| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| But still shake hands when it's done. | ||
| I'm so grateful for this opportunity. | ||
| And for the guys up in Highland Falls, I hope I haven't embarrassed them. | ||
| But I thank all of them and their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and wives and husbands because in the end we forget about their sacrifice. | ||
| And I've learned this intimately. | ||
| You don't serve alone. | ||
| You serve with your family. | ||
| And those families are just wonderful. | ||
| It's Frank Lunt, Senior Fellow at the Social Sciences Department of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are joined now by Heather Long to talk about the U.S. economy and concerns about an AI bubble. | ||
| She's a columnist and also chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. | ||
| Heather, welcome. | ||
| Hi, Mimi. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| So let's start very generally now. | ||
| How would you characterize the state of the U.S. economy right now? | ||
| I keep calling this a two-story economy. | ||
| You know, on the one hand, there's this AI boom going on that you reference. | ||
| Growth looks great. | ||
| Spending has been way stronger than many people anticipated this year, given the tariffs and all the other headwinds. | ||
| But the big butt is not everyone's feeling it. | ||
| There's a lot of struggle and strain for, I call it, the bottom 80%. | ||
| The new dividing line in America is around $170,000 in income a year. | ||
| People above that, the top 20% of earners, this has been a great year. | ||
| People below that, we can see it in our data, they're really treading water. | ||
| Their spending is just keeping up with inflation. | ||
| They're moving their spending into Costco. | ||
| That's the big winner this year. | ||
| You know, value hunting, bargain hunting is back. | ||
| Is this what's called a K-shaped economy? | ||
| Well, that's what I called it. | ||
| I believe I was the first one to call it the return of a K-shaped economy this summer. | ||
| Which means some people are going up and some people are going down. | ||
| And again, that dividing line is right around $170,000 a year. | ||
| I sometimes hear people say the dividing line is $100,000. | ||
| I don't think that's true. | ||
| That's not what we see in our data or in the national data. | ||
| What you see is basically folks above $170,000 a year. | ||
| That's the top 20% of earners. | ||
| They're benefiting from the stock market boom. | ||
| They're benefiting from rising home prices. | ||
| And they are benefiting from a very strong wages. | ||
| And they're just not that concerned about inflation. | ||
| They're still spending it. | ||
| And look at those credit cards. | ||
| Amex and the Chase Sapphire card just keep raising their fees, $800 a year fees. | ||
| And who's paying that? | ||
| The top 20%. | ||
| Meanwhile, the bottom 80% is really just facing rising cost of living and really having to be very selective. | ||
| So what's driving that? | ||
| What's driving that dichotomy in the economy? | ||
| A lot of things are driving it. | ||
| So number one, obviously not everybody owns stocks, and so isn't not everyone is benefiting from the stock market boom that's going on. | ||
| The other thing that's going on this year is this big transition in the labor market. | ||
| I've been calling it a frozen labor market all year. | ||
| Look, it's hard to get a job right now. | ||
| If you don't work in health care, there are almost no jobs available. | ||
| If we didn't have health care job gains this year, we would be negative. | ||
| We would be talking about the year of layoffs in 2025. | ||
| And so you certainly hear it from young people who are struggling to find work, but really, and because of that transition in the labor market, employers don't have to pay up, right? | ||
| The wage gains are getting smaller, and at the same time, the cost of living is rising. | ||
| And so that's the squeeze, right? | ||
| Pay isn't rising very fast, and cost of living inflation is creeping up. | ||
| That's what I call the middle-class squeeze. | ||
| Let's talk about artificial intelligence. | ||
| Is it a bubble? | ||
| And what does bubble mean in the economic sense? | ||
| Ooh, yes. | ||
| I mean, look, I would say probably it is a bubble. | ||
| I'm not a stock market picker. | ||
| People can watch CNBC for that. | ||
| But the real hard question is: are we in the first innings of a bubble or the last innings of a bubble? | ||
| What I would tell you that I think. | ||
| And bubble meaning it's kind of fake and it's just all going to be. | ||
| No, that just means it's overvalued. | ||
| Overvalued. | ||
| Overvalu. | ||
| And so there is a there there. | ||
| I use these large language models. | ||
| I use ChapGPT and Claude from Anthropic and Copilot from Microsoft. | ||
| So look, these products are real and they are having an impact on the economy. | ||
| People are using them in positive ways. | ||
| We can debate if having an AI boyfriend or girlfriend is positive, but I think for the economy, it's generally been positive. | ||
| But the real question for 2026 is: are these valuations in the stock market and the amount of money that people have spent, these companies have spent, is that justified? | ||
| Are they going to get the return and the payoff that equals that mega dollar amount? | ||
| There's a lot been made of circular financing, that all these AI companies are just kind of investing in each other, and that that's not really based on sound economic principles. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| Yeah, there's probably a little bit of truth to that. | ||
| Again, it's different from the dot-com bubble because there is real revenue. | ||
| You know, companies like mine are buying these products and licensing them to use them and use them in productive ways. | ||
| What I do think it's interesting, and you could see this starting to turn even this week as we're talking, and that is there's going to be a lot more winners and losers in 2026. | ||
| I think what you're describing is in 2025, almost anything AI-related got a ton of money thrown at it. | ||
| You know, they were winners. | ||
| Everybody was a winner in AI in 2025. | ||
| And now we're starting to see this debate about, wait a minute, some companies are going to rise to the top. | ||
| Some companies are going to have better models. | ||
| Some companies, Google's making a play, are going to integrate better across their organization. | ||
| And so that's really the debate, I think, for 2026 in both the economy and the stock market. | ||
| Who really deserves the valuation and the dollars? | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation, if you've got a question about the economy for Heather Long, you can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| The lines are Democrats 202, 748, 8,000. | ||
| Republicans 202, 748, 8,001. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| I want to play you a portion of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. | ||
| She was sounding an alarm over the AI bubble bursting at a hearing this last week. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| Just this morning, the Wall Street Journal reported a significant drop in the U.S. stock market with the headline, AI bubble fears hit stocks. | ||
| Now, this also contrasts with what we've been hearing from the Trump administration, that the economy in general is thriving. | ||
| And he's been saying that the economy is booming, but it's only seven tech companies that are booming, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. | ||
| And they're driving this growth in just one sector, AI. | ||
| So the entire U.S. economy growth can be tracked down to seven companies and their AI growth specifically. | ||
| At least 40% of economic growth this year is attributed to these companies alone. | ||
| And 80% of stock gains this year came from AI companies. | ||
| But people are justifying these levels of investment because of the promises that the CEOs make that there will be a return on that investment. | ||
| So for a company like OpenAI, their value is based on the expectation that they're going to figure out how to make a profit out of it. | ||
| And they haven't. | ||
| And so generating this increased human dependency that can be mined because it's not subject to HIPAA. | ||
| Is that correct, Dr. King? | ||
| Right, it's not subject to HIPAA. | ||
| It's not subject to HIPAA. | ||
| So people's deepest fears, secrets, emotional content, relationships, can all be mined for this empty promise that we're getting from these companies to turn a profit. | ||
| And the reason I bring all of this up is because the exposure of this industry and this investment, I fear, has reached broad levels potentially of the American economy. | ||
| When we're talking about 40% of stock growth in the United States being attributed to these companies in the AI sector alone, and that sector has not turned a profit, we're talking about a massive economic bubble. | ||
| And we've seen the, depending on the exposure of that bubble, we could see 2008-style threats to economic stability. | ||
| Heather, 2008 was a bad year for the economy. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| Look, I think there's a lot of risk right now. | ||
| She described very well the risk to a K-shaped economy where we are heavily dependent on the AI boom and on rich consumers, that top 20% that we were talking about. | ||
| And when the economy is so dependent on those small number of players, as she points out, if something happens to rock that confidence in AI, if there is a correction or a bear market, she's describing 2008, which is more like a 40 to 50 percent loss in the market, yes, that is going to send us into a recession, possibly worse. | ||
| But I think we also have to step back and say, you know, when is that going to happen? | ||
| Is it a guarantee? | ||
| No. | ||
| And so what companies like mine, and I think throughout the economy, are planning, they're hesitant right now. | ||
| And I think you can see that hesitance that outside of AI spending, there's not a lot of investment that's going on. | ||
| There's certainly not a lot of hiring that's going on right now. | ||
| And so I think everyone's sort of waiting to see, you know, what scenario is going to play out in 2026. | ||
| There were bailouts in 2008. | ||
| Do you think there would be bailouts again if this happens? | ||
| That's a hard call. | ||
| I think we learned a lot of lessons from 2008 in terms of what is worth bailing out. | ||
| One of the big mistakes, I would argue, in 2008 is, you know, we spent a lot of time bailing out certain companies and industries, and we didn't bail out Main Street. | ||
| And there were a lot of homeowners, millions of people who had their homes foreclosed and lost so much of their wealth and so much of their well-being. | ||
| And I think we learned as a society how detrimental that is. | ||
| So I think that would be one of the questions. | ||
| Who would you bail out in a worst case scenario? | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Kyle Sealrock, Oregon, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Kyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Hey, you mentioned that healthcare is a big goal for people wanting jobs right now. | ||
| And I agree. | ||
| I also think, though, that I'm hoping that this era is kind of a return to the trades. | ||
| There's a lot of vocational schools that I don't know how much help they get from the federal government, but they are starting programs where companies are in need. | ||
| It could be something plumbers, electricians, meat cutters. | ||
| There's some great good jobs available out there that aren't the college route that was pushed for decades. | ||
| Everybody had to go to college. | ||
| And I'm hoping that as AI takes over those kind of jobs, that we get back to the trades. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| I agree so much with what he said. | ||
| We not only need to push trades again, but also apprenticeships. | ||
| The good news is we've doubled the amount of apprenticeships, mainly in skilled trades, in the past decade. | ||
| The bad news is we're still doing fewer than a million a year. | ||
| A nation as large as ours should be probably doing four or five million of those a year. | ||
| I will tell you an anecdote. | ||
| A lot of young people believe they will never buy a home or be able to afford a home as the typical age of a first-time home buyer has risen to 40. | ||
| But I was just touring some of our members recently and I met two people in their early 20s who are working. | ||
| They left high school, got into apprenticeships, got into the trades, and they just bought a home this fall. | ||
| I mean, that tells you that's about as good of a preach for the value of trades right now. | ||
| Stable jobs, stable income. | ||
| Well, speaking of buying a home, the Fed meeting is early next month. | ||
| It's the last meeting of the year. | ||
| What are you going to be looking at with regards to interest rates? | ||
| This meeting just got really juicy. | ||
| I mean, normally Federal Reserve is well telegraphed in advance, but it's really a toss-up whether they are going to cut interest rates in December. | ||
| I do think if they don't do it in December, they'll probably do it in January, so that's not a huge difference. | ||
| But I can tell you, we have people every day who call into Navy Federal and are asking us what the latest mortgage rate and auto loan rate is. | ||
| I mean, people really want to buy if they can, but they need those rates to be lower. | ||
| They need the borrowing costs to be lower. | ||
| And so I do, I don't know, I was betting they were going to cut interest rates in December, but it really does, you can see the tension that's going on right now. | ||
| And do you think they should reduce interest rates? | ||
| President Trump has been really pushing for that, but the fear has been, I guess, on the inflation side. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It's this two-story economy. | ||
| You know, are we actually in this boom and we're really worried about inflation and things getting too hot too fast? | ||
| Or are we worried about the job market and the fact that you can pretty much only get a job in healthcare right now? | ||
| And we're starting to see many sectors do layoffs, you know? | ||
| So that's the sort of untold story this year is you have transportation and warehouse, you have the manufacturing sector doing layoffs, and of course a lot of white-collar professions that are doing layoffs this year. | ||
| And so that's really the two parts of the economy. | ||
| And which one do you want to help? | ||
| Why is healthcare doing so well as far as hiring goes? | ||
| And why is the manufacturing sector laying off people? | ||
| Talk about both those things. | ||
| I mean, great question. | ||
| So look, the healthcare story is really the aging of America. | ||
| There is just so much demand as baby boomers age for everything from home health care to knee replacements, you name it. | ||
| So that's just going to continue even during recessions, even during the 2008 that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was talking about, healthcare was still hiring. | ||
| And that will probably continue. | ||
| The manufacturing sector, when people ask, hey, the tariffs really haven't had much impact this year, you're right, it's not as big as we thought it would be. | ||
| But where is it showing up? | ||
| It's showing up in manufacturing and the warehouse sector, right? | ||
| We are not, and we are not making as many goods because prices of steel and other items that we need to import in order to manufacture have gone up so much in price. | ||
| And we are certainly not transporting as many goods across the nation right now since we're not importing as many to the port. | ||
| So that's the opposite of one of the stated goals of the tariffs was to onshore and to revitalize American manufacturing, like just make everything here. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| So if you're the White House, you argue that this is a temporary transition. | ||
| And in years to come, we would make more in the United States. | ||
| But from an economist's perspective, no, that what's happening, what's playing out is very much what many economists, myself included, were warning about that these tariffs, particularly on every product. | ||
| And I'm excited, I'm happy to see the White House is starting to fine-tune a little bit. | ||
| And they've started to pull back some of the tariffs on things we do not make in the United States. | ||
| And we like coffee, coffee, beef. | ||
| I mean, talk about the hamburger price, bananas, so these things. | ||
| And there needs to be a real debate about what kind of parts we should import versus not. | ||
| Let's talk to Robert Keyport, New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| This is the first time I'm calling, so I'm very excited to be on the line. | ||
| I just wanted to ask Heather and just first point out that I think there's a big difference between what happened in 2008 versus now, where there was like more fundamental things in 2008 versus just like a bubble in the stock market. | ||
| And that them trying to fix the bubble in the stock market has been like a repeated pattern since like kind of the 90s. | ||
| And I wanted to get her take on like that statement, if it's true or not, and then what that has to do with the point that touches the access on her case her K-chart, right? | ||
| So like if they try to fix the stock market, is it going to be next $200,000 that people are going to feel comfortable with? | ||
| Like what does them choosing to fix the stock market, what does it have to do with her K-chart? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| Yeah, that's Robert. | ||
| Thanks for calling. | ||
| Those are great questions. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| You make a good point. | ||
| I wish I had made it better earlier. | ||
| And that is that the fundamentals look very different from 2008, obviously driven by this huge, really fraud that was basically going on in the housing market. | ||
| There's some question now. | ||
| People talk about the private credit market and whether there may be situations going on there that were very opaque, that we don't fully understand. | ||
| You may have heard the comments about the cockroach, and whenever you see one cockroach, you're going to see more. | ||
| But generally, I don't see similar dynamics. | ||
| So you make an interesting point. | ||
| Should we be concerned about the stock market? | ||
| Should the Federal Reserve be concerned about high stock market valuations? | ||
| So far, I don't think we're so out of whack that they should be focused on that. | ||
| There are more important fundamentals in the economy that they are looking at right now, and they're kind of ignoring stocks. | ||
| I will say, if I do think we're overdue for a correction, so the notion of the stock market going down about 10%, that's very healthy, maybe even 15 or so percent or 20% would not be unheard of and would not be an unhealthy thing to see right now to just reset some of those expectations in the stock market at some point in the coming months. | ||
| If that happens, I think it does impact the K-shape in terms of the top wealthier earners would probably pull back on their spending, similar to what we're seeing from the middle class and moderate income Americans. | ||
| But I don't think it derails the economy in any huge fundamental way. | ||
| Stephen, Columbus, Ohio, Republican, good morning. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Appreciate your taking my call. | ||
| First time caller, first time viewer, in fact. | ||
| I'm a bit ashamed for you to say I'm Republican, although I've been registered Republican for over 50 years. | ||
| And Mr. Trump and his cronies have turned me into a Democrat. | ||
| And I'm just calling to say I'm ashamed of Republicans and their effect on my country and their effect on my economy, as witnessed perhaps by Heather. | ||
| And just an overall let it be known that you can be a Republican and still be appalled at what's going on. | ||
| So Stephen, tell us about what you're calling your economy. | ||
| How are you doing personally? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm doing badly now, but I have to take more of the blame than anything because I've been self-employed sales for over 40 years. | |
| In what industry, Steven? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I created an online insurance business in 2000, and I was in insurance for a long time. | |
| I ran that slowly. | ||
| But I've sold other financial products, and I just consider myself a salesman overall. | ||
| I can sell about anything as long as it's quality, and actually I believe in it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Any comment, Heather? | ||
| Yeah, thanks for your call. | ||
| Look, I think what I hear you saying is what we hear so many Americans saying that the White House needs to get back to focusing on affordability. | ||
| And they seem to be getting that message. | ||
| They're taking some action to tweak the tariffs. | ||
| I would like to see them take a little bit more action. | ||
| I think they need to look again through the tariffs playbook and really adjust some more to help with those costs. | ||
| I really want to see them pivot to housing. | ||
| We need to build more housing in America. | ||
| It was encouraging to see the president and the incoming mayor of New York City talking about ways to potentially build more housing. | ||
| And this is supposedly what Donald Trump's career has been, real estate, right? | ||
| I mean, think about whatever you think about the president. | ||
| If he could help to build and incentivize more building in America, that would be huge. | ||
| I don't think the 50-year mortgage is the solution. | ||
| I was a little bit of a gimmick, but I like that he would be thinking more about housing. | ||
| And look, I think they're going to have a big problem with health care. | ||
| There's been a lot of focus on the Affordable Care Act and those subsidies going away potentially in 2026. | ||
| Doesn't look like they're going to get a fix. | ||
| But I think what people are not talking about enough, even if you have a health care plan through your employer, the increases next year are looking to be 7 to 11% increases for most Americans who even have quote unquote good health care. | ||
| And so I think this, again, one more cost of living that people are seeing. | ||
| Let's talk to William in Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I just wanted to say that I've been a member of Navy Fed Credit Union since 1976. | |
| And we're Marines. | ||
| I'm a Marine. | ||
| If you were a Marine, you had to join where you were overseas. | ||
| So I joined in Okinawa in 1976. | ||
| It's a great finance institution. | ||
| I do all my financial transactions with Navy Federal Credit Union. | ||
| I finance my house through them, which is now paid off. | ||
| I'm retired now. | ||
| I joined when I was 27 years old. | ||
| I'm 70 now. | ||
| And I've been a law member ever since. | ||
| I like to tell Navy Federal Credit Union. | ||
| You guys are doing a great job and keep it up. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I like that call. | ||
| You mentioned a couple of things that the president can do as far as tariffs, building more housing. | ||
| How long do these things take to actually impact people's wallets? | ||
| You're right. | ||
| That's what's tricky. | ||
| Everybody in this world that we live in, they want a solution for tomorrow. | ||
| And I think the way that I would think about it is there's some things like reducing the tariffs that can have a pretty immediate impact. | ||
| And so, look, I think we're already starting to see some of those reduced costs come through in the grocery store, and we'll see more and more as we head into the holidays. | ||
| And so, that's why, if I were them, that's the first trigger that I would work on and work through. | ||
| Look, they could work with the Democrats, Republicans, Democrats could work on some sort of compromise on the health care. | ||
| You know, it doesn't look likely you know more than me on the politics, but it doesn't have to be exactly what the Democrats want. | ||
| But something is better than nothing, is how I would say there. | ||
| Housing, you're right. | ||
| Housing, there, there is no easy solution. | ||
| Even a 50-year mortgage, we were talking about it at our institution. | ||
| Look, if somebody's not qualifying for a 30-year mortgage, the likelihood of them qualifying for a 50-year, you know, even setting aside that it's not great because you're just paying so much more interest over the lifetime of that 50-year loan, I don't think that many people are going to qualify for a 50-year mortgage. | ||
| And would those rates be higher than a 30-year mortgage? | ||
| And they would be higher, yes, and they would be paying more interest. | ||
| So, I don't think they're going to necessarily love a lot of the terms that they're getting with a 50-year mortgage. | ||
| You know, the other one that we probably should talk about more. | ||
| I know it's a dicey issue politically. | ||
| I come at it from an economic standpoint. | ||
| But, look, immigration is also the immigration situation is providing a drag on the economy in the sense that just from a numbers basis, since March, we've lost over a million foreign-born workers in the workforce. | ||
| And, you know, look, you can have your own feelings about what's going on with immigration, but again, I think much like tariffs, there probably needs to be some fine-tuning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We do need some explain that a little bit more. | |
| We do need workers, but we were just talking about how hard it is for people to find jobs and the unemployment rate. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So, doesn't that one balance the other? | ||
| Isn't there now more jobs available? | ||
| You're right. | ||
| We don't need as much labor, foreign labor, or as we did a couple of years ago, during the era when people were so desperate to hire. | ||
| But again, it comes back to what types of jobs do Americans want to do. | ||
| It also comes back to different parts of the country that are having more strain than others. | ||
| Look, a lot of foreign-born workers are overrepresented in construction fields, in home health care fields, in the child care field. | ||
| Right or wrong, these are lower, in many cases, some of the lower-paying jobs. | ||
| And so, I think if we're trying to build more homes in America, of course, we want to hire American-born workers probably first. | ||
| But if the workers aren't there and the talent isn't there, we need to rethink some of this. | ||
| Let's talk to Michael, Plainfield, Illinois, Independent Line. | ||
| Michael, you're on with Heather Long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And maybe I have a question for the guest and then a short comment. | ||
| But the question, first of all, is I have heard that the activity, the major amount of activity in the stock market has really been concentrated in just a few companies, perhaps less than 20. | ||
| It might even be a number much smaller than that on the SP, you know, like that NGEN and all this other AI stuff. | ||
| And I'm just wondering if this distorted activity in only one segment of one of our indices is there historical parallels to that, or is this an anomaly that is something new? | ||
| And my comment is, and I'm sure your guest might take offense at this. | ||
| I don't mean to be rude, but Karl Marx was right. | ||
| Capitalism only works for a handful of people. | ||
| The rest of us are going to be always left behind. | ||
| And the only salute, and Americans will take any job for the guest. | ||
| That comment that she had a moment ago about what jobs Americans will take. | ||
| When you get hungry, and I've been in that position, you take anything. | ||
| So, you know, I think the economists need to get their heads screwed on right. | ||
| There can be other systems that we should be looking at because when you have an economy that is serving only a fraction of its citizens and the rest of us are left behind, the economy is simply not working. | ||
| Got it, Michael. | ||
| I certainly agree that we need to be doing more to help middle-income and moderate-income Americans. | ||
| That's why I wrote about the K-Shape economy in the Washington Post in early August and was the first person to really shout that I think that the K-Shape economy is back and that there's a lot of risk. | ||
| There's a risk short-term to the economy to be so concentrated at the top and in these, I believe it's seven AI stocks. | ||
| And then he pointed out the longer term risk, which is there's a lot of societal unrest. | ||
| And you see it in these polling data and you see it in the economics field and the consumer sentiment data has been, you know, we're back at the second lowest level of consumer sentiment in the past 50 years, which is just, that tells you the unrest, unease that is out there right now, even though 164 million Americans still have jobs. | ||
| They're not feeling that they're getting ahead and they can see in their communities ways that they feel that they're falling further behind. | ||
| He asked about historical precedents. | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| You know, that's really interesting. | ||
| I think that's more of a stock market question. | ||
| I would say one time that maybe was pretty similar is going back to sort of Gilded Age and in particular the era of trains of building railroads across the United States, having a handful of barons, if you will, of that era who were really benefiting and who were driving those companies. | ||
| And there was also a lot of speculation. | ||
| I mean, ultimately, that was a bubble that did burst because it got to a point where anything railroad related, people were just blindly throwing money into. | ||
| And so I think that, you know, tying our whole conversation together is the real fear. | ||
| I don't think we're at that point today, but we are certainly could be headed in that direction. | ||
| On the Republican line in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, Thomas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are you? | |
| My comment is also the previous person was talking about railroad. | ||
| We're dying for skilled labor on the railroad. | ||
| Built a lot of New York City over the last 30 years. | ||
| I could not get people to actually work on the railroad. | ||
| Their parents were just telling them go to college, get a degree, make $65,000 a year. | ||
| But the guys working on the railroad are making $130,000, $140,000 a year, making good money. | ||
| We're dying for skilled labor in this country. | ||
| We don't need to give it out to anyone else. | ||
| We need to bring our kids up. | ||
| And instead of spending $250,000 right off the bat for these kids to go to college, why don't you throw a little savings account in, put a down payment on a house, let them go to work, make some money, get a good skilled trade, and there they go. | ||
| They take off. | ||
| That's part of the answer too for helping kids get a down payment on a house. | ||
| Murray, Thomas, second call on trades. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| I mean, notice that we've had both Republican and Democrat calls, you know, talking about the importance of trade, the need to put that at the center. | ||
| And to be honest, this is another area that I'd love to see the White House and Congress focus on in 2026. | ||
| There is bipartisan agreement. | ||
| I think there's agreement between workers and between industry that why are we not moving the pendulum back to pushing trades, to pushing apprenticeships across this economy? | ||
| It's what young people want. | ||
| Earn while you learn. | ||
| It's what's needed in many parts of America for whatever future you're envisioning in the United States of a more industrial future for America. | ||
| And so, you know, it's kind of a head scratcher. | ||
| The president did do an executive order earlier this year saying that he wants this studied and that he would like to see more investment and more apprenticeships, but they really haven't actually pulled the trigger to execute. | ||
| And so I really hope this is a focus given the need and the bipartisanship. | ||
| Troy, Democrat in Rancho Mirage, California. | ||
| Hi, Troy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Mimi, you're the best. | ||
| And Heather, it's a pleasure to speak with you. | ||
| I have real concerns about our young people being unable to get into the housing market. | ||
| I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and for some odd reason, well, I guess it's not an odd reason, the housing market there has exploded at the time when housing markets aren't doing well. | ||
| They're still getting, you know, three or four multiple offers on homes. | ||
| And a lot of them are investors coming in, driving up the cost of housing and making it unaffordable for our young kids to buy. | ||
| The question I guess I have is: could we not dial back the down payments required to purchase a home, like to 5% or something, to get more people into the housing market? | ||
| Would that not stir and create more economic benefits for all of us? | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| And Heather, I just want to add to that: Dan in Pennsylvania saying a 50-year mortgage could be cheaper than renting because of tax laws. | ||
| So if you can bring that in as well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so look, Troy, I think I hear this everywhere, just what Troy was saying: that young people are very bleak and very despondent about this economy, and particularly the fact that they don't think they will ever achieve any version of the American dream, any version of homeownership. | ||
| You know, on paper, their fears are kind of right in the sense that the first-time home buyer age keeps rising and just hit 40. | ||
| And certainly the home prices. | ||
| Look, home prices are up over 50% since 2020. | ||
| And that's been great for homeowners, but not for anybody trying to get into the market. | ||
| And look, again, I've said it a couple times now. | ||
| I think this needs to be a focus, a national focus for as we head into 2026. | ||
| We're starting to see some great initiatives come out of different cities and different states around this, but it would be really helpful to have some federal work on these issues as well. | ||
| You know, it's an interesting idea. | ||
| I think people need to talk about the down payment, what it would look like if the down payment were reduced from the standard of the kind of 20% down that most people are doing on their 30-year mortgage at the moment. | ||
| The VA loan for veterans, for instance, we do have VA loans, as you might imagine, Navy Federal. | ||
| We have a lower requirement for those for down payments, and that has certainly helped many people to get into housing. | ||
| So I think it's an intriguing idea. | ||
| Obviously, we don't want to recreate the situations that led to the 2008 financial crisis and housing market crash where people were getting in, putting almost nothing down, and then they don't have enough income and they didn't have enough equity in the home to survive, survive that downturn. | ||
| So I think it's a little bit what is the right level is a good debate to have. | ||
| I'm not sure 5% is it, but I kind of agree, does it really need to be 20%? | ||
| Other countries do it very differently. | ||
| The 50-year mortgage, look, yes, possibly, because it possibly is a tax advantage. | ||
| Look, the other big advantage of owning a home is it's forced savings. | ||
| A lot of people are not good savers in the United States. | ||
| And what really builds the wealth is just the fact that people are putting away month after month some of that money. | ||
| And so in that sense, yeah, there's an argument for it. | ||
| But I just go back to I think there's better solutions for the middle class. | ||
| It just takes so long to build up equity in a home over that 50-year period that for the first sort of 10 to 15 years, you are basically renting. | ||
| You are basically throwing that money at the bank. | ||
| Ronald in Washington, D.C., Independent, you're on the air, Ronald, with Heather Long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I want to know what's the benefit of buying Bitcoins. | |
| Well, the benefit, obviously, I certainly have moments where I wish I had bought it back in 2014, 2015. | ||
| I probably wouldn't be sitting here, probably retired on a beach now. | ||
| But look, the price is gone up dramatically. | ||
| It's come back a little bit in the last two weeks. | ||
| But I think you're right that one of the big debates that I have almost every day with people is beyond just the fact that it was going up so well and appreciating what is the real value of this Bitcoin or any crypto to the economy. | ||
| And it's a little bit harder, I think, to make the case, but I would say the underlying technology behind Bitcoin is really exciting. | ||
| The idea that basically you can have a very safe and trusted way of exchanging money or exchanging contracts or validating contracts without needing an intermediary going forward. | ||
| I think that could be very transformational for the financial system. | ||
| But the actual Bitcoin itself, in the United States, I see less need for it because we do have the dollar and the dollar is the global reserve currency. | ||
| I will say I have lived in other countries. | ||
| I lived briefly in Honduras and it's a totally different game. | ||
| When you live in a country where the currency isn't stable, the government isn't stable, you know, you could lose all. | ||
| Look at Argentina. | ||
| You could lose most of your money just from bad actions by the government. | ||
| And in those countries, owning something like Bitcoin can be very, very useful to move your money and to keep your money in a much more safe asset. | ||
| That's how I see it. | ||
| So Steve in Illinois sent us this question on text. | ||
| What economic indicators is the guest using for her forecasts for 2026 with the lack of federal data coming out? | ||
| Well, the good news is we're finally getting some data. | ||
| We've just gotten most of the data for September. | ||
| We saw retail sales this morning, obviously the jobs report last week. | ||
| But the person's right that October is a bit of a black hole. | ||
| You know, we're not going to get an inflation report. | ||
| We're not going to get an official jobs report released. | ||
| There will never be an October unemployment rate, which is kind of a mind-boggling thing. | ||
| I certainly hope if there's ever another shutdown that they make the Bureau of Labor Statistics and our data people essential workers so that they will continue to do this, but that's water under the bridge now. | ||
| What impact will that have? | ||
| I mean, is there going to be a lasting impact on that October report never coming out? | ||
| Yeah, particularly right now. | ||
| Because again, going back, this is this two-story economy we're talking about. | ||
| You know, are we, are things accelerating? | ||
| Is a bubble going on? | ||
| In that case, inflate, should we be worried about inflation, which means we should be rising interest rates or certainly not cutting them? | ||
| Or are we in a world where things are really deteriorating rapidly? | ||
| It looks more like this no-higher job market and layoffs are picking up. | ||
| And that data that we're missing from October would tell us a lot if one story or the other is winning out right now. | ||
| And we're just, we're never going to have that. | ||
| So luckily, we have our own private sector data that we can look at at Navy Federal, and that's been helpful as we think about our forecast for 2026. | ||
| We do not have a recession in our forecast for 2026. | ||
| I want to be clear about that. | ||
| But I am very open. | ||
| The middle-class squeeze is on, and it's going to continue for the next several months. | ||
| Costs of living, inflation will keep climbing, unemployment will keep climbing, and wage gains are going to get smaller. | ||
| So there's no doubt about it that even though the economy will continue to grow at a bit of a slower pace, probably we can see it in our data. | ||
| The folks at the middle, $100,000 and less, are definitely feeling the squeeze. | ||
| One more really quick call. | ||
| Anthony, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Republican. | ||
| Anthony, we are running out of time. | ||
| If you could be brief. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, as a Republican member, a Navy Federal Cratian, I agree that the economy, I don't want to run a recession. | |
| I just hope it never happens. | ||
| And you do not have a recession, and you said in the forecast. | ||
| We do not for 2026. | ||
| Now, we are prepared for a wide variety of outcomes, but we do not, and the consensus forecast also is not. | ||
| And how should consumers prepare for 2026? | ||
| What do you recommend to people? | ||
| I mean, I'll tell you, the best advice that I can give, and I give it to myself, is be a little bit more choosy. | ||
| Maybe we don't need as many presents this year under the tree or on the Hanukkah. | ||
| And trying to increase savings is the best thing that you can do in a world where layoffs are likely to pick up, in a world where there could be stock market gyrations. | ||
| I know it's hard to save. | ||
| I don't pretend otherwise. | ||
| I have a three-year-old. | ||
| It's hard not to spend on things. | ||
| She's always pointing things at stores that she wants. | ||
| But I've been really trying to put a little bit more money away. | ||
| Every bit helps. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's Heather Long. | ||
| She's a columnist. | ||
| She's also chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union there at NavyFederal.org. | ||
| Heather, thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
| Thanks, Mimi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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