I've had short, very short hair for probably most of the last six years since the pandemic. And I go to barber shops, but I'm so insane that I won't go to one barber shop. So, I have five on a rotation. Because if you go every — when you have short hair, you have to go every three weeks. If you go to somebody every three weeks, they start talking to you more, like it becomes like, 'What do you think about the stock market?' Like, you know what I mean? It's like I used to have a personal trainer and the guy's telling me about his girlfriend problems and — no. Okay. So, I can't have people in my life that want to just have the same conversation over and over again every time they see me.
Where they tell you their stocks.
Yeah. Or whatever. So, I go to five different barber shops.
Geographic diversification there.
Yeah. New York. Yes. There's a guy down on Wall Street right across from the exchange. Great. Barely speaks English. Perfect. No, no interest in anything that has to do with me. Okay, very good. I'm not sure. I can't confirm this, but I think he might cut Cramer's hair. Either he told me that or somebody told me that. Okay. It's in the lobby of an office building on Wall Street. You walk up a staircase. It's like a secret barber shop. All right. Anyway, then I have another guy, Spanish. The music is blasting. Like it's five Spanish guys. They only speak Spanish to each other. I think they're Venezuelan. They don't care about me. No, that's great. And then I have guys that I like, but I don't want to go beyond that for more small talk.
Michael, I know you're staring at me like I'm the scum of the earth, but I also know you could totally — I totally get it. Yeah. It's like taking the relationship to a level that is not really what you want. I want to just sit in the chair and close my eyes and just have the haircut happen. So, and I'm like this — when I go to the dentist, I have a mask. I do the — what is it called? Nitrous. Nitrous. I do the nitrous. No. As soon as the small talk — no, no, no. You don't understand. The mask is on. Don't talk. This is the thing. The least crazy thing that you do. Wow.
Well, I stopped doing this now because I don't need to get haircuts as often because I don't have short hair anymore. Oh, so now you only need three guys. So, it's like a double blessing. Number one, I have a delicious head of hair. And number two, I don't have to go somewhere every three weeks and have the same conversation over and over and over.
When is the last time a lesbian ran her fingers through your hair?
Maybe today. We'll see. We'll see how the show goes. So, I take my boys to Bedford Avenue. There's a guy there. Nice, very nice guy. And — oh, they're all nice people. This is not me judging anybody. No, I know. I know. I know. You would not believe — I mean, you would believe just the things that people share with their barber. He's not like, you know, dragging it out. It's just diarrhea. Oh, no. One guy found out I'm into the Knicks. Jesus Christ. So I can't go to him during basketball season. No.
But there is a sad aspect to this. The fact that people need to do small talk or care to with their barber, it's like a lack of people in their lives.
Or you could say it's safe. It's safe. I can tell them that. Oh, did you tell your — from a barber standpoint, why do they want that? Because some people do want that. They're just not reading what you want. I have a great person who — the guy said, 'By the way, if I'm talking too much, just tell me.' You are talking too much. Let him talk. So I go in my head, I'm like, 'This is your chance.' No, because he gives a great haircut. This is your chance. Tell him he's talking too much. No, but then you can never go back.
All right. I mean, they used to do your hair at work, so I had to get colored all the time. So I'm so old that I turned white at my scalp within three weeks. And then I found this guy who was near the broadcast center. It's weird to get your hair colored and your bosses are walking by. It's weird. So I found this guy. I love him. His English is not great. His name is Johnny Bong. He's Korean. He's like this amazing dude.
Wasn't that your pledge name in college?
Yeah. Johnny Bong. And I don't talk to him. He just puts this stuff on my hair. I bring my computer. I do my — well, because Johnny has respect. If you want to talk, you'll talk. I don't need to talk. I don't talk a lot.
Oh, you know what? The worst thing that ever comes out of anyone's mouth that never needs to come out of anyone's mouth. Say it. 'So, what else is going on?' No. Stop. The conversation ended. Nothing else. 'So, what else is going on?' 'Oh, I don't know. I got a thing growing on my elbow and my sister-in-law is a pain in the ass.' Like, what do we do? Why? Um, all right. Let me just switch gears. And you can't have AirPods in. Never. This is my biggest — I was just going to say this. I wear AirPods all the time. But for a haircut? No. When I'm walking around — I tried and they kept falling out. Oh god. No. You can't do that.
Um, but I had my AirPods and I'm always listening to stuff or I'm on a call or I'm on a Zoom and I don't want to go into the office. I want to live in my little Upper West Side living, and I'm walking around and people are like, 'Hey.' Yeah. Hi. How — I'm like — and then one guy said to me, 'You're always on the phone.' Yeah. I was like, 'Yeah, I guess I am.' There's a sign of your — sorry. Yeah. Because you're always talking or listening, right? What do you listen to? I listen to you guys talking about the best.
Um, can I — so, can I tell you my story about meeting my new boss? Do it. Do you want to do it? Like, are we going to — who is your new boss? M. Barry Weiss. Heard of her? Okay. And so the new boss, she's not like controversial or anything. Not at all. No one has anything to say. Um, so it was like a year ago. Okay. Maybe a little more. She just finished her first year. So for people listening, she is a journalist. She was an op-ed writer, an op-ed editor. She worked at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. She started her own gig called The Free Press. It was really successful. It was like lightning in a bottle. She came out at the right time. And then the organization that ended up buying CBS, Skydance, bought The Free Press, also brought her over and she's the new boss. Everyone's freaking out. She runs 60 Minutes. She runs everything. She runs the entire CBS news operation. Okay. So she comes in, she's — well, also, I mean, she's young. She's 42 years old, right? So which you — I don't know if you guys know this about her. I don't know how readin you are, but you know she's somewhat controversial. People were really freaked out and so I was like, how am I going to meet her and be a normal person, right? Like I'd be just like — because everyone's like kissing her ass and that's not my thing. I can't do that very well. It's why, you know, I'm not an employee. I'm a contributor. So, like her fifth or sixth day in the building, a friend of mine says, 'BW's in the control room.' I walk by the control room. Yeah. Out she comes. And so she comes out and she's got a couple of her people around her and I stick my hand out and I said, 'Hi, Barry. I'm Jill Slesinger. I'm the original lesbian Jew here and I cover business and the economy.' Did she ever forget that interaction? No. So, what did you get from — wait, what did she say back? She said — okay, so what she said was, 'There's only two.' I said, 'You're number two.' She goes, 'There's only two.' I said, 'Yes, there are only two. There may be one woman down at Edit Bay 7 who's editing a piece for Sunday morning right now.' Two notables. Well, all right. There's a very small population of lesbian Jews at CBS News. So, that's it. She's my new boss and she — so, I think that that interaction allowed me to get this new show that I got greenlit. And that's all you had to do is make her laugh. Exactly. Have a sense of humor. Don't look like you're scared of her.
All right. We're gonna talk about the show at the end. We got to get down to business first. Let's do it. All right. All right. The show started up. I love being back here.
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Thank you so much, John. Host vlogs here today. Daniel's here, Duncan, Miss Nicole. Hey guys, you know we use this term all the time, friend of the show, right Mike? Constantly talking about people that we have as guests or people that we know. We say friend of the show, but in this case, this is like the friend of the show live in studio with us, the return of Miss Jill Slesinger.
Thank you. I used to be your favorite guest, Michael. If you remember, after my first appearance, Michael said, 'This is the best guest ever.' The inbox lit up and what happened after that? Talking over her own intro. I'm just telling you, after that, you got all these other people on. 'Oh, our favorite guest. Oh, our favorite guest.' Oh, like I'm borch now. I'm nothing. I never say — yeah, Michael. What's up with that?
Jill is an Emmy and Gracie award-winning business analyst for CBS News, appearing on CBS television stations nationwide. She covers the economy, markets, and investing. She also hosts the Jill on Money and the recently launched Money Moves podcasts and recently concluded 15 years of hosting the nationally syndicated Jill on Money radio show. So sad. Before moving into media, she spent 14 years as co-owner and chief investment officer of an independent investment advisory firm after starting her career trading options in New York. She's the author of Dumb Things Smart People Do With Their Money and The Great Money Reset. Jill Slesinger, welcome back. We are so excited to see you. Delighted. I am so happy to be here. You're one of Michael's favorite guests now. I know. I've heard that and not many. No, Josh is like, 'Well, you're maybe in my top 50.' Maybe. No, you truly are the best. And longtime Compound listeners know and love you and we're so happy to have you here. Great to be with you. Love walking here. And it was so funny, like the security guards haven't seen you in a while. That was very nice. I got to see Nicole first. She threw her arms around me. Love her. Of course. Love her. Good. And I'll tell you something. We have a lot to talk about today. Let's do it. All right. You're on the hot seat now. All the hugs are over. Done. All right. Question one. Yes. How would you solve Israel-Palestine? I love this question. No, don't answer. I love this question.
Uh, let's talk about consumers. So, you sit at an interesting perch. CBS News probably doesn't care about the day-to-day stock market stuff until the rubber meets the road. Yes. Like until something's going on that crosses over from a business story to a mainstream story. Correct. It's been a while since market volatility has been able to do that. Like nobody's rushing you into makeup these days because the VIX gets to 18 for 10 minutes, right? Okay. So, that won't be the thing. But there are market-related things that are getting the attention of Main Street. Absolutely. Obviously, like wealth inequality is a perpetual topic. K-shaped economy, blah blah blah, but then also data center stuff, which we're going to talk about later. Um, so I don't think the CBS audience hears about the stock market and the consumer and all these topics as loudly as they do when there's a panic or crisis. But I think — give us your overview on the consumer right now.
So, um, first of all, it's such a strange time because I think we got that survey of consumer finances from the Fed and I know you guys saw that and I wanted to pitch it for a segment on the air and as soon as I said it's the Fed survey, they're like — too much. Oh, too much. Like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh, it's unbelievable. Right. Inequality. Oh, okay. Come on the air and talk about that. Right. So, I think what's interesting — are you saying the media likes for people to be angry? Uh, I think what — okay, so we have a really interesting — we're trying to thread a needle, right? If I come on the air and I say, 'Hey, everything's great for the top 25% of earners and people who have wealth, it's great,' but then you have this whole part of your audience you're alienating. But if you only talk to the part that is really freaked out about affordability, you're not giving everyone the whole story, right? So I think like our little business and economics team, I think we really do play it right down the middle and it's been interesting because we kind of get it from sometimes the overlords because they're like, 'Wow, why are you so negative?' Or, 'Oh, you're being too positive.' And I'm like, 'Okay, we got it.' So, I think affordability is real. When we have people out on the ground or we have polling, you know, you can't ignore the polling even if everyone's overly negative, and I get it. Everyone's overly negative and says, 'Everything sucks so badly, even if my life is good.' But we do hear from people. We have real people that we are polling and talking to that give us information. So, I thought it was funny, like I'll give you an example. Like, they called me up on Sunday when the Russia oil deal is happening, right? And I mean, let me just say how not happy I was. It was 4:00. I had just taken a beautiful nap because, you know, the Jets suck and so why watch football anymore? And so I had to get up and I want to get a read in on this. And I started saying, well, no, heating oil is pretty wild. Like in the Northeast where a lot of our producers live, they're like, 'My heating oil bill is going to be up so much more.' And I'm like, 'Oh, yeah.' And then I start looking up. I'm like, 'What percentage of the United States fires their heat with oil versus propane or electricity?' And it is a remarkably small share. It's like 3% of the United States. But people are noticing that if they are truckers, if we have people who are farmers and we have these conversations, we're talking about like, hey, the elevated part of the energy market. So I think that we want to tell people that is a real thing. It's going to impact these certain people. And then we also say that remarkably it's probably not going to help the vast majority of people. It won't matter because thankfully people have jobs and as long as they have jobs and they're making their bills, it's okay. And so I think that what my job is as like the elder stateswoman coming on the air talking about money is to be able to say there's nuance. It's not all good. It's not all bad. There's something in the middle. We have been covering a lot of the AI story because we have a woman out on the West Coast, a colleague of mine. Her name is Jolene Kent. She's so embedded in the whole story. She's been incredible. And she's putting on these long-form pieces out on Sunday morning. And so what's good about that is we have a seven or eight minute piece, then she can come on in the morning show or go on evening news and talk about it fast. But you're giving people the information. Yeah, there are going to be some jobs created. Not going to be as good as you think. There are going to be some jobs that are destroyed. It's not going to be as bad as you think. We don't know yet. And so I think from my perspective, I'm always pleasantly surprised that the consumer is doing okay overall. And you know who is? These older people who have gathered their wealth and they own their homes. It's amazing. It's like they're doing really well.
There's a real truth to what you said about playing it down the middle and not making anyone happy. There are people that want to be fed bad news. Yeah. I think a lot of those people are themselves struggling and they don't want to hear that the economy has left them behind or that what they're experiencing is not like what everyone else is experiencing. And so when they see people prospering or just getting by, doing well, they look at it and say, 'Well, that must be fake because —' or rigged. It's rigged. It's rigged not only in their favor, but against me. Yes. And if you give that back to people, they enjoy it or it's like what they're — it satisfies that. Um, and that's not to say that there aren't people struggling, but there are people struggling in every economy.
Yeah. And I think what's interesting today is that when you hear — and you know I hear from real people, right? So I have these shows where people are coming on the air and talking through things and I hear — I'm not hearing like obviously the funnel is different. If you're listening to a personal finance podcast from like a 60-year-old chick from New York, you're going to get a certain kind of person who's listening to that. And we're hearing very good news from those people. They're worried about their kids though. That I will say even people who are wealthy are anxious about their children. And what I am hearing more is — are you saying that that's new? Well, I think that that's new. Uh, I don't think my parents worried about me and my career. Like you have to be a dumbass to graduate in 1987 and not get a job. Like really, I don't know. I mean, I certainly graduated with idiots and they're doing — the affordability thing is the big anxiety for parents with children who are going to go to college, the uncertainty about what jobs will even exist and the knowledge that it almost doesn't matter what job your kids get. If they want to live in New York City, they can't pay the rent, right? And if they want to own a house, that might not be till they're 30 if they're lucky. So that's the real anxiety that everyone with children is thinking about. I agree that that's real but it's not unfounded. And I think that there's a — I don't think — I think Michael, your kids are too young, but you know, a lot of my friends, their youngest is now in their 20s and they'll be like, 'Oh my god, like she's doing this or he's doing this or it's not quite good.'
I was just with a friend, right? I have a friend of mine, the daughter was like — I got the kick under the table from my wife about this because we're out with friends and, 'Oh my daughter, she's looking for a job,' and she starts describing the job she wants which is — I think I probably rolled my eyes a little bit. Jackie whacks me under the table like keep your mouth shut because I'm like, get a job. Get any job. I remember when the financial crisis was happening and I had sold my company already and I'm talking through what are the things I could do. I'm like, I'm moving back to New York. What am I going to do? And I remember saying, 'Ah, I could sell cars.' But we don't raise kids now to get any job. We raise kids now to think about their career when they're in eighth grade. That's ridiculous. My kids' high school has become a college. And in eighth grade, you have a meeting with a guidance counselor at the high school you're about to go into after the summer, and it's plotting out what are the things that you're interested in because you have to start creating a course load that corresponds to that interest. It's not like you're slamming the door shut on anything else, but like there are kids in ninth and tenth grade who have planned out what they're going to do for the rest of high school and the specificity of which courses. You haven't been through this yet, but you will. So, we're not training our kids to get any job. We're telling them from a very young age, you're on a certain track. Now, you could break the track and try new things, but it's less prevalent, I think, than in previous generations where it was like, 'All right, you can't do A, go do B.' Right? If you weren't on that track to go do B, it's harder because you're competing with kids that were. And that's, I think, a very big change in the economy.
Uh, I think so, too. And I think the idea of someone coming into college being forced to start to sort of — I hate it. It's crazy to me. And I don't understand — like I don't know, whatever. Like in college, we were not — I didn't go to a very pre-professional kind of college. So, it wasn't like that for us. But I think that like you're robbing the chance of people to just sort of take a breath. If you don't want to be in school, if you want to be in a professional school, that's fine. But if you're going to be in a liberal arts college, like have some fun, find out who the good professors are, learn something, and learn how to think. No way. Does not exist. And should they go to college at all? Then why not go? But then skip it. Well, so I think the system now works. If you're a kid that has decided, I love science, I want to study biology, this is great because you are getting piled up with things that are relevant to you at 16, at 17. In many cases, you can spend the summer taking college classes and earning credits that will go toward your eventual degree. But that's not every kid, right?
All right. I have a few things to say. I'm very tired. I was out late last night. Um, let's go. All right. So, proud of you. There's a lot going on. Yes. And there are legitimate reasons for anxiety, economic anxiety. John, let's skip ahead or Daniel. Chart five. Michael's love language is charts. I know that. All right. So, gasoline is getting really expensive. I saw in Cleveland — I just saw a tweet. It was up like 50 cents in a day. Like it is very expensive. Diesel as well, you know, goes through the entire economy. I think things are expensive. Mortgage rates, next one, disgusting. The — beyond unaffordable. It's a joke. Um, however, there is also like we have sources of truth and forget about the New York Fed. Every quarter we get to hear from these big companies that serve everybody. One of them is Bank of America and that's Main Street, right? That's not like the Amex consumer. Chart four, we have consumer net charge-offs and it's going down. Yeah. And this is just the hard data. This is Bank of America and take that literally. Consumer charge-offs are going down. We also have today we had initial jobless claims down to 194,000 which is the fourth lowest level going back to the 1960s. And finally, look how — look how CO is ridiculous. So off the charts they can't even fit it in the graphic if they want to show you anything. All right. So, last thing is that our friend Dan Greenhouse compiled a bunch of quotes from the banks and they're all saying the same thing. Friend of the show, Dan Greenhouse, whatever. One of our favorite guests, our second favorite Jewish guest. And Jill, for 15 quarters, they've been saying the same thing. They're not lying to us. Okay, so what's going on? There is a lot of anxiety despite the fact that the economy is generally okay and obviously there's people struggling. So, I was thinking about this last night. Why am I tired? I was out past midnight. Robin and I went to see the Elizabeth Holmes documentary. Oh, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Yeah. And I'm — you look a little bit like Elizabeth Holmes. Stop it. One of our viewers on YouTube said, 'Why does Michael look just like Elizabeth Holmes?' So, in the movie — I can't stop. In the movie, and this is not a spoiler, one of the things that they fixate on is a quote from a reporter about what she had to say about a character that she was playing, but there was like the language mattered a lot. And it's not a spoiler. It was a focus of the movie about what the reporter actually said. Did she misquote Elizabeth? And they were talking a lot about that. And about 30 minutes later, I get a text message. I'm like, 'Oh.' So, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal today. Yes. It looks like a music festival. It's really a sales pitch for private credit. They're talking about FutureProof. Uh-huh. And the article is a joke. Like, it is so far from reality, Jill. I can't even begin to tell you. The average adviser there is a fiduciary CFP. If anything, there's thousands of people, there's thousands of advisers. If anything, this is like the plain vanilla advisor. They're not there to shove private credit. So, she wrote the story, looked for quotes, looked for us as a backdrop. It's nonsense on stilts. And so I'm thinking about this and the irony of me being in the movie theater for this article coming out and all of the headlines around AI every day from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and anybody that covers it. Yeah. And it is just the world that we live in. And it's obviously bad in a lot of ways, but every journalist, we're all competing for eyeballs. If you're on the microphone, you want people to listen. And so you're not just competing with other outlets, you're competing with YouTube and Reels. And by the way, Facebook reported last night and of course engagement is at an all-time record, 55% of Reels or whatever are a day old or less. So it is just nothing but constant attention-seeking behavior. And I think the way that the media, rightly or wrongly, is reporting on AI, it's all negativity all the time. And the economy, it's all bad all the time. And it's — but Elizabeth Holmes and it's driving us insane. Hold on. In the case of Elizabeth Holmes though, if not for the media, people would have died because she was bullshitting. She was claiming she had a technology that would be able to test your blood for things that people were counting on real results. Not the point. No, I'm not on all journalists. I'm just saying that's part of the reason why everything feels so weird right now.
I mean, I think that it's like — okay, so I think that when we're talking about developing stories and how we cover them, I think that there's a push-pull that like it's very hard because you get excited. I get excited like I'll say like I want to come on the air, the S&P is at an all-time high. I want to talk about this and I want to talk about like how that happens. I don't want to just be called in when we're down 10%. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and we want to talk about what's behind it. And when I say something like — and I get hate mail all the time — well, what's really been helping the market, powering the market, is this investment and consumption of AI. It is not everything. There are other places that people are spending money, in restaurants people are making money, but yes it is absolutely true that that is part of why your 401k is as frothy as it is. So you can still hate your data centers but you got to kind of take both of those messages in. I think that the negativity that you're scrolling through and the seeking of negativity is something that I kind of fight against personally because I — losing battle. Uh, well, I think I don't know because I think that when I have — when I
do when I do a show or when I'm on one of our shows and I can sort of say there's these two sides, I can see both sides. I can do that. I'm not—I really think I am calling balls and strikes on the economy. I don't really think—I don't really have—I don't care. I'm much happier, by the way, in a bear market just as a trader. No, I don't like bull markets. They freak me out. I'm always waiting for the bottom to fall out, like you know. But I do think that my struggle is when someone comes on the air and I'm talking to a 37-year-old woman who says to me, you know, I've got $300,000 saved in my retirement account and I feel so behind. And I'm like, you're not behind. You're amazing. You're doing a good—like, I'm not just a cheerleader for cheerleader's sake, but like you're on track. You don't have to do every single thing that your parents did at that age. And I think that the negativity, but also comparing yourself to what others are doing is such a vicious cycle and the cycle goes down.
So there's two—so there's two things why that's such a great point. The first thing is the media, the financial media in particular, got caught with its pants down in the Great Financial Crisis.
They were not skeptical enough. They weren't skeptical at all.
Right.
Um, and they looked so bad in hindsight when it was like whistleblowers and hedge fund managers. That's who discovered that the whole thing was a house of cards and overleveraged and all the fraud in housing. It was like activist short sellers and hedge funds. It was not reporters. There were a couple. Barry Ritholtz's whole career, right, is writing about all the nonsense going on in the housing market and the mortgage market. People were laughing in his face. He would go on Kudlow and there'd be a panel of four people, and Larry and the three other people were cheerleading the activity, and Barry was quote-unquote the bear. And that gave him his whole career. But like that was really rare. Most people were aiding and abetting. And I think the media did a 180 in the wake of that, and they said, we will never cover finance that way ever again. We're going to find the next crisis. I mean, it's not one person saying this. This is collective. The problem is there wasn't one.
So they spent 17 years looking for one. But that's where the instinct comes from. And I don't think it's a negative thing.
I actually think that's helped prolong the cycle. You don't want everybody to be all-in bullish. You want there to be skepticism. It sucks if you're wrong and you're listening to the wrong people and you miss Tesla going up a thousand percent. But it's good that there were Tesla bears in the media. Like, it's good that there are people that are bearish on Bitcoin or are looking at this AI capex thing and calling it a bubble. I think that's good. I think it's the media's role to at least ask the questions. Are they 100% bearish all the time? I don't think so.
I think it's simpler than that. So I think it started as that 100%. Like in 2013, you could credibly say that they said we're not going to miss the next one, right?
Okay. It's 2026. And so that world I think is a long way past us. And what they are responding to—I don't blame media for making us angry. It's not like they're doing it on purpose. What they're doing is they're a business and they want to make money. And it is our fault, the consumer's fault, because we want negativity. We don't want to read. It's not interesting. And so they're just profit-seeking animals like everybody else. And so they're giving us what we want, and that is in the data. People are clicking on negative headlines, and it's the algorithm, and that's why. And so we're stuck in this doom loop until we die. It's never going to be different.
The comparison part of the economy, though, is Instagram.
So the people that are like, I have a million dollars in the bank, I think I'm the poorest person in Manhattan.
Yeah. Or like, why aren't I able to go on the trips that I see other people going on? And all the fraudsters that are capitalizing on that, the get-rich-quick—like, oh, you know why you're not having as much fun as everyone else? Because you're not invested in blank, or you haven't bought my course yet. That's a wholly Instagram phenomenon. That is the algorithm programming us to be thirsty for things.
Oh yeah, that, and they're giving you the impression that everybody's on a boat in Italy in the summer, and everybody is in Aspen skiing in the winter, and they're giving you the impression that everyone who is about to have a gender reveal party, it's at the Ritz-Carlton and an Usher is performing at it. Obviously it's not that way in real life, but they are feeding that and people are responding to it. So the algorithm is going even further.
And one more thing, and then I'll shut up, but for real. So last night, when I was at the movie theater, a bottle of water was $8. Stop it. And a kid asked how much it was, and he laughed and he put it back on the shelf and he went to his seat without a bottle of water because it was eight dollars for a bottle of water. Like, people aren't making that up. They're really pissed off and they should be.
Yeah. And if that kid—I don't know how old that kid is, but let's just pretend. 28 years old, right? So I'm 28 years old, I'm commuting to the city at my first job, I'm making $72,000, and I'm living at my parents' house. Like, I ain't going to spend that. On the other hand, it does drive me insane when I had a great fight with one of my old college friends, and he was like, 'These kids are so lazy. They're this, they're that.' And so, of course, this turned into an entire blog post that I had to go write and research because I was like, 'What's the big difference?' He's like, 'Oh, when I came out of school, I was making this and I lived in Queens and I commuted.' All right, fine. So I went and looked up all the data, and the income's pretty consistent. It's actually pretty much the same.
Like adjusting for inflation.
Yeah, it's really the same, right?
No, the cost of living is what's...
It's the cost of living. It's the cost of housing. It's the cost of housing. And so I find it—I get annoyed when older people are like, 'These kids...' I find that really annoying because I think that first of all, they're your kids, so like figure it out. You know, if you're going to enable them, then enable them and stop talking about it. And if it's just everybody else's kids, well then let's look at the reality. What are the numbers telling us? It is harder to make these choices today. And maybe you are going to have to live home for a couple.
My 17-year-old texted us. He goes, 'All my friends are going to Calvin Harris. It's at Barclays this spring.' Like, everyone's going. I have to go.
He's like an EDM big-time DJ. So he's at Barclays. Which, no thanks for me right off the bat, but fine. So it's a one-night thing. So I'm like, 'All right, so I guess we'll let you—you can go. They could take the Long Island Railroad there. We don't care.' Um, he's like, 'The tickets are $600.'
Wait. So he's like, 'But they're all sold out, so it doesn't even matter.' So now you have to buy in the resale market and they're more. So he goes, 'Oh, wait. Good news. They just added three more shows.' I don't know if this is true. This is just what he's like. They added three shows. Oh, okay. So surely the prices for the other shows will come down.
Nope. They're 700. Because there's another phenomenon going on, especially with young people. There are a million options for how you could spend a Tuesday night, especially in a city like LA, New York. But everybody wants to do one thing. Everyone wants to be at the one restaurant you can't get into. Everyone wants to be at the one show that's $600 a ticket. Young people now—they don't end up doing that, but that's the desire, which again I think is different. I think there's this crowding effect that is leading to the pricing. And I was in Vegas. I walked through some of these hotels, there was nobody there. I walked through the Fontainebleau.
I swear to God, you could have had a football catch.
Yeah. My hotel, the Wynn Encore. Yeah. There were people hanging from the rafters.
Wow.
Because everyone decided on social media, this is cool. That's not cool.
And people will pay anything to be in the place that's cool.
Anything. So now corporate America is getting wise to this. And that's why inflation has the bottom half of the K, the $8 water. But now they're saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. There is like literally no limit to what rich people will pay, right? Let's just jack the dollars on the middle-class people acting like they're rich. We can use ambition to get them to want the same things as the wealthy people, and we can drive them via the algorithm.'
But now the wealthy people are going to start complaining.
Well, we'll see. They might complain. Let's see if they change their habits.
But United and Delta are jacking up the miles. Disney is raising prices at the top of the K, because why wouldn't they? There is no limit to what people will pay for certain events.
I mean, I sometimes feel like when you're living out in the universe, you feel it yourself, like something happens, your $8 water, you know, you're at a bar. I will say that like there's a part of me that's like I cannot pay $30 for a drink. I just—I can't. It's like there's something about—like, of course I can afford it, but it hurts me. It's ridiculous. And so I think that there's also like that swing back. I'm sure you guys saw this article, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, about like people are staying home and playing games.
Yeah. It's just shocking. No. By the way, also huge uptick in the number of people who are playing mahjong. I don't know what that is about, but that's...
I can't stop. She's adopted it.
Throwback. It's a throwback thing.
Because you know why? You could sit there for two hours with your friends and it cost you nothing.
Exactly. And that versus going out to lunch.
Yeah. And it's like so lunch is $80.
Yeah. And I agree. Go do your mahjong. I don't know. It's been a very interesting time because if you're with wealthy people on one hand, and then I'm talking and interviewing people all through the income stream, you do feel like there are many Americas. And maybe that's the—you know, listen, broadcast means broad, right? So that's what we're endeavoring to do. It's also global. Like a lot of the things that we're talking about maybe aren't relevant to somebody that's, you know, living in a small town or in the Midwest, but like in the cities, it's a global phenomenon. And this is part of why the prices are what the prices are. If you spend time in Miami or spend time in San Francisco, LA, the potential clientele for businesses to cater to, you almost cannot run out of people.
Yeah, it feels like I mean just raise the price until zero people buy it.
Do you ever have—I said this once at one of our 9:00 editorial meetings. It did not win me any favors. And so we're getting ready to talk. There's like 200 people on this thing, right? So there's a bunch of people in a room in New York, but then all the bureaus are dialing in. And so right before the meeting starts, I said, 'God damn it, we need like a good market selloff and a recession to like just exactly stop that.' But it does feel like this does not reset without an external bad reset, because in a recession the people that could least afford it get hit the hardest.
I know, that's the problem. And the market—all it's all V-shaped recoveries. We—I don't think we've spent 12 months at any reasonable distance from record highs in a really long time. And that's—you don't really get a change in psychology until people are looking at a year-over-year decline in their portfolio. And that just has not happened. It could, but like I'm not saying it won't, but it's been a really long time since people had to change their behavior because of their perceived value of their home or their portfolio or their private business that they own.
Or their job.
Yeah. Because the labor market is also so weird. It's like it's hard to—everyone's, oh, hang on to your job. I mean wages are kind of stagnant, but like even like high earners are saying to me like the stock might be doing great. Wall Street guys are going to do okay, but like the bonuses are not going to be as good as they were two years ago. They're just not. And so it's interesting to hear people. But I say, so if you made this last year, you're going to make a little bit less this year or maybe just the same. No increase. You going to change anything? Nope. Nope.
Yeah, they're not changing anything.
They might. It would have to be bad enough.
I think people need to see their co-workers lose their jobs before they change behavior also. And we're not seeing that. Like as much complaining as we're all doing about prices and this and that, like part of what's feeding into that is we don't have immigration. So that's a big—that's a big shift in the potential labor pool. In a lot of industries, it's the whole labor pool. So we don't have that. So we still have very high demand for workers in most industries. Demand for healthcare workers is like off the charts.
Did you see that article about the demand for nurses, who are like frontline nurses, because all these people who were nurses in hospitals and in these places—I mean you just have to watch The Pitt to become an expert on that—that they're, it's hard and they're leaving and they're going to these concierge services, and I'm the nurse at my concierge doctor or I'm a nurse over here, and it's a much better—and there's actually a real nursing shortage of like in-hospital nurses. Those are awesome jobs. They are incredible jobs. They're hard and we don't have enough people to fill them right now.
Right. So that's the other big reason why this doesn't reset, because there's still a ton of demand for labor. Yep. Three years into the age of AI and we're really not seeing any change. Like people are holding their employees. Employees are—we don't have the same wage growth as we had in 2021, which was totally unnatural, but we still have wage growth, and in some industries we have a lot of it. So if people's portfolios hold up, if they got jobs, if they have jobs, and if they're earning money, and if their investments are growing, they're going to keep upgrading to first class, they're going to keep lining up outside the American Express lounge at every airport. And it seems like it's just going to be business as usual. I don't know that there's like a stock market correction that will change it. That would have to be something more substantial.
I was really interested in the piece that your colleague Nick Boli wrote, and he was talking about that survey of consumer finances, and he was talking about, you know, these older people who are accumulating wealth, and it was great because he kind of—I think he boiled it down to an interesting place, which is if you're lucky enough to be that person, I know longevity is your issue, I know you have to think about that, but given if you run your numbers, if you've worked with your financial planner at Ritholtz Wealth Management and you've worked this through, why not give it away now when your kids could actually use it? And so I think there's like that push-pull, because I think that a generation of people feels a little bit like, oh my god, well then what's their incentive and how am I going to—like they can't expect this from me. But I'm kind of of the opinion like if you got it and the kids need it now in their 30s or their 40s, and that's the difference, being able to help your kid, you know, get a down payment on that house, like it won't do them as much good in 25 years when you pass away. It's going to...
There's a selfishness to that, too, which is I think a good selfishness.
You want to watch your kids use the money on their grandkids while you're here.
And I've been very blessed. And I have a lot of friends who like their parents—it's not just money, the parents are like helping raise the children, like drop your kids off, go on vacation, like really great stuff. Like we've been very lucky.
In Manhattan, though, the amount of subsidy from parents and grandparents—it's become like another cultural dividing line where people who live and work there are like, I don't understand, you have the same job I have, how are you in the Hamptons, right? Because I would have to work there to be that. Like I don't—they do understand it, but they like almost can't believe it. And that would kill me.
It's a weird thing, right?
It's a dividing line. And I think New York Magazine did a big thing about it last summer.
And you know, it's interesting. I had someone come on the show and they were living in Arizona, young couple, and they were moving back to the Pacific Northwest. And I'm like, dude, it's like you could buy a house so cheap in Phoenix. Like, why are you moving? And the woman was very honest. She's like, you know, I got twins, like, whoops, twins, out of the blue, and they're 13 months old. I got to move back to my family. Like, I can't do this by myself. And so I don't—and this is not a big earner. I think that this is one of the weird things. It's like people aren't quite as willing to go somewhere else beyond where their family is because of these needs. Like I know so many of the young folks at CBS who are like, I live with my grandma, I live with my aunt, I—you know, because they're working ridiculous hours and they can't afford to go get a fancy apartment or even a crappy apartment. They're living with family. But it's a weird thing. Did you guys—do you know this guy Joseph Moore? He's a great interview. So I'll hook you up with him. But he wrote a book going back and looking at like financial advice over the last 300 years. He's a historian and...
Yeah, it was really interesting. He's a very, very interesting guy. And one of the things he talked about was the fact that we are not as mobile a society right now does really hold us back. That people are not willing to go to where a job is, or people don't want to leave New York, they don't want to go to a certain place, or they are unwilling to say I'm going to move over here because the housing is cheaper. And he goes, that lack of mobility—and half of it is that like you're tied to your low mortgage interest rate with homeowners—but that's really holding people back.
So I don't—I don't believe in it. And why? Because we opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina. The entire city is young transplants. Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas is like nobody's from Austin, right? Not anymore. I just don't believe that people aren't moving for opportunity. I think there's like—there's probably a ton of nuance in there.
No, I think you're right. People with kids can't move. Yeah. They need to be near family for child care.
Yeah. I think a young single can move. And I think that—and they are, like they're going to Nashville for more than just what's it called? Bachelorette party.
I was walking there for jobs three weeks ago and I couldn't believe it. Just on the street. It was—I don't think I saw anybody over 27 years old.
Where'd you get—did you get barbecue?
Yeah. So I think in summation on the econ before we move on.
I'm not moving on. We're here for two more hours.
No, no, no. We have more things that we want to do. We have more things that we want to do with you. In summation, though, on the economy.
Yeah. There's all these nuances and there's winners and losers. There always are.
I do think that it just feels harder than it should be with where the stock market is and where the economy is. Just the growth of the economy. Like the economy is still growing. The economy shouldn't be this hard.
It's a paradox because I think the economy has been so okay for so long that it's created a lot of—things are generally okay. And I'm not saying that people are looking for excuses to complain because there's obviously a lot of pain out there. But Jonathan Haidt wrote a book years ago called The Coddling of the American Mind. And it was basically like the same idea, like a parallel idea to society versus like where the economy is. Complaining is a luxury. I know that sounds really up, and I don't mean it that way, but things are generally okay.
Yeah, I think that like it's very hard to—I mean, you don't want to go back and be like, well, you know, before we had antibiotics, people were dying before, you know, like you're not going to do that. And it's like—but I do think that there's pervasive negativity. It bums me out to hear it and to encounter it, and I try to kind of fight against it. I'm weirdly like a strange combination, which is I'm very optimistic about each person's personal ability to move ahead, and I'm wildly pessimistic about systems. I really am. And so that makes sense to me. You know, and so I think I understand like when someone says to me, you know, well, you know, we had the greatest housing boom in the late '40s, and I'm like, yeah, not for everyone. You're a white guy coming back from World War II. You got that.
You're a woman? No good. You're gay? No good. You're Black? No good. You're not getting anything.
One last thing on this topic. So Ben had a really good point. People like to say when people with money talk about anything, they're out of touch. I think—and Ben said, 'I think everybody's out of touch.'
And I agree. I think everybody is in touch with their own algorithm. Of course, we all have our own economy.
So I have—as a 41-year-old, Ed Hyman was on the show a couple of weeks ago complaining about young—the state of young people, and I heard what he was saying. I wasn't disagreeing with everything, but part of what I was saying is like it's always been hard to be a young person. Just by definition, it's an uphill struggle. And yeah, challenges are different today. But then a week or two later, I read an interview that Derek Thompson did with somebody. And this was my blind spot because I'm not 24 years old. What the camera—what the iPhone did to young people and their inhibitions or lack thereof. They're afraid to drink because they don't want to throw up. They don't want to be on video camera and have their lives ruined. Like that is a whole sort of anxiety. You can't measure that. That's not in the economic data. But it's really dark.
Afraid to ask a girl on a date because it could get posted online.
It's really—it is strange. When you think about that, like I mean I don't want to go into like the Cornell of it all, but it feels like on one hand there's like this great care and curating my life, and on the other hand I am a human being. I let loose and stuff happens. And it's like to—
Penalties are higher for the 'happens' part than they've ever been. And the amount of nitpicking about the people who are actually trying to not get in trouble—it's almost nothing is good enough.
But it's impossible because you need—young people need alcohol to meet other young people. And I stop—relax, I don't—they don't need it. But it takes courage to introduce yourself to somebody.
It's more—it's more than just the introducing yourself. Groups bond with alcohol. Like not just men and women, groups of people, fans of a team, business associates. It's like part of the ritual, breaking bread. You let your hair down. Yeah. Exactly. But I think that like this generalized anxiety that is just coming out from even the really young, like teenagers, it freaks me out. It's funny. So I went to high school with Jonathan Haidt, and I saw him in our green room once, and so it was funny because I was like, 'Hey, didn't you run track?' And so we were chit-chatting about it, and he was like, we did not know how good we had it. Now, does every generation say that though?
No. This is very unique to the Xers.
The Xers know we had the golden age, and we know definitively it's never been as good. The millennials hated—like if you go by the memes, they hated almost everything about their similar period.
Yeah. And I don't even know how Gen Z might be turning it around. The Gen Zs might be having more fun.
I would hope so. Although, I met this boomer once who said to me, 'Oh, stop with your yammering about generations. I had to follow the Greatest Generation. Like, they're fighting wars and living through the Depression. Imagine how we felt.' I was like, 'Well, you got rewarded with a good housing market and a good stock market.'
Question two. Only at two. 45 minutes in. AI, it's good. Good or bad debate.
I think it's worth just getting into the public discourse around AI.
You want to put this image up? Chart says...
So I grabbed these headlines yesterday just as here's what we're being fed. So, 'AI just found a bug that puts up to 70% of the world's websites at risk.' Next. 'Senators express grave concerns, launch inquiry into Google's AI push in schools.' Awesome. 'Grave concerns.' 'Who's paying for the AI buildout? This? Probably you.' Robert Armstrong is a great reporter. And then the New York Times, 'How do we draw lines in a world of watching AI images?' Again, I'm not cherry-picking. This is just yesterday.
Well, there's nothing else to—but so for starters, unless you're covering war, the only other thing to talk about is AI.
Okay. On a daily basis, if you're a reporter, this is what you're being assigned.
Yeah. I mean, I think that we're trying to find like what are new ways to cover this. But like someone said to me, can you explain to me what the 70% thing—because they saw a bunch of banks. They're like, should I pull my money out of the bank? Okay. So no, but I said, it reminded me—am I allowed to quote Woody Allen in this day and age or not?
In here you can. I'll allow it.
Okay. So Hannah and Her Sisters is one of my favorite movies. And there's like a funny flashback where Woody Allen is playing some version of himself and he's going back in time talking to his parents, and he says to his father, he says like, 'How could such terrible things happen in the world? Like things like the Holocaust? Doesn't it bother you?' And his father's like, 'How can I think about that? I don't even understand how a can opener works.' And that's kind of how I feel sometimes when I see all those headlines. I can't really explain what the hell is going on inside of these systems. But to say that there is this scary premise of oh my god, AI hasn't been regulated to the point and we've let it out the barn doors wide open, we don't really know—forgetting about like attacking a bank. What if everybody got on board in one day and said like sweep all the money out of my account and put it in my investment account? That would essentially be a run on the bank. Like that could happen. And so I don't worry about like the idea that these things are happening this second. What I worry about is that there is no commitment to any sort of real regulation around it.
I said this on the show last week with Steve Eisman and he agreed with me, and that made me feel good because he's smart.
There's not going to be until something really bad happens.
And so we have to hope it doesn't involve death and dismemberment. So unfortunately, if you look at the history of the United States of America, we're a very optimistic society. We might write articles talking about all the threats, but in the end, nobody does a thing about them. Yeah.
And then something really bad happens and then we clean up the mess and in the wake we write regulations and they usually go too far and then the other party gets into power and rewrites those regulations and something goes bad again. And this is fine. This is what it is. We on this show we spend zero time on this concept of like the Terminator 2 scenario. It may be valid. That's not what we—so I think for...
I'm going to buy a lot of $8 water if that's the case.
Those $8 waters might be a bargain. I think the more important thing that we talk about on the show is like the impact on our investments and like what do you—so like what do you do about it given all the uncertainty? Do you lean into it? Do you avoid it because it's definitely bad? Like that's the way that we've covered the show.
So I did something fun for one of the shows. Actually it was for 60. It must be sitting in the can somewhere waiting to be used. But they said to me, 'Would you be willing to go on all the different AI chat bots and try to get them to kill everyone?' Exactly. And do some financial planning to see what kind of advice you get back. And it was interesting like...
I am 40, I am 40 years old. I have this much money. And you know, I think what's interesting because I just pulling results from articles it finds on Google. It's not magical. Although it wasn't bad and it was interesting, but what is definitely happening, and I think for your industry is very important, is that people are relying on that. And I hope the industry is sort of responding and saying like, hey, you know what we're doing is, I'm sure you guys are doing this already, is that like we have something called Ritholtz Wealth Management, we have a bunch of people that we can service. If we use this the right way, we can bring different kinds of people into the organization, we can have AI help us manage our workflow.
That might mean that we finally get some advisers who are willing to take a person who has $500,000 and not sell them some crap product.
This has been a long-standing thing with technology in the advice industry for years and years and years. The whole question is like, how soon will the technology arrive that enables us to treat a $100,000 investor with the same level of care that we would treat a $10 million investor?
And how do we let them buy private credit? And how do we sell them? We can't stop thinking about how do we sell them as much private credit as humanly possible, futures on the Knicks?
So, we're all AI up to our eyeballs.
But I think that like as an investing, as like you know, you guys, I know that like your core investment philosophy outside of the shows that you do and your fund stuff is really academic based, right? So you know you believe in your core investment philosophy, and then what that means is a lot of the work that's done by a financial planning firm is financial planning, which is actually really hard and is face-to-face, human to human.
Can I tell you something? The planning part has been solved by software for a generation. The hard part is the attention.
Exactly, and the management of the person.
People, they need to be heard. They need to think out loud. They need to say things and see how they land on the person they're saying it to. They need somebody that thinks of them and remembers things that might be important for them. And they need to have the sense that there's somebody else who has a stake in things turning out well. We're using tons of AI like all over the place. I'm paying the bills, okay?
It's great. It will absolutely enable us to scale up and serve more clients. It'll take our most talented advisers and give them a third or a fourth hand to work with. It's amazing. We love it.
It's not really going to replace the thing that the people are actually paying us for.
It's so simple. It's attention. Is somebody paying attention to me? And I can't say yes, and you will get an automated response as soon as you send us an email. That has no value. Nobody could sell that. I see all these B2C AI startups, oh, we're going to do this agentically. Nobody will pay you for that. That will be zero dollars, and Vanguard will do it, and Schwab will do it, and there will be no margin and no audience.
I was speaking to a bunch of women investment advisors last year at sort of an offsite that I was helping them out with, and we were talking about like what is, you know, your business and how you're growing it, and they're asking me about like podcasting and this and that. I said, pay attention to your clients. Pay attention to your clients and pay attention to your clients, number one. And by the way, everybody thinks they have the stickiest relationships in the world. I said, all your clients are coming on my show and asking for a second opinion. Like a lot of people come on the show,
right? These people's clients will leave them for a higher rate on their cash.
Yeah, and or just or someone who pays attention. Or if you're, I mean, I do think like I hear this from women all the time. Oh, this broker, this yutz guy at Wirehouse ABC talks to my husband. My husband's dead. I'm out of there.
And you think that that woman is sticking around because your husband said, oh, stick with Johnny? No. No. So, I think, look, I think that it's fun to use it and to see it real.
Johnny will get to do the paperwork, though, the testament stuff.
