Summary
➡ The advertising company, Odyssey, is facing bankruptcy due to debt restructuring and decreased ad expenditure as a result of changing socio-economic conditions. Industries are undergoing a significant transformation, with firms like Xerox reducing their personnel by 20%, and technology companies like Zoom facing cutbacks as remote work normalizes. Also, traditional businesses such as bakeries are finding it difficult to continue operating profitably, while the recent trend of corporations building entire rental communities may lead to more foreclosures and a lack of community unity. Lastly, e-bikes are becoming a safety concern due to spontaneous lithium-ion battery ignitions, indicating a need for revised safety standards.
➡ Concerns are raised regarding the safety of wheeled toys like scooters and personal bikes after several incidents of them catching fire and causing injuries. Meanwhile, a solar company, First Solar, has benefitted significantly from selling $700 million worth of tax credits, effectively funding its operations. The impact of COVID continues to be seen as public transit ridership decreases, costing the country a financial deficit of $6.6 billion annually. A Florida landlord’s extreme reaction to unpaid rent results in criminal charges. It is also highlighted that due to the pandemic, many people are avoiding public spaces and small businesses are suffering as a result.
Transcript
It’s super windy down by the beach. I just thought I’d climb through the park, all the leaves blowing all over the place. It’s kind of nice. Jazz Preet Singh, the financial advisor, he did a great video talking about how the fake rich went out in 2000 and 22,021 and bought all these assets. They bought Rolexes, other expensive watches, things that they thought would never go down in price, paid an absolute premium for them and made it so that they were very scarce to get.
You could not get these items, and they thought they were just going to continue to go up in value. And the other thing was like g wagons, like the Mercedes g wagon that these guys paid three and $400,000 for. I know a guy who sent me details. He says, dan, I got $100,000 discount on this car. And I didn’t think much about it until I started researching this video.
And I’m thinking, wow, that guy really got a deal. Because somebody went completely upside down. So, so many people went out and financed everything to the hilt until 2022. Spring of 2022, the Fed decided to do something that they hadn’t done in three years, and that was raise interest rates. Then they did it eleven times, guys. Okay? And it made it so that the economy has completely done a 180.
And these assets that people just couldn’t wait to get their hands on, people can’t wait now to get rid of. And the problem with it is that people in general think that they will never stop making the money that they’re making when things are good. And they think that it’s just never going to stop. And that’s not the case. And that’s what so many of these people are experiencing.
And we’ve talked about being able to buy assets, things that are on sale. You’re going to see many, many things that you thought, oh, just can’t get those watches. And now there’s a glut of Rolex watches available for sale right now because of people like this. Right now, our deficit went to $34 trillion. Think about this. It went up a trillion dollars. In 15 weeks since the beginning of football season, for you football fans out there, the deficit went up a trillion dollars.
Or think about this. Think about how much money this is, okay? $8. 52 billion a day is what we pay in interest. And what it went up. I mean, that is insane, guys. It’s absolutely insane. It’s going to get to a point that we will not be able to sustain this. Now, 105 days is 15 weeks. That’s all it was, guys, since the last trillion dollars was hit, it took years, years for it to happen last time, and now it’s 15 weeks.
Think about this. We could realistically, easily, we’re going to see it go up $3 trillion this year, but it could go up $4 trillion if things aren’t watched. And you can sit there and say, well, how does that affect me, Dan? It affects everything. It affects interest rates. It affects the stability of our country. It affects the stability of our defense. It affects absolutely everything about the economy.
Now, if that doesn’t concern you, if that doesn’t concern you, nothing will concern you because it’s just completely out of control. We cannot afford the interest on this. You’ve done this. You’ve bought things in the past where you sit there and go, oh, let me try to calculate the interest in your head. And then you get your bank statement or the statement from the credit card company and you’re shocked at how much it is.
You have no idea how much it is. But we could theoretically see us go up $4 trillion this year because every trillion dollars is going to happen that much faster and that much faster and that much faster. So bravo. Welcome to 2024. This is what just happened. So with that being said, we are just completely out of control. The layoffs that happened in 2023 are going to continue into 2024.
And the financial stability of these companies that we thought were invincible are not invincible. Going to give you an example, first one is Walmart. Now, I love the insiders. I love the insider information that you guys send me. But to respect this woman and her husband, because her husband’s with management at Walmart, I’m just going to say that they’re in the south, okay? They’re not in Arkansas, but they’re in the south.
And he got a letter that they are not going to contribute to the, do any matching this year for the fourth quarter of 2023. How come we’re not hearing that in the news? Okay. It took this private letter to be sent out and for us to get it. Now, I’m not showing it to you because it’s just got defining information of who these people are. But we’re just going to call her Cammy.
Okay. And Cammy sent this. But this is the shape of things to come. Walmart had a horrible fourth quarter. They are not going to match the 401K for the employees. Is it mean? No. Is it the fact that it’s survival? Yes. Are they not making money? Absolutely. But right now, people are so overextended. People have not made the money in the past that they thought they were going to make.
And you’ve seen this. People are flying high, shoving it in everybody’s faces, and then all of a sudden it comes to a crash landing, okay? And it happens time and again. I am telling you. Melva wrote me about how they added, her and her husband have set back, did their finances in 2023, added a couple of additional accounts just to be safe, to make sure that their retirement is secure and they have access to money.
And they looked at different places in their area. You have to do this, guys. You have to take this seriously. And please understand that this is not going to continue again. What if these are the good times? That’s what my uncle said to me once before the last recession. What if this is as good as it gets? Listen to this old man, okay? And he was 1000% right, and I remind him of that.
But you have to look at this right now, and you have to look at what you can do to cut back to save money and to understand that the company that’s invincible, like Walmart, they’re not going out of business, guys. We know that. But will they cut back? Will they not help people with their 401 ks? Absolutely. Hey, how are you? That’s exactly what’s happening. Okay? So share your thoughts on this stuff so far.
Let me know what you think. But guys, look at this, okay? Our country is completely upside down. The management is completely upside down. We’ve all worked for places where there were idiots, a den of idiots. And we’ve talked about that time and again. Our government’s like that right now. It’s a den of idiots on both sides, guys. It’s a complete mess. But this deficit, think about this. We’re less than two weeks away from a government shutdown again.
Kick the can down the road. Okay? It’s an absolute mess, guys. Okay, so let me know what you think about this, because I think that we have not seen anything yet, okay? Nothing yet. Nothing. And you can sit there and tell me, oh, it’s no big deal. Deficits go up. It’s an absolute mess. An absolute mess. Share your thoughts. Let’s talk about our sponsor, Patriot gold group. With all this talk about the deficit and all these problems with our national debt, we have to look at the price of gold.
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Call them at 88833 00:14 31. You can get an IRA or 401K that’s backed by physical metals. Plus they have a free investor guide. You can find out all the details. Contact them today. Sign of the times, guys. Sign of the times. First things first. Radio. Radio. Big company odyssey. Looks like they’re going to finally go down for the count. Odyssey was an ad company. And the biggest problem that you see at times like this is when people restructure debt, okay? They can’t make the payments, so they get an extension.
They refinance things and push things off. Odyssey did this in September and October and pushed off like $28 million in debt. And guess what? Nobody’s advertising on radio right now. People are cutting back for 2024. So with that odyssey, it looks like they are just bankruptcy is eminent for them. I’ve never heard of that company. Dan, the point is that do you not listen to the radio when you go in the car? They not have ads.
Is it just everybody, a personal injury attorney talked about that with a lawyer today about how go to Vegas and flip on the radio or drive around. All you see are personal injury. Know it’s a personal injury capital of the. He says, no, no, Florida’s worse. Maybe it, you know, you’re seeing this over and over again. The other thing is not so. Know. We got the fed minutes yesterday and Jerome Powell didn’t sit there and say, hey, I’m going to cut interest rates nine times and do this and that.
What he said was, we’re going to have a cautious approach to this. Oh, cautious? Oh, wait a second. I want you to get, you can bookmark this and you can either shove it down my throat or say, oh, the guy was right. You’re going to see interest rates for mortgages hovering between six and a quarter and six and three quarters this year. If you got stellar credit and put a substantial amount of money down, you’ll get the lower rate, but you’re not going to get this thing into the threes and the fours and things like that.
It’s not going to happen. Now, you can pull shenanigans and take over somebody’s existing loan, and I’m telling know, like my insurance man said, dan, as soon as you get the new insurance policy, they’re going to call that mortgage in for these people. But the original seller will be gone, so they won’t care. Lot to look forward to with, you know, correct me if I’m wrong. Do you think Jerome Powell’s going to lower interest rates six times and do that? I don’t know, Dan.
I don’t know. One thing that was disturbing is there are legacy businesses. There is a business that was a bakery that’s been open for over 35 years, sweet lady Jane’s. And they had six locations. They abruptly closed on January 1. Now, I’ve heard speculation they served a minor alcohol. Dan, they’re getting sued. All this stuff. What I heard was they cannot make any money in the bakery business right now is what I’ve heard.
So share your thoughts on this stuff if you know this, but very rarely do I eat sweets, but I had this triple berry cake that they make that somebody sent me at one point years ago. It was insane. It’s this butter cake with three of the seasonal berries, and it was just in lunacy. Okay. But that’s what they’re known for, and they’re done now. They’re absolutely done. Growing up, we always had things like you would say, hey, let’s go get Jello.
Hey, get me a coke. Go to the Xerox machine. Use the Xerox machine. It was the term for a copy machine. Right. Well, Xerox has seen better days. Xerox is laying off 20% of its staff right now. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Back in the day, in the 80s with my business, I went out and we signed a contract with Xerox and they would come out and they would service the copy machine and the fax machine that cost me thousands of dollars.
And they had reps that did that. And, oh, how times have changed. And Xerox is done. I didn’t even know Xerox was open. That’s how bad this was when I got this story sent to me. So, 20% reduction in staff. They had just over 20,000 employees at the end of 2022. They don’t have any regulatory filings to go look at beyond that. So big problems, guys, for Xerox.
But again, we’ve seen these companies that were invincible at one point, and now they’re done. So share your thoughts on this stuff, guys, because times are changing. You can say technology is changing. And think about this. You don’t need a scanner. You can use your cell phone, okay? You can take a picture of something and it’ll turn it into a pdf and you can mail it. You can do docusign.
That’s the one. A couple of good things came out of COVID the docusigning and agreements and things like that. Hey, get to my office and sign this contract. Oh, no, no. We’ll just send it over via docusign and you can sign it. Okay? End of story. So innovation helped, but then it didn’t. Why is Zoom not doing so well right now? Remember Zoom? They had one day that their stock went up $100 in one day because of just the craziness of 2020.
Well, guess what, guys? Zoom is having cutbacks right now because people are using less Zoom right now. Oh, I thought everybody was working remotely. They’re not. People are cutting back. That’s what you have to look at right now. So share your thoughts on this stuff so far. Let me know. What other product did we talk about that we’ve used for reference? Like, hey, get me a coke. Well, it’s not a know Dr.
Pepper. They’re owned by coke, but you know what I mean? It’s like you would sit there and say. You don’t say, get me a soda. Hey, I want some gelatin. No, you get me jello. You know what I mean? That’s how it worked out. And let’s go to the Xerox machine and make out. Okay, we’ll do that. Okay, share your thought now with all this fed talk about how will they cut interest rates? Will they not cut interest rates? One thing that Jerome Powell kind of led in his talk was that there could be defaults coming in the real estate.
Huh? People aren’t going to be able to pay their bills because they lost their job. Oh, okay, now again, something you guys send me over and over again is how the corporate world is going to build cities and they are going to build entire rental communities. That’s great. It’s one thing to have an apartment building, but when you have 150 houses in a neighborhood that are all renters, it is a different community.
It really is. There’s no pride of ownership. There’s no, hey, I painted my house blue. Oh, it’s against the association. You have none of that. It is a completely different community, to say the least. So you’re going to see the foreclosures tick up. Now, I don’t care what you sell, there’s always a way to sell it as long as you’re not overextended. Look at the company Zulily, which was a women kids brand, okay? They just went out of business right now and they’re not going to go bankrupt.
They’re just going to liquidate the company. And there’s lawsuits with Amazon about how Amazon did their fulfillment and all these different things. But company went, opened up in 2009. In 2013, they went public. In 2015, they got purchased by QVC and made money hand over fist. And it’s one of those eclectic brands that people bought stuff from all the time, okay, over and over and over. So with that down for the count, but instead of bankruptcy, they’re liquidating the company, which again is the sign of the times and very sad.
And I’m just telling you guys, you’re going to see this happen more and more and more. And as we get, we’re just a couple of days into the new year, guys. It’s not like we’re six months into it and we’re starting to see these layoffs and cutbacks. You haven’t seen anything yet. You’ve seen nothing yet. But you need to batten down the hatches. You need to do whatever you can do to shore up your finances.
You’re going to see your credit cards get cut off. You’re going to see things that you rely on and companies that you rely on to help you finance your credit line get eviscerated during this time. That’s going to happen. So mark my words on that. These communities, I mean, I get a lot of people that write me about the communities being upset about that, and I think it’s nuts.
Have you flown lately? Hey, pull out your laptop. No lithium batteries. Let us know what you have stuffed inside your luggage so we can check it and make sure it’s not going to explode. Well, guess what? They’re having problems now with lithiumion batteries from the stupid ebikes that people ride 40 miles an hour without a helmet. And a guy was on the Toronto subway and guess what? Caught on fire? The lithium battery just self ignited because it sparked into something.
You don’t think that this is going to happen over and over again? Remember those little things that you would ride? The little two wheeled things that you’d sit there and walk on and it would ride. Those things caught on fire. You don’t think those bikes are going to catch on fire? It’s going to be crazy when these things escalate and it gets worse. But bringing them on the subway, it’s just a matter of time until these problems get, know the scooters and know those scooter, know, like bird and all that stuff.
It was crazy. They got all these exemptions here in California where people didn’t have to wear helmets, but people were falling and getting injured. And again, the nurse is telling me, don’t ever let anybody you care about ride one of those things, because we get all these different emergencies in the hospital with that stuff. Okay? That’s all you need to hear, guys, don’t fall. Don’t fall. Okay? And those things are just a proponent to help you do that.
So anyways, I’m preaching. I’m going to finish this video with these last few stories. And the first one was sent by Ahmed, and he said, wow, this is the 1980s all over again. And there is a solar company, first solar, that prides itself on being american made and american owned and manufactured here in the states. They had tax credits that they just sold, and they sold $700 million worth of those tax credits, just like they did in the 1980s.
And this will help fund the company, but you’re going to see more creative ways for people to finance their manufacturing and to move forward. Dr. Marvin sent me a great story about the state of all the different bus lines, travel, everything, any mass transit is completely upside down. And our country has a deficit, financial budget deficit of $6. 6 billion a year right now because ridership has gone down since COVID Now think about this.
Everybody stayed home and then nobody went back. That’s the thing about this that’s absolutely fascinating. So you’re seeing that over and over again. But again, this is the sign of the times. People are not going downtown. They’re not going downtown to the dry cleaners, they’re not going to the soda shop, they’re not going to the liquor store, they’re not getting sandwiches. They’re doing nothing right now. And these small businesses are getting destroyed because people aren’t going there and they’re not riding the buses and they’re not riding the subway or the train or anything like that.
It’s going down. Okay? And again, people, if you notice this, people don’t want to be around other people. It’s kind of really weird that people just don’t want to be out there. They want to be out in the middle of a park by themselves. Final story. Okay, there’s a landlord that got fed up with not getting his rent. George Lambert out of Florida. Also, this is Dr. Marvin.
Another Dr. Marvin story. Mr. Lambert decided to take matters into his own hands. So he brandished a firearm and capped a couple rounds into his tenant’s car. You’re going to pay me. Okay, well, guess what? He got arrested for that. You’re not allowed to do that. That is taking matters into your own hands and going to the extreme. And that’s not allowed even in free Florida, as people have written me over and over, because it’s nowhere is that free, okay? So please don’t forget to hit the like button.
Why am I laughing at? Really? That’s disturbing. It really is. That’s the question for Dr. Marvin there. Anyways, like subscribe, share the channel with all your friends and colleagues, and don’t be like Mr. Lambert, okay? Be loving neighbor and a thoughtful landlord. Okay? Onward and upward, guys. I’ll see you guys very soon. .