Bloomberg Money: Credit Card Indicators and Golf's Changing Fanbase

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
Bloomberg Money.

**Tom Keene** (0:12)
This is the Bloomberg Money podcast. I'm Tom Keene with Scarlet Fu.
Join us each week for a smart look at the forces shaping your financial life on personal finance, on retirement, and wealth management. We will explore how people are earning, investing, and building wealth. We are live Fridays at noon Eastern on Bloomberg Television. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and as always on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business App.
Got a great set of Bloomberg people to be with us. David Gurl just won't go away. No, we won't.

**Scarlet Fu** (0:47)
We pay him to come in.

**Tom Keene** (0:47)
Bloomberg this weekend on Friday ramping up to the show. Do you have a key guest this week?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:52)
Yes, maybe one from Michigan. I'm going to tease that.

**Tom Keene** (0:54)
Okay, we'll just let you hear in a moment. She's a song with us. Thank you so much for joining. Nice to have you here. We got lots to talk about. But the star of the show right now, how did you affect Mr. Hassett here? You were talking about socialism in the new Democratic Party.

**Mike McKee** (1:10)
Well, we're talking about some inconsistencies maybe in the Republicans' language. They have talked about the communist socialist Democrats and asked him what a socialist was, and he said that the government owns the means of production. And then I pointed out that the Trump administration has been taking stakes in a lot of American companies.

**Tom Keene** (1:29)
John Edwards years ago was old school and what I saw today was a two Americas job economy. Have you ever seen it, Mike McKee, this split apart as we all struggle to retirement?

**Mike McKee** (1:40)
I don't think it was too split apart this time. It was a lot of stuff under the hood that you have to kind of thread together to make a story out of it. We did lose 23,000 jobs but 50,000 of those were local education teachers and education workers and a lot of that may be just a seasonal difference of when people were taken off payrolls because they usually come off May and June. And so that will go away in the next month and then the question is where's the rest of the job?
We lost 19,000 retail jobs but the rest of it was all just kind of lower hiring.
Social services and education and health has been the big job creator and we've been usually getting 30, 40, 50,000 a month in that category, only got 22,000. So hiring slowed down but we had a 4.1% unemployment rate because a lot of people left the labor force. The labor force was a lot smaller again the second month and what that's telling you is that the president's deportation plans are working. The baby boomers except for Tom are still are retiring.

**Tom Keene** (2:48)
Hey now.

**Scarlet Fu** (2:51)
As he looks behind his shoulder.

**Tom Keene** (2:53)
Last time on the show for him. Save the show right now, please, oh young one.

**Scarlet Fu** (2:58)
So the jobs report took inflation off the front page, at least for this morning. But when it comes to inflation, still about oil prices, David, and consumers have the Iran war fatigue. Every headline on military strikes or talks causes huge swings in oil prices and gas prices. This is really difficult to know where things stand. I think even the president has Iran war fatigue.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:17)
I think that's true. I mean, he's been talking about the prospects of a deal, but it's one that's been negotiated between the Iranians, the Omanis, and a very circumscribed one that doesn't involve certainly the nuclear program or anything like that. Interesting to see the way in which the president, if not talking about the Iran war, isn't pivoting to talking about the economy. Although we do know from recent reporting from Bloomberg and other outlets, he's calling up Kevin Warsh, calling up the Fed chair more frequently now to talk about the economy. Spitball his ideas of where things are here about Mr. Warsh's impressions of the data.
So clearly cognizant of where things are, but that's not manifest in the way that he's talking about on the campaign.

**Tom Keene** (3:49)
Is it odd David that we're ignoring affordability, standard of living, paycheck to paycheck right now? It seems like nobody's talking about it.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:58)
I wouldn't paint that with a broad brush, but I'd go back to the White House. And it is something that I think President Trump's advisors desperately wanted to talk about more of the advances that he's made. You saw him go to Las Vegas this week to talk once again about no taxes on tips, which was such a rallying cry during the campaign.