Things Greg Says on Podcasts

Yeah, I think there's a genuine concern out there that the companies have gotten ahead of themselves with the massive amounts of investment that they're promising without a strong timeline as to when the revenue, the profit will fall in place to actually make it worthwhile. Google, for example, we saw that even though they're still growing very rapidly in terms of their revenue, their search revenue from ads is slowing down. So people are saying, hmm, is the money they make from AI going to really going to make up for whatever they lose on search ads and so forth? And I think that question propagates across all these companies. And you're seeing investors who are not really asking questions about the enormous prices they were willing to pay for those companies now asking questions. We're seeing Intel down. We're seeing Google down. We're seeing, in fact, most of the big stocks that we associate with AI are actually kind of struggling this

quarter for the economy, 3.4% annual rate, best in a year. If you actually look under the hood, there are some measures of demand growing around 5% best in three or four years. It's an economy that's not just strong, but it's accelerating. But, Kai, the thing that I find striking is that if you actually look at the income side of the statement, you know, where's the money going that is basically being thrown off by this fast-growing economy? Real disposable income, the money that ordinary folks out there are holding on to after their taxes and everything like that, it's only growing around 1.5% after inflation. That's half the rate of economic growth. Why the difference? Because so much of this economic growth is investment. It's AI, it's profits. It's not trickling down to ordinary workers. And I think that explains why people are so unhappy about the economy now, even though the numbers tell us it's doing really well.

the hood, there are some measures of demand growing around 5% best in three or four years. It's an economy that's not just strong, but it's accelerating. But Kai, the thing that I find striking is that if you actually look at the income side of the statement, you know, where's the money going that is basically being thrown off by this fast-growing economy? Real disposable income, the money that ordinary folks out there are holding on to after their taxes and everything like that, it's only growing around 1.5% after inflation. That's half the rate of economic growth. Why the difference? Because so much of this economic growth is investment. It's AI, it's profits. It's not trickling down to ordinary workers. And I think that explains why people are so unhappy about the economy now, even though the numbers tell us it's doing really well.