 20th, 2025. Okay. So I don't know. He's just, I'm sure he's just a little tired. Sorry, I just get so confused. So does the president, as it turns out, yes. So, and then he goes on to talk about how we should be having GDP growth of 15 and 20%, which we can get into how blockers that would be. Our debt would be paid off, and then he complains about interest rate increases, costing the United States lots of money, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So, again, this is his latest tweet. In many ways, this is a piece. He's a businessman. He's a businessman. That's why the American people elected him because he really understands dollars and cents. No, no, he does not. He does not. Particularly as it pertains to the macro economy. So let me unpack a little bit of what's going on here. Trump thinks that if you are a strong economy, that means they give you a good deal on borrowing, right? This is because he comes from a real estate background. You know, he's a businessman. This is how he made his name, and it is true. If you are a private party, applying for a loan, and you are more credit worthy, yes. Generally, you get more favorable terms on your loan, including a lower interest rate. However, this is not how monetary policy works. And in no way how monetary policy works. So we got good jobs and numbers today. That is true, you know, bully for the US economy. But what that means is that the Federal Reserve can like lean in a little harder on tackling inflation because they don't have to worry about killing the economy, right? It's like, well, if the economy is strong, maybe we can do the thing that we need to do to deal with inflation, which is raising interest rates, not cutting interest rates. You are above inflationary targets, correct, Catherine? Like we had, we had both problems. We had a sluggish economy and inflation. And so the Fed was like, eh, what do we do first? Right, exactly. We have been above our inflation target for six years now. And the challenge that the Fed has been in is that, you know, there's this fear of this term stag inflation that you have a stagnant economy and high inflation. And those things together like tell you opposite, put you in opposite directions for how you should guide interest rates. Because again, interest rate policy for an economy has no relation to how interest rates work for a private loan. What the Fed is trying to manage is the business cycle. That news to the president. That is absolutely news to the president. And he employs economists. He surrounds himself with people who are supposed to explain these things to him. But he clearly does not understand this. And I suspect that this is going to end-- I don't want to say badly per se. But there's a collision course coming for the president and one of his economic picks over at the Federal Reserve. I'm curious how you think that is going to go. Yeah. I mean, there's so much in this little Trump tweet. I mean, I do. I said to you before we hopped on, I agree in part with the president. A agree in part, disagree in part, really. That's how I am, Catherine. I just call it like I see it balls and strikes. He is very even-handed, very easy. Balls and strikes. We do live in a weird, false economic reality in which oftentimes markets behave in ways which are totally antithetical to the signals they should be getting. For instance, when a president declares that a war is over for the 17th time, and the market knows the war isn't actually over, the market will react as though the war is over. Again, ways that just don't make sense. So that's a real thing. It would be wild. What do you think the board of Fed governors would think if we got 20% economic growth in a quarter? Do you think they'd be happy about that? I think it depends on whether this is nominal or inflation adjusted. There are countries that can get 20% growth if-- Sure, by Marge, Germany. Yeah, below that number out of the water. If you are just running that printing press, and it looks like the economy is growing because you're printing a lot more dollars and you're not adjusting for inflation, that's one outcome. The president is like supporters. They were like, we want deflation. We want price-- no, you don't. You're not breathing idiots. You don't want deflation. Deflation is really, really dangerous and bad and hurts everybody in the same way that you don't want 20% growth in a quarter. Because that means something else terrible is happening. We should be so lucky to have 4% growth per quarter. Be right. Yes. That would be awesome. There are a whole bunch of other reasons why that's unlikely to happen. I mean, look in fairness. One quarter to the next, things bounce around. You can have-- we've had quarters of 4% growth. But over a sustained period-- no, that is not likely, particularly given our demographics, which again are something else that Donald Trump is undermining, not because he's making baby boomers age. That's happening naturally. But he's basically extracting a lot of working age people from the United States by deporting them or not letting them into the country. So just to sort of hone in on this Fed conflict that is coming, I think we have a chart that shows what markets think is going to happen for interest rates that we're going to show. So let me explain what this means. And I'll describe it for those who are only listening to the audio here. So this is a chart that basically shows you what market participants think is going to happen to interest rates. And the dark blue bars are what they were at least as of like an hour or so ago. I assume they're about the same. And they show that for the September meeting for the Fed, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, markets think that the Fed is going to raise rates. They have a 60% chance. The Fed is going to raise rates. That's what this refers to. 375 to 400, that would be a tick higher, if they raised interest rates. The one shade lighter of blue is what they thought yesterday. So yesterday, it was around a little under 50% chance. So basically the way to understand what this chart shows you is that it's showing between yesterday when we didn't have the job numbers. And today, when we do have the jobs numbers, markets are like, whoa, the Fed is going to have to raise rates. Like the economy is strong enough, it can handle it. They have to focus on inflation. Kevin Warsh, the the new-ish Fed chair has said, we really care about inflation. This is the evidence that that's how the markets understood today's data. This is this is a sign that rate hikes are coming. Obviously we've seen from that Donald Trump tweet and another tweet that he had as well. Earlier today, he does not understand that that is how the Fed is going to react. And so that's why I was saying before, like I really wonder how Kevin Warsh is going to handle all of this because he was clearly appointed to this job because Donald Trump thinks he's going to cut rates and he's boxed in. Donald Trump has boxed him in to raising rates. So I just want to step back for a minute and raise one of our long-running concerns, you and I, which is about the data coming out of the administration, because this is what the Fed needs. The Fed, you know, the Fed essentially is like when you're learning how to pilot and one thing they do is they do instrument-only flying, which is you assume you have no, you're in a black box, they blacked out the windows, you can't see the world around you, you're relying only on your instruments to tell you where you are so that you can fly, say, at night, or when there's no visibility. And the Fed operates basically in that way. They can only see the world through the instruments that they get, which are signals like growth and unemployment numbers, etc., etc. Trump has attempted to politicize the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He is certainly politicizing the census. And this is one of those dangers that you and I frequently talk about because on the one hand, the Fed has to decide what they're doing, excuse me, based on the numbers. But on the other hand, like, I don't know, do we think we can really trust all the numbers? Maybe they're being politically manipulated, maybe they're not, maybe they're just being incompetently put together. And we have this conversation two weeks ago about the census, where all of a sudden, all the data coming out of the government, everyone has to go, I don't know. And so that's a second order concern I have. I kind of hope Kevin Marsh does push for rate cuts. And this is me wanting the accelerationist view of the world, which is a working theory of mine, just a theory, not a strong belief, is that part of the reason we got here is because the frog was boiled very slowly because there were sensible people around Trump protecting him from his worst impulses through the first administration. And the fact that those responsible people protected him is what got us to to Trump 2.0 in which without those responsible people, he's causing a great deal more harm through the deportations of 2000 people a day, internment camps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, tariffs, trade wars, attacking Iran, whatnot. And so part of me thinks that maybe we really do need accelerationism here to sort of shock the system so people can see what they're what they've really chosen. And if Kevin Marsh is instead of laughing him try to split the baby, but let's just let him do what the president wants. Yeah, I'm not rooting for that, honestly. I'm really not because once you've torched the credibility of the Fed, it'll take decades to get it back. I mean, that's literally, that is, this is not. Well, we're heading there anyway. I mean, this is, you know, with Lisa Cook, then all the, this is what I'm saying. And the good news is, what you and I root for has zero bearing on the outcome. So we can, we can have our analysis slacks. You wanted to all burn out, yeah, dependent of worrying that we're going to cause the conflagration, because it's either going to happen or not happen. Maybe. I don't know. I'm super worried about a lot of these things. And on the point about the data, look, I think the numbers are still right from the BLS, as we've talked about before, there are like massive red flashing lights about what's happening at census, not only the fact that they released a bogus report. Since we spoke actually, census has like quietly deleted some guidance basically saying that their data should not be politicized. Like it's very over. It's, it's bizarre. I feel like you're supposed to at least pretend that you're releasing objective scientific numbers, but they've had, that they've, they've, they've, anyway, so there, there have been some other things happening at census that are concerning to my knowledge. There's nothing comparable happening at the BLS, but I don't think that we can take for granted anymore, unfortunately, that it isn't happening or that it won't happen. I at least have, you know, small non-zero nagging doubts. I trust these numbers, but I'm, I'm still worried. And, and part of the issue here is also that like even innocent tweaks, tech things that again would have been given the benefit of the doubt to the data collection process now look a lot more suspect. Just as an example, the way that inflation is measured, the way the, or one of the ways that inflation is measured, specifically the one that the Fed is most reliant on and emphasizes it's getting a technical change. And it is actually going to get changed in a way that probably makes inflation look slightly less bad. Now, I don't think that that is because they are trying to soft pedal inflation and they're trying to cook the books in this case, but I understand why people would view that with suspicion. And, you know, a few years ago, we would have been like whatever. It's like a technical change. They've changed the methodology. This is a nerdy thing nobody needs to pay attention to. And now I get why, you know, when this changes, which will be pretty soon, I believe. I don't remember the exact timing. There's going to be some attention paid to it, and it's going to fuel conspiracy theories. And, you know, you know, who else is fueling those conspiracy theories, Donald Trump himself and his lackeys who are doing all of this stuff. So anyway, that's a, that's a side note. Obviously, I will make my usual call out, which is that if anybody out there is listening to this or watching this and has information about things happening at the statistical agencies or elsewhere in the government that may be affecting our government data, please always reach out. This is a topic I'm obsessed with. All right. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the other ways in which Donald Trump is entrapping the Fed in a sense, which is his war. And, you know, I think we have this chart that Carl Contanía had previously posted, but it's actually from somebody at a Apollo named Torsten's lock. Can we show that chart showing the market expectations for Fed rate hikes? Maybe. If we don't have it, that's okay. But basically, it shows that when we started our war in Iran, that's when suddenly like all markets had been expecting that rates were going to go down. And then, you know, a switch flip. There we go. So this is a nice little chart. And it shows the, the dark blue line on the right side of the chart. That's where that's where markets thought rates were going. And then all of the other lines are where, you know, the blue line is going down. All the other lines have been sort of going up. And that's because people now expect rate hikes since Trump has kind of undermined whatever chance we had previously at killing inflation. And you can see that in, you know, this is not just an abstract thing. I realize these charts that I'm asking for are like pretty abstract, but it's showing up in, you know, gas prices, diesel prices, diesel prices. I think are at all time highs. If we, I don't know if we have that chart as well, but like truckers out there are having to absorb these costs and passing them along to, to people like you who were watching and listening to this since almost everything you buy gets transported, right? So, so all of these things are getting more expensive. Farming. Farming. Farming. All runs on diesel. Farming equipment. Yeah, that's also true. Yeah, it's not just about transporting goods. It's about producing stuff. All construction equipment. Run on diesel. Yeah, yeah. So, look, you can see diesel prices are 585 per gallon when your record high, at least in nominal terms. So, again, that's the golden age that Americans are enjoying right now. False reality. False, I mean, that's the real reality. I know it makes me happy. I know you don't want me to be happy about these things, but I look at that. I'm like, great, diesel prices are overflecting reality. This is good. We want good signals from reality injected into our political environment for people to make judgments on. Yeah. Good luck America. Good luck America. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about other markets where maybe we're getting clear signals, including the gold market. Oh, please, please, please, your news on this was so good. Oh, thank you. So my newsletter, tell the people the story. You want to be terrified, sure. So almost a hundred years ago, our European friends evacuated gold from Europe to the United States to flee the Nazis because they were worried that Hitler was going to steal their gold. And guess what? Now they're taking it back because they're worried someone else might get his grubby paws on it, which is Donald Trump. I am not making this up. At earlier this week, the Dutch central bank announced that they had brought back gold that was in North America, mostly in New York, some in Ottawa. They had brought it over. They had removed it from North America, taken it to London because of geopolitical tensions, geopolitical risks unspecified, huge amount of money being taken. That was preceded by a similar move by the French central bank to take their gold back as well. They repatriated all of their gold, I believe, at this point, that had been held in New York to Paris instead, to Valtz in Paris instead. And when I first saw this news, I was like, that's kind of weird. And I asked a friend of mine who was a traitor. And I was like, what's going on here? He said, oh, well, that's because they're worried about the security of their gold reserves. And I was like, what? What do you mean security? Like, they think Donald Trump is going to steal the gold. And he's like, yeah, yeah, and I was like, that's not- Talks about stealing stuff from other countries all the time. Exactly. You watched this show, right? You know? We're going to take their own. Yes. Yes, we're going to take their oil. We're going to take the minerals from Ukraine. We're going to take all sorts of natural resources from- They have their raer earths. Got it. Not so good. The raer ones, we like them very much. We're going to take equity stakes in lots of companies as the U.S. government is going to, including some non-American companies like Nippon Steel. We have a golden share in Nippon Steel, which basically means that Donald Trump can- How about the share we have in his whale and state oil? Yep. Yep. Um, so- You wrote that piece just for you, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate it. You beat me to the punch. I was thinking about doing my newsletter on that this week, but you did a fantastic job. So my work was unnecessary. You beat me to it. Right every day. Right every day. And then you won't have to worry about me doing- Got it. You do that, man. I don't know how you do that. Yes, the Venezuela story, um, and everybody should read, well, three JVLs try it every day, but this one was like particularly good, I think, about how we are getting into bed with somebody who under the Trump administration was accused of money laundering. Like the first Trump administration, I should say, second Trump administration, we don't care about money laundering. We shouldn't- We shouldn't. We don't even pretend. He was investigated for money laundering. Excuse me. He was never charged and has never been convicted. He's only been investigated by multiple governments across the world over and over again. I presume because there is some very, very bad money laundrer out there who looks just like him. And so- That must be the case. It's a very unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Thank you for correcting me. I don't want to defame anyone. Yes, I believe he was listed as an unindicted, unnamed co-conspirator, one of our indictments, but he's not named specifically. He is implied. Fair enough. How many governments have investigated you for money laundering? Six, seven, eight? Who among us? Who among us, exactly? So yes, that is just one data point that might convince some of our friends that they can no longer trust that their assets, including their gold reserves here in the United States, are totally secure, particularly when Donald Trump not only is like talking about like, you know, stealing natural resources. He himself is obsessed with gold, actually, side note, we are going to play a blast from the past because JVL insisted that we have a reference to be the more famous gold lover. Can we play that little clip? I love gold. Thank you. I love gold. Yes, for those of you who are too young to remember, this is an Austin Powers character. Who? Donald Trump character. All right. I have to interrupt you. Yes. Because I want people to understand how you work. I want to give them a peek behind the curtain. So Catherine, I talked to each other on Slack all the time. And this newsletter first began with her noting that like some gold was getting pulled out, and she was like, I wonder what, there must be like a weird, highly technical reason for this. And I assume that that was also it. And so she started calling people and reporting and investigating. And that is what led her to uncover that no, actually, this is actually all about Trump. And people in Europe are actually afraid of Trump. So this is the value out of Catherine's amazing newsletter is that she goes out and like, she sees something interesting and she starts pulling on the strings and makes us all smarter. So can you, can you explain to people why this is not Trump's arrangement syndrome on the part of our foreign allies, because it isn't, in order for them to be compromised, Trump doesn't have to actually take their gold from them. The fact of the gold being in America, if America is in fact a lawless country that is essentially a competitor to our former allies, the fact of having their gold here creates vulnerabilities. Can you explain that to people? Yeah. So, I don't think Donald Trump is likely to like literally go to the vaults beneath the New York Fed and carry out the gold like in die hard, you know, in dump trucks or whatever. What's, or at least this is what people who know more about the stuff than I do have said, they're more worried, these European countries are probably more worried about it being used against them through various sanctions, right? Sanctions are normally something we think of doing to like Russia or Iran or Venezuela or maybe even trying to countries that are not our friends, countries that we have some kind of adversarial relationship with, that we want to punish in some way. One of the things that often happens, this happened with Russia, for example, is that we freeze their assets, those that we have, we have some kind of access to, so they can't access them, they can't sell them if they need to, you know, get some cash in a pinch because of a crisis. This is what we did with Russia's assets, not specifically gold per say, but other -This is the thing that happens all the time. Yes, this happens all the time, right? And so they can't access that money, that those assets, and they can't use it to do whatever they need to do. Now, if this gold is in the United States, that means that the United States could similarly immobilize it. And by immobilize it, I don't mean like physically, like, well, I guess they could physically keep it from being transported, it's very heavy. But they also say like, you can't sell it, you can't move the gold bar from one part of the vault to the other part of the vault because you've sold it now to another country or to a private holder or what have you. And that could be used as leverage to force our allies to do something that Donald Trump wants. And again, the idea that we would do this to our friends is just like, batch it crazy, or it was, until quite recently, because we have just had this litany, this cumulative list of things that Donald Trump has done to very clearly communicate to our friends that they can no longer trust us, and they can no longer trust that we would not pull something terrible like this. We've talked about just as an example, the trade wars, taking the oil, threatening to take other sorts of-- Greenland. Greenland. Greenland. Yeah, one of the things that came up in my reporting on this, including in talking with people who are European themselves, who work in finance, or who study economics, things like that, is like, they kept saying you don't understand how much the Greenland threats freaked out Europe, right? Here in the United States, like, maybe we kind of covered it or talked about it as if Trump was just trolling and didn't mean it and whatever Trump-- Right, Joe. Yeah, exactly. In America, the American public looked at the Greenland story with a sort of, oh, that's just Trump and Trump, right? Yeah. And people on the right thought it was great because he was triggering the lives and people on the left, like me, sort of, you know, rolled their eyes. But it was deadly serious the whole time, because if-- If you're Europe, you have to take it seriously when the American president says that you don't have the luxury of saying well He's probably trolling because you always have to make your long-range plans for the worst possible scenario I mean, yeah, you gotta start hedging things you can't you can't just assume like, huh probably doesn't mean it Yeah, exactly so in the same thing with Canadians, right when Trump says Jokes about saying that Canada is going to become our 51st state, right? They cannot just laugh that off because maybe this is an actual threat to their sovereignty. So The trade wars the threats about Greenland the threats about invading Canada The taking of the equity stakes sometimes in you know probably mostly under jurace Threatening to take the gold there have also been plans floated proposals floated to sort of like shake down other Foreign holders of US dollar denominated assets like Steve Myron who was the Council of economics chair and then went over to the Fed for a while He had this proposal that he floated about having a user fee That would only be charged to foreign treasury holders Foreign debt holders right or decide we're not going to fully honor our debts to you if you hold T-bills and you You're the government of Singapore or whatever Maybe we're gonna Tell you will only give you 94 cents on the dollar. Yeah It's insane to let that sort of stuff out into the world No, it didn't happen when you let that out into the world and you're like connected to the administration these things have Concentral like you don't life is not Twitter You know, but they all act like it's just really you know what's the bad tweet, dude Yeah, so all of these things have had this cumulative effect where Threats of maybe Trump will sanction us maybe Trump will expropriate us like things that might have sounded totally wild and and Impossible to happen now seem possible and if you are a foreign central bank You're like, you know, it's a relatively cheap hedge for me to move some of my gold. What does it cost you? Exactly. Yeah, I mean, it has some costs, but some transaction costs to it Yeah, some transaction costs and then why Bob? Yeah, so it's like what why not do this and it's not only the gold to be clear that is moving out of the United States If you look at other, you know, so again central banks around the world they have been selling off US treasuries You know selling off US debt. In fact, they're they're moving more of their investments into gold and out of treasuries Because they're trying to diversify away and I guess gold looks safer at least if it's not held, you know in the United States anyway So they're they're trying to get their money out you there have also been like big pension funds in I think in the Netherlands and Denmark and others that have also said we're we're getting out of treasuries or at least we are deemphasizing Treasuries in our portfolio so all of these like very particularly risk averse Investors, institutions, central banks, things like that they are saying Maybe not such a great idea to continue keeping our money in the United States and you know to your point about like How do I how does my thinking evolve as I'm reporting a story? I was aware of all of that I didn't necessarily have much awareness until recently about the gold moving out I but I knew about central banks dumping treasuries or whatever that's a fine way, but I had assumed that that was happening largely because of concerns about like the competence of You know or functionality or whatever of US financial leadership by which you meet I mean Can we actually pay back? You know how we do we have a plan to deal with our long-term deficits? do we You know, do we like have a way to make sure that Donald Trump doesn't put a size the Fed and like threaten higher inflation that these would be like kind of traditional Economic reasons that I mean there's obviously intersection with role of law and so but traditional economic reasons why you may not want to hold US dollar denominated assets it hadn't really occurred to me That there might be as another motivation, which is like people are worried around the world about Trump expropriating them or at least Freezing their access to their assets or using that pair of freezing them as leveraged to get something else Because that's to me is the most likely thing right and and with him the the threat is credible I think in a way that Bill Clinton saying to the UK we want you to do X for us and if you don't we'll freeze your assets I think yeah the United Kingdom could have looked at that and said this is an empty threat with Trump I just think it isn't and so why would you give him leverage? Yeah, great and meanwhile You know Trump is trying to do things to draw that money back or prevent it from leaving again not usually what What is going to a lay investor fears But in these for example these trade negotiations right he keeps on touting that Well, we've gotten this commit pardon the investment right yes We've gotten this commitment this investment in the United States and one of the things that An economic historian that I spoke with this guy Nick Mulder who is himself Dutch and he teaches at Cornell one of the things that he said Is that Europeans and other trading partners kind of view this as a trap because They worry that if they you know promise more foreign direct investment here in the United States in exchange for lower tariffs That just means Trump has another thing to control and weaponize against them right that that they are putting more money in our system When really they want to like decouple a little bit from us so that Trump doesn't have a way to freeze more assets or otherwise you know puts or threaten to freeze assets or to impose sanctions The more things that come into our system Um the more things that are nominated in dollars the you know the more physical assets that are in the United States The more control Donald Trump has over it and again like When when I was talking with professor Mulder about this I said you're speaking about European's views of the United States in the same way that I've been hearing American national security and economic experts talk about China That they're like we need to decouple we don't want them to have leverage of our over us We don't want to be so intertwined with them economically that they can withhold the rare earths or The access to the whatever some other critical infrastructure or something like that there we don't want to be dependent on their EVs Um, and this is how now European's are talking about the United States and the United States has has had a lot more leverage to do these kinds of things to to exert control and to to threaten to Freeze assets and and whatnot because the dollars the global reserve currency And so many transactions that don't even take place within the United States rely on infrastructure that the United States has a say in So uh, so this has been you know like the United States has has had this exorbitant privilege uh to use the term of art for a long time but We didn't really think it was going to be Deployed this this threat was going to be deployed against our friends It's why China and Russia have been like pulling money out and switching to gold and stuff but We have a president who speaks all the time But with his open admiration for Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin Who believes that the Chinese system is a good one has really brought a lot of Chinese precepts of Command and control capitalism or national socialism or whatever you want to call it and to America And so why wouldn't the year? I mean, I think the Europeans would be crazy not To say this now they do have one advantage in this though Which the Donald Trump actually doesn't care about whether or not they invest in America He only cares about being able to say that they said they will And so they can promise like you know Foxconn building Foxconn was going to build iPhones in Wisconsin remember that And everyone's like of course they're not They're never going to build iPhones in Wisconsin. It doesn't make any sense I think it was he wasn't a TV's I think it was TV's but you know what apple was there I think Tim apple was at the groundbreaking with Foxconn and And okay, you know Everybody who has two brain cells knew no this is never gonna happen But they you know Foxconn had to spend a little bit of money On this Potemkin project so the Trump could say and that's what a lot of these countries I presume cutting their hair off side deals are doing they're saying yeah We'll give you a Million dollars for Something and Trump's like great. I just want to put it out on put it out on a tweet And uh, but they're never gonna do it because as you said they are trying to slowly decouple from us And good for them they should yeah And this is gonna be in all Austin powers themed episode today. Uh, I'm hope it's good. So I - Oh! - I've got awesome powers on the brain. Sorry, that's where it's all coming from. - Okay, I got it, I got it. Yeah, and actually, I was joking before about Trump's affinity for gold, a lot of gold member in Austin Powers. And we all know, we've seen the Oval Office, we've seen that he likes to-- - Should we do the thing about he and Elon, going to Fort Knox? - I think we have a clip of one of those things that we can play. - About auditing. - Well, we wanted to go knock on the door, Fort Knox, very thick door, and to see whether or not we have any gold in there, because we'll take a look at it. It's a very interesting question. We played with that. I wonder if they left the gold in Fort Knox, 'cause they steal a lot. - What's the line that every accusation is a confession? - Every accusation is a little bit. - Yeah, I just wanna see it with there. So the reason I wanna talk about this is because it is an interesting finance question. So there was a big case back in 2023 with Nickel in the United Kingdom. Do you remember this? - Remind me, I don't think I do. - Okay, so once I say, so this is JP Morgan Chase, owned a whole bunch of Nickel futures. And for some reason, somebody wanted to check the London medal exchange and see, like we actually do have all the Nickel, right? And when they went down there, they found a 54 metric tons of Nickel that was just bags of stone. And it's because a lot of this stuff is notional financial maneuvering. So when you buy Nickel, you aren't really buying Nickel. You're buying like a little, you know, a bunch of zeros and ones in a computer spreadsheet that says you own some Nickel. And when you're buying futures of Nickel, that you're not, you know, you're buying like the potential future price of Nickel. And a lot of this stuff never changes hands. It's just financial engineering and it doesn't. - It's on paper at the very least. - It's on paper, right? And, you know, like at some point, some end user has to take a shipment of Nickel in order to make something with it. But that's not what a lot of the actual liquidity in the market is made of, right? Well, liquidity is made of people like trading things that are not taking delivery of Nickel. And that the reason we like this, 'cause it helps price discovery and you get truer prices, the more liquidity the market has. That said, it would be like a funny, a funny movie. You know, like a yes minister or style movie that like, you know, the president shows up to fork knocks and discovers actually half the gold just bags of rocks. And then like, well, what do you do? You can't tell anyone, right? And I'd be into that sort of thing. That's a movie. - Yeah. Again, there is a movie. I think it's die hard with a vengeance. One of the die hards, somebody can remind me in the comments where like this is actually a plot point. Jeremy Irons steals the gold, I think. I think that's who I was. - No, it's been a long time. Somebody in our comments will remember. But actually, fun fact, I got a tour of the gold vault at the New York Fed, a year or so ago. Yeah, it was like me and a bunch of journalists. - How far down did you have to go? - I don't remember, but I think my ears popped. So yeah, it was like pretty far underground. And it's very cool. They don't let you take any photos or anything for probably obvious security reasons, but it's very cool. No, can't touch the gold, can't touch the gold. You get to see the gold, get to see it like through a cage in the vault. But one of the things that they were very insistent about is that whatever the physics were of what happened in the die hard movie could not happen. They were like, no, they tunneled. - The rest of America's forgotten about this movie, but the New York Fed, people like Lee's and tried their head rent free. - Yes, oh yeah. Well, I think they get a lot of questions about it. So they're like, well, how come, you know, like, could you do this and could you get the dump trucks in here, whatever. I mean, for all I know, Donald Trump is watching it and like taking notes and trying to figure out how he can go in there just to check to make sure no one else is stolen the gold. But again, like all of these factors. - With classified documents, put it in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, say he's in the field with it. - Spring court will all buy him. What does he have to worry about? - Like I said, like I said, all of these things that should be funny little jokes and little snark from the two of us, people in Europe are actually freaked out about and maybe for good reason because we're threatening to invade them. So like the less concerning outcome might be if he tries to freeze their gold assets. - It comes out, Catherine, that there's a reason to have boring leaders who are very dry and aren't colorful and who don't take the piss on the regular and don't think that they should troll, like it. It's actually useful, especially if you're a super big powerful interconnected country. - Yeah. - Because the way to stay super big, powerful and interconnected is to have everybody believe that you're stable and that the status quo they have with you right now will be the status quo they have with you all the way to the horizon. I know what's funny and entertaining for the voters to get somebody who's an absolute fucking lunatic in the Oval Office. Do you know? Not so great for America long term. - Yeah. - Something to think about people. - Yeah, I feel like there are other places to get entertainment now too. Like get a Netflix subscription. No, there are other ways. But whatever, different strokes for different folks. I guess other people have different hobbies than I do. In any event, I am told that it is die hard with the vengeance just for those of you who are wondering, die hard with the vengeance. That's the one where they tunneled into the vault. All right, well, it's been a great Austin Powersville conversation. Before we go, I do wanna tell people, thank you so much for watching, by the way. We have been having so much fun producing these receipts podcasts, video casts, that we're doing more of them. We will actually be adding a second weekly show pretty soon, and I think we have a little trailer. A lot of people here, the economy, and they think stock prices are crypto gross. It's easy to think that a story about tariffs is just a story about tariffs. The end of the day, Trump is making those basic necessities more expensive through tariffs, through politicizing the Fed, and through mass deportations. But here's the thing, talking economics also means explaining why your groceries cost more, or why your weed gummies aren't available in a certain state, or whether buying a house even feels possible. It's also about where your money goes, and who's profiting from it. It calls him to focus what Donald Trump does care about. He's getting rich and you're getting poor. Everyone has a take on the economy. I've got the receipts. - Didn't you love that look? - We were cool. - Yeah. - You want me a little catchphrase? That's excellent. - I wish I could-- - I wish I could-- - Yeah, well, I'm sure you have connections to order that up if you were so close. - That's amazing. Tell the people what you're gonna be doing. - Yes, so in addition to receipts live, what you were watching right now, we will continue doing that every week, here/forth, and we will also be adding a second episode that'll be taped, it won't be live, which will be with JBL and other bullwork buddies, but also lots of outside experts talking with the guy that I mentioned before, the Dutch economic historian, who, by the way, is an expert in economic sanctions and confiscation, economic confiscation. I had a great conversation with him yesterday. Wish I had recorded it as a podcast 'cause you all would love it. So maybe we'll have him on. We'll have people talking about trade, we'll have politicians talking about what's going on, what, you know, how they're dealing with Trump, we'll be talking to lots of business people, all sorts of characters to basically dig into the economic headlines and how they affect you, and what you can do about it, and how they intersect with the broader project that we care about here at the bullwork, which is obviously preservation of and promotion of democracy. So gonna be a blast. I'm really excited about this expansion. JBL and I aren't going anywhere on Fridays. We're still gonna be doing that. You're just gonna get a little bonus episode each week. - It's gonna be great. - Yeah, it's gonna be really fun. Well, anyway, that does it for us this week. Thank you again for joining, for listening, for your comments, correcting me on which diehard movie it was, always useful, and we will be back pretty soon. But in the meantime, please like, subscribe, on YouTube, you can find us at thebullwork.com and read all of our content, see all of our videos, and catch more of me, JBL, and the rest of the bullwork gang. We also have some shows coming up, some live shows coming up, then Charlotte, Atlanta, and what's the third place, Charleston? - Columbia stuff, Carolina. - Columbia, excuse me, excuse me. So you can check us out in person, and we hope to see you all there. Thanks again for watching.