Hello everybody. Welcome to another week with  the sense of things. On this week’s show,  

we’re going to talk a little bit about, of course,  the way we usually start, what’s going on in  

history. Ron’s got really good stuff that he came  up with of where global wealth is consolidated  

within the top 20%, the top 1%. He’s also got some  information on the size of the global economy and  

how several of our states are larger than a lot  of countries that are out there. I’m going to  

come in and talk a little bit about the tariffs  from last week and the Supreme Court decision.  

Real quick economic update. There wasn’t a lot of  economic news today. And then what I think is one  

of the most consequential things that’s happening  this week coming out of the the Federal Reserve  

with banking regulation. So stay tuned. We’ll be  right back on and just hang in there for a second.

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Ron, how are  you my friend? Good morning. Yes, we are in the  

last week of the shortest month, February and  walked out this morning and we could be wearing  

shorts to work. It’s been gorgeous here. I had the  top down. I loved it. Nice. Nice. Love Yeah, we we  

we didn’t really have a winter this year. So, we  had about two weeks of winter and we’re right back  

to summer months here. Yeah. And it seems like we  got Teflon markets. Doesn’t matter what the State  

of the Union said. Nvidia earnings came out last  night. It was a It was a bit of a of a nothing  

burger. They’re down almost two and a half%. Yeah.  And absolutely crushed it. Yeah. I at this point  

I don’t think anything any of the AI players can  do is going to really push them up in the market  

at this point. Look, they’re making they’re a cash  cow. They’re making hand they’re making money hand  

over fist and really at this point with Nvidia  and a couple of the other ones I’m not going  

to say the patina is off, right? Or the bloom  is gone. It’s just a matter of I think at this  

point people taking a breather. Yeah. And I think  we got to get through the balance of this month,  

maybe go into Q2 and then all of a sudden people  realize, oh, these companies are still making  

money. The EPS is expand is growing. The PE is  expanding. And then all of a sudden they realize,  

oh crap, these are under undervalued now. And then  all of a sudden these things will pop up 10 20% in  

a couple of days or a week. It’s going to happen.  Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I think it’s always one  

of those things where the market just decides I’m  my interest is someplace else and I’m seeing it.  

I had reduced a lot of that type of stuff in  our portfolios. We really hadn’t seen any of  

the whooping that that was happening with some of  the AI stocks and some of the the mag seven and  

things like that. But I’m sure it’s going to come  back because once again, this is not the 2000s of  

a whole bunch of dot stocks that are not making  money. These are companies that make a crap ton  

of money and they’re going to continue to because  we’re in a different world. This is a world of  

we’re going to continue to see more AI. It’s Yeah,  I think right now it’s a lot of what the market’s  

worried about is are companies going to continue  to spend as much. If you have two or three  

quarters where they continue to spend as much,  maybe you were wrong. And I’ve also the market  

will eventually get back. I’ve been saying this  for a while that every couple of weeks, you see  

with AMD and a few of the other ones, if they’re  not making any announcements of partnerships,  

deals, or we’re going to be spending more on  AI, the stock is stagnant. And I think like  

I said last year, is it 98 going in 99 or is  this 99 going into 2000? Because despite the  

profitability on the top companies, are they are  they overextending their capital expenditures?  

Yeah. And we won’t know this for several years,  but at the end of the day, Oracle’s already gotten  

called out for the way they’re financing it. Uh  we’ll have to see. We’ll have to see. Absolutely.  

What happened this week in history? Quite a bit.  Okay. Numero uno. Why isn’t it popping up here?

Numero uno.

All right, let me pop it back up.

All right, you could edit that. Yeah. All  right. 1819, the US acquires Spanish Florida.  

Cool. Bueno. 1919, Grand Canyon is designated a  national park. This was something Teddy Roosevelt  

tried to do early on, but he didn’t get a chance  to. He was probably the most prolific as far as  

designating a lot of America land to national  parks and preserves. Yeah. For Yellowstone,  

especially. Interesting thing, my my wife’s family  when we were doing some genealogical research,  

her greatgrandfather was he basically owned a  ginormous ranch that became the northern part  

of Yellowstone Park. It was sold to the federal  government. They could have made a TV show about  

them. I know. Nope. That’s already been done.  1922 Supreme Court defends women’s voting rights.  

Remember, they were given the right. I think it  was in 1920 or 21 and the Supreme Court upheld  

it. Why they even had to why people even sued  against this is just incredible. Yeah. I’m like,  

okay, you everybody ratified it, so what’s the  problem? And remember, we had that I had that  

stat probably two, three months ago when Wyoming  Yeah. had women’s voting rights and that’s why a  

lot of women were going there. Besides there was  like a 10 to1 male female ratio. So whatever if  

you wanted to get married that was the place to  go because there was a lot of selection. 1940 NHL  

game televised in US for the first time now being  a season ticket holder of the Philadelphia Flyers  

for many years. I could tell you this hockey has  always been much better to watch in person. Yeah.  

On color TV at times it was difficult to follow  the puck. Yeah. I could not imagine what it was  

like in a black and white snowy version to try  and follow the puck on TV. Snowy plus the fact  

that they would have if you look at TV back then  it would have a double image and stuff like that.  

Yeah. I can’t even imagine. I don’t even think  people knew they scored until the guys put their  

hands in the air. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s hard  enough to follow today with all the fancy cameras  

that they have. I can’t imagine them filming it  on those big cameras that were like six feet long.  

So now 1954 children received first polio vaccine.  I thought this was earlier but 1954. Huh? 1960.  

All right. We had a little history repeat  itself with a gold medal. US Olympic team  

beats the Soviet Union. And as great of a game as  that was and as incredible talent on both side,  

this still is bigger because you had amateurs  versus pros. Yeah. 19. So, we beat him in 1960,  

but we also beat him in 1980, too. Uh, yeah.  But remember, 1960 was amateurs on both sides,  

as far as we know. Yeah. Okay. But,  interestingly enough, Yeah. 1960,  

1980, and then now 19 or 2026. Yeah. Now,  it’s all pros. But, you know what? Really,  

I give them such credit because those guys are  so patriotic and amazing. And the ladies as well,  

just absolutely amazing. And it could The  game could have gone either way many times.  

Oh yeah. And I I how they pulled that last goal  off. I It was crazy. Yeah. So I find this one  

comical. 1964 Italian government seeks aid for  fixing Lady Tower of Visa. Did they never get  

funding? They tried. today. When I was there the  last time, how long ago was that? That was 201

12 10 somewhere around there. It’s still leaning,  isn’t it? It still leans. For a while they had  

they’d put in like a ginormous post in the ground  and they had it years ago like metal cables,  

but since that point like when we were there it  wasn’t they they had finally figured out how to  

put some stuff in the ground to stop it from  leaning farther at this point. And now you can  

actually go up into the leaning tower pisa. Oh,  really? I thought Yeah. For the longest time you  

couldn’t because they were it was leaning  even more every time people got up in it.  

Oh boy. All right. 1974 Nike receives patent for  waffle sold trainers invented in a waffle iron  

by a lot of people think. It’s Bill Bowererman.  Bill Bowererman was a World War II hero vet and  

he’s the one that I mean that Oregon track team he  made world famous and had a lot of big Olympians  

come out of there. But yep, this was the first one  and he was the one that did it. And then obviously  

Phil Knight added the business aspect to it.  Yep. And Steve or Steve Prefontaine actually  

tested them all. Yep. And 1980 the Miracle on Ice.  So 1960 were two amateurs. The 1980 Miracle on Ice  

happened. We all know what happened there. 1983  final episode of Mashars which I did watch and  

and was watched by 70% of the television viewing  audience. And that’ll never happen again. No. No.  

And it’s really not when I went back and watched  it. Two choices and two local choices. This is  

what you watched. That’s exactly right. Plus the  fact it was not really the best episode ever. It  

was Oh, I thought it was very good. And I was  someone that watched a lot of reruns because  

I was pretty young when it first started. Sure.  But I thought it there I thought they did a great  

job. I have never seen it since, by the way, but  I thought they did a great job. Go back and watch  

it. It’s not near as good as you thought it was.  It’s cuz we watched Now you’re being more critical  

of it. Yeah, we’ve been watching We went back  and watched multiple times. We’ve watched the  

entire MASH series and they I we went they don’t  play that one very often and and like once a year  

they play it and we watched it a couple years  ago and I’m like, “Wow, this thing is way too  

long and very weird.” It it was a very two hours  on TV. So, it was really about an hour and a half  

playing time. Yeah, it’s like hour 30 minutes,  hour 40 minutes, something like that. But yeah,  

it’s just very weird as we watch. It’s just  odd. 1991, Gulf War ground offensive begins.  

I remember it very well. So do I. 1993, World  Trade Center is bomb. Somebody I had just started  

dating literally there’s a picture of her in the  paper holding something over her mouth. She was  

coughing from all the smoke. She was, I think,  working down the street or she had a meeting  

down the street or something like that. Wow. 2014,  El Chapo, the TR, I call him the tunnel king. Uh,  

the world’s most wanted drug kingpin is captured  in Mexico. I got to tell you, the tunnel systems  

that they were able to build, especially on  that jail on that jailbreak, incredible how they  

calculated all that out. Obviously, they knew pe  they paid off people in the prison because there  

was so much noise in the building was shaking.  They didn’t want to alert. But it was just amazing  

how they engineered that. Let’s just leave it at  that. Yeah. And then El Meno was wiped out this  

week. So interesting that Yeah. It’s interesting  that Mexico’s kind of kill trying to clean stuff  

up before the FIFA World Cup. Yep. Number three,  Dale Erenhard Senior killed in crash at Daytona.  

I remember watching that bar person, but I did  watch it. Yeah, I was sitting in a bar at the  

time. Oh, it’s Yeah, it really honestly didn’t  look like it was going to be that bad. And but  

Yep. That’s I remember sitting in the Beantown  pub in Boston at the time. 2022, Russia invades  

Ukraine. We all remember. I can’t believe it’s  been four years. I know. Just It’s like the war  

that will never end. Geez. Well, they’re talking  again. Unless Ukraine makes concessions on land,  

it’s not going to happen unless Yeah, but I’m  not I honestly Yeah. Honestly, at this point,  

I’m not sure if they even gave concessions to  it that they would have to. That’s my point. I’m  

saying even if they gave concessions at this  point, which I think they’re willing to, I’m  

not just Putin is just evil. There’s just no other  way to explain it. He’s Move it on. I got you. All  

right. So, here we go. I kind of going back to our  vishial capitalist friends. Import reliance. Look,  

we could spend a whole hour on this chart, but  I thought it was interesting because this chart  

basically represents the reliance on countries  surviving on imports. But, okay, let’s just start  

out. US is only 14%. which means we’re pretty  self-independent when it comes to producing  

the goods the goods that we need. Um, I find it  interesting on the bottom Hong Kong. I don’t know  

how you get to 178%. I How do you get to more  than 100% of being reliant? I don’t understand  

that. Then I didn’t see any explanation. Yeah, you  understand like Australia, right? You understand  

it doesn’t have Hawaii here. But obviously if  you’re an island state or if you don’t you if you  

depending on your climate you may not be able to  be as self-sufficient when producing especially in  

agriculture and stuff like that. Wow. It’s amazing  what I can’t really see it but what’s Canada like  

37% 33% in Canada 33%. Wow. Mexico’s 38%. I  thought that was low just because of the nature  

of their economy. But I also find it interesting  too, the low numbers in South America being being  

pretty pretty self-reliant, them being able to do  what they need to do to produce it. Cuba doesn’t  

surprise me whatsoever. Being 82% obviously  we’re not helping them. Once they have a change  

of regime, I’m telling you that company will take  that country will take off. Sudan, that surprised  

me. 1%. How are they producing everything that  they need? I don’t know. They’re a big desert.  

I guess that kind of surprised me. And why  are they like the percentages of the country  

surrounding them? Yeah. And then Djibouti is what,  113 or 119 or something? 115. Yeah. 115. It’s once  

again, how do you get more than 100%. I don’t  get that. Yeah. And like I said, Singapore 144.  

That makes sense. Being an island, they might not  be able to get everything. They might not be able  

to produce oil or beef because there’s only  so much space on land space on there anyway.  

Okay. Yeah. But it makes sense for I think that’s  Kazakhstan up there above China or is that Nepal?  

This country. Yeah. I don’t know what that country  is. I’m completely geographically stupid when it  

comes to some of the some of the geography.  That actually may Yeah, it may be Mongolia up  

there or it’s one of the stands. Wait, China and  Russia. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure. Yeah. or it’s  

one of the stands like Kazakhstan or one of those  just not people are watching this going did you  

guys go to school or what yeah exactly it doesn’t  identify it but yeah that that makes sense they’re  

completely landlocked on all sides and basically  a big desert so yeah that that makes sense but  

yeah Europe I think is the real challenge there  they don’t produce anything yeah but you got to  

remember too they have had literally hundreds and  hundreds and hundreds of years of development and  

growth and population and whatever that they  probably they don’t have the land and they  

probably don’t have the resources. Yeah, it  is what it is. Okay, here we go. Well, it’d  

be interesting to see does this really include  importing from other European countries? Yeah,  

it because of the European do a lot of trade with  each other. Yeah. And obviously the transportation  

costs are going to be less. Yep. Okay. So, here  are the top 50 global economies. Okay. Just under  

half, 19 of them are US states. So, we know about  California. They moved up from five to four in the  

last what 18 months. Texas obviously is up there,  too. New York, that was a given. Florida surprised  

me being higher than Illinois and Pennsylvania.  Arizona’s down here. Look for Arizona to keep  

going up over the next 5 to 10 years. I wouldn’t  doubt if they were they wouldn’t be in the top  

25 in the next 10 years, especially in the data  center world and some of that with Taiwan semi  

and stuff. Taiwan. Yeah. Taiwan and Intel. You got  other semiconductor companies out here. You got  

migration coming here. Gold global headquarters  are coming here. Yeah. Over the next 10 years,  

this will this will I think this will creep  up to the top 25. Yeah. It’s just scary how  

we literally have US or states that are beating  entire countries. It’s amazing to me. When you  

have the printing press to do all the money,  it helps. And obviously there’s international  

investment here. Yeah, international investment.  And I just think we’re the most innovative in the  

world. I think that’s going to continue to be this  way. Yeah. And if you see the stat here, in 2000,  

California ranked eighth. It was five for many  years and now it’s four. Will it surpass Germany?  

I would say probably. So, probably. Yeah. Yeah.  If they don’t keep having a mass exodus and then  

they don’t do a wealth tax, there’s a possibility  they’ll surpass them. Yeah. All right. My last  

chart. I thought this was interesting because  everybody always talks about either a potential  

ridiculous wealth tax on the the 100 million 100  millionaires or the billionaires. They invested in  

the stock market. They invested in real estate.  Now, obviously, you need money to make money,  

right? Do you need money to invest money? But I  thought this was interesting where the top 20%  

of wealth make up almost 90% of corporate equity  and mutual fund ownership. And that would make  

sense. Look at the stock market. how much of  those portfolios have grown with consistent  

contributions over the last 161 17 years and not  only that too real estate has boommed too. So just  

overall wealth but this is investment corporate  equity and mutual fund ownership now of that the  

top 1% owns almost 40% of equity and mutual fund  of a mutual fund ownership per Fed data. Yeah. I  

don’t know what your thoughts are on this, but  it doesn’t surprise me because I’ve heard for  

20 years 80% of the wealth is held by people over  55. They’ve had years to let it grow if they’ve  

invested. So the people that are in their 50s and  60s that come to you and I and say, “Hey, I’m now  

ready to save for retirement.” I’m like, “Where  were you in your 20s and 30s?” That’s exactly  

right. I think it was probably our generation that  we we didn’t have another option. Like my parents’  

generation or our parents’ generation, they had  another option. They could work for a company and  

have a pension. And that was that time period  that kind of changed mid-career for a lot of  

them. Whereas for us, we didn’t have we’ve never  known another option, which was you’ve got to save  

otherwise nobody else is doing it for you at that  point. Yeah. All right. What do you got? I don’t  

really have a slide for this, but just wanted  to talk a little bit about I love the media,  

but the media can be a little goofy sometimes.  Talking a little bit about the tariff thing in  

the Supreme Court. Last week, the Supreme Court  struck down the president’s ability to use  

emergency powers act for tariffs and things like  that. Of course, the media immediately I saw just  

headline after headline, tariffs are struck down.  There can be no tariff. No idiots. It doesn’t work  

that way. The par the president still has the  ability to use tariffs. It’s just he has to work  

in the normal process which includes Congress and  everything else, but tariffs can still be there  

and tariffs have been used, you know, throughout  history for very specific things. So yes, you’re  

going to continue to see more tariffs at this  point. the I think the administration expected  

this and put in place some tariffs to make sure  that a lot of these deals that have been made  

are going to stay in place because I think with a  lot of that initial tariff stuff was to encourage  

these countries to to actually put together a  deal and I I think a lot of those deals are going  

to stay in place. They’re really good deals for  a lot of these countries. What’s your thoughts?

You’re on mute. I’ve been talking about this  with a few people over the last couple of days,  

and this is what it comes down to. Whether you’re  far left or far right, at the end of the day,  

we all want free and fair trade. Let’s just stop.  Let’s just stop there for a second. And at the end  

of the day, no matter what the administration says  about how bad it was over the years, with select  

countries, it was absolutely very bad. With with  I would say the core countries, it goes back and  

forth to who has the advantage over decades.  I think I should get that out there as being  

nonpartisan. That one. Number two is I think the  deals that are in place, yes, were a lot of these  

countries forced to the table to make these deals.  Yeah. But they negotiated in good faith. I think  

both sides did. We weren’t in that room. So I  think the deals that are in place, if they thought  

it was that bad, I don’t know if these countries  have uh the gumption or the kones to actually  

step up and try and sue us. U that’s not going to  happen. So I think the deals will stay in place.  

And I think I don’t think China is still done.  That hasn’t come out because every week there’s  

more news coming out. So being elongated in my  response to you, I think that free and fair trade  

is important. I think if the deals are in place  and both sides agree this is free and fair trade  

to both sides, that’s fine. You have to have some  type of tariff in place anyway. I give the example  

just very quickly years ago with the dairy farmers  in our northern border states were getting screwed  

out because Canada was bringing in milk at under  their cost because they had too much. they had a  

huge surplus. So they were hurting our farmers.  So we put a tariff tax on the Canadian milk to  

at least bring the competition to even so our  dairy farmers could survive during that period of  

time. So the whole point is that yeah, we need to  protect our people, our farmers, our manufacturers  

too. My other quick example was geez five years  ago, 10 years ago, it goes back and forth,  

our steel producers were hurting because Japanese  so much and the Chinese had so much they were just  

dumping steel on our market at pennies on the  dollar to get rid of it and it was hurting our  

manufacturers. Is that fair to our manufacturers  which ultimately help will hurt American citizens?  

No. There is there’s a reason for these tariffs  to be used in a way to make competition fair. I’m  

off my soap box, but you get it. Yeah. But it’s  the same thing with the forest products industry.  

Our forest products industry, especially up in the  Northwest, was literally decimated over the last  

10 years. It had been for years, but literally  decimated over that time period. And I think it’s  

it was time to say, “Okay, all right, we need to  even this out a little bit with Canada so that we  

can stabilize that industry a little bit and how  we’ve got a lot of raw material. We just didn’t  

have an industry anymore because it got killed  off.” Yeah, I agree. What What else you got next  

to for a whole hour? Oh, I know. Yeah. And that’s  it’s fine but not fine at times. quickly share  

really the only econom I mean everything else was  in place economically this week but I think one of  

the most interesting things was a pop back up in  consumer confidence now it had dropped in January  

but actually popped back up here so hopefully  you’re starting to see some people say okay I  

see things are starting to get a little bit better  of course the media is just going to beat on this  

non-stop but I honestly think we’re starting  to see people go, “Huh, interesting.” And then,  

of course, you’re going to see, I think, during  tax season, the taxes we’ve run for some clients  

already, they’re getting money back, which some  people hadn’t gotten money back in years. So,  

this is it’s I think it’s going to be pretty  interesting to see if people actually put that  

to work. Now, are they going to take it and  invested in the stock market and mutual funds  

like the top 20% or are they going to go buy TVs  and things like that? Who knows? But we’ll see how  

this all works out from a consumer point. The last  thing I want to talk about, and this is, I think,  

one of the most interesting things going on, the  Fed vice chairman or chairwoman, Michelle Bowman,  

has been heading the banking committee, and one  of the things that she’s going to be talking about  

today is the findings of her committee regarding  banking regulations. Since the global financial  

crisis, our banks have been just regulated regul  and they just kept adding and adding and adding  

and she’s making the point I believe today to say  okay we went way too far and what’s happened and  

I saw this a lot from the being a business owner I  get surveyed by the Fed on a regular basis and so  

I get these little things that I have to do ever  so often to say what where I’m getting financing  

from and things like that. And they’ve been  very concerned, the Fed’s been very concerned  

with the shadow banking world. And not shadow  banking is anything bad, but private financing  

versus more public financing through banks. And I  think they’re making the point that we’ve gone a  

little too far and we kind of need to back that  off a little bit. And especially globally too,  

we need to back that off a little bit so that  we move financing more into the banking world  

where they can be regulated a little bit more  instead of a lot of this private financing.  

A lot to talk about. We’ll actually be sharing  more of this as we go throughout this year. Your  

thoughts on it? Look, I’ve said this forever,  especially after the financial crisis. Yeah,  

I don’t want regul Nobody wants regulation for  regulation’s sake. But but you also there are so  

many bad actors out there and so many super smart  people that use their intellect for evil reasons  

that they know the loopholes and how to get around  all that that you want to make sure that the  

banking system is secure. But are we hamstringing  them to do loans? No. Do we want to make sure that  

they have good balance sheets for the for shock  risks and whatever? Yes, of course. So, I don’t  

know maybe what they might see as some extreme  banking regulations, but we absolutely do need  

them. We don’t want to prevent them from doing  business either. Yeah. And I think we’ve put such  

capital requirements on them that they it’s really  prevented them and hamstrung them from doing a lot  

of financing. I think it’s there there’s a happy  medium in between where we were in 2007208. Yeah,  

absolutely. They were doing a lot of crazy stuff  and shooting out a lot of crazy loans. I’ve said  

this for years. I wish the banking industry  would just go back to what they used to do.  

Take in deposits and give out loans. Get out of  our industry. Get out of insurance. Get out of  

private equity. Get out of venture capital. Get  out of all that. That’s where all their risk is.  

And for the most part, many of them are not  good at it. Yeah, they’re not good at it. And  

there is a tremendous amount of conflict  of interest, which is a conversation for  

another time because they’re pushing  them towards their banking products,  

which that is not their fid it’s not they’re  violating their fiduciary responsibility,  

but it’s what’s good for the bank. They need  to just go back. It’s never going to happen.  

But be yeah, be banks again. I think being able  to merge investment banks into banks that just  

ruined the world in a lot of cases. That’s why  I’ve always had a little bit more love for the  

community banks where they just do banking versus  these big banks that are just conglomeration of  

so many different things. Thanks a lot folks for  joining us on the show. We do these for you. So  

surely make sure you subscribe to the channel and  we’ll see you guys back here the very next time.