Norm Blumenthal – an attorney for workers and consumers. Selected as one of the Top Attorneys in Southern California. Norm was inducted and recognized as one of America’s Most Trusted Lawyers in Employment Law.
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About the host:
Bert Martinez is a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. Bert is fascinated by business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. One of Bert’s favorite hobbies is to transform the complicated into simple-to-understand lessons so you can apply them to your business and life. Bert is also obsessed with exploring the mindset of the high achievers so you can follow their secrets and strategies.
Now What!
Bert Martinez:
Welcome back. Man, it is going to be a great show today. Today we have today on the show is Norm Blumenthal. Norm Blumenthal is an attorney for consumers and workers like, like you and I, selected as one of top attorneys in Southern California, Norm was also inducted and recognized as one of America’s most trusted lawyers in employment law, Norm Blumenthal. Welcome back.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Nice to be back, Bert. And, I guess, from here on, the question is, what’s next? Here we have a new administration, and sometimes when you wanna ask a question of what’s next, you have to look and see what happened. And, I think this election is a and time frame is kind of a what’s happened in the 19 twenties. You know, if you study your history, this is like the roaring twenties. There’s a lot of money out there. Consumers are spending. Stock market’s going up. There appears to be no ceiling kind of let like, let’s the good times roll.
And, you know, we have to be a little cautious because the the stock market, contrary to popular belief, is in in a larger sense gambling. And the consumer is, in in our economy, 2 thirds of a gross domestic product. That means the velocity of money going into the economy, 2 thirds of it is is consumer spending. And in the event consumer spending drops, there’s gonna be an issue, and I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. But, you know, no tree grows to the sky. And so it we have to look up a little cautiously at at what’s what’s ahead and see what, happened behind us. And so when you look at the twenties and Coolidge was elected in the war, 1st World War was over, kinda like when, COVID was over.
You know, it was the same devastating effect around the world as if it were a war. Actually, it was a war war of bacteria. And so but we we solved it. And Right. We solved the First World War, and then there was great things happened in the twenties. It was the time of change, you know, then the automobile was coming, and it was it was booming. Now we have AI coming, and, there appears to be no no end. So I, you know, I don’t know what to say except that, ultimately, it ended in a crash. And the reason for the crash was, they passed the tariffs.
Bert Martinez:
That is absolutely correct. A lot of people, I’m glad you brought this up. That that was the, that was the, one of the reasons that we had this massive crash was these these retaliatory tariffs, if you will. And go ahead, Norm.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Yeah. That’s basically and that happened, you know, the market. And so to to they fed at that point in time in their infinite wisdom, thought the idea was to, tighten the economy and and pass these, prohibitive tariffs and, you know, bring everybody home and, make America, great again because this was in in 1930 after the crash, and they were trying to come back in 1928. Hoover was elected, and, it’s forgive me. I have the name wrong. It’s just, like, the smooth, Hartley Act.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. That’s correct. Smooth Hartley. Yeah. The 2 repult these 2 senators. Correct?
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Right. That was named after them because they wanted to take credit for it. They were gonna show the world that America didn’t need any, trade with anybody else. It can make it on its own. Well, that didn’t work out. And by, when that came in in 1930, that was kind of like throwing gasoline on the fire of the stock market going down, and it continued to go down. And unemployment went up, and it didn’t change until 32 when Roosevelt was elected, took the tariffs off. And, lo and behold, we worked, by the time everything we looked, we were in in the 2nd World War.
And, one of the big causes of that was, you know, the fact that our tariffs went on and there was inflation around the world. And in Germany, it was so bad because of the reparations they placed on on Germany that you literally needed a wheelbarrow full of marks to pay for a loaf of bread. And so that, you know, I only say this because it looks like we’re in a situation where they’re gonna put tariffs on again. And, I know that they’re just you know, it’s kind of, threatening now. They aren’t necessarily doing it, but, it seems to be that we should be a little more cautious before we start throwing around, you know, a 100% tariff on it on anything.
Bert Martinez:
On anything. And and correct. Look. The the, from my point of view, one of the reasons that we have lost, excuse me, we have lost so many manufacturing jobs to places like Mexico and and and China and stuff like that is because it’s just simply cheaper to do it over there. If you and I are going to have a manufacturing plant here in America, there we just have more regulations. And some people can point and say, well, that’s bad. Well, you know what? The reason that we have some of these regulations is before these regulations, people were being killed. That They were losing limbs.
They were being worked to death. And and and that’s why these unions started popping up and and things had to change. And so maybe we’ve gone too far, but the reality is is, as Americans, we don’t want to pay top dollar for a top quality product. I always tell people, look at Walmart. Walmart is the low cost leader. When you want something cheap, you’re gonna go to Walmart. When you’re when when you wanna spend a high quality and you’re looking for the top shelf, you don’t go to Walmart. And so in in my experience this has been my personal experience.
When my wife and I had 5 kids, living at home with us, and and, you know, they’re all in elementary school or whatever, We went to Walmart. Why? Because it was cheap. It it kept us fed, and we could we could find all sorts of cheap items there. And and, of course, as you start to get more money and and and things change in your household, then then you start looking elsewhere. But if all of a sudden, as Americans, we decided, hey. We we don’t we don’t want cheap products anymore. We don’t want to, what do you call it, import products from China. And China is tough to compete with because their laws there are very, flexible.
They can they they don’t care about copyright. They don’t care about, child labor or labor in general, human rights. So so they have a lot of flexibility. It’s tough to compete with them. But, Norm, you’re famous for saying vote with your dollars. And if we decided to vote with our dollars and stop buying products from China, that would change things. We don’t need a tariff. We just need to, discipline ourselves.
And that’s tough to do. And and and, again, when money is tight and you need a pair of shoes to get you by for a few months or or whatever, hey. Walmart’s not answering it, and I and I don’t blame people for going there. But before we, you know, go down this whole rabbit hole real quick, I do wanna point this out, and this is a I’m just going to, do this, sidebar, if you will.
I wanted to point out that when, Meg, MAGA loses, when Trump loses, when his supporters lose, they file lawsuits, and and they and they spent tons of money, promoting a lie about how they got defrauded and how the system’s broken. In this case here, the system hasn’t changed, but Trump and MAGA won, and they won by a lot more. They won, which surprised me, and then second of all, they won by a lot, which surprised me. But you you didn’t hear a bunch of democrats filing lawsuits and screaming fraud and and things of that nature.
So to me, I just wanted to point that out that there are just the difference in the MAGA integrity and everybody else’s integrity. Anyway, back to the tariff thing, the tariff, it’s already been pointed out, is not the way to bring the economy back to life. It’s the reverse. Because, I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, Norm, Canada says, if you tariff us, we’ll tariff you. China said, you know, if you tariff us, we’ll tariff you. And and so it’s going to be a no win situation. Mexico said the same thing. You you wanna play this tariff game? We’ll play the tariff game.
It’s not going to bring jobs back. It’s going to make everything more expensive. And on top of that, Trump, has already said that, you know, as far as, you know, he’s gonna back the oil industry. So I imagine those prices are gonna go up regardless of what happens. And I think that, because Trump is definitely pro management, things are gonna change radically, as it is. And and, again, correct me if I’m wrong. I believe that one of the things he’s going to do or he’s already done or or I somebody maybe it was a supreme court. I apologize.
But I believe that they’re going to do away with executive overtime or over a salaried overtime. So that means that it that they’re they’re they’re going to be able to make you work 40 I’m sorry, 50, 60, 70 hours, and you’re not gonna get compensated for that time. So things are gonna radically change in a bad way.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Yeah. There’s a lot of things going to the table. Last point on salary overtime, both, administrations are responsible for not taking more jobs off the table and making them, nonexempt jobs instead of exempt exempt jobs. It’s a it’s a long, sad story on administrative and executive and professional exemptions. And the idea of of limiting those exemptions from overtime and and the other work related benefits for, salaried employees, and and, hourly employees is is a long way to go. But on the macro level, really nothing has changed. It’s just like the minimum wage. Both sides are guilty of leaving the minimum wage at $7.25 Right.
For federal. So, you know, there’s there’s both sides had some responsibility, and and it basically the, Democrats, because they weren’t receptive to ideas that Bernie Sanders brought up, which the, Republicans adopted, they lost their base. And, now we have, MAGA coming in with the tariffs and, the trade group BRIC, which is Brazil, Russia, Iran, China.
You had, in South Africa among who’s there now and there’s others that are gonna join as a trade group. They’re gonna wanna make a currency, which will be the fiat currency, which is currently, the US dollar, which props up the dollar because, you know, we’re $30,000,000,000,000 in debt. So they’re they’re kind of running away from the US dollar, and that’s where Trump threatened to put it.
They may tried to make it to, BI currency. He’ll put a 100% tariff on all of their products, which would clearly start a trade war. You know, there’s no doubt. So there’s some scary things that that can happen, in the meantime, but, it seems like all of these have been washed aside, and it’s, the stock market is just doing fine, and that’s the gauge that Trump watches.
Question is, who’s gonna get the tax reductions, and who’s gonna get taxed, to try to bring, the, debt down and at the same time, keep the economy going. And it’s a real conundrum, that congress has failed miserably in in trying to correct, not all their fault of their own. They they, you know, we’re $30,000,000,000,000 in debt, which is about equivalent to the annual gross domestic product.
And it came about because of the, you know, 2007, 2,008, real estate crash, which was, you know, another period of time where spend maybe spend on housing and refinancing and, you know, the the housing market was going to the moon. Well, it didn’t happen in crash, so that took $10,000,000,000,000 to bail us out of that one. And then we had COVID, and, COVID, took another 10,000,000,000,000 to to get us out of that one. So that of the 30,000,000,000,000, 20 of it is the last 2, difficulties that this country has faced and successfully gotten out of. But in as part of this, they’ve just washed the the economy with, borrowed funds.
So we’re living on, you know, borrowed funds that we don’t have, and there’s no plans in the horizon as to at least stop bleeding. You know? Stop the the continued debt, but no one there’s no talk about paying it down any of the debt. In fact, We’re talking about adding another $2,000,000,000,000, this coming fiscal year. So, you know, Musk has some good ideas, and to cut spending.
The issue is, are they going to raise taxes on, those that are that can most afford to pay, or are they gonna leave it alone and you know, renew the, 20, 2016 tax cut that expires at the end of this year. It expires at the end of 2025. And if that expires, you’ll be, more taxes, on those that can afford to pay. At the same time, the idea is is to have less of a tax burden on those that need every dollar because you you gotta look at the velocity of money.
I mean, there’s you can divide it into half. You know? Are there people that live paycheck to paycheck and need, support? And are there people that fortunately for them have a substantial, resources that could pay, their fair share, which in the current environment, they don’t? So there there has to be a kind of a give and take here, and it’s it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. But, this is where we are, in in our economy, and we’re gonna put, you know, more debt on it, and we’re gonna have more deductions for those that, can, more than, afford to pay.
Bert Martinez:
Certainly. And this is not just you and I talking about tariffs and and the economy. If if you Google Trump’s economic plan, you will see people from both sides of the aisle saying that this is not a good plan. You cannot tax yourself into abundance, and this is what a tariff is. And and Trump, bless his heart, believes that we’re going to that he’s going to be able to place a tariff on, again, these foreign manufacturers without any repercussion. He somehow believes that they’re not going to retaliate with their own tariffs. Look. If if that was the case, that would be a beautiful thing, but that’s not the case.
It doesn’t make sense. And so I think that the situation, again, from what I’ve been able to read from both sides of the aisle, is not one based on prosperity or abundance. It’s, again, it’s just, I I guess he hopes to, show how strong he is or whatever, and and he thinks that somehow it’s gonna bring jobs back to America. Good luck. I hope I hope it pays off. I I would love to be proven wrong again. So I think that, again, you’re putting putting the the the tariffs aside for a second. You were mentioning the the the trillions of dollars.
I think, again, several economists have come out again both sides of the aisle as you know, and you’re and you’re looking at anywhere from 7 to $10,000,000,000,000 being added to the to the already large deficit. And, again, this is not something that, they’re that they’re making up from from thin air during the campaign. Both sides said, hey. We’re going to have to spend money we don’t have. I believe that that Harris’ economic plan was gonna be roughly 3 to $4,000,000,000,000 and Trump’s economic plan was going to be 7 to 7 to $8,000,000,000,000. And my thought on that is when the government tells you it’s gonna cost a dollar, it’s probably gonna cost 3 or 4 times that amount. Sometimes we see it cost 10 times more that amount. So if they’re thinking that it’s gonna be a $7,000,000,000,000, it could be 10, 15, 20,000,000,000,000.
We don’t know. Your point on on Elon Musk. Look. If Elon Musk can come in and make the government more efficient, I think everybody would support that. Interestingly enough, we see an experiment in in Argentina where the new president radically reduced the the government there, and they were able to see significant reduction in inflation. So, again, do we need to reduce our government? Absolutely. There there’s just so much fat in there, and this is a natural occurrence when people are not accountable for their budgets. In your house, my house, and in your business, if you don’t manage your budget correctly, you’re gonna go into bankruptcy.
The way the government works, they’re not held to that same, standard. They can just print more money, which causes more problems, but they refuse to look at at themselves and just reduce the size of their spending. I’ve said multiple times that right now, we spend, I don’t know, 4 to $10,000,000,000 in subsidies to some of the richest and most powerful industries. Sugar still gets a subsidy. Corn still gets a subsidy. The beef industry, I believe, still gets a subsidy. This is crazy. Every time they roll out a new budget, the budget is stuffed.
And this is just the way the gov our government is set up. The the budget is stuffed with everybody trying to get their their share of the pie. And you you get this massive budget, and then if if if you had the time to read through it, you will find that both sides have added tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars for their own interest. And sometimes those interests are needed, you know, maybe they they need more jobs in a certain state, so they they stick stick that into the budget or something. But either way, the tariff thing, I think, is a poor choice. Again, I cannot remember the economist. He is a republican, but he says multiple times, you cannot tax yourself into prosperity or I think he said abundance. And so I think that that, maybe cooler heads will prevail, and they can come up with a better program.
And again, we, as consumers, we vote with our dollars. Every time we buy a product, a cheap product from China or some other overseas place, we are telling our government and those other governments that we want these cheap products. And so we get we get them.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Yeah. Let the good times roll. Like, we are in a a good time period. You know, it’s the famous quote about the the fellow that jumps off the, 100 story building, and he gets to the, 50th floor and somewhat somebody asked him how’s it going, and he said, so far so good. So that’s where we are. You you mentioned Argentina. Well, Argentina brought the, inflation rate down from about 250% down to 20%, and they’re they think they’re doing great because they have bankrupted that country over and over again. They devalued the, Argentine time peso over and over again because when the were in power, all they did was print money.
And, you know, it’s that’s what we’ve done for for good reasons. I mean, I can’t, say, but we put out a lot of money, $20,000,000,000,000 in debt. And we aren’t doing anything about it because as you mentioned, there’s all these, lobbyists that are protecting their part of the pork barrel. And whatever they do, they don’t want, the government to cut the pork for their constituents, which I is is part of their job as a a politician. Right. But if you don’t do it across the board, and you you gotta just basically take an ax to it and say, okay. A certain percentage of everything comes off. And then you gotta, at the same time, you gotta do what, Trump was saying.
You gotta, make it easier on people going paycheck to paycheck so there’s no tax on, overtime, and, there’s there’s no tax on tips. And so that hits the the lower end of the economy that are working paycheck to paycheck. And so that’s a big boost for them, which it would be helpful to keep them from heat the safety net in there for those that that could at least afford for it and increase the, federal minimum wage, take it up to $15.
And so, you know, in California, we’re at 16. You know? They and, people did not, a referendum did not approve going to 18, but we’re at 16, which is is there’s no shame in that. And people need money. The consumer, he’s spending. He can’t afford a a house to live. They have to have a a new paradigm for housing where if, you’re a teacher at a school, the school, like they do at Harvard, supplies you with housing. Right. As long as you’re a teacher, you get, below market rent, and you have loyalty to that schools, you know, from elementary school on up.
Start there. Put in the police. Have build housing for them, fire them. So you have police, fire, and and teachers are all have a a a a stake in the economy. They’re able to afford a a place to live, you know, near the the school or the fire station or wherever it may be, police station. And so, you know, we can have new ideas coming in, but it’s it’s unfortunately, except for a very few of these ideas, I don’t see any of them happening. I don’t see the increase in the minimum wage. I don’t see it federally.
I don’t see the, no tax on, overtime and no tax on tips. I think it’s it was a great political move, but I don’t see that happening. And so I a lot of the things that, Trump said, I don’t see happening. And if the tariffs do happen, that could be one of those straws that broke the camel’s back like it did to us in in 1930 after, you know, a downturn in the in the stock market in 20, end of 29. That that could do it. So, you know, there’s a lot of money floating around that has no home. And so this money is going into the stock market, so the momentum of the stock market feeds on itself. So, again, it it if you’re out there and you see a stock going up and and it’s going to be like Warren Buffett, he is in this period, he has taken out $325,000,000,000 from the stock market.
Because his philosophy is that everybody’s in, he, you know, he wants to be out. If everybody’s out, he wants to get in. Right. So he has that contrarian view. In the meantime, he he doesn’t look very, astute because the market keeps going up, but he thinks it’s overvalued. But who’s to say? But that’s where we are now, and that’s where the consumer is. And if the consumer, either loses their job or decides not it it’s not gonna pay the prices because of the tariffs on these, certain items, then you you get a a an effect where everything stops and people get laid off. So there’s some real dangers here.
And, Trump does not have an easy job. This is not gonna be a cakewalk. That’s for sure. And so we just have to to see what’s gonna happen. Now we’re kind of spectators because, you know, we really have no horse in the game. Marda is is in control, and it’ll be interesting to see how they do, in control, you know, what they come up with. Right now, they’re you you know, the fortunately, they have a, you know, Wall Street, economist as the head of treasury. So, he can have them, you know, the cooler heads will prevail on on some of these things.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And and to your point, Trump doesn’t have it, easy. Being the president of the United States is not an easy job, generally speaking. But I think when when you are combative 247, it just makes it that much harder. And and you look at the people that he has nominated so far. Matt Gates thankfully, Matt Gates resigned and now is gonna step down and and says he’ll never, get back into politics again. Good riddance, Matt Gaetz.
He’s nominated Kash Patel. Again, this was something that he tried, when it was his first go around, and and his attorney general, William Barr, would not do what he wanted him to do. He and and the head of the the director at the time of the of the FBI would not do what Trump wanted him to do. He wanted he attacked Kash Patel to take over as FBI director.
My understanding is Kash Patel has no law enforcement experience whatsoever. He is just totally loyal to, Trump and will do whatever he wants and will go after whoever he wants. So that’s why he wants them in that office. And he has tried numerous ways to get Kash Patel in there.
His first go around, I believe all the the the best people in the FBI said if you put Kash Patel in there, we’re we’re we’re all gonna resign. And and so he he was stopped and and including, William Barr said that, hey. You know, what you’re doing is wrong. And and so, I think that president-elect Trump is going to make things harder on himself because he wants to skirt the vetting process.
He wants to skirt the law. He wants to do things his way, because he he’s a, a genius, and he only knows the best ways. I think that we’re gonna have 4 years you know, this you know, we’ve already we we kinda know what to expect. We’re gonna have 4 years of of the White House constantly hiring and firing people just like we did the first time.
We’re gonna have 4 years of of violent, decisive rhetoric. We’re going to have 4 years, where I think very little will get done. And here’s the and here’s the shame of it. Here is really the sad part. Like any president, president Trump will do some good. All presidents do some good. And when I say some good, I mean, things that we all agree with. Right?
Look. If Trump came in and said, hey. I’m going to, you know, I am going to cut spending. Hey. We’re all gonna be happy for that. I am going to, create a budget surplus. Again, he would get tons of backing on that. I am going to not tax Social Security. Everybody would be happy to hear that.
But in between the good that he’s going to do, it’s going to be so combative, so terrible, so egregious that that the good that he does is going to be smothered by all the other crap that he’s gonna do. And so at the end of the 4 years, it’s hard to tell if he did any good. And so unless you could really keep track of the the the policies, it’s gonna be difficult to understand if we move forward at all. You may not agree with everything Biden did. Again, none of us do. But at at the end of it, you can simply you have to point out and say, look. When Biden took over, the economy was a mess. Inflation was a mess, and now he is delivering an economy that’s that’s humming along, that inflation is coming down to a new administration.
And I don’t think we’re gonna get that kind of of traction with Trump 2.0, for lack of better terms.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Yeah. I think you have to divide it into, you know, the sideshow. And, you know, if we’re a carnal carnival act, you’d, you know, you have all of the sideshows that you’d have, but then you have the money making operations, you know, where that are there for the for the carnival to, make money. And I think forget about all the sideshows. I’ve really kind of turned all of that off. I mean, they’ll Yep. They’re gonna do. But my concern is is that, if prices go up and unemployment goes up and inflation goes up, and at that point in time, you started that spiral.
It’s very difficult to turn it around. Right now, he’s on a honeymoon, because Biden left him with a economy that, inflation is down. Our employment is down. Basically, employment is up. And so we have a good strong economy now, and that’ll be the the test. And, in my mind, you know, cutting spending for government, we’re all agreed to for that. You know, we’re gonna hopefully, Musk can do a a kinda good job that he’s done with his own companies and get this done. And, you know, we all wanna see it, and we wanna see wages go up and, keep inflation down and keep unemployment, down, but we don’t know.
Yep. It goes sideways and these these tariffs could be the worst thing that could happen from what I can, tell. And so we just have to see what what goes on there, but I don’t I kinda turned off all of the rhetoric between, you know, who did this to who and when. It doesn’t, have much to do with what the consumer is going to do. Because if the consumer stops spending, all bets are up.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah. That’s a very good point. Again, we, the consumer, we, the citizens of the United States of America, can can vote with our pockets, our pocketbook. And and if we decided to cut back on our spending and in and and start in putting more money in savings and investing, it’s going to have a massive effect, I think in a very positive way, matter of fact, because a lot of the stuff that we buy, we simply don’t need, and we have become a very consumer oriented, or very, yeah, consumer oriented citizenship, if you will. We sometimes because marketing works, we think that we need to have the next iPhone when the current iPhone works perfectly well. My my, a lot of people make fun of the fact that my phone is, like, 5 years old. It’s it’s gonna it’s an antique, and and I just but it still works. It does everything that a new phone does.
And and other than the new phones might have, quote, a better camera, but I’m not a photographer, so better camera doesn’t mean that much to me. But bottom line is we are still in charge, believe it or not. We still can can vote not only with our pocketbooks, but we can vote, to get better people, in the midterms into into place. We can vote, and tell our politicians, this is what we want.
And, again, it’s it’s real simple, not make not necessarily an easy thing to do because, again, politics change everything. When money is involved, people act differently. I since I don’t have any skin in the game, if I was president, I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have a problem cutting out these subsidies that are going to these wealthy industries. That’s one of the first things I would do. But as a politician, I might be afraid to do that because it’s going to hurt my reelection. So politics change everything. Money changes everything.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Yeah. At the end of the day, everybody can watch because, you know, everybody’s got their own personal lives to deal with, is watch the stock market. If the stock market continues to go up, which it it and the momentum stays there, everything else will follow in in in line. If the stock market starts to turn, all bets are up because at that point in time, the consumer will pull out of the market and stop spending. And and when he stops spending, jobs will be lost. Unemployment will go up.
Tariffs will cause inflation, and there’s just a real danger here of of what we’re gonna see. But, you know, the barometer is, you know, everybody would doing what they’re doing day to day life is watch the stock market because that’s gonna tell you whether we’re up or down.
I mean, the first indicator of the Great Depression was the 29 crash. Right. And that after that, all the wrong decisions were made. They ended up in World War 2.
Bert Martinez:
Right. And, you know, and you’ve already pointed this out. Warren Buffett has pulled out, because he thinks the market is overvalued. And I tend to follow Warren Buffett. He’s not you know, he’s like the at one point, he was the wealthiest man in the world, and that is all from his investing acumen. And so now he’s dropped down to number 5 or 6 or 7. He’s still in the top 10, but that’s all from investing. And so when, in my opinion, when the world’s best investor says, hey.
I’m pulling out of the market. Now he’s not completely out of the market. He still owns a bunch of Coca Cola and some of his favorite stocks, but he sold off a lot of a lot of Apple. He didn’t sell all of it off, but he basically sold off a bunch saying specifically, I think it’s overvalued. And so he is a smart guy. And you mentioned he’s a contrarian. When everybody else is buying, he’s selling. And when everybody else is selling, that’s when he starts buying because it’s just the way it works.
And so I love your idea of let’s just watch the stock market. As the stock market changes, as it continues to go up, then things are probably in good shape. If it can if it starts going down, then you’re going to see, everything change because the stock market is a great barometer of consumer confidence. And when consumers lose their confidence, they pull out of the market and they and then that, again, changes everything. You mentioned loss of employment. Companies don’t don’t have capital to grow. All these things start, a, what do you call it, an avalanche effect. So it’s gonna be it’s gonna be interesting.
I can’t wait to to see what happens on the first 100 days of his administration.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Well, it’s gonna be gonna be wild, and let’s just, you know, hope for the sake of all of us that, they can do half of what they said they’re gonna do. And and at the same time, we can ignore all this of the sideshow and watch the main event, which is the stock market.
Bert Martinez:
I’ll I I and you’re absolutely right, guys. I I I think that norm has hit that nail on the head. Let’s not get sucked in by the side shows, all the pundits, and all the people pointing fingers. Let’s just focus on the real issues. Norm, as always, thank you, my friend, for stopping by. Looking forward to catching up, with you, soon.
Lawyer Norm Blumenthal:
Okay, Bert. Thanks for having me.
