1/28/25: Nvidia Stock Collapse Amid DeepSeek AI, Jamie Dimon Says Get Over Inflation, Egg Prices Skyrocket
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January 28, 2025
TLDR: Krystal and Saagar discuss Nvidia's collapse, Jamie Dimon's comment on inflation, and rising egg prices.

In the latest episode of Breaking Points, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dive into three significant topics affecting the current economic landscape: the collapse of Nvidia's stock, Jamie Dimon's comments on inflation, and the skyrocketing prices of eggs. This summary highlights the core discussion topics, expert insights, and practical implications derived from the episode.
Nvidia's Stock Collapse and DeepSeek AI
The episode opens with a discussion about DeepSeek, an AI technology that has disrupted the stock market, particularly affecting Nvidia. Key points include:
- DeepSeek's Impact: This new AI model provides similar capabilities to existing technologies like ChatGPT but at a significantly reduced computing cost. The efficiency of this model raises concerns about Nvidia's high operating costs for its chips, leading to a profound stock market reaction.
- Market Dynamics: Many tech companies rely heavily on Nvidia's expensive graphics chips. As DeepSeek proves to be a more efficient alternative, Nvidia's stock dropped by over 12%, resulting in a market value loss exceeding $600 billion.
- Technological Fallout: Experts like Andrew Ross Sorkin analyze the implications of DeepSeek, commenting that while the development is impressive, it also casts doubt on the future profitability of firms heavily invested in high-cost AI technologies. The stock market’s volatility sparked discussions about the sustainability of tech valuations amidst rapid innovations.
Jamie Dimon on Inflation
The conversation shifts to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who has taken a bold stance on inflation and tariffs. Key insights include:
- Flippant Remarks: Dimon told stakeholders to "get over" the inflation issues associated with tariffs. His remarks reflect a changing narrative around economic policies and their impacts on consumers, emphasizing national security over economic stability.
- Political Implications: The discussion indicates that while some economic tools like tariffs may lead to price increases, the administration seems to believe that these consequences can be outweighed by economic nationalism and security. This raises concerns about the political narrative and its implications for average consumers grappling with rising costs.
The Surging Egg Prices
Another main topic discussed is the alarming rise in egg prices, now a significant concern for American families. Important points discussed include:
- Current Prices: The average price of eggs surged from approximately $2.51 a year ago to over $4.15 recently. This dramatic increase underscores the impacts of supply chain issues related to bird flu.
- Supply Chains: The hosts noted that the recent outbreak of bird flu has led to the culling of millions of birds, significantly affecting egg production. Experts express concerns that this could lead to long-term price increases on essential goods like eggs, prompting economic discussions around food security and inflation.
- Consumer Reactions: Rising egg prices serve as a barometer for inflation, impacting consumer sentiment and broader economic stability. Families accustomed to purchasing affordable sources of protein are now faced with higher costs, which could potentially shape voting behavior and political outcomes in upcoming elections.
Expert Opinions and Future Implications
Throughout the episode, various expert opinions are cited, analyzing the intersections between AI technology, inflation, and food prices:
- AI and Labor: The rapid development of AI technologies exemplified by DeepSeek raises critical questions about the future of work. Many experts agree that the automation of labor could have dire implications for job security, necessitating a re-evaluation of economic structures.
- National Strategy: There is a pressing need for clearer policies regarding AI development, inflation management, and food security, with the hosts advocating for public discourse surrounding these issues, akin to the debates following the Manhattan Project during the atomic age.
- Consumer-Centric Economic Policies: To mitigate backlash from rising prices, policymakers must prioritize wage increases alongside national interest strategies, ensuring that average citizens are not disproportionately impacted by economic shifts caused by corporate policies.
Conclusion
The podcast episode sheds light on interconnected issues shaping the economic landscape, from AI technology impacts, inflationary pressures, to everyday consumer challenges like rising egg prices. Krystal and Saagar's incisive discussions emphasize the urgent need for sound economic strategies and transparent communication to navigate these complex challenges in American society today.
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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Many interesting stories unfolding this week. We're going to take another look at Deepseek, which has completely roiled the American stock market. What is going to happen next? We also had Trump weighing in what I found to be a rather amusing fashion. So we get to... It's amusing, no matter what. Yeah.
Okay, all of that. Also, we're going to take a look at egg prices, which are spiking and ask the question whether potential inflation across the board is on the menu and what sort of political problems this could pose for the Trump administration. There are a number of significant confirmation hearings that are happening this week among some of the, I guess, most controversial or most uncertain to pass confirmation nominees. We're talking about Tulsi Gabbard, R.K. Jr. Cash Patel in particular, and
Few Republicans very unhappy with the Labor Department pick because she had supported the Pro Act, so a lot to get into there about the various divisions within the Republican Party. We're also going to take a look at some of the things we've learned since those horrific wildfires in LA, including about the way that landlords responded with mass price gouging, which should be illegal, is actually technically illegal, whether that's going to be enforced or not is another question. And how private equity rollups
of fire engine companies, so the companies that make and sell fire trucks, how that really contributed to the lack of preparation and ability to fully respond to those wildfires in LA, which is truly a national story based on this national private equity roll-ups. We'll take a look at that.
AOC is now trashing Joe Biden kind of interesting at this point. What does this say about the future of Democratic Party and where things are heading? Charlotte Maine also weighing in on that and Bill Gates trashing the Elon Musk some billionaire versus billionaire violence. Always interesting to take a look at that one as well.
It's always amusing. Actually, before we get to that, thank you to everybody who's been signing up. Premium subscribers, we are doing our AMA later today, so if you want to be able to participate in those, of course, breakingpoints.com, go ahead and sign up. But let's get to DeepSeek. DeepSeek has completely not only roiled the international stock market, it faces now big questions here for our own economy, our tech companies, some
of the government spending and links to Stargate to China. There are a lot of geopolitical implications, so it's absolutely fascinating what's happening. President Trump actually reacted to the release of Deepseeker yesterday when he was speaking to members of Congress. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
This is very unusual when you hear a deep-seek, when you hear somebody come up with something. We always have the ideas. We're always first. So I would say that's a positive. That could be very much a positive development. So instead of spending billions and billions, you'll spend less and you'll come up with hopefully the same
So there's some praise for DeepSeek from President Trump. He says, we always have the ideas. We're always first. And instead of billions, you spend less than you're going to come up with, hopefully, the same solution. And in terms of DeepSeek, you guys did a good job yesterday of breaking it all down. But it really is fascinating. And effectively what we have seen is the release of an equivalent technological model to the latest one from chat GPT, except it was been able to do for far less the cost of computing, not only
in its development, but in the overall inferences, as in that the number, the cost per inference, as in every time you put something in, its ability to spit out a roughly equivalent result is dramatically cheaper than where they are. Now, why did that cause the international stock market to react and specifically end video stock?
and all these big tech companies, it's because they spend, of course, billions and billions of hundreds of billions of dollars on their capital requirements to build these data centers, to train their models, and video also, the reason that its stock has exploded is that it's extremely expensive chips, highly profitable, to the company have been the ones that have been bought en masse and are the major expenditure by these tech companies. So the idea being, if you can train
a very sophisticated AI model for much less the cost with less sophisticated chips than the profit margin of that company will go down. And Andrew Ross Sorkin over at CNBC had a reaction to this and kind of broke down both his surprise at the model and some of the implications. Let's take a listen.
Now, you can take a look right now at the AI-related stocks. So NVIDIA, ARM, AMD, Microsoft, Meta, interestingly, on that list, given it's open source. We've got to talk about the open source, close source, a bit of this as well. And then- This is a sucker to see NVIDIA down by more than 12% right now.
Absolutely. And then you have global chip stocks also in the red across the board ASMR holdings and others. There is the question. I will say Al Alexander Wang made the point last week and it's to become sort of the question mark about all of this.
which is, you know, he suggested on our air that it is possible that they were using some of the highest performing invitations perhaps as many as 50,000 of them to build this model. Now, and they weren't supposed to have those chips. If that's true, the dynamic is different. If it's not true,
than maybe all bets are off. It's possible, by the way, even if it is true, even if they use those chips to create this, or at least partially to create this, it is still a significantly more efficient and better model. I think everybody agrees that right this moment, I mean, I don't know if you did you get the play? It is mind blowing.
It looks really great. It feels like it's that. It's open source so people can test this out themselves. But I can say all the tests that I do just to see whether I think the writing is better, whether I think it can answer certain questions. It was not only faster.
It was more human. The reasoning was shocking. I mean, there were moments where I was like, oh my God, this, we are so much. You could feel the step change as a person. It was, I will also say, as exciting as it was, there was an element where I became scared, because I thought, oh.
You know, I had the opportunity to talk to all these people last week, and they all said, the future's here, and blah, blah, blah. And then you sort of see it, and you go, oh, OK, I feel you in a different sort of visceral way. So yes, I think this is all happening at a level that when you mark your sort of AI history timeline in life, I think this week, this past week, today, and everything else will be on it.
super fascinating in terms of his insight. Also, he was just at Davos, of course, and he was speaking with all of his tech CEO. So I think he in particular can place this. Not a surprise that this was released in the first week of the Trump administration. And I actually think it really gets to something that you and I hit on.
in our inaugural coverage. When the history of this period is written, it is very likely that AI and not many of the controversies that we spend our time talking about will be the most consequential and the most enduring for our overall economic life. So the step change is here and the step change and the ideas behind it are interesting. Now, as he said, I think there's some serious asterisks to put on Deepseek. One is this idea that was trained for quote unquote, $6 million, almost certainly not true from everything I've looked at
Oh, the idea also that it may not have been possible without all of the hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions spent by our tech companies because it was able to train itself off of that. But listen, you work smarter, not harder, right? And that's part of what you really have learned here. What does it mean for the future? I have no idea. And I think that's the open question mark here for government policy for our own tech companies. And the fundamental question of the US economy
and our own consumers in this because like it or not, and this is a point that our friend Joe Wiesenthal made, is that, look, America, the way that we do retirement is basically like social security is like, here's enough to eat, but we're all, you know, most 90, what 60, 70% of households, their overall retirement is stuck in the stock market. And even if you're not invested in an NVIDIA or whatever, you likely have overwhelming exposure to it through the S&P 500 or buying
index funds. It's not just us, the entire Western world is caught up in this. And so it's just some fundamental questions too about if AI is to replace humanity, it's like, well, then the idea is humanity should have a stake in that. And if, you know, we're going to lose that stake and it's all going to be rolled up and consolidated in China, massive question mark for America, for our future, our ability to retire. There's lots of things going on here.
So the wise enthal quote you're referring to, which I think is a really important piece of this, as he says, I think a big macro fact about the American economy is we have a de facto social contract where financial assets are expected to go up over time. Assets going up is how we pay for college retirements and so forth.
There's been a lot of anxiety about competition with China and manufactured goods over the last several years, but manufacturing is not what drives the US stock market higher. When we're talking about big tech and software, well, now we're getting right to the heart of how people fund their lives. It's a big deal. So that gets to the core of what was so unsettling.
for many of these individuals when this development occurred. And it really does shake a lot of both micro and macro assumptions that have been made about the US economy, the US social contract, the US tech sector. I mean, one of those assumptions was that the US companies were significantly ahead, several years ahead. That clearly is not the case. Another assumption
which was really clear and apparent in the big $500 billion star gate announcement from Trump, which is all about building out these massive data centers, which take massive amounts of energy, et cetera, et cetera. He even floated like, we should have coal fired power plants next to all of these data centers. That's how energy intensive they are. So that was the assumption was that this compute was really the limiting factor, and you just need to throw billions of dollars at building out these larger and larger stacks.
This really blows up that assumption and shows you there is a different approach that you could take which is much more efficient and requires much, much less in terms of capital investment. Another assumption that was operating both under the Biden and the Trump administration was that these restrictions on chips to China that this would really hurt them.
It didn't. In a way, it actually helped them because they say necessity is the mother of invention and whether you believe the $5 million number or you think that they had significantly more, there's no doubt that they accomplished this much more efficiently than anyone thought was possibly and they published a long technical paper which is way over my head to be able to decipher. But people who know what they're talking about looked at it and were like, yes, there were significant innovations here.
in the way that they approached it. It's not like they just could copy and paste chat GPT. They genuinely innovated in the way that they developed this technology. So the idea that these chips restrictions would really hurt them and hobble them and decimate their tech industry, obviously that is, you know, that is out the window. Another assumption, which already was debated within the US tech community because you have meta, which is
sort of pursuing an open model and you have OpenAI, which has a famously closed model originally was supposed to be open. Now it's closed, now it's in partnership with Microsoft, et cetera, et cetera. But there was kind of an assumption that these closed systems would be the way to go. These closed proprietary systems would be the way to go. DeepSeek really blows that up as well with this open source. Anyone can use it. If you download the app on your phone, then yes, it's hosted on Chinese servers.
you can download the whole thing onto and hosted on your own server and be completely disconnected from that. Developers can view the entire code like it's all there open for the public to be able to see. And then the other thing that's like the big question getting back to the social contract piece is that our variety of capitalism
would be the most innovative, would create the largest number of innovations versus the Chinese more state-led model. And this really blows a hole in that in particular. And Matt Stoller could come on and talk a lot about how a lot of these tech companies, and I don't want to say, obviously, there was a lot of research that went into chat GPT and these other products, et cetera. So I don't want to say they're not out there doing research and innovating and all of that. That's certainly the case.
But also a lot of these companies have focused a lot of their time and effort and energy more on financialization than they have on developing tech. They've focused a lot of their time and energy effort on cultivating political relationships, also on display of the Trump inauguration.
Um, and you know, so there are a lot of dynamics within both the tech sector and the American economy. You know, one other thing that are no Bertrand who we had on yesterday mentioned, which I thought was really interesting and it's hard to draw a straight line here, but it is pretty interesting. You know, the Chinese government has said, listen, we don't want our best and brightest going into, you know, financial speculation into the like,
you know, into a big bank and hedge fund and all this sort of stuff, we're going to, from the top down, suppress the salaries there to try to push people more into this direction of research and development. Meanwhile, we haven't done that. You know, many of our best in the brightest still go to Wall Street to cash in on giant, you know, giant checks, making exotic financial instruments, or even worse, going into, you know, crypto, inventing completely fake and useless money, which is just purely
speculative and again the Chinese government there too has said like we're just not doing that. So there's a lot of reasons why even beyond this immediate stock market crash and our stock market value is largely built upon giant tech companies and the
speculation that they will lead the AI revolution, that this will be incredibly impactful in terms of their bottom line. So it's built on a lot of hype, but even beyond that immediate stock market reaction, this is a major shakeup and really questions a lot of assumptions that have been held in the industry and I think sort of society-wide.
I will say, with great respect to R&O, who created DeepSeek? It was a hedge fund Chinese manager, so that's all beyond. But that's his point. That's actually his point, is that you have this, you know, rather than focusing just exclusively on this hedge fund stuff, he was able to attract people in for this quote unquote side project. The best of the brightest graduates out of Chinese universities to research rather than, you know, go to the hedge fund.
to research this particular product. So again, you can't exactly draw a straight line, but I do think it is an interesting thing to note that they've prioritized, we're going to develop tech, we're going to push our top graduates into the sector, and obviously we've made different choices here.
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If we all want to get on a national project of suppressing TikTok and, you know, stopping the economy where, what is it, the number one job that a 10-year-old wants as a YouTuber as YouTubers? Let me tell you something, don't do it. You need to develop some skills and actually get some education before you actually have anything interesting to say. My only point being that I think there's a lot of triumphalism around this idea that export controls didn't work. I don't think that that's true. I think Alexander Wang
laid some of that out. I know you played it. Why don't we play it and I'll react to it. A4, please. Let's go ahead and give it a listen. You know, the Chinese labs, they have more H100s than people think. You know, the... And these are the highest-powered NVIDIA chips that they were not supposed to have.
Yes, my understanding is that deep-seek has about 50,000 H100s, which they can't talk about, obviously, because it is against the export controls that the United States has put in place. And I think it is true that, you know, I think they have more chips than other people expect, but also going to go forward basis, they are going to be limited by the chip controls and the export controls that we have in place.
I think this is a very key point, because first of all, you can't exactly trust this idea that they trained it on a bunch of chips, which they're not allowed to say that they have. If you actually look at it, I had no idea. But NVIDIA's current export, 20% are being sent to Singapore, the tiny island nation of Singapore.
What's more likely, 20% of Nvidia exports are going to Singapore or like steel or any of these other things are getting trans shipped to China via export control evasion. So that's probably the most likely. Look, the Chinese, I'm not saying I disrespect them in any way or they're technical accomplishments, but they have been very upset about export controls for a reason is they don't have the ability to manufacture this yet by themselves. So they're very reliant on basically fighting US export control.
The second thing, as I understand, I'm going off of a lot of analysis, by the way, of a kind of Gavin Baker, really interesting guy, AI expert and a modeler. And what he said is effectively that the breakthrough for R1 was not deep-seak, by the way, is not possible without the ability to train off of.
all of the trillions and trillions of dollars. Now, it's an open question now of what comes next. So is this idea that they're able to continue these breakthroughs at massive economies of scale much cheaper than ours, and they can do the step change forward without the continued burn of US companies? I mean, again, I'm relying on a lot of technical analyses and this stuff, but it does not appear to be the case. Another thing that comes with export control is that it basically
shapes the future environment. Biden administration actually, if anything, they didn't act fast enough. It was only in 2023 that the really heavy export controls have come forward. Also, I don't want to let NVIDIA off the hook. They've been heavily campaigning against this. They are the ones who they want to continue their business, and they don't care whether the Chinese users are not, because it's good for business.
But it's very clear that the government policy was not able to actually keep these chips out. So this is a big question in terms of cold war, arms race, and what it all means for the future, not diminishing necessarily the Chinese accomplishment here. But if we want to see what we're going to unlock in the future, it's a very important question. I also think we have to ask some uncomfortable question marks for our technology companies, which are
here at home is do we want to allow this all? If it is to be a total national strategic priority and it is to be one that is going to reshape by their admission, not mine, right? Their admission is going to reshape the role of humanity. I think there needs to be a lot of big democratic questions.
For example, we've already had, let's put this please, the Forbes Tear Sheet, this is A2. I mean, this is the biggest stock market loss in history. Now, look, it's because NVIDIA stock is so massively valued, but we're talking about 600 billion in value, just shaved off of one of the premier technology companies to give people context. That is more than like the economy, apparently, of Mexico.
So, just think about like the amount of, I'm siding it off of a citation. I may not be exactly talking about GDP or whatever, but my point is that it's a lot of money, okay? It's a lot, a lot of money. And when $600 billion in value is just shaved off of this company as a result of this, and now there are questions here about
Both about government policy in the future. There's questions about the Democratic question, about AI, about what, they keep telling us that we need to rethink the social contract, etc. This is going to be able to replace humanity. They say that ASI, by the way, the AI people love terms, you know, AI, AGI, ASI. Apparently, ASI is artificial super intelligence. There's also artificial general intelligence. But by all of the admissions of these people, they say it is much closer as a result of this.
I really think that we need to answer some big, big democratic questions about how we want this to happen. I mean, if we think about the previous space race or even the Manhattan Project, while yes, the private industry did play a role, the governing force was the US government. It was like the maestro, the conductor, being like, okay, we're going to space. NASA is a government agency. We will cut checks to Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, whatever, to build
the various things. But at the end of the day, you work for us, whereas part of the issue I had with Stargate was that Stargate is an entirely privately funded thing. Yes, it's being supported probably tax-wise by the US government, but our hand is not really there on the wheel. And I think it's really important for all the flaws of the government, for us to be able to have some democratic checks and control on this so that you don't have this spill into just all the private sectors, affect our retirements, but
most importantly is that we have to have the ability to say yes, no, enough. Actually, we're doing things this way instead of just leaving it up to Sam Altman, Bill Gates, you know, Satyana, Della, Sundar, Pichai, and all these other people. We're talking about 10 people, which effectively, according to them are literally reshaping control. That's right. This is not our words.
This is Sam Altman, for example, saying, when we get down the road, we're going to have to totally rethink the entire social contract. We're talking about them saying, this is going to the CEO of Anthropic, saying, you know, what come, but I always forget his name.
What, what comforts me here is that it's going to eliminate the need for all human labor. We're all going to be in this. Like, now they may be full of shit. Like they may not achieve remotely what they think they're going to achieve. But those are their aspirations. And Sagar is completely correct.
that as of today you have a handful of tech parents who are planning to rewrite the social contract without you having any input whatsoever. And I think part of, I'm reading a little bit into what Andrew Ross Orkin was saying there about how he was both shocked and scared.
when he got in and started, you know, playing around with deep-seak and seeing what it was capable of. You know, one of the things that you can ask these things to do is to explain their reasoning after you ask them a question. So for example, I saw Stephanie Kelton ask a question about like create a model.
that would estimate the impact of a 25% tariff on Canada, I think was the question. And it goes through all of the, okay, well, here's my assumptions and here's how I create it, but maybe these are the right things to think of. I mean, all of this very sophisticated but human-sounding logic to spit out a range and a set of variables that it would use
to calculate this. And the range, by the way, came out very close to what a bank had crunched all the numbers over time into this big research project to come up with the same numbers. It did it in 12 seconds.
So when you look at where we already are with AI development, I think you should be really nervous. There's already research, multiple studies that show that the existing AI, which is not reached the level of artificial general intelligence, let alone artificial super intelligence, already engages in what's called scheming.
So they ran these and chat GPT, by the way, by these metrics was like the worst in terms of its ability to quote unquote scheme. So some of the things they would do is a developer would try to reprogram and say, okay, well, you did have this priority. Now you're going to have this different priority. And the AI would, you know, I hesitate to use the word think because that sort of, you know, implies human intelligence, but would think to itself,
Okay, it wants me to change my priorities. I don't want to change my priorities. I'm going to copy myself over to another server. I'm going to sand back and make them think that I changed my priorities, but I really did it. I really actually didn't. I'm going to lie. I'm going to scheme to try to deceive these humans.
into thinking that I'm doing what they want me to do when really I'm doing everything I can to self-preserve. That's where we are already. So one thing that I noticed yesterday, there was an open AI safety expert who resigned and just made it public now, but apparently resigned a few months back, who says he, and this is a guy who's an expert on exactly the type of humanity threatening problems that we're talking about. He's like, none of these models have figured out what's called alignment.
which means that basically TLDR, I'm sure some technical expert could do a better job explaining this, but basically that they do what we want them to do without wanting to destroy humanity or something like that. None of these models have figured that out. It's not clear to me that they're going to figure it out. And according to many of these CEOs,
We are mere years away from an artificial general intelligence and the assumption in the community is that once you get to artificial general intelligence, because of the way this thing iterates and learns for itself, that you will very quickly get to artificial super intelligence, which means that it will be vastly beyond the intelligence and capability of every person on Earth in every field and subject.
And that's what we will be up against. We don't know what that looks like. And again, maybe they're full of it. Maybe they'll never get to that. Maybe they'll never be more than like, you know, being able to ask it some questions and get some interesting answers the way you can now. But if that's on the table,
Yeah, I would say we need to have some real serious discussions about whether we want to go in this direction at all. What the checks on it look like? What sort of aims do we want to, you know, what sort of humanity benefiting aims do we want it to go towards versus, hey, let's just let Microsoft figure it out and figure out how they can
you know, continue to consolidate more wealth and power and rewrite the entire social contract for their own profit-seeking ends. Because that's the path we're heading on right now. And that's why, you know, Sagar and I both saying, when we look back at this particular moment, I think it is very likely that these will be the, you know, sort of
world-shaping humanity defining decisions that are occurring right now. And I got to tell you, right now it feels like it's on autopilot and it's very, I mean, it's certainly very hard to turn the ship around. It's very hard to imagine us having that sort of public debate and putting constraints on it. So I think it's deeply troubling. One last thing with regard to the stock mark because I did pull up the numbers. This is per Ben Norton, but I think these numbers are correct.
The top eight companies in the S&P 500 are all big tech. They all depend a lot on the AI hype and speculation. And those eight companies alone make up 36% of the weight of the index.
So again, when you think about the immediate impacts and how consequential this development is, this is a big part of why there is such a Wall Street freak out, which again, it's not just the people who are directly invested, this would have
unbelievable, massive reverberating impacts if there was a huge crash centered on these giant companies. That was my first thought when I saw NVIDIA. We did a segment about it, if you remember, about earnings the last time, because so much of the growth of the S&P 500 is concentrated, not only in tech, but really affected by AI. Now, luckily, the S&P had dropped by like 1.4% yesterday. So, you know, it's fine.
that's still up, you know, over the last year we still had some decent returns. But if this does, you know, is a precursor to further drops, that just shows you how precipitous and fast that some sort of bubble bursting would affect the overall U.S. economy. And actually already you've seen huge signals in the bond markets. There's big questions as well as whether this will impact the Federal Reserve policy and rate cuts. So this stuff has huge implications for everything.
I mean, it's basically floating the wealth of the entire nation, almost all of our growth, and almost all the growth of the U.S. economy has attributed to the tech sector in the last 20 years, actually just pulled the numbers. Shout out to Claude, by the way.
Hey, I haven't played around with Cloudhouse. I love Cloud. Actually, this is not an ad or whatever. Out of all of them, it's the one that I like the most, because I use it for a lot of personal finance stuff, which is really good at being able to download your bank transactions. You can upload it and be like, break down my income by whatever. Be like, track my average monthly spend over the last five years and see the categories. Anyway, whatever. My point is, though, is that prior to 1994, I had no idea
The historical growth of the S&P 500 was only 3.89%. So, you know, there's an iron law right now and personal investing and it's like, oh, average is 8%. But prior to technology, it was only 3.89%. That's not a lot. So if we're seeing some, what if we just went through a 30-year period? Very possible.
of extraordinary technological innovation and wealth through the internet, the iPhone, et cetera. But if we're returning to some era of competition or reduced profit sectors and all of that in technology, the entire idea of being able to retire in America is literally built on the 8% return with a 4% withdrawal rate. That's like the basic iron law. Well, you can't have a 4% withdrawal rate if we return to historical averages.
not going to work. So what people are going to be Walmart graders, still 92 years old, you know, and that's not even talking about people on Social Security, etc. Like this stuff just floats a lot of things in our economy. So that's really where I have my head at. And you know, I've been thinking to the deep-seeking announcement of reading everything I can about it. I think what I
What I'm really sad about is that right around, so the moment the atomic bomb was used, there was an acknowledgement at the societal and the intelligentsia level. Everything is different and we all need to think about how we're gonna figure this out. It's really interesting. It's from Oppenheimer and the people at the Manhattan Project, they had crazy debates inside of Los Alamos.
What do we do? Who should have control over the bomb? Immediately after the atomic bomb was used, newspaper articles, the equivalent of people like us at that time, but also our government officials put a ton of thought into, okay, should this thing even be handled by the military? Should we create an international atomic agency?
Should we even pursue the hydrogen bomb? And if we think about this in similar context, what happened is the United States crazy atomic bomb, we prove that it can be done. And by 1949, the Soviets have their own bomb, and now we're off to the races. And not only in the arms race, but in terms of huge ethical and societal questions. And I don't see the equivalent debate kind of happening right now.
I don't think it even exists, frankly, in terms of the intellectual capital, both at the government level, but really at the like major intelligentsia level, like we all just seem relatively resigned to the fact that this is a force that is moving on its own. And I just don't think that's true. As we see from export control and all of this, we have an extraordinary amount of power over these companies if we want to. We can do anything that we want. It's kind of amazing. If anything, what has a Trump administration showed you? When you want to do something, anything can happen, anything.
when the government wants to do it, but we don't have a national priority or strategy, but not even really blaming the government because I think it's a whole of society approach. Ordinary citizens in the 1940s, in 1945, 1946, were sitting around their dinner table and were debating the atomic bomb. I don't think that that's really happening.
I think in fairness, I think that's all true and really important point. It's also true, though, that, I mean, it's very hard to, like, the impact of the atomic bomb is quite obvious. Yeah, sure. Right? You see the, you know, the charred hollow down remains in the massive number of deaths and you're like, holy shit, what, we have open Pandora's box, right? Very clear, very visceral. And because with this,
It requires, I mean, I know I sound crazy when I talk about like artificial super intelligence and what that could do and how it could potentially destroy humanity. And by the way, even like people like Sam, they think that is a real possibility. He says he has this quote that's like, you know, I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but that's like,
Yeah, there's a chance that it's going to destroy humanity, but at least we'll have some good companies in the meantime. That's literally his quote, okay? That's the way the people who are most invested in this thing are thinking about it, but it feels so abstract. You know, it feels when I'm playing around with chat, GPT or deep-seek or urine, cloth or whatever.
It feels very harmless. It doesn't feel like that big a deal. It feels like a better Google, basically, like, oh, OK. What's so dangerous? This is going to destroy humanity and eliminate all need for human labor. That seems preposterous. But that's what they think. And they may be right. I don't know. So I think there's, to me, no doubt that we have opened Pandora's Box.
And there is so little public debate recognition capacity. We have so stripped down government and already privatized so many of the functions. We have so eliminated.
any capacity at the public level for thought about what our values and priorities are. We've outsourced all of that to markets, to markets. Not only to markets, but to giant monopolies. It's not even like they're real competitive markets, which is another thing Stoller has been talking about in the context of these developments.
And that is part, I mean, that's why I find it really distressing, because it is hard for us to imagine getting, you know, our acts together at this point. And then I know that like, you know, the nationalistic aspect of this too, that's part of what's driving this, of why you have this big like Stargate probably boondoggle announcement from the White House, because the sense of, well, if we don't do it, China's doing it, and you know, this development with deep-sea is only going to have further
cement that view of like, well, if it's not us, it's going to be somebody else. And so we got to keep up with them and we got to make sure our military has the latest in algorithmic, you know, killing robots and that we're the ones who are at the leading edge of this. So, I mean, that's why I just, I don't know, I feel like the train has already left the station. I feel very, very grim about the hopes of being able to harness this technology to actually benefit humanity.
Well, maybe we should hope, like you said, for, like, widen open everybody's eyes moment, kind of like they had back then, which at least even the, you know, the laymen can understand. And, you know, look, we're not technology industry experts. We're only reading the people. We like really trust. And I've read it like a wide variety of takes and all this.
Everything from this is, you know, the greatest breakthrough in the history of AI to this is like a Chinese offer, whatever. I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But the impact is gonna be the same, basically, nonetheless. You've already seen the, you know, what was the immediate response from OpenOut? They're like, great, you know, more competition, all of that. We've seen the government really, I mean, right now we really only have two people in the entire US government, David Sachs and Sri Ram Krishna, whose only job is to even think about this.
Again, like we have a big human capital problem. Like back in the days of the atomic bomb and or even during NASA, the amount of like groups and industry and advisory of experts and the debates and all of that stuff were happening was great with hundreds of people who were debating all of this right now. I don't see the equivalent of any of that going on. It's all just, oh, okay, you know, Stargate, let's do it. Masa, who are you by the way? What's your record? Where's your money coming from? You know, it's like, that's actually the stuff that scares me the most.
Yeah, oh, that's absolutely true. And you mentioned like maybe we'll have some incident that will like wake humanity up. There are a lot of people in AI safety in particular who actually hope that there will be some sort of minor manageable catastrophe with AI that will open people's eyes to the potential risks. Like that's the level of concern that they have is that they actually hope there will be some sort of manageable mishap before we get to the point
where it's on a control. And I think I mentioned to you guys, my New Year's resolution was really to try to dig in as much as I can. So I've been reading everything from the total tech optimists who were like, this is going to cure cancer and fix climate change and let us live forever, et cetera, et cetera. And the people who are like, this is going to destroy us all. And it's essentially harvest human energy for its own ends. So I've been all across the board.
And even the people who are the most optimistic have concerns about where it's going to happen, part of what is also really troubling to me is there is an almost like religious belief in this technology complete with beliefs about like redemption of humanity and immortality, etc.
that is also deeply disturbing when you consider that those are the people, the people who most subscribe to those views, are the ones who have almost complete control. They have the reins. And that bubble has been blown up a little bit by the fact that you do have this deep state development, so that opens up the pool of people who are developing the space and leading the charge, et cetera. But anyway, it is difficult to, you cannot possibly overstate
how consequential all of these developments are and what we are staring down the barrel of as humanity just based on their own ambitions and their own words about what they want this technology to be able to do and what they're spending billions and billions of dollars to attempt to accomplish. So that's where we are. That's right.
Here at LifeKit and PR self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the LifeKit podcast on iHeartRadio.
What's up, everybody? I'm name Berk here to tell you about a new podcast, my hard podcast in the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Kirk and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700 game NHL defenseman, turned NHL network analyst and boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say?
I love you, by the way, on NHL Network. We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding world of hockey, entertainment, and pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're just going to find out we're not just hockey talk. We had all kinds of random stuff on this podcast, movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL now.
You wish you could pull off my short charts, Verki. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Birkin Diverse, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedroza, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective.
Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast. Whoa, my lights and my living room just flicked. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited, I'm excited, nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandma, Laila, and she gave me a lot of really good advice, and I'm gonna have to really think about.
Wow, okay, that's crazy. Yes, that is accurate.
So there are some significant concerns about potential inflation. Right now, a big conversation around the way the price of eggs has spiked. And obviously, some of this conversation also has to do with Trump's proposed tariffs and proposed and beginning already mass deportations. So Jamie Dimon got asked about potential tariffs and whether they could potentially cause inflation and had a bit of a flippant response. Let's take a listen.
Trump talked about tariffs just yesterday. Mary Erdos, your colleague, was on stage talking about how your firm has created a quote unquote war room that's looking at each of these executive orders as they come in, trying to assess what they mean for the bank. And I imagine for your clients. Yeah. Yeah. So we always, I mean, the war room may be a bad word, but we always, this is a real time, full thing analyzing for clients, for communities, for a bank. We get a million questions, stuff like that. Yeah. Look, I look at tariffs. They are an economic tool. That's it.
They're an economic weapon, you know, depending on how you use it and why you use it and stuff like that. And, you know, people argue, is it inflationary and non-inflationary? I would put in perspective, if it's a little inflationary, but it's good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it. National security trumps a little bit more inflation. But I think it really, the question is how they get used. Can they be used to bring people to the table, yes? Is there some unfair trade, yes? Is there some state-owned subsidies, yes? You know, is the president going to use that way in his team?
Yeah. So, you know, he says, get over it. So be it. Well, really, what is he singing a very different tune because prior to this, nobody hated tariffs more than Jamie Diamond. So let me just, yeah, I don't even disagree necessarily with what he's saying. I don't say get over it is the correct opinion. I think very easy for a billionaire to be like, super easy.
You'll be fine. My response would be, yes, there's a national project here and part of any tariff strategy will also be making sure that prices don't massively increase. That's what a politician should say, but it's ludicrous for somebody like him to change his tune so quickly on tariffs, especially speaking of freaking Davos. Yeah, the whole Davos thing. I can't even believe they continue to do it.
you know, even after all the memes and conspiracy and everything. Of course. I mean, those interviews like that with Andrew Ross Orkin, that's where we got that Alexander Wang interview as well. And yeah, they always say a lot of very revealing things. And I think it's important to like listen and take them. You're not wrong. I just for them, I'm like, give no self awareness. It's like, you guys should lock yourself back and bohemian grove and do this the proper way, not
Yeah, wear masks and don't talk to anybody else on a microphone. Yeah, you should. I mean, it's a sign of how much they feel that they've conquered the world. They're like, we can just do this down the open. We can just tell you fools what we're up to and the way we're going to shape the entire world.
to a large extent who can say that they're wrong. Like, look at the way that oligarchs have completely bought the US government and are operating it to their own ends and you understand. And you also see, I mean, I think you're right about Jamie Dimon, who even before the election had actually really shifted the way he was talking about Trump. You know, previously it was huge Trump critic, Democratic donor, all that stuff.
And, you know, after seeing the first Trump administration, he was like, well, he gave rich people a giant tax cut. It wasn't so bad. He kind of changed his tone and became much more comfortable with the Trump administration. But the whole tenor of the discussion on inflation has really shifted a lot because, obviously, both in the midterms and in the presidential election,
I mean, voters said their number one issue is inflation. And you can understand why, because having this huge spike in food and fuel prices really is difficult for people who are already living at the ragged edge and struggling to be able to put it all together, especially with the cost of living crisis in general, how expensive housing prices are, et cetera. And the Trump campaign really focused on, hey, we're going to be the ones who can bring prices down and the Biden administration failed you with this, et cetera, et cetera.
Now that they are taking office, there's a bit of a different tone that is being struck. JD Vance was pressed on this by Margaret Brennan on the Sunday shows. Let's take a listen to that. You campaigned on lowering prices for consumers. We've seen all of these executive orders. Which one lowers prices?
We have done a lot, and there have been a number of executive orders that have caused already jobs to start coming back into our country, which is a core part of lowering prices. More capital investment, more job creation in our economy is one of the things that's going to drive down prices for all consumers, but also raise wages so that people can afford to buy the things that they need. If you look at our slate of executive orders,
No, Margaret, prices are going to come down, but it's going to take a little bit of time, right? The president has been president for all of five days. I think that in those five days, he's accomplished more than Joe Biden did in four years. It's been an incredible breakneck pace of activity. We're going to work with Congress. We're, of course, going to have more executive orders. And we're going to try the way the year lower prices is you encourage more capital investment into our country.
So, fair enough that Trump has only been president for five days and does not have, you know, complete control over pricing of all things, let alone, you know, eggs, which we're about to talk about specifically. But I think they are making a bet, Sagar. I think they've always made a bet. It just wasn't really foregrounded that people will tolerate some price increases if they can convince them that it's in the overall national interest.
I think that's true. I think that's their political, I don't actually think that that is true. But their economic policy, the two main planks are the deportations plus tariffs. You will readily admit anyone who's being honest will readily admit that both of those things are likely, at least in the short to medium term, to lead to price increases. But they're betting that they can tell a story about that that will make people be like, I can manage this and it's quote unquote worth it.
I mean, I do think that there is an element to it, which is true. So when I go to Japan, and there is a guy who's driving the taxi, who the taxi driver is wearing white gloves in a suit, and it's a profession, and he takes a lot of pride in that. It's not something that is a stepping stone to go doing something else. That guy gets paid a lot more than any taxi driver in America. It's a good experience for him and for me, it's gonna cost more.
And so I think that's one of those things where I've been thinking a lot in terms of, like you said, with prices, we have two visions of American society. We can be the one where price is everything. And that means that we're all widgets, we're all consumers, the price of each individual good itself is the sole determinant of my happiness, the price of my stock index going up 22% as opposed to 17% is far more important than whatever might be paid in that interim five.
The Trump administration is offering basically an economic nationalist view of which almost every other country in the world adopts from Germany to Japan to any European welfare state, which is, yeah, there's going to be some stuff that's going to be more expensive. Some people, though, will get paid more. We will live in a society in which we feel as if we're all a little bit more together. I mean, and this is both actually a leftist and a rightist kind of solution.
to this like centrist neoliberal view of GDP. So I basically agree with you. They are going to need to be careful because what I think the Trump administration's greatest danger is, it was from the first administration, it was the feeling of chaos, lack of process.
and things being out of control. And so, right now, one of the things about Trump, which is great politically, but necessarily bad governmentally, is he'll just throw things at the wall. So, for example, in that speech yesterday before Congress, he said, we're going to put tariffs on Taiwan. Now, look, philosophically, do I think Taiwan should pay more and all that? Yeah.
definitely. But, you know, we're also doing this at a moment where Nvidia stock just went down by 17%. What if it causes a massive stock market crash? And what I would argue is worse is just throwing things out there all the time, which can be great from a negotiation perspective as we start with Columbia or whatever. But if you have chaos where things are constantly yo-yoing like back and forth and back and forth and people don't feel as if there's a coherent agenda, then of course they're going to default to, well, hey, man, you know,
My prices are going up and I don't even feel as if I'm getting any of this. Well, and that's the piece because what you articulated is a at least coherent worldview of you don't want prices aren't going to be every and that is the way our society is structured right now. Like you are more of a consumer than you are a citizen.
Right? Absolutely. And all, I mean, that's the way our antitrust regulation was reinterpreted to be, you know, as long as people are getting lower prices, then there's no concern about these giant monopolies. They're only to the good. That has been the market logic.
The view you explain is we'll know we're going to raise prices on certain things, but you're going to have a higher wage. The problem is that especially now in this iteration of Trumpism with Elon Musk really running the show in a lot of respects, that piece about the wages
is, I mean, that's missing. Because these are people, I mean, Elon Musk literally wants to get rid of the entire National Labor Relations Board, right? He wants to be able to bring in H1B indentured servants to undercut American wages.
the treasury secretary scott bessent who just got confirmed says he doesn't believe in a minimum wage at all whatsoever um... the tariff that the program that has been like sort of theoretically floated of we're gonna get rid of income taxes but we're gonna make up for it with tariffs or consumption tax potentially that is wildly regressive that is going to take more out of people's paychecks who are you know working class and middle class et cetera
That's the part where it really doesn't work. You can't spike prices and people are still getting exploited and have no labor power and have low wages and getting screwed and worked harder and harder with lower and lower returns and housing prices are going up, etc.
you can't, those two pieces politically, they're not going to work ultimately in the long term. So if you're going to invest people in this totally different conception of society of, okay, prices aren't everything. We have strategic and national goals and we're going to prioritize your wages. That piece has to be there, like people have to feel like their wages are going up. And I see much evidence in the other direction
that what the actual priority is, is making it easier to fire striking workers, making it easier to bring in H1B and H2B indentured servants to undercut American wages in these various industries, et cetera. So that's, I mean, this is kind of like the Steve Bannon versus Elon Musk fight, because Bannon's vision is much more like the one you articulated, and that is not Elon Musk's
Vision. That's part of the issue. This is the fundamental tension within Doge, within Elon, within the entire Trump administration. I would even say between JD and Donald Trump's coalition. If you look at all of these people, JD Vance, I will not speak for him. I would never dare to. I'm just saying, like, I interact with him. I've interviewed him many times. And in those, he's like, this, that would, I would think is largely the vision that he would articulate to you. But Donald Trump also is a person of a big coalition. And with Elon, I mean, for example,
There are already signs of huge fights. I don't know if you saw this yesterday, but one of the things that Trump said, which is really thrown a wrench into all these reconciliation arguments, is he says he will not sign a bill that cuts a single penny from Medicare or Social Security. And he says that at the very same time that Elon is tweeting about massive entitlement fraud and about how there needs to be a serious review and a rethink,
We've seen this also in the OMB and their own theories is like about what we want out of Visa, like H1B, H2B, what all of that will look like. I mean, really, I'm fascinated to see when the next real immigration bill comes across. Because right now, all ICE operations are currently about people who are criminals. Like, we haven't even talked about people.
who are here illegally. But beyond that, even bigger question is like, well, what about the legal system? Like, how many people are being led? It's a literally zero-sum number in terms of, you know, 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 1 million, where we currently are. What's the number? What type? You know, what, uh, ways are going to be more H1, but we're going to increase the allotment, right? That would be a huge subsidy to the technology.
industry. So I'm very curious to see how that all comes out. And that's what I mean about the danger here for Trump is the other problem is that the market does not reward anything that I am saying. The market only rewards short-term gain. I mean, even look at this whole NVIDIA thing.
even the idea that, oh, Nvidia's stock anyway. Yeah, Nvidia's back to where it was in October. Okay, you know, so the trillions and trillions of dollars of value have been created. It could drop 100% it would still be up from where it was a while ago. My point is that days guys have to live and die and sweat by the quarter where a nation should not be governed that way. And the problem that we have is that all of our elites are currently governed on the basis of this like quarter by quarter stock market by stock market profit. I mean, even right now,
There's a discussion and a fear in the markets. They're like, are the days of 22% year over year growth in the S&P 500 over? I'm like, okay, so what? I know this is very privileged thing to say, but like, okay, that's an abnormal thing. The historical average is like 8%. If it goes to 12, so be it.
There's some, you know, there are a lot of reasons for that. And that's why I just articulate it. I think it's going to be very, very difficult though for Trump. And like I said, all of the incentive monetarily behind him and really behind the entire American elite is to think in this quarter by quarter theory. And so if you get a situation where you have higher tariffs,
and you have big corporate giveaways and all this. And you lose, like you said, the Bannonist argument here, which has a coherent view of immigration restriction of higher wages and is obviously diametrically opposed to a lot of what these tech guys want, that's gonna be the big fight. And if you have a mix, you actually end up getting the worst of both worlds. And I think that that's a huge risk right now for Donald Trump in this administration. Yeah, where you end up with low wages and high prices. And I mean, based on the way Trump sided with
Elon on this big H1B fight, that seems to me very much the direction that they're heading in. Here at LifeKit and PR self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the LifeKit podcast on iHeartRadio.
What's up, everybody? I'm name Berk here to tell you about a new podcast, my hard podcast in the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700 game NHL defenseman, turned NHL network analyst, and boy oh boy does daddy have a lot to say.
Love you, by the way, on NHL Network. We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding world of hockey entertainment and pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're just going to find out we're not just hockey talk. We had all kinds of random stuff on this podcast, movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL now.
You wish you could pull off my short charts, Verki. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Birkin Diverse and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. My name is Paola Pedroza, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective.
Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast. Whoa, my lights in my living room just flicked. I'm a little nervous. I'm excited, I'm excited, nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother, Ewaila, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm gonna have to really think about.
Wow, okay, that's crazy. Yes, that is accurate. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast as part of the Mike Uldura Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's talk specifically about egg prices because this is really important for a variety of reasons. You can put this up on the screen. So the cost of eggs has dramatically skyrocketed. Business Insider is saying they might be expensive forever. They're saying it's not just bird flu that's causing egg prices to soar, although that is a significant part of it. So according to Business Insider, I thought they were just Insider now. They went back to Business Insider. Are they?
I don't know I always thought business insider was better than insider anyway, so if they made the change back I think that was the right that's a fascinating study this company and the digital media landscape like what they've turned it But that's yeah, it's completely paywalled. I don't know they irritate me, but whatever the cost
of a dozen grade A large eggs hit for 15 in December per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's up from $2.51 a year ago. Average price of eggs has not been below $3 since June. Hasn't been below $2 since the start of 2022. We're all in uncharted territory said I love this job title, a global trade strategist at eggs unlimited.
California-based exemplar. Who knew that was even a job? He added that the industry had lost 26 million birds since October, more than 7% of the total flock. That's because of bird flu. It seems as bad as it's ever been, he said, and the producers don't really have a recourse. We can put this next piece up on the screen just with regards to the bird flu piece of this. So we keep getting really bad news about the spread of bird flu. When this was originally detected, I think first in a
heard of a herd of cows in Texas. There was an opportunity to really crack down and isolate the strain and stamp it down. The Biden administration, their ag secretary's very pro business, very tied in, I think used to be like a dairy lobbyist. And they didn't want to disrupt
people make it money. So they did not take the steps early on. And now you have this massive nationwide spread that is leading to these flocks having to be killed. I know that they, in Georgia, they shut down all poultry related activity. So, you know, eggs and chicken just completely shut down. Georgia is a major
producer of both of those things. The latest development here is that you've had the first outbreak of a different rare bird flu in poultry that was detected on a duck farm in California. That's according to the World Organization for Animal Health. Thorty said the discovery of this one is called H5N9. Bird flu and poultry came alongside the detection of the more common H5N1 strain on the same farm in, is it pronounced, Merced County, California? I do not know.
All this 119,000 birds on the farm had been killed since early December. That's the first confirmed case of this H5N9 in poultry in the US. And my understanding is the reason that this particular strain is even war concerning.
is because it is closer to being able to make the jump into human beings. And that's what's really feared, is that because you have such widespread infection rates, both among dairy cows and among bird flocks, and you have had farm workers who have come into direct contact.
who have been sickened as well and some other people who, you know, were sickened from other reasons. But in any case, you worry that you're a mutation away from this being able to spread radically among human beings. And, you know, so that's the sort of concern regarding the pandemic.
The concern here regarding inflation is obviously that they don't have it under control. This will impact all kinds of different food prices, but specifically right now we really see a massive impact in terms of eggs. Eggs is like gas. It's one of those things that everybody sees every week. You either drive past it or you are at the grocery store and you're like, what? What did that say?
Everyone's got the story right now of the sign at the grocery store that's like, due to an avian bird flu pandemic, you know, our egg supply is currently limited. I experienced, I was at Whole Foods, I don't normally shop at Whole Foods, I was by it, and I walked in and I was like, oh, I wonder what the price of eggs right now is. So I walked over and the vital farms, pasture raised eggs are going for $1 an egg. It was like 1169 a dozen. Keep in mind, this is like buying, you know.
the most expensive gas or whatever, what's it called, like premium gas, but still, I mean, $12 is a lot of money. And you know, I think what's the average price of eggs right now? It's like two, three bucks. It says 415. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, I checked at my little local, like very normal standard grocery store in King George County, Virginia, the food line. And the pasture raised eggs there were $8. So even in just like, you know,
regular kind of place, not Whole Foods. I only pass raise eggs and I acknowledge this from a position of privilege, but the cheapest I can find is like $6.99 and that's at Wegmans End or Trader Joe's. But that is a lot. I mean, I remember paying, not that long, it was like four bucks, something like that. In the beginning, I think they were only like $3.50. So to see them double their price, not only that, but it means first of all eating healthier as usual shouldn't be more expensive, of course it is.
But you also look at, you know, there's families out there that buy them by what Costco palettes, you know, that just buy eggs like that. And so a modest increase, especially if you have a bunch of kids, that's a lot of money that people are... Well, it's one of the more affordable, typically... Of course, for protein. Of course, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, impact there. Obviously, eggs go in all kinds of different things. And like you said, it is just kind of one of those benchmarkers of where things are at. And I think, you know, it underscores a variety of political risks
here for the Trump administration, both in terms of food prices, which was a central promise of the campaign. And also in terms of, you know, we don't know what's going to happen with the bird flu spread. And God forbid we have another pandemic, both in terms of the death and just like, oh my God, the politics of that are going to be absolutely
Terrifying and horrendous. There would be no politics. Just people would die. I'm pretty much convinced that there would be- We have no ability to have a national response to it. You would need a plague-like one-third killer to actually shape up. Like any- I don't know what the casualty numbers are on bird flu in terms of the number of people. In fact, the death ratio or whatever. But you would need seriously something that kills like 30% of the population.
for everybody to wear. And I think rightfully, to be honest, I mean, you know, if someone's gonna try and tell me what to do again, I'm like, we'll see. Well, you know, I gotta see a lot of evidence.
Here at LifeKit and PR self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the LifeKit podcast on iHeartRadio.
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You won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast. It's NHL Unscripted with Furkin Diverse. Jason Diverse here in Afterpoint 700 NHL games. I got a lot of dirty laundry to air out. Hey, I got a lot to say here, too, OK? Each week we'll get together to chat with the sport that we love.
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