➡ The economy is currently experiencing a mix of good and bad, with a 4.3% growth in GDP and low unemployment at 4.4%. However, there are concerns about the accuracy of these figures and the future looks uncertain with predictions of increased layoffs and business closures. Industries once considered safe, like tech and real estate, are also facing challenges, with AI replacing human roles. Consumer spending is declining, credit card debt is increasing, and retail sales are weakening. Home sales are slowing down, and the construction industry is predicted to face bankruptcies.
➡ The speaker discusses the importance of financial preparedness, highlighting the stress of credit card debt and the need for an emergency fund. They also mention the current economic downturn, with many stores closing and home sales declining. Despite this, they believe the economy will recover after a difficult period. They also touch on the increasing intelligence of AI in bankruptcy cases, and the potential for it to identify fraudulent behavior.

Hey, it’s Dan. Welcome back. You’re watching IAllegedly, and I’ve got a good one for you today because we’re doing a deep dive into the economy and the status of where everything is at right now. Some good, some bad, a lot bad. But let’s take a look at it, okay? Get right into it. You know, we were just told the GDP numbers were great. And we had 4.3% growth in our gross domestic product. And that, well, gosh, Dan, when was that? It was for the third quarter. We finally got the number from, you know, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

And they told us that’s exactly where things are at. Whether you believe that or not, whatever. I think that the thing that I used to get a kick out of from the last administration was they would tell us something, say, an unemployment number. Oh, we hired this many people. And then they would revise it down, you know, and it would always change. It never stayed the same. So to me, it gave very little credibility in that. And next thing, economic figures. We still have low unemployment, you know, at 4.4%. Who believes that, guys? I mean, I know a lot of people are not working.

I know a lot of people that are contemplating leaving their jobs and moving on. And I’m done with this. And you’re seeing a lot of people getting laid off. We’ve had record numbers of layoffs in 2025. But that’s nothing compared to what we’re going to see in early 2026. This is going to skyrocket and catapult in the wrong direction, to say the least. So when you look at industries, tell me an industry that’s safe right now. There’s not. There’s no such thing. You know, it used to be, oh, it’s tech. And I am in HR. No, no, no, no, no.

You don’t even need an HR person. You don’t even need a real estate agent right now. It’s a great story out of Florida, where there’s an AI company that’ll help you buy and, you know, sell your property without ever talking to a real estate agent. Now, I bought my last house without a realtor, did it all on my own, and told everybody I was dealing with up front, from the lenders to escrow to everybody, that you were dealing with me, not anybody else. There’s going to be no agent. And if you give me an ounce of grief to deal with the lawyer and deal with this, but I just would rather make the transaction go as smoothly as possible.

Now, it wasn’t AI. It was Dan. But again, a lot of people don’t do that. A lot of people have to have a middleman. And every time I mention this, I get the middleman, oh, I’m sure there was something missing from your transaction. Nothing. Nothing. But consumer spending, you know, certain key categories are declining. And this is the winter of your credit card debt. Don’t forget that. You’re going to have more and more people with their January statements that will not pay off their credit card debt. And you haven’t seen anything yet. Nothing yet. And again, not everybody’s flush.

I get it. You’re ripping on people that have to put things on credit cards. No, I’m not. I have multiple credit cards, but I pay them off every month. That’s the difference. I don’t carry $100,000. Somebody just sent me a Dave Ramsey phone call with a woman who was 59 years old and $258,000 in debt with credit cards. No, no, no, no. We talked about in the last video about how the student loan companies are coming after you big time in January. Oh, Dan, you’re exaggerating. Oh, read this story. Read this story from the Department of Education that wants their money.

Now, retail sales weakening across physical stores. We have seen a record number of stores close in 2025. We saw over 8,200 stores close right now in 2025. That is staggering, guys. It’s just unbelievable to think about when you have this many places that have gone out of business. It was led by Rite Aid because of their bankruptcy. And you can sit there and say, oh, that’s just a bad store chain. Good stores, convenience stores, 7-Elevens, CVS, Rite Aids. How many times have you said, oh, I just got to run and grab something at 10 o’clock at night? We’ve all done that.

And the advantage to having Rite Aid open down the street is that you could go in there and grab stuff, and they had certain food items and certain milk and certain ice cream and things like that. If you had your kids show up in the middle of the night, you could go get that stuff. You know, the inflation on wages. You know, you’re not making as much as you used to. None of us are. Go to the grocery store. Go to a fast food restaurant. What is the number one thing at all the different restaurants right now? The number one thing right now is discounts and deals.

Chili’s, Applebee’s, that hellhole. I just don’t like deep fried everything, guys. That’s my problem with that. So you’re seeing these places, like, with their 2 for 25s, and those are sounding really well. But where they get you is people go out, no, I need a margarita. I need a drink. People that are going out and buying things that are off that discount menu. That’s where they make their money. You know, manufacturing output, you know, we’re not making things like we used to. Is there a shift to make more things? Yes. It has been raining for 3 days.

It’s beautiful out here today. And I love the hills after it rains. I love how clean everything is. It’s just fantastic. But, you know, a manufacturing output. Home sales. Home sales are drying up right now. Homes are sitting on the market longer. Now, realtors write me and say, oh, well, this is not home buying season, Dan. You’ve got to get to home buying season before. The fact that you have houses that have multiple price drops and they are sitting on the market longer and longer and longer, that’s what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing more and more of that.

So home sales volume dropping too. The other thing is that you’re seeing people pulling things off the market more and more and more. And that is something you cannot, you know, you can’t avoid. I don’t care where you’re at. There’s 10 housing markets in the south right now. Starts in Texas and goes east towards Florida. They’re in the south where there’s real problems, where there’s surprise adjustments. We’re seeing home builders do things they’ve never done. Here, in Southern California, you’re seeing home builders drop the price. Oh, we don’t do that. That’s a lie. Sure you don’t.

There’s a track in Tustin, California. They just did that. So, you know, home price trends. High-end houses. Neighborhoods like this. Houses on the hill. Think about it. It is nothing to drop a house $500,000 in price up here. Nah, places $22,500,000. $22,500,000. Down to $22,000,000. Drop a million. Oh, you’ll take $18,000 for the house? That’s happening all around us here in Southern California. New construction. Builders are slowing. You know, you’re seeing more and more builders not be able to complete jobs. You’re going to see bankruptcies, but between now and tax day in April, you’re going to see multiple builders go out of business.

That’s my strong prediction. One thing that I got to kick out of is somebody sent me an article about how Texas, the construction and the real estate problems, stand from the ICE raids because they can’t hire good workers. And I’m like, what liar wrote this? And staff writer. I love that because it’s chat GPT and nobody with any credibility to put their name to it. The idea with this is that there are so many ICE raids that it’s scaring off all the workers. Well, let me tell you something. Here in the United States, there’s a form called an I-9 that even if you’re an American citizen, I fill that.

What it does is, are you a citizen of the United States? Do you have a Social Security card? Do you have this? Do you have that? Well, if you don’t have it, no, I don’t have any of that stuff. They’re not going to let you work there. They’re not supposed to let you work there. What are these construction companies that are having all these problems with workers? What do they do? Seriously, is it all illegal? Is it all scammed? That was the question I had for the writer and staff writer. I couldn’t find that person that wrote this bogus article.

But the idea with this is that this doesn’t have any credibility. You want to work at a gas station. You have to fill out that form if they’re taking taxes out of your check. And the idea is you have to have you be here legally. Now, do we know that people get around this all the time? But I don’t know how they do this because eventually you’re going to get audited and they’re going to match things up. And you’re going to have your payroll reports. You’re going to have your employees and you’re going to say, these are the people.

Somebody’s checking that right now. And there’s people right now in this administration, a lot of time in their hands, to find the bad people that are doing this. So let me know this. Let me know what you think. Credit card stress and debt stress. That’s the other thing that’s killing people. I am telling you this right now. Please get yourself out of debt. Make sure you have an emergency fund. A woman I’m dating picks up her mom, takes her to their second house. So they’ve got two houses. But the first house, power went out for six days because of the wind.

What do you do for that? I’m like, thank God you were there for your mom. What would she have done without you? Oh, she has water and candles and electric lights and things like that. You know what I’m saying? That’s what you would do if that happens. The only thing you could do if that happens. But not everybody’s prepared. Clearly, not everybody’s prepared. This place rains for three days and you’d think it would be chaos. You’d think we would have had six feet of snow. And they talk about it on the news like it’s just the most surprising thing that we’ve ever seen.

And yes, there are mudslides. You have areas that were burnt during the fires in January that they have not built. They haven’t even graded these places properly. But then you get three inches of rain. And what does it do? It all flows downhill. So it doesn’t flow to my house. It flows to your house. The retail sector, this collapse, Joanne Fabrics, 600 stores, Starbucks, 600 stores. The things that used to be immortal and immune to this, like the Walgreens and the small stores, that’s a problem. They anticipate there’s already going to be four to five hundred more stores announce foreclosure in the first month of January 2026.

That’s wild, guys. Markets like Austin saw a 20% decline from their peak in price and in sales. Sales volume, sales prices. Home orders are underwater. Right now they anticipate there are a million people that have purchased homes recently that are upside down. D listings are rising. D listings are at a record pace right now. We put our house in the market. We get it ready to sell. And then you dump it. Bye. The thing that nobody wants to look at is that this is all interconnected. The economy, will it come back? Yes. Is it going to have a down period? Yes.

Do people think it’s going to be depressionary and get that bad? Let’s hope not. Some of us are prepared for that. I’m prepared for that. But there’s a lot of people that are not prepared for that. And I have food. I have water. I have things to protect myself. But that’s that. A lot of people don’t get it. My job is going to be here. They love me. No, they don’t. You know what they love? Staying open. And your boss likes keeping his job over you. You’re not married to him. Remember that. The credit card defaults are not slowing down.

They’re going up and they’re expanding. And one thing that’s happening with AI, this is what I had a bankruptcy attorney send me, is that generally people would go out and they would. You’d stop charging about 90 days before you filed your bankruptcy. And people go out and they charge to the hilt. And then they file 120 days later. Now AI and these bankruptcy attorneys are getting smarter. And the courts and the trustees are saying, wait a second. We think that this was just a way for you to run up your bills. This is going to be excluded from your bankruptcy.

You’re going to have to pay this. And beautiful out there. So it’s going to be interesting to see this. Florida to Texas, guys. Don’t forget that. I want to make sure I got that nailed for you. Made a bunch of cool images for you guys. And I always like seeing the cops when they’re speeding like that. That’s a police boat out there. So it’s coming to get you. Clearly I told them you weren’t here, but you know. And it was like an only life so long. You know, again, let’s close it out with Walgreens 450 closure.

7-11. 7-11 the convenience stores. For those of you that have been to one of those, it’s just it’s crazy. You know, you’ve got some people that are talking about expanding. You’ve got some places that are going to open up new stores. But overall, we’re going to have a rough patch before it gets better. I hope this was interesting. Look at all the stories below and add it all up because all that equals, you know, what’s going on. The cop boat stopped. Let’s see what they’re doing. Like, subscribe, email me Hello at iallegily.com. If you’re on the Christmas card list, make sure you check your spam filter because the Christmas card list just, Christmas card just went out via email.

And then this week we’re going to have the winners announced. So it’s very cool. Okay. I’ll see you real soon. [tr:trw].

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