Hey everybody, welcome to another week of the sense of things. Ron and I are back after our trips to Philadelphia and

we were in the same town and we still weren’t able to hook up. We’re back via virtual at this point. We’ll see you

guys today on the show. We’ve got, of course, this week in history. Ron’s got some stuff on Disney advertisers

complaining about next year’s Super Bowl prices. Ron’s got some interesting stuff on businesses morphing over time to

different businesses and then a little piece on the economy, what sectors of the economy are slowing. I’m going to

cover a con today like I usually do and really some interesting numbers today.

So stay tuned. We’ll be right back on in just a second.

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Ron, how are you my friend?

Good. I was ready to go and meet you for Cheesec Cheese Stakes. It’s not my fault. You booked a tour somewhere in the middle of all that.

I know. It was the only They were shutting down Independence Hall for two days to do like a sprinkler system upgrade and so there was one window for

a that we could get into. Which makes no sense because that would have been over the weekend even though it was crappy weather there. I was Well, it was funny. It was like they

were doing it from I think because we were going to meet on Thursday. They were doing it from like Thursday through Saturday for some weird reason.

You must have been a union thing. I don’t know.

Yeah, they just had to do it then. But yeah, so it was a good trip and good seeing your your town of birth there.

But we It’s the United States of birth. I was born in LA. Oh, okay. Then never mind.

I grew up I spent the majority of my life in the Philly, South Jersey area.

But yeah, I got to tell you, Thursday and Friday weather was fantastic.

Saturday and Sunday just reminded me why I need to get back to Arizona. Yeah, it was gross. Yeah, it was it was nice.

Cold, dark, and damp. Not good all the time there. For most of the week, it was that way.

What happened in history?

All right, here we go. So, actually, it started out slow here when I was putting it together, and it ended up being some interesting things.

1789, this week, George Washington gives first presidential inaugural address. Very cool.

1865, John Wils Booth is finally captured and is killed.

Nice. Or maybe he wasn’t. He may have died in Texas.

I think they got Wilson in North Carolina. Where did they get him? I forgot. Uh, no. They got him in Virginia, but then there was a guy in

Texas that supposedly it was like a right out Granberry, Texas, which is outside of where I grew up, that said

that he was John Wils Booth. And it was just this whole goofy thing.

All right. 1918, GM buys Chevrolet. And this is just the beginning of some interesting GM news. the same week.

Okay.

1926, Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies to adopt a 40hour, 5day work week.

And I think child laws, child labor laws came into effect somewhere around there, too.

Yeah. Because it was like six days a week and more hours if I remember correctly. Like 12 hours a day. Yeah.

With Sundays off, but they had kids working as as young as 8, nine, and 10 years old as they should. 30, 40 hours a week.

As they should. Okay, there you go. What do they need school for?

So 1931, Empire State Building finally dedicated. This could never ever happen again. I believe, don’t hold me to this.

They broke ground on the Empire State Building in either 28 or 29. And they built that literally in two or three years

right there in the middle of the but that building today would take six years maybe seven between permitting

unions materials who I could only imagine I’d love someone to actually figure out what it would cost in today’s dollars

and how and literally because of permitting and everything else what it was because remember this got caught right in the middle of the the Great Depression. Yeah. Oh, they were actually

getting some subsidation from the government to keep people working. And then the Chrysler building went up after this and a few other buildings in New

York. But I think the fact is it really didn’t even have tenants until the early 40s.

So, it basically just sat there empty with just a few tenants at that point.

But we did see an example of this. If you remember the Freedom Tower, that thing took like freaking 12 years to build. And that’s not as tall as the Empire State Building, I don’t believe.

No, it’s taller, is it? Okay. Yep.

Wasn’t sure. But then King Kong King Kong, the first King Kong came out in 1933, they climbed the Empire State Building.

Yeah. And then everybody’s, hey, we’ve got to put our business in that building because the monkey climbed it. Actually, you know what? And in 2001,

when the first Spider-Man came out,

That’s right. was a scene where he puts a web between the two twin towers to capture whatever villain there was. And

then when 9/11 happened, they had to pull that scene out. Yeah. All right. 1941,

arguably one of the best movies ever made. Citizen Cane was made. Do you remember the original name of this movie?

But wasn’t it Rose Bud? No, it was American. Interesting.

And loosely but partially, whose life was it based after?

William Randph Hurst, who got royally pissed at at Orson Wells for making the movie?

Like I said, loosely, but if you parallel a lot of the guy’s life, it was probably 60 to 70% similar events. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

1945,

rather ironically, same week, Bonito Mussolini was executed and Adolf Hitler commits suicide. Wow.

I think that made sense because Hitler was like, “Uh-uh, not going to happen.”

The interesting thing is that they have pictures of Mussolini being executed.

Who the hell knows they hung hung upside down? Well, when they found Hitler, I don’t remember any

pictures being taken because they didn’t Hitler. He was they burned his body outside.

I understand that. But don’t you think that just for historical evidence and everything else, they would have taken pictures?

Now, if you found the guy was sick and demented, he wasn’t sure if the cyanide pills were going to work. Do you know what he did to test the pills first?

No. What? He gave one to his German Shepherd. Yeah, there you go. Kill the dog, too. Jeez, freak.

1954, polio vaccine trials begin. I thought this was earlier, but this is 1954 that started.

Yeah, cool.

1972, Jay. Edgar Hoover, the infamous crossdresser, ends a five decade era at the FBI. And and the amazing thing is

that there was an agreement with the secretary that if he died, the first thing that she would do was destroy all

of his secret files. Y can you imagine what would have been in these files if somebody Oh, I can only imagine what was in those files. He was basically blackmailing people for years with that.

He hated Kennedy. He hated Martin Luther King. He had something on everybody.

1993 worldwide web launches in the public domain. I thought it was earlier than that, but I knew the worldwide

web’s been around they’ve said several decades, but this is I think the first year that happened. And you know what? Interesting enough,

remembering in the archives in my mind,

it was like 95 where all of the sudden it took like this spike up. People were interested and by 96

people were getting email addresses and getting online with their 288 baud modems and their 5 whatever 56 baud modems. You’ve got mail.

That was AOL. But yeah. Yep. 2004. This surprised me a little bit.

World War II monument opens in Washington DC. I can’t remember the year the Vietnam War Memorial went up the

wall, but I have a feeling it might have been before. Oh, this long before that.

So, why did it take so long to do a World War II month?

I have no idea. They just never did. It wasn’t. And it was Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks that pushed it to get it done because it’s after they did Saving Private Ryan that they were both like,

why are why do we not have something for the World War II veterans? didn’t really dig in and research. I didn’t have time. I just thought it was interesting. Yeah, it was hilarious because I’m like,

okay, it’s the biggest generation of war fighters we ever had and we just it was I think so many of those just think that

generation was like, you know what, we want to put it behind us. We don’t want to really remember this stuff. And there just wasn’t

it was more about Vietnam. World War II was remembered for more bravery and courage. Well, it was, but you didn’t

have Yeah. You just didn’t have the push from that generation to go, “Hey, we want to we want a memorial.” There was

much more of a push from the Vietnam generation to say, “We want to remember this and we want to show that it’s a national scar.” But, uh, I just think those guys were just a different animal.

I get it. Look, there was 50,000 soldiers that died in Vietnam.

Yep. Let me get my numbers wrong, but wasn’t it closer to a million of our soldiers that died in World War II? Yeah, like about 750,000. So, yeah.

Yeah. I I don’t I don’t Yeah, they’re just a different breed. I watched a thing last night on Expedition X or Expedition History or

whatever with Josh Gates and there there was this whole thing. I had never even heard of this unit that like was in they

were all artists and all these guys and stuff like that. I did. I thought they were just in in Britain, but they

actually went onto the battlefields and they were like creating fake armies and stuff like that and blow up tanks and

things like that and just completely screwing with the Germans. And nobody in this unit talked ever.

It wasn’t until it was it wasn’t until 2011 or 12 that this one journalist found out about this and publicized it.

And there’s like when it was recognized there was only like three or four of these guys left in this unit. But yeah,

they just didn’t want to talk or they you said don’t talk about it so we just never talked about it. So they were just a different breed.

Yeah, I agree. So the kind of the beginning of the end of the Denu month of really I’m not to be anti 100%

anti-UN but you know how unions just really helped destroy a lot of our auto manufacturer starting in the late60s and 70s and the innovation and whatever.

2004 GM ends Oldmobile production and then with the financial crisis they ended the production

which is the biggest shame ever because that was my favorite GM brand of all time.

I had a 77 Grand Dam. That was my first car.

Yep. They were awesome. Yeah, I had a Grand Dam, too. They were badass cars. I loved them. Yeah, I was eight years old. I got it.

Yeah, it was a bit of a tank and I was getting frustrated because it was costing me 20 bucks to fill up the tank.

like an old cous in today’s world that would cost you like $175 to five gallons. Four or five gallons

that’s all that was a big tank. It was like a 20 gallon tank. Yep. Well, I can’t remember at this point,

but it was and we managed to get eight gallons to the mile. So, yeah. No, it was better than that, but yeah, it was it was brutal.

All right. So, interesting enough, I I swiped this I think off of LinkedIn. So Disney bunkers bought at $10 million

Super Bowl ass for a 30 second ad. Now if you remember, I remember when this thing hit a million. Yeah,

that was like 30 years ago.

Yeah, that was like a big thing. Now it’s now they’re just off the charts.

And then obviously you see the last line there as the game goes on. The average cost is 7 to 8 million. Yeah. But if you

want to get in early and you want to make sure you’re getting a prime spot, whatever they consider a prime spot,

usually it’s in the first quarter or first and second quarter, it’s going to they’re asking for 10 million.

Hey, with all the funny money slloshing around, I don’t know. I will say this, not a recommendation.

Disney has been suffering the stock for quite some time. Even with Iger coming back, it really hasn’t done much. Yeah.

Sell them for around 100. price target,

the average price target is 150 bucks plus or minus.

Uh I don’t see it. You know, ESPN is falling off the map. Just I don’t see it. Disney is hurting and they’re not

getting well, it’s mainly theme park revenues and they’re even starting to see people bulk on the theme parks at this point because they priced them so stinking

high that people are going I just I can’t spend $14,000 to take a family of four to a theme.

I seen an article that let’s no if you just want to go for two days take a family of four.

Yep. It’s like 1,500 to two grand depending on the type of ticket. Remember, you have your regular ticket,

you have your fast pass, you have your ultra fast pass, and then forget about the food. And if you’re going to buy whatever else,

I don’t know the average family that can afford that. Now add in airfare. Now add in hotel, possibly car. Although if

you’re staying on a Disney hotel property, they got shuttles, which we did one time. Also, I know like for the food, there are food plans that you can get on to for the budget conscious even.

So, I don’t know how the average person can do that or the average family. Yeah,

you can’t. That’s Crystal and I used to go to Disney all the time. We would go usually every other year and we hadn’t gone in a while because we were actually

going to the real world and we were like, “Hey, maybe we’ll just do that.” And it was cheaper to go fly to England,

spend an entire week in England with food and everything else. It was cheaper than going to Disney and getting the

fake experience for five days. We went for 10 days to England, double the time,

and I spent probably $3,000 less than I would have spent at Disney.

Yeah. The last quick point there is I haven’t been to one out in LA since I was a kid.

But I will tell you if you’re going to Orlando, I like Universal Studios.

I think it’s more for adults anyway, but that’s Yeah, not a fan. I don’t like getting spit it in the face.

Okay. All right. Here we go. I thought this was an interesting thing going back remember to the bad business decisions we used to do. These were all actually

pretty good decisions. So these were what companies started at to eventually how they pivoted and morphed over time.

So Nokia actually got its start as a paper pulp factory. Nintendo which we all know as a video game company originally sold playing cards in 1889.

Rathon i.e. RTX was in the refrigeration business. Yep. Uh so I thought that was interesting.

Samsung was involved in exporting dried fish and produce in 1938.

Don’t understand. We all know Dupant’s history, right? They’re always called war profiteeers, wararm mongers. They started out as a gunpowder company.

American Express was actually, and this might make sense, was delivering packages in 1850 before they I would never thought of it, but that

actually makes complete sense why they called it was Wells Fargo originally. They were a stage coach. They were armored, right?

They weren’t a bank. Yeah.

Bayer, I actually did know this. They actually were in the original production of dyes in 1881 before selling aspirin.

And apparently many of these bottles contain heroin with the Gotta love it.

Remember CocaCola originally had co coke in it.

Had cocaine for it. That’s why it has the name. Wonder buzz. Yeah.

William Wrigley, I did not know this. He used to just give away the gum free to customers who bought his soap.

I did not know that. Gum soap sucks.

Yeah. So, nice PSA for everybody. Public service announcement just in case you didn’t know. Just a little bit more information you could share with some friends today.

And Rathon, you said it makes tomahawk missiles. They were a refrigeration company. They make really cool missiles. So,

absolutely. Well, they make the Patriot missiles. So, they’re going to be around for a while.

All right. So, I meant to bring this up last time. We didn’t get a really a chance to get into it. Moody’s Analytics, Mark Xandy, but you’ve seen

him on all the shows. So, these are 22 states that are near or could be in a

recession. Now, this is a combination of not just US GDP information, but also real estate, too, because Realtor.com

contributed in this. I thought this was interesting. Look at the red states.

Obviously your state and my state were expanding. Why? Because we got all the Californians that are moving in. Many of the Midwest people are moving in. And

well, we’ve also got the companies moving in. That’s the other part of it.

I think Mississippi is always teetering on a recession.

It just they don’t have any industry there. Interestingly, South Dakota surprises me with all the oil drilling and everything going on. That That’s actually very surprising.

You mean South Dakota, right?

Yeah, South Dakota. Yeah. I I agree. And they got the Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills there and Sturis and Yeah, I

don’t understand that. But I guess Alaska, Hawaii, I guess they I guess that’s about right because mainly Hawaii is tourism.

It’s all tourism. Where are they going to expand?

Yeah. Yeah. They’re just going to tread water. Minnesota, they’ve lost all their their industry and fraud. That’s going to be a contraction for them for a while.

Yeah. And then on the right side, just as some narrative to it. So with some markets, you’re seeing slowing job growth, reduced consumer spending, and

softening housing demand, which we’ve seen. I could tell you here in Phoenix,

which was one of the hottest markets in 2020, 21, and 22, the inventory I from

what I understand hasn’t even gone back to the average inventory since before

COVID and it’s been hovering around 23 half to 2/3 of where it was. And within with mortgage rates hovering around

above six, I don’t see that the inventory going up. And then below that, obviously houses are holding value,

lower inventory, which we just spoke about and buyer competition. So unless people have to move, they’re they’re holding fast.

Yeah. And it surprises me there with Pennsylvania that Pennsylvania is in an expansion, it must be the western part of the state because

manufacturing technology, remember pharmaceutical is real big, especially in the southeastern part of PA. But man,

I tell you, Philadelphia, walking around that city, that is a dying inner city is all I can say.

Well, one thing about Philadelphia, if you know where to go, which is why I wish I would, there are many pockets which are great. There are many terrific

neighborhoods, but I will say this, and I’m probably going to get whacked for it. It’s not a great place if you want to raise a family in the inner city. It is not a great place.

Schools, the cost, everything else.

There’s really no place for the kids to play. They have some very nice parts,

which I’m not sure if you saw any. They have some really nice parts, but it’s not a place where you’re really going to raise a new family.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean it you just see I think the next generation of artists and stuff like that neighborhood that where

your your cheese steak place was. We walked through there.

Yeah. That we walk through there and I’m like, “Okay, there is there are very few businesses left.” And then you start to see the the sex shop kind of businesses and stuff like that. I’m like, “Okay,

then you’re going to get all the artist keep away from these places.”

I know. I had my wife with me and she’s just a little weird that way.

She is married to you, so you got to get rid of that.

That is true. And she’s been married to me for a long time. All right, let’s let’s take a look at the economic calendar real quick here.

do. All right. So, this week, probably one of the best pieces of news today was

the jobless claims. We actually came in way below where they were expecting.

They were thinking about 212. We came in at 189. So, good news on that point.

Now, it could change next week, but we’ll say we’ll say that it’s a good news for this week. Housing starts and

permits. I still love this. We’re still in government shutdown mode on these numbers. I’m like, can you not do a double up one month and get caught up?

We’re still looking at March numbers.

They were supposed to report on the 17th and they’re reporting all this stuff today. Housing starts permits going up.

If you remember the last one, it was actually trending down for a couple weeks. So hopefully this is an uptrend that we see going forward. Durable goods

orders I thought were really good because they were they’ve been negative for a couple months. Consensus was that they were going to be up a little bit and they were actually up more than what

was expected at 08. Once again we’re moving in the right direction there. GDP this was the surprising one cuz

consensus was two we came or 2.1 we came in at two. So right on the money PCE 1.6

six or on the top end of that GV or GDP there. GDP is still strong. We were at 0.5 last month. So, we’re back in the

game again at least with that. And then really the number that the Fed looks at is P personal income and outlays. This

is the PC price index came in where consensus was. It’s higher than where it was the previous month. I don’t think that’s a surprise to me. I don’t think

it’s a surprise. We’ve got higher gas prices which are pushing everything up,

but it’s not like it’s completely off the charts, too high or anything like that. You look at it year-over-year,

we’re at 3.2. Of course, the Fed wants it to be at two, which I don’t see that happening ever in our history, but we’ll

go with what the Fed thinks. Fed decided to do absolutely nothing, which we expected and probably won’t be forever.

And it looks like we’re going to have Jerome Powell around like mold who is just not leaving.

He has no influence. He’s not a voting member moving forward.

Yeah, I know. But he’s just going to hang around like old luggage. And just actually I don’t blame him, but that’s beside the point.

Whatever. You know, once again, he said he would not leave if the if there was still an active case against him. Okay, there’s no active case. Go away now.

No, there is.

No, there isn’t. No, they canceled all that. No, they didn’t. Should look it up. I’m telling you, there there’s an active case.

Oh, yeah. Whatever. I thought they’d said they got rid of it. So, no.

That’s why Tom Tis Yeah, that’s why Tom Tillis decided to vote for Kevin Wars is they because they got rid of the case against him at that point.

That’s all right. You know, one of the other numbers that came out today was the the jobless claims, which they said was one of the best in many years. I know you didn’t show that, but I heard that on the way this morning.

Yeah. 189 is awesome. Yeah, I was the they said I think it’s the best in like several decades. I don’t know how that is, but

once again it and it was down initial ch claims were down 26,000 this month this this week which is fantastic. That’s a

really good move that it means yeah people are struggling but at least they have jobs at this point and we’re not seeing big layoffs.

The other thing too and I never I mean I like following a lot of the economics. The one thing I never I don’t

want to say never understood, but I never understood when you take what I’m about to say and apply it to either the

claims or the unemployment rate. I never got it. And that’s the overmployed versus the undermployed.

Is the ones that are out of work and stopped looking. So I guess they’re off of unemployment insurance but not on anybody’s payroll. And you know what I

mean? So when you get the unemployment number, does that still include the people that are not on unemployment

insurance? But I never I never understood how that faka formula really work well. And then then you’ve got the whole

Yeah. the undermployed, which is they’re people that aren’t working a full 40 hours. They they’re basically kind of

part-time or whatever. or there are people that underemployed, if I remember correctly too, includes people that like might have two or three part-time jobs.

They’re considered undermployed, but they’re not unemployed at that point.

So, yeah, there there’s a whole bunch of different goofy bits and pieces of that mix. But this I think this one’s just the just sheer

jobless claims period. So this is initial claims for the week effectively that you get and that’s every Thursday

we get that number but Friday right we’ll have our podcast next Thursday next Friday is the unemployment number for for April.

Yeah and we’ll get ADP early in the week. So we’ll get a feel for it with ADP early in the week and then Meta and a couple

of other tech companies really haven’t heard of any major layoffs. So the number probably is just pro probably just steady and I and I think what I’m hearing in

the tech industry is AI is having some effect but a lot of these companies are just saying hey okay we don’t need you

for this job inside the company we still value you so we need to train you in a different role within the company so the

companies aren’t just outright chopping headcount they’re going in and saying okay all right we’ve got these easy jobs that can be done these repetitive jobs

can be done by AI. Now, we need a human brain to do these jobs and we need to train you in some of these other roles.

Yeah. So,

we’ll have to see. I had I had some spirited conversations with people over the last week on the trip and back about AI and I said, you know what?

And we’ve talked I think it’s going to end up creating net jobs. Yes. Will it get rid of some jobs initially?

Absolutely. Will it get rid of some tedious tasks? Absolutely. Um, but net I think it’s going to end up creating

jobs. Just look at evolution of technology over the years. We’ve talked about this. We did in a podcast. Is it going to be right away? No.

Over time, I think it’s going to create. We’ll see.

Yeah. I was listening to the news one morning on the business news.

What would you think is the highest paying job right now? the highest paying job that people are getting hired for right now in tech or in general.

In general,

non-professionals and doctors and lawyers and stuff like that. Nonprofessional. So, is it tech?

It’s I’ll say it’s tech. You’ll never guess it.

Maybe working in something that has to do with a data center maybe. I don’t know.

Yeah. Nope. AI content creators are the highest paid people right now. That is tech.

Yeah, it is tech, but it’s you you still have to have be able to write too, but AI content creators.

Well, okay. And I’ll dovetail that real quick as a last point, which is the other part of that is with AI, one

of the ways that AI will be able to help you is creating agents. So, I want to run these five reports every single Monday and go out and grab all the new

data. That’s each one of those is an agent or one. So you still need somebody to create the agents, monitor the

agents, update and enhance these agents over time. So you need human brains. Yeah.

Way because AI is going to create the code, but now you still need someone to create agents. Will they create an a an AI agent to create AI agents?

Maybe. No, a person has to say, I want this. Yeah. And it has to go out and create that.

Yeah. I’ll give you a perfect example of how you know you work with AI. Before I would before I left for vacation, I knew I was going to come back and hit the

ground because I’ve got to do some major re restructuring of my businesses and stuff like that. So, I spent two days

inside of Claude going, “Okay, I here’s what my goal is for my business. Here’s my businesses. I want to cut it down to three lines. Here’s what my goals are.”

and we sat down and worked together to plan this out. And I literally have a checklist for the next 90 days of every

single thing I need to do every single day that pulls all this stuff together.

There’s I could have spent three months doing that and not gotten all this stuff done. So, it’s amazing how fast things can do. And I hear kids complaining

today that we’re going to get out of college. We’re not going to have jobs because of AI. You know what? Stop.

Smoke. Yeah. Stop smoking weed. Stop drinking on the weekend. Spend some time on AI.

Yeah. Stop getting on Minecraft and playing video games and go in and learn how to do some of this stuff. Try it or go learn how to program video games.

Yes. Yeah. The problem is a lot of that stuff’s going to be taken out. A lot of the coding side of it is going to get taken out. Most video games are actually

designed by Most of Creation.

Yeah. They’re most of them are designed by artists. That’s that was the fallacy I had. I actually did a presentation at the company that bought out Atari one

time and I was talking to the guy who owned the company and I was I made a joke about you guys all went to you all

went, you know, and learn how to program and all this stuff and they all looked at me like I had three heads. And when he afterwards he was talking to me, he goes, “No, they’re all art people. They

they’re all from art programs because we have people that program the computer program that they use then to do the art

part of it and make it look right. So yeah, they’re most times they’re not programmer programmers, they’re actually artists.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right.

Yeah. Cool, folks. Thanks a lot. We’re glad to be back. We will see you guys the next time.