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00:00I think inflation is going to continue to go down, but it's going to take a while
00:05to get those long-term interest rates down.
00:16Good morning. Welcome to the Myers Report Fast 15. It is Friday, December 19th, 2025.
00:23Do you guys realize the year is almost over? We're a week away from Christmas. Wow.
00:31Okay, and some kind of sobering news. The UK is delivering yet another stunning hit to democracy.
00:40Prime Minister Keir Starmer's drowning leftist Labour Party is postponing 63 local elections until May of 2027.
00:51These elections were scheduled to be held in May of 2026. However, some of those elections were
00:59originally scheduled to be held on May of 2025. Keir Starmer's leftist party has been under constant
01:08public pressure, public demonstrations, and was expected to receive a drubbing in these elections
01:15for their failed economic policies. There are restrictions on free speech and prosecutions
01:22for people posting and saying things or even thinking things. They're canceling jury trials.
01:29In the UK, you no longer have a right to trial by jury if the penalty is three years or less in prison.
01:38Their immigration policies are being protested, the related two-tier judicial system, and their legal
01:46system and movements toward replacing traditional British culture with Sharia law. Either the UK
01:54is about to collapse amid the weight of oppression, or they're about to break free of the yoke of
02:01impending totalitarianism or authoritarianism. We shall see. I'm betting on the UK. However, in our own
02:09country, governmental evil is absolutely afoot. Tina Peters is a name you should know and remember.
02:17Tina is a 70-year-old woman, a cancer survivor, who was county clerk for Mesa County, Colorado.
02:24Tina is being held in solitary confinement, constantly surrounded by four guards, and kept in a cell that
02:32is often near freezing. Her crime? She saw election fraud in Mesa County, Colorado, dared to complain about
02:41it, and then saved election records that she was supposed to save under Colorado law. President Trump
02:48pardoned her, but Colorado is fighting the pardon because Tina's offense supposedly was against Colorado
02:56state law and not federal law, and therefore not eligible for a presidential pardon, which would be
03:03federal. However, members of our own group are preparing an amicus brief that might get her out of
03:09prison even yet this year, yet this month, because she had a fiduciary responsibility for a federal election
03:20and thus should be covered by federal protections. More to come.
03:28Don Day, warmer weather. Is it coming anytime soon?
03:33Yes, it's going to be a very mild Christmas for not all of the nation, but for a lot of you,
03:40especially in the Midwest and the Great Lakes that have had it pretty cold and cold again here today.
03:46You're going to have a warm-up, 40s and 50s, coming for Christmas.
03:51So, no white Christmas.
03:54Not falling on Christmas Day. If it's going to be a white Christmas, it'll be what's on the ground.
03:58Now, it will be a white Christmas in New England. Looks like the northeast United States,
04:03the far northeast, we'll get some snow. It's going to be raining and snowing in California.
04:09Even places in Arizona and Nevada will have some areas of rain and snow on Christmas.
04:14The middle part of the country, though, will be pretty mild.
04:18Don, President Trump is closing NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
04:27What does this agency do?
04:29Well, yeah, you know, whether or not there's some conflicting reports that it's closing or they're threatening to close,
04:34I don't know what it is.
04:35The National Center for Atmospheric Research has been around for a long time.
04:39A lot of its funding comes from the National Science Foundation,
04:42and it is a research facility that is responsible for a lot of the big advancements in weather forecasting,
04:53especially severe weather forecasting, whether it's tornadoes or severe thunderstorms.
04:58It's on the leading edge of a lot of the supercomputing and the modeling of the atmosphere.
05:04I think it's a huge mistake.
05:06I don't really quite understand what's going on here with the Trump administration wanting to close it.
05:15It's being mislabeled as a climate research facility.
05:19And while climate research is happening there and has happened there,
05:23it's not necessarily the tip of the spear, so to speak, in the climate, you know,
05:30modeling problems and the climate policy problems we have.
05:33I don't really quite understand it.
05:36I think it's a big mistake.
05:38I don't know who's advising Trump on this.
05:41This may go back to maybe what you just mentioned.
05:45Maybe since the facility is located in Boulder, Colorado, it employs a lot of people.
05:51This may be a jab at Governor Polis for this Tina Peters thing.
05:55I don't know.
05:56How many people are employed out there?
05:59Over 800.
06:00It's about a thousand.
06:01But you've got to understand that the NCAR is connected like a web to a lot of universities
06:08and a lot of the research that happens in atmospheric science in the university system.
06:15This is just not a Boulder thing.
06:17Like I said, I'm perplexed.
06:20There's a lot of people on the anti-climate problem side that, you know, that I'm on that are against this.
06:28So it's a little bit of a head-scratcher.
06:30It's not necessary.
06:32How is this different from NOAA?
06:35Well, NOAA benefits from NCAR's research, but it's not funded from NOAA.
06:42So it's not part, it's not a subdivision of NOAA.
06:44No, no, it's not.
06:46So I got big problems with it.
06:49Okay.
06:49Isaac, what is happening in the truck and trailer resale market, and have prices bottomed out, particularly since the trucking industry is under stress?
07:00Yeah, they've definitely bottomed out, Gary, but they're starting to stabilize.
07:05While demand is still very, very soft for any type of used equipment, tractors, as well as trailers, it's very clear that the bottom is behind us.
07:14And even more evident with this data, with this data point, that recovery is on its way.
07:19To kind of give you an example, used truck pricing, on average, during COVID, hit north of $80,000.
07:26Right now, used trucks are roughly around $55,000.
07:30Okay, are we seeing an uptick in carrier exits or authority revocations this month, and how quickly might that reduce excess capacity?
07:42So we were seeing roughly three to five carriers leave the market via FreightWaves, the media outlet for transportation, during the first half of 2025.
07:53Within the last 45 days, that number's tripled.
07:57We're seeing 10-plus carriers and sizable carriers.
08:01It's not onesie-twosie, guys.
08:02These are mid-sized carriers with a few hundred trucks plus.
08:06How many?
08:07A few hundred trucks, 200-plus trucks that are going out of business day over day right now.
08:13One of the most notable ones was 10 Roads Trucking, which employs about 2,600 truck driving jobs, good local home daily truck driving jobs.
08:23That's a major player in the Chicagoland area, just went out of business.
08:27They announced three weeks ago.
08:29So we're seeing more and more of this mid-size as well as the larger ones in higher frequency as well.
08:36Are insurance carriers tightening the underwriting standards for fleet these days, and what should fleet operators expect during their renewals?
08:45Yeah, absolutely.
08:47They absolutely are tightening up.
08:50Fleet operators are all expecting, you know, again, we just went through renewal.
08:53We were handed down an increase, and our loss runs were good.
08:57Safety's good.
08:59The entire industry's bracing for 5% to 8% increases, and that's even if you're a good carrier.
09:06Some of these bad active carriers will be hit with 20-plus, and we're hoping that this is going to be the insurance piece.
09:13It'll be the last squeeze to get a lot of these bad active carriers out of the market.
09:19Okay.
09:20Dr. Bob Janetsky, how did the job numbers...
09:23Yes, sir.
09:26What's up, boy?
09:27Good morning.
09:28How did the jobs numbers come out this week?
09:31All over the place.
09:33The government finally got around to measuring jobs, and depending upon which measure you looked at, they could be up.
09:42There's a household survey.
09:44They were up over 100,000 jobs, which looked good, but then they have another series of full-time jobs, and they were down 100,000.
09:54What I look at is I look at the data coming out from ADP.
10:00They just seemed to be a little more stable, and what they show is that jobs were practically flat during the past four months.
10:08That is very little growth from the spring, actually from the spring on through into November.
10:14In the past four months, basically no growth in jobs at all.
10:19So the job market is all over the place, but on balance, it's pretty weak.
10:24Bob, were the jobs that were created offset, were they private sector jobs, where the offset may have been were the loss of federal jobs?
10:36Well, it depends on where you look.
10:39If you look at the ADP data, which are all private, they're showing no job gains at all.
10:46So I look at that as indicating that the job market is pretty weak.
10:52Okay.
10:53How did inflation reports look this week?
10:56Inflation reports looked really, really good.
10:59We had been forecasting that the inflation was coming down toward the 2% area.
11:06Yes, we did.
11:07And up until the last several months, it didn't look like that was a good forecast.
11:11Everyone was talking about inflation being in the 3% area, maybe even higher.
11:17Fortunately for us, the latest numbers came down and showed that in recent months, the inflation has actually been right at the 2% area that the Fed has been targeting.
11:29Now, year over year, it's not quite down to 2.
11:32It's 2.6 or 2.7, depending upon the CPI number that we're looking at.
11:39And CPI tends to be higher than other inflation numbers.
11:42So on balance, these were very good numbers.
11:46We're not quite down to 2% on a year-over-year basis.
11:50But we believe that we're heading there, and the latest numbers seem to confirm that.
11:57It seems that interest rates fell slightly.
12:00Was this because of inflation reports, the job reports, or both?
12:05Well, they fell slightly with the inflation report.
12:10I think that was the main thing that drove interest rates down, although the job report, the weak job report, seems to suggest that the Fed might be leaning for another interest rate cut.
12:21I don't think so.
12:23I think when the Fed announced that it was going to be purchasing securities, that is, putting more money into the system, in the latter half of December and then into January and maybe even February,
12:38it got the financial markets a little nervous because inflation is still above the Fed's target.
12:48And to be starting to stimulate now was very uncomfortable in the financial markets.
12:54They're just not comfortable that the Fed has really gotten a hold of the inflation figures.
12:59And so the rates are staying up there in the 4.1% area.
13:05And we all want to see interest rates come down.
13:07It's good for the mortgage market.
13:10But so far, the financial markets are a little leery of the latest move in Fed policy.
13:17And that's keeping the rates up, I think, longer, the long-term rates up longer than they should be held up.
13:21Well, our forecast that we have made as a group, you, me, and the rest of us, oil prices are coming down and they're going to stay down for a while.
13:32And that is going to certainly help inflation, which will help keep interest rates down.
13:38Yes, I'm with you on that.
13:41I think inflation is going to continue to go down.
13:44But it's going to take a while to get those long-term interest rates down.
13:49One of the great levers that President Trump created on the oil markets was the freeing up of the use of coal, which can be used as a substitute for oil, obviously.
14:01And that puts tremendous pressure.
14:03There's a lot of good news on the natural resources.
14:07Yes, there is.
14:07The production of oil, the production of natural gas, coal.
14:14Things are moving in the right direction in so many areas.
14:17It looks good in terms of using our nation's resources where they haven't been used before.
14:28The president this week declared Venezuela a terrorist state and placed a blockade on oil ships coming out of Venezuela.
14:37Yet oil prices, interestingly enough, hit the lowest levels in two years.
14:42By the way, Bloomberg, in response to the president's announcement, said oil prices spiked.
14:51Actually, they went up about a buck off of a two-year low, which is nothing, and now it's back down.
14:58Anyway, the stock markets did not seem to react much at all.
15:02What is your take on this and the markets?
15:05Well, I think the stock market basically between now and the end of the year is going to be kind of a noun event.
15:14I doubt if it's going to go up or down.
15:16Well, it's going to go up and down, but on balance, I don't think anything's going to happen.
15:22And mainly that's because all of the economic information that's come out has either been positive or it's basically verified what we thought was going to happen anyway.
15:35So without that, without some major move one way or the other, we're going to see the market kind of flat.
15:43We think we're going to be better.
15:45I think the market's going to be moving in a positive direction.
15:48Okay, Don Day, are you optimistic about the future?
15:55The same question.
15:56Does optimism still prevail in your neck of the woods?
15:59I'm going into 2026 with my head up high and with a lot of confidence.
16:05So, yes, I'm optimistic.
16:07Isaac, what about you?
16:09How do you see the new year?
16:11You know, it's been a long haul here throughout the last three and a half years of freight recession.
16:16But the lights ahead are looking brighter and brighter each week that passes.
16:22So I'm very optimistic, Gary.
16:24If we didn't know that from your words, your happy smile would certainly be an indicator.
16:30I just need a haircut now.
16:32There's that.
16:34And Bob, your view, are you still optimistic?
16:37I am.
16:38The one weak area of the economy right now is the job market.
16:41I think it's going to be weak for another couple of months.
16:44And after that, we're going to see explosive growth in the economy.
16:48And we're going to see a pickup in jobs and a strengthening in that.
16:53And that's extremely positive for the markets and positive for the economy in general.
16:59I mean, there's no question.
17:01I agree with you completely.
17:03I'm very optimistic.
17:04Yes.
17:05Businesses in general tend to trim their sales toward the end of the year.
17:09And nobody hires during the end of the year.
17:13They do it when things at the beginning of the year, when things start to look brighter
17:18and people are generally more optimistic.
17:19And when Don lets the weather warm up.
17:24Okay, everybody, have a great Christmas.
17:27Have a Merry Christmas.
17:28Have a good weekend.
17:30And as I said, we will not be doing a discussion next week unless they start firing at Santa,
17:36which is always a possibility.
17:38Be well, stay safe, and God bless America.
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