Back to episode — Episode 2913 CWSA 07/31/25
Context —
he time. So, Elizabeth Warren. Senator Josh Hawley has introduced legislation to ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks. The problem is that they have inside information. So if they were to trade stocks, they would be tempted to cheat or we'd expect that they might cheat. So it's an ugly situation. And of course, people blame Nancy Pelosi for insider trading, which she d…
← Previous segment →etween a small box and a big box and knows what to move where. All right. Sure. Shanghai Electric, that's the name of the company. So I am not impressed by the robot that can move boxes of various sizes.
But then an American company named Figure is also building a humanoid robot and their leader Brett Adcock showed us a video of one of the robots he has in his home that is putting laundry into the washing machine. So it's reaching into a laundry bag and putting the laundry into the washing machine. Now, what did the video not show? Here's what the video did not show. Could the robot also put soap in the washing machine and know how to operate the controls and turn it on? Could it come back later and move that wet laundry into the dryer and then use those controls to dry it? I'm guessing that if it could do those things that the video would have been edited to show that it can do the entire laundry process.
But I would like to triple down on my prediction that we do not have the technology that would power robots. Obviously, we all think we can get there, but we're not really even in the right domain. I don't even think they have the right approach. It looks like it's just sort of not possible. Now, if I had to bet on it, I would bet that it will be solved at some point in the history. But if you think that we're a few months away from humanoid robots, which by the way, last year, I believe Elon Musk was saying that the end of this year, which is sort of right around the corner, that we see our first humanoid robots with general sort of general intelligence, some version of it. We're not going to see that. Would you agree? We're definitely not within a year of having an autonomous robot that you can just give an assignment that it's never seen before. Like imagine a robot where you could say, I want you to reorganize these shelves, but it's never been taught to do that. We're not really, we don't have any way to make that happen. But we can move boxes from one place to another and we can have a robot take laundry out of one container and put it in another and that's it. That's apparently that's all they do.
Well, in economic news, the jobless claims numbers came in and they're just pretty close to estimates. I guess the stock market liked that because the market's higher. Did you see that the gross domestic product was at 3%? Which is better than it was in the spring. 3% would be a good solid GDP number. And inflation also is not too bad. So I would like to say for the record because I haven't said this and I feel very bad about it. If you believe the GDP number, that would be a mistake.
A lot of Trump supporters, and I'm one of them, have sort of celebrated that inflation did not go up with tariffs, and it hasn't really, and that the GDP was solid. But here's why you should not be too happy about that. The tariffs haven't even kicked in. We have no idea what impact the tariffs will have on inflation. Why do you think we already know the answer to that? We don't know the answer to that. There have been a few special deals, but probably almost nothing compared to what it will be or could be in terms of the total tariff impact. So I'm one of the people who was doing a little bit of too early celebrating saying, "Whoa, look at this. Trump's a genius." And he was right that tariffs have no real effect or at least not one that's going to stop us on inflation. We don't know that. We're not even in the tariffs have happened phase much less knowing the long-term impact.
Now I'm not opposed to the tariffs. I'm not opposed to them, but I'm going to retreat to what I keep calling the Dana Perino view, which is we really don't know. Maybe it would be the best idea that anybody's ever had. Maybe it will just cause too much inflation and we'll wish it hadn't happened. Both of those are still possible, you know, and maybe we'll know by the end of the year, but we don't know yet. And so I would say with inflation and GDP that they both look good, but there are reasons that they would look good at the moment that would not apply to the r
Context —
est of the year. So I like the optimism. I like the fact that the Republicans are touting it as a win. I like the fact that the pundits are touting it as a win. And I was touting it as an economic win as well. But I want to just be on record saying I'm not stupid. It's way too early. It's way too early to know it's a win. So I'm not stupid, but I'm optimistic. So I don't mind rolling with it a lit…
Next segment → →