No BS Weekly Business News: Interest Rates, Mega Merger, Bezos Playing Monopoly, Elon Musk Touting Robo Taxi While Tesla Burns

Speaker 1 Look, we get it. You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 1 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people

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Speaker 1 Hello, you savage capitalists. Today, on right about now, we're always taking the BS out of business.
This ain't your daddy's business show. Everything you're about to hear cuts straight to it.

Speaker 1 The Federal Reserve just decided your mortgage rates are going to stay right where they're at. Eh, it's trending nicely, inflation, so they speak.
Why don't they fix the problem they created?

Speaker 1 And hey, they keep borrowing like it's crazy. What's good for the goose would be good for the gander.
We need more money in the market. Those rates need to come down.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, two British oil titans, Shell and BP, Talking about a merger. That'd be the biggest thing since Exxon ain't mobile for lunch.
Ha! They lecture you about net zero, saving polar bears.

Speaker 1 Hey, all they want to do is save the shareholders. In Silicon Valley, Open AI got another brain in a box.
O3 Pro just rolls right off the tongue. Predictably, every consultant is now an AI strategist.

Speaker 1 Right before those pink slips come across the desk and they get fired. Everybody knows AI now, suddenly, right? Nothing screens progress like paying more to store the same data twice.

Speaker 1 That's why Rubrik, they just bought an entire startup to sprinkle machine learning on your backups. They want your data, people.
It's not about the tools.

Speaker 1 It's about that data they need to digest to make them work. Speaking of orbiting reality, Tesla is hyping Robo Taxis, while its European sales nosedive by 50%.

Speaker 1 It's like bragging about a yacht while the Rebo Man tows your sedan in the front yard.

Speaker 1 Finally, Hollywood just rebranded another streaming bundle, Paramount Plus Premium, the latest attempt to tax your boredom.

Speaker 1 Yet the real subscriber surge is in India, where Jeehost Hotstar is stealing eyeballs at 300 million strong.

Speaker 1 We untangle every one of these stories, give you the number of the suits, hope you'll ignore. And, as always, leave you with a stat so sharp you could slice through tomorrow's boardroom buzzwords.

Speaker 1 Because this show is about soothing your feelings. It's about arming you with the truth.
Now let's get to work, right effing now.

Speaker 3 This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production.

Speaker 3 We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.

Speaker 3 Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Speaker 1 All right, guys. We're all wearing fitness trackers, everything else today.
Got this fancy bracelet on today. It's just one one of the many accessories with my plod notepin.

Speaker 1 Hey, it's become my favorite accessory. You know, we got the Fitbit.
This is like the biz bit. It keeps up with every recording.

Speaker 1 One button starts recording, transcribes, gives me all the AI takeaways. Again, gives me action items.
I can set it up for anything because you can train it with your AI engine behind it.

Speaker 1 But ultimately, it's recording those meetings that I always forget. I walk into a meeting, ultimately, I'm like, damn, I wish we'd recorded that.

Speaker 1 So now, instead of taking notes, this guy, the plod note pin is doing it all for me. You can wear it here.
You can pin it on you. Again, minimalistic.
Looks pretty trendy if you ask me too.

Speaker 1 Got this, you know, double, double bracelet going on, but I love the white man. Classy.

Speaker 1 And again, keeping up as an entrepreneur, man, it's so important to catch those ideas, those things that are happening in real time in meetings. I love it.
Get yourself one. Plod note pin.

Speaker 1 It's one of the greatest inventions and little tech gadgets of this year. It is in my tech stack because it helps me get ahead right now.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, let's get right to it. Rate freeze reality check.
The feds are holding the rate between 4.25 and 4.5%

Speaker 1 for the fourth straight meeting. Core PCE is still above 3%.
Election year, optics, trump the math. Hey, here's the deal.
What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Speaker 1 We're borrowing like crazy. We're $100 trillion in debt, whatever the hell it is.
We've got more interest to know what to do with.

Speaker 1 But we're worried about the inflation that was caused by our own government. And now we've got to keep the rates where they're steady and money's tight.
Hey, those corporate, that corporate money.

Speaker 1 We're about to find out who the real winners are. There's a lot of unicorns out there that borrowed money to get going.

Speaker 1 When there ain't as much liquid cash out there, we're going to find out what's real and what's not with a lot of these unicorn SaaS companies.

Speaker 1 A lot of things have been held up by a lot of cheap money. It's not going to be cheap so much any longer.

Speaker 1 1.4 trillion corporate debt matures in 2026. You better start refinancing this summer.
Two cuts penciled for Q4 2025.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I'm buying it. You better lock in that liquidity before the window slams.
And look, we need more money in the market.

Speaker 1 That's why Trump's been saying he's going to get rid of the Fed chair. I think we got to start moving, but ultimately, we need to be what's good for the goose to be good for the gander.

Speaker 1 All right,

Speaker 1 Shell and BP are coming together.

Speaker 1 Hey, they were all worried about all the green stuff. Suddenly, yeah, the only green thing they're worried about is this shareholder shareholder value is what they're worried about.
Come on now.

Speaker 1 I'm all for

Speaker 1 mergers and capitalism, but man, does this just mean higher prices for gas? Those convenience stores going to get a little better? I have my doubts. We'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 In other monopoly talk, you know, Bezos might be preparing that rocket to go to the moon. There's no antitrust laws up there.
A lot of these...

Speaker 1 audiobook authors aren't happy because they're not getting the profits they should and the judges are starting to agree.

Speaker 1 It's not so rosy for Bezos right now in that category. We'll see what happens.
Look, it's hard to know what the right thing is.

Speaker 1 A lot of convenience prices, a lot of things that were consumer friendly have come out of Amazon. But I do believe in creativity and holding it together for authors' time,

Speaker 1 creativity. everything they put in.
Amazon shouldn't be the only one profiting at the highest level and being so like it is a monopoly. Let's just call it what it is.

Speaker 1 But ultimately, there needs to be room for everyone and for the authors to get the credit and those royalties they deserve. We'll see where it goes.

Speaker 1 Okay, AI, man, it's so funny how we have AI making everything easier. I still feel like some things in my life are a lot harder than they need to be.

Speaker 1 I digress. I think our AI price wars are detonating.
Chat GPT just came out with O3

Speaker 1 Pro Mini

Speaker 1 Delta, whatever the hell. I don't know know where they come up with these names.
All I know is it thinks a lot longer and smarter, but it's gotten a lot cheaper, 80% cheaper. Isn't it funny?

Speaker 1 I look on LinkedIn. Everyone's now an AI strategist.

Speaker 1 Like, that's going to save their job. I'll tell you what, AI is coming for those entry-level and mid-manager jobs, no matter what your resume says, if you don't know how to put them to use.

Speaker 1 Agentic AI is a middle management killer, ultimately, if you ask me. I would be thinking about how you're going to turn your career into being a leader in the AI space, leveraging agentic AI.

Speaker 1 You could literally have a staff of 10 people reporting to you, all agents. That'll get your boss's attention and keep you from getting those pink slips.
Look, things are changing.

Speaker 1 We've talked about it on this store, but with costs coming down on these tools, what does that mean? It means data is important. important.
I'd be focused less on the tools and more on the data.

Speaker 1 You need to lock it up because these tools need data, information, creativity, all the stuff that's on the internet or the stuff that we think and write every day with our brains and thinking.

Speaker 1 That's what they need. You need to lock that down, get your agreements in place for using it.
I think about all the data we've created with...

Speaker 1 interviews on every podcast on our network. We need to lock that down because I know that data is is getting pulled from with which these models get trained.
Why aren't we getting royalties for that?

Speaker 1 You know what's happening behind the scenes. So we'll see.
Price wars, it's more like data war. I love my man Elon Musk.
The hype train continues. EU sales down 50%,

Speaker 1 but RoboTaxi taking off like wildfire. He's always innovating.
I love it. If only the data does matter eventually.

Speaker 1 Hey, look at this beautiful yacht while the repo man's in the front yard taking your sedan. I don't know if it works.
We'll see. If anyone can make it work, it's Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Hey, I do want a good taxi without a scent that comes from that guy in New York. Sorry, guy.
It just stinks in that Uber. So I'm all about the robo-taxis being safe.
But ultimately, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Those Tesla sales are hurting. I look at, get on Facebook Marketplace.
I'm seeing a lot of Teslas for sale.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if it's just sentiment and people are just tired of him, or if it's really because of the issues of the car. I tend to think it's just the sentiment.

Speaker 1 I'd be worried about turning that around and less about that robot taxi. We'll see.
NVIDIA

Speaker 1 back on the throne. Market cap is at 3.77 trillion.
The head of Microsoft and Apple, most valuable company in the world.

Speaker 1 8 billion, but a billion revenue hit expected from U.S. export ban to China.
Hmm. That could hurt.
It might not be the world's most valued company for long.

Speaker 1 I will say this. The problem here for NVIDIA is again, same thing, monopoly.
Is single supplier AI risk the next single point failure?

Speaker 1 One company holds a lot of the cards for what it takes to keep these computers and all this stuff running. Owning the shovels in a gold rush is great until the government shuts down the mine.
Hmm.

Speaker 1 We don't always like to sound the alarm just for any reason, but I do think this is a stat that you can't dismiss. This is the right about now stat of the week.
12.3.

Speaker 1 That's the 90-day card delinquency rate right now on credit cards in America. That's big.
That's the largest it's been since 2011. 2011, that's 14 years ago.

Speaker 1 Hey, you cannot ignore this. The consumer crack has arrived.
It just hasn't been priced in.

Speaker 1 I'm not calling for a recession, but when consumer debt rates and these kind of smoke signals are here, it signals the recession.

Speaker 1 You start hearing and seeing these stats before you hear people talking about it. I hope not, but that's why we need...

Speaker 1 more money in the market when there's interest rates to come down and we need action to happen. Hey guys, we appreciate you for listening.

Speaker 1 This is is the Real American Business Show, and we got the 4th of July where we celebrate our independence next week. I hope everyone has a fantastic 4th.
Be safe, people. Be responsible.

Speaker 1 Everything in moderation, including moderation. That's all for the show today.

Speaker 1 If you want all the raw data, if you want more takeaways, hit the newsletter. If you hit me up on Instagram, hit the link in the bio, or you can subscribe at ryanoffer.com or ryanisright.com.

Speaker 1 That's where we have all the back episodes from all of the 600 episodes. That's where we're approaching 600 episodes.
That's some data, folks. A lot of it.

Speaker 1 A lot of the greatest minds in business and all of our back episodes, highlight clips, tons of content.

Speaker 1 And signing up for the newsletter where you get more in-depth coverage of what we do here on the pod. Can't wait to see you next time on Right About Now.

Speaker 3 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit RyanisRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 5 DC politicians want to enact harmful credit card mandates that could take away your cash back and rewards points. Perks that stretch your budget and make life a little easier.

Speaker 5 Losing these benefits means less money for your family's everyday essentials like gas and groceries. The perks you rely on could disappear, leaving you with higher costs and fewer options.

Speaker 5 Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the Durbin-Marshall credit card mandates.

Speaker 1 Paid for by Electronic Payments Coalition. Look, we get it.
You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that.

Speaker 1 And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed, but you have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people

Speaker 1 better?

Speaker 1 AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that, from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think, to analysis that digs deep, finds patterns, and surfaces trends quickly.

Speaker 1 SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business.

Speaker 1 Try it today at surveymonkey.com/slash Ryan.