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TheMeyersReport_06_13_2025_Fast_15
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00:00How much, if at all, do you think the Iran attack will discourage the Fed from lowering interest rates?
00:12Good morning, welcome to the Myers Report Friday Fast 15 for June 13, 2025.
00:19Friday the 13th.
00:21Israel has attacked Iran's nuclear facilities and their headquarters for some of their key military people,
00:27and apparently they got them.
00:28In addition, Israel also bombed heavy water facilities in Iraq, which I think we're all in agreement.
00:35We don't want nuclear weapons to be going to those countries.
00:39Our sources, our own people, are expecting that Iran will react, but the results will be very limited,
00:47which it seems that that's what's happening.
00:49The real question, Don, as you said, is what will happen with the proxies.
00:53We'll know that over the next few weeks.
00:55The oil market spiked yesterday during the raise and hit $78 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate,
01:01but this morning are back down to $73, as the Iranian counter-strikes seem to be fizzling and the market fears may be abating.
01:13Our call is that the attack on Iran will put a pinch in the money Iran was able to send to Hamas in Gaza,
01:23Hezbollah in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza in the West Bank, and the ANC in South Africa.
01:32We're going to see that the ANC is a major terrorist funding operation.
01:36Combine this with Doge's slashing of USAID funds that were, in fact, going to terrorists,
01:43and we could have these terrorist groups and others around the world,
01:47we'll start to see them starving, which I think would be a good thing.
01:51The question is, will this be enough to get Iran's leaders to perform better at Trump's negotiating table?
01:59Well, I think so. Sadly, though, there's no fixing stupid, so we shall see.
02:06Don, as Israel has been attacking Iran, what are the weather conditions over there for warfighting?
02:16Well, if you were going to do an airstrike, they picked the perfect weather.
02:20After some stormy weather here, late spring over Iran and that part of the country,
02:26big high-pressure systems come in, and the weather's clear.
02:30So the clear skies, the lack of precipitation is going to continue here for at least another week to 10 days.
02:38So if Israel is going to be doing more airstrikes, the weather is not going to be a factor.
02:43It's probably one reason why they took advantage of the good weather.
02:45Well, obviously, it's also good weather for Israel. It's good weather for Iran to attack as well.
02:53They are, although with our spy assets and intelligence gathering, you can't hide stuff behind clouds.
03:02You know, so that makes their moves a lot harder.
03:06As this conflict may last a week or more, so your forecast for the next 10 days is good weather for all parties that want to kill each other.
03:14Pretty much. I think that sums it up.
03:17One thing I'm interested in is, you know, they're going after the military leaders.
03:23I'm wondering if the mullahs are next, because I think if anything's going to happen in Iran, that's going to be a political shift.
03:28You've got to get rid of that religious hierarchy.
03:32Well, what I am hearing from our own people is that the very significant either majority or close to majority of the population of Iran would like to have good relationships, good relations with the United States, as they have had and we've had with them in the past.
03:53And they were one of the first countries that basically had good relations with Israel, and they were the counterpoint that kept peace, relatively relative peace, or kept the Middle East a lot less, more peaceful than it otherwise might have been.
04:10Isaac, given the recent spike in container rates following the U.S.-China tariff truths, should we anticipate a short-term surge in volume?
04:24And what kind of pricing pressures are going to be hitting the customers?
04:27Yeah, pricing from China to Los Angeles has already doubled as north of $6,000 for a container.
04:34Doubled in what period of time?
04:36Doubled over the last month, Gary, or the last month.
04:39We were sitting right around $2,700 last month.
04:42Today we're right at over-doubled.
04:44We're about $6,200 for a container that leads China to reach the United States, Long Beach, California particularly.
04:52You have BNSF, the nation's largest inland railhead, is positioning 300 locomotives in California as we speak to prepare for the surge.
05:03Many trucking companies across the nation are in a hiring frenzy, trying to bulk up as much capacity as they possibly can to be able to handle this freight, and to be able to handle the freight that's coming.
05:16Are any of the demonstrations in, well, of the riots in Southern California impacting the ports there?
05:24Thankfully, no. Thankfully, no. The National Guard does have a really good job protecting the ports.
05:30So it looks like the looters are busy with Gucci stores and Louis Vuitton stores.
05:35They're leaving the ports alone for now, Gary.
05:38I think several weeks ago we had that picture of the port of Los Angeles, which was like a ghost town.
05:45There was hardly any activity at all.
05:47Is this the makeup from that that we're seeing?
05:49Yes, the answer is yes, but it's still pretty slow in California ports.
05:56We're at the tail end of the impact of those tariffs that were in place back in March.
06:02So we're not going to start seeing this volume hit until another two to three weeks or about.
06:07So right now, Long Beach Port looks extremely similar to those photographs that we saw a couple of weeks ago.
06:13So it's all coming in, really, it's all coming in at once.
06:20Isaac, I've heard of the FMCSA in trucking. What exactly is it?
06:26The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, they monitor, they regulate licenses, elect ELDs, law book hours for drivers to make sure that all drivers and carriers are incompliant.
06:40How will their new enforcement affect English proficiency requirements?
06:46So they're hot and heavy.
06:47That just went into effect, I want to say, just a few days ago.
06:51And even our drivers are reporting that DOT, well, they're getting pulled over in scale sites, and they are administering these tests.
07:00Luckily, all of our drivers have passed.
07:03Most of our drivers have no issues speaking English language.
07:07But yeah, this is going to affect the business in a major way.
07:10They're hitting it hard.
07:12There's a tremendous amount of, I think they're called H2B2 visas, those work visas that,
07:22the work visas that, that's become really, really rampant in our business here in the last two to three years.
07:29We have a lot of imported drivers coming from places like Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other countries that have flooded the market here in the past couple of years.
07:40And if we get that, now mind you, our industry's been a freight recession, mainly due to overcapacity, right?
07:47That's been bled out.
07:48A lot of it's been bleeding out the last 36 months.
07:50But this is probably the straw that's going to break the camel's back to really speed up this exodus in capacity and level out our supply and demand in the industry here.
08:03Bob, now that Israel is attacking Iran, how will the stocks react?
08:09Will they react negatively?
08:11Well, the initial reaction was negative.
08:14Right after the bombing, the futures markets went down about a percentage point.
08:19I don't see this as having any lasting significant impact.
08:24Well, could it, in fact, if there's no significant reaction, particularly if Iran comes to the table, the negotiating table,
08:34could this, in fact, have a very positive impact on the market?
08:37It could have positive, it could have negative, if all sorts of things happen to the oil market.
08:41But basically, I don't think at this point there's anything we can say that really is meaningful about what the reaction will be to this.
08:51And we have so many other things going on.
08:54What's happening?
08:55We have riots going on at the current time.
08:58We have the wars in the Ukraine, the wars in the Middle East are both heating up.
09:03Where those go will eventually have some sort of an impact on markets.
09:09But in terms of what's happening right now, the U.S. economy is still going along as it had before.
09:16And these are kind of distractions off in the distance.
09:19I don't think they're having a major effect.
09:21How are the inflation numbers this week?
09:25We got some really good inflation numbers.
09:28Most people were expecting a two-tenths of a percent, which is, you know, maybe a two-and-a-half, three-percent inflation rate.
09:35We ended up with CPI numbers of only a tenth of a percent, which for the month was in the one-percent vicinity annualized.
09:43But if you look at it over six months or a year, we're still looking at two-and-a-half percent inflation as being kind of where we're at in terms of our worst numbers.
09:54In terms of some of the better inflation numbers, we have a lot of different inflation data.
09:59In terms of some of the better numbers, you're a little below two-and-a-half percent.
10:03So on balance, the inflation at the moment is pretty good.
10:07We're going to do it through May, and we're not seeing so far the effect of tariffs lifting prices to any significant degree.
10:16So in that particular case, Trump may have been right.
10:20He's been right more often than he's wrong.
10:24Yes.
10:25How much, if at all, do you think the Iran attack will discourage the Fed from lowering interest rates?
10:31I don't think they're going to lower interest rates, regardless of what's happening with the strike on Iran.
10:41The Fed is looking at inflation.
10:43The inflation numbers are somewhere between two-and-a-half percent, three percent, other than the last month.
10:52And the Fed is not going to cut rates immediately.
10:56They cut rates prematurely back last September, and it had the opposite effect of what they hoped for.
11:04Basically, when they cut rates, the argument went in the financial markets.
11:09The Fed was not serious about containing inflation.
11:13And so inflationary expectations and long-term interest rates actually went up, and they went up pretty sharply.
11:20That was an embarrassment for the Fed.
11:23They belatedly realized they made a mistake.
11:25And I don't think they were about to make it again.
11:28So the Fed meets this coming week, and they're not going to be cutting interest rates.
11:32The financial markets, the latest odds I saw in the financial markets for a rate cut were less than half a percentage point.
11:42So there's a 99.8 percent chance that the Fed will just hold rates where they are.
11:48And I think that's going to happen not only now, but I think it's going to happen at the end of July.
11:52Conditions can change between now and then.
11:55But right now, it appears we won't be looking at a cut in the short-term interest rates until sometime in the fall.
12:05Okay.
12:05How, in general, are you looking at the economy and the markets in light of all the chaos going on around the world?
12:13So far, all the indications we have suggest that the economy continues to do well.
12:21People are going to work.
12:22People are earning money.
12:23People are creating wealth.
12:25And there are some indications that we're actually seeing a pickup in manufacturing orders in the latest month.
12:33And if that's true, that will carry the economy through into the third quarter, into the summer months, which is into the third quarter.
12:42Hey, Bob, how are the job markets looking?
12:46I think the job market is really tight.
12:49Well, it's tough.
12:52We have a lot of people that I know who have been complaining to me that the market is absolutely terrible if you're looking for a job right now, that this is not a good market to be trying to change jobs.
13:07And I'm getting an awful lot of feedback in that area.
13:10So there are a number of contexts that I have.
13:15People who, say, two years ago were saying that market was just really great now are saying, wow, I can't even get an answer on my resume, you know, just looking at it.
13:27So there are signs that the job market is not good at the current time.
13:32Okay, so, Don, in general, going forward, where are you in terms of optimism and pessimism for the economy and the country?
13:44I'm optimistic on two things.
13:46I'm optimistic that, number one, the global chaos will continue.
13:50And number two, that I'm still optimistic overall on the big picture of things.
13:56But, you know, a lot of times things have to get worse before they get better from on the global stage.
14:03That's for sure.
14:05Isaac, same question.
14:07Are you optimistic, pessimistic?
14:09Where do you see things?
14:10They say bumpy, bumpy roads ahead, but very exciting time.
14:14But, yeah, I remain optimistic, Garrett.
14:18And Bob?
14:19Well, I'm pessimistic on world peace at the moment.
14:23It just doesn't look like we're going to have world peace for quite a while.
14:28However, I think these are all distractions at the current time.
14:31The current riots we see in L.A.
14:33I remember back in, I think it was 08, we had something called Occupy Wall Street,
14:39where a lot of attention was paid on these people who were just protesting.
14:45And it wasn't clear what they were protesting for.
14:48But there was concern about the country and civil war and everything else.
14:51I think it's the same nonsense that we're seeing today.
14:54This is going to pass over.
14:55It's a current distraction.
14:57But I'm very optimistic about where we head after these distractions are out of the way.
15:04Personally, I am very optimistic for domestic issues.
15:10And I think the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot,
15:13and they seem to be very good at that.
15:15But what I think is also going to be a surprise is that I am hearing from people overseas
15:22that the respect that our president is getting across the board
15:29is way, way beyond what anyone over here can imagine.
15:34And that implies that he's going to be very effective with everything he's doing.
15:38I think he's going to get it done.
15:40I agree with you, there's going to be some bumps in the road.
15:41But I'm still optimistic, and I think the United States is on the verge of a golden age,
15:49which would be good for everybody.
15:51It is still the shining light on the hill in terms of freedom.
15:55With that, have a good weekend, stay safe, and God bless America.
16:22You
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