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00:15Welcome to the Myers Report Fast 15. It is Friday, September 11th, 2026.
00:23Sadly, it is also the 25th anniversary of the worst attack on mainland America in our history.
00:32We must never forget. There are lots of lessons to be learned.
00:36We are truly the shining light on the hill, and we are the hope of Western civilization and the world.
00:44Though at times, though the times appear to be very difficult, I do believe we will prevail.
00:52This morning, as usual, Don Day, our weather guru, is going to answer the question,
00:57are the climate doomsayers right? Was this the hottest summer in our history?
01:04Is crazy weather the norm? Are the doomsayers right, or are they just full of horse pucky?
01:11Isaac is back from traveling, illness, and a tough fuel environment.
01:18And in the cleanup slot, we have our hockey-playing chief economist, Dr. Bob.
01:26No, no, no. I don't play hockey.
01:29You used to.
01:33For maybe two or three attempts before I got injured, and that was it.
01:39I went to golf. I thought that would be safer. It wasn't.
01:43Do you watch hockey, Bob?
01:45He watches a lot. His grandkids play hockey, and Bob Jr., who is, what, 59 years old,
01:52is still playing hockey despite two hip replacements.
01:55I know. Several weeks he plays.
01:58It's amazing.
02:00Don, was this really the hottest summer in history?
02:04Well, it really was a hot summer for sure, but there's a lot of different ways you can
02:10take temperature data and make it say what you want to say.
02:13So I'll answer your question.
02:14Was it the hottest August in history or summer in history?
02:19It was the warmest, not the hottest.
02:22And you might say, I'm splitting hairs.
02:25Well, the thing is, is that the nighttime temperatures
02:29were the warmest relative to average compared to, let's say, the hottest year that we know
02:35for sure by far was 1936.
02:39That was by far the hottest summer anywhere in North America.
02:43And we ended up being fourth place.
02:48And the reason I bring up those nighttime temperatures is something called the urban heat
02:51island effect.
02:52Correct. So you can't compare temperatures in Minneapolis or St. Louis in 1936 at night
03:02compared to 2026 because of the heat that is made from the urban sprawl and the concrete
03:10and the asphalt and all those things.
03:12So once you make those adjustments, it was the fourth warmest.
03:15What about in the suburbs or the rural areas?
03:19There are there are no suburbs in rural areas.
03:25OK, well, I know where you're going with it.
03:29The thing is, is if you compare the temperatures in rural areas to 50, 60 years ago, you don't
03:37really find that much change.
03:39But it's not apples to apples.
03:41When you have temperature sensors that are surrounded by cities, you find that the nighttime temperatures
03:48are much warmer because of that.
03:50And so when you do the math, you figure in that, let's say you had a high one day of
03:55100
03:55and a low of 70.
03:58Well, 40 years ago, that low would have been 65.
04:01So when you average the temperatures together, that's why there's a skewing.
04:05So you've got to be really careful in how you how you do the numbers.
04:09Aren't some of the measuring places that are now in high density areas, weren't 30, 40,
04:1650 years ago, weren't they in less dense areas?
04:19Oh, absolutely.
04:21I mean, how many cities in the country is the airport now in the city?
04:26That's the point.
04:27I mean, it's like most centers are at airports, which were usually built far out of cities.
04:32So if you've got a candle, if you've got a thermometer sitting outside or sitting in one
04:39part of a room, and then you move a candle closer to it, it'll show that things are warmer.
04:46Amazing, isn't it?
04:49Stupidity.
04:50What happened to hurricanes hitting Florida on the coast of the Gulf of America?
04:55Where are they?
04:56Well, we've had one tropical storm in the Gulf here recently.
05:00The Atlantic is...
05:01It's not a hurricane.
05:01Not a hurricane.
05:03The next five to seven days looks very quiet.
05:06We might see something in the Atlantic late next week forming.
05:09But right now, the hurricane season in the Atlantic and the Gulf is extremely quiet.
05:15We're only on the Bs in terms of the names.
05:20Now, there's a lot of season to go.
05:22I mean, we've got all of September, all of October, even into early November for things
05:27to pop.
05:27And I would be shocked if we don't have something in the Atlantic or the Gulf this fall.
05:32But right now, we're on track for one of the quietest hurricane seasons in a long, long
05:39time in the Atlantic.
05:41And what's happening in the Pacific?
05:43The exact opposite.
05:44The Pacific is going crazy.
05:46I mean, we've had two hurricanes, broad brush Hawaii.
05:50We've got another tropical storm west of Mexico, tropical storm Norbert that may become a hurricane
05:57later.
05:58And this is largely due to the very warm El Nino waters in the Pacific Ocean right now.
06:05We will continue to see Pacific hurricanes well into the fall.
06:10Okay.
06:10Isaac, it has been a while.
06:12We almost forgot who you are.
06:14But your unique smile is unforgettable.
06:19You make me blush, Gary.
06:22Isaac, how's the AI boom impacting transportation and the logistics industry today?
06:28And where do you see the biggest impact coming over the next few years?
06:35Yeah, it's definitely here.
06:37AI has shifted from a novelty chat box and Google on steroids to AI actually running parts of
06:44our back office.
06:45Gary, today's trucking company is using AI for adding new orders into our systems, auto
06:51rate quoting, inbound email rate requests, and helping a lot of our dispatchers maximize
06:57truck utilization by guiding and assisting planners making more efficient freight planning
07:02decisions with our drivers.
07:05C.H.
07:06Robinson is really the leader in this.
07:08It's a massive freight broker.
07:10Yeah.
07:11It's reported that they've already automated over 3 million shipping-related tasks since
07:17they first really launched their AI initiative back in 2024.
07:23Many brokerages, like C.H.
07:25Robinson, have removed a live person from picking up the phone and negotiating a lot of
07:31these spot market loads that end up on the load boards that many of the smaller carriers
07:36call on.
07:37Now we're, you know, these guys are negotiating with AI bots.
07:41And, you know, we don't do much on the spot board, but a couple of my dispatchers, it took
07:46about probably two, three minutes from them to realize that they're talking to a robot.
07:50These things are convincing.
07:51Very convincing.
07:52If I think I'm talking to a robot, I immediately ask them, how many children do they have?
07:57Okay.
07:58And usually the program answer goes, oh, it doesn't work.
08:03Well, I ask, are you a robot?
08:07Do you get an honest answer?
08:10Yeah.
08:10They will tell you.
08:12Yes.
08:12I've, I've experienced, I've encountered some pretty honest robots.
08:18But the other obvious question is, how do you negotiate with a robot?
08:22Well, they got their, you know, so, so they have their parameters on, you know, the lowest
08:27they can go and the highest they can go.
08:29So that I don't have robots deployed within my organization, but that's my assumption.
08:34I mean, so much of negotiating is listening to the tone of voice, look, or if you're on
08:40a Zoom call, you know, looking at people's eyes and their faces, how do you do that with
08:45a robot?
08:46You don't, you give it parameters to work with them.
08:49Okay.
08:50Isaac, cargo theft is becoming a major concern across the country.
08:56Are you seeing any signs of it slowing down or is the problem continuing to get worse?
09:01Actually, yes.
09:02Actually, the answer is, yes, the, it is slowing down.
09:07Yes.
09:08It's actually, it's actually down 5% year over year.
09:11So really, really good news.
09:13But there's a big but here, right?
09:15That, although that stat sounds good, it's actually very misleading.
09:20Although the number of incidents are down 5%, the average theft loss is actually up 36%.
09:27So it's so.
09:28Hold on a second.
09:29Can you, can you explain that?
09:32I certainly will.
09:34So fewer criminals are breaking in with both.
09:37So think this is fewer guys with boat cutters in yards with a box truck to put product in.
09:43And it's more sophisticated crime rings, right?
09:46What's going on right now.
09:47So although we just talked about AI, how it's absolutely helping a lot of businesses, right?
09:53Arguably, you know, yeah, I'll leave it at that.
09:56A lot of businesses, right?
09:57And definitely transportation.
09:58It's exposing us to a lot of cybersecurity exposure.
10:04We have fraud at an all-time high where these guys are very sophisticated.
10:09They're stealing carrier identities, their motor carrier numbers.
10:12They're intercepting emails between customer and carrier to get shipment details.
10:19You know, location, origin, location, bill of ladings, pickup numbers.
10:25Then they're sending in their, you know, their phony truck with the carrier's credentials,
10:32their decals on the doors, and arming that driver with everything the driver needs to pick
10:37up that order, bumps up into a dock, checks in, and hauls off $200,000 worth of TVs from Samsung.
10:46With the victim helping him load the stuff on the car.
10:51Absolutely.
10:52It's actually a scarier problem because it looks legitimate the entire way through until you find out you just got
10:58robbed.
11:00Wow.
11:00We actually just had, we actually just had one of our containers over the weekend, Labor Day weekend.
11:07We just had one of our containers in our Thornton, Illinois yard that was just stolen.
11:12Amazon product, 53-foot container.
11:15Thank God there was nothing really of value.
11:17It was a bunch of empty plastic totes.
11:20And, but, so we had one container stolen.
11:23In that yard, there's probably about 100 trucks that parked there, trucks and trailers.
11:28There was 15 stolen throughout the weekend.
11:33Of, what, in that one yard?
11:35In that one yard, correct.
11:37So, yes, it's gone away from a guy in a boat gutter.
11:41It's now sophisticated crime rings that are using AI to empower them.
11:47Okay.
11:48Dr. Bob Janetsky, Iran is heating up.
11:52And despite some setbacks in the stock market, the stock market is still near record highs.
11:58And the Fed is meeting next week.
12:01What do you think the Fed will do?
12:03Will they raise or hold rates?
12:05First, I don't think it matters what they do, raise or lowering.
12:10Well, the impression is, and it's a widely held impression in the market,
12:14that if they don't raise interest rates or if they cut rates, we have a more stimulative policy.
12:22And if they raise rates, then they have a more restrictive policy.
12:25It isn't quite that straightforward because the Fed is just artificially picking a short-term rate.
12:34And they're ignoring market rates.
12:37Now, low rates or the current rate or a lower rate could be stimulative if the Fed were purchasing a
12:44lot of securities
12:45because that raises the price and lowers the interest rates of securities.
12:50And if the Fed is purchasing a lot and keeping the market rate and keeping their target rate below the
12:58market rate,
12:58that would be stimulative.
13:00If the Fed is still purchasing securities now?
13:03If the Fed is selling securities in order to raise rates, that would be restrictive.
13:07Interestingly enough, the Fed is doing neither now.
13:10The Fed has gotten down the past two months, July and August,
13:14of only purchasing $5.5 billion of securities each month.
13:21That's a record low.
13:22That's hardly anything in the scheme of things.
13:25So what the Fed has done, and it's not really talked about this,
13:29but they are not aggressively trying to shift that rate down.
13:34And my interpretation is that means the current rate is close to the market rate.
13:39And so my interpretation is it might not be a good idea to raise the rate.
13:44But even if they raise it artificially, it really doesn't do anything because they're neither buying or selling securities.
13:50It's just forcing markets to adjust to a new rate, which may not be positive.
13:56So what are they going to do?
13:57I think they're going to raise rates anyway.
13:59And the reason I think they're going to raise rates anyway is because the president has been talking about lowering
14:06interest rates.
14:07And so the sense is the president doesn't want those rates to go up.
14:13What the Fed might have to do is raise rates anyway, given all the inflationary pressure, just to reassure the
14:20market.
14:21If they don't reassure the market, the market's going to think that the president is getting his way and the
14:27Fed is not doing its job.
14:28So I think a little quarter of a point rate, which is not going to do a whole lot of
14:33damage, is going to be something the Fed does under the reasoning that it's going to reassure the markets that
14:39it's in control.
14:41And that will keep long-term rates.
14:42Or that it's independent.
14:43So anyway, that's my catch-up.
14:47How's inflation doing?
14:48And how's it doing versus the economic growth of the country?
14:51It's not doing that badly.
14:54At least we got some numbers today.
14:56And it looks like it's 3.5% counting total inflation.
15:01That counts the big surge in oil price.
15:04Now, it doesn't count the surge in oil prices for this current month, where they're like $100 a barrel.
15:11That's going to send the inflation rate next month, or September's rate that's reported in October, that's going to send
15:18the inflation rate up to well above 3.5%, maybe even to 3.75% a year.
15:25But if you take away energy, you're back down to 2.5% year over year.
15:30That inflation rate has been kept under pretty good control.
15:34So basically, the reason we're getting high inflation numbers and all this concern over disruption to the economy is because
15:42people are assuming that the inflation is just running out of control.
15:48And while it's running out of control, it's doing so not because we have produced a lot of money and
15:54having a surge in spending.
15:56It's running out of control because we have a lack of supply in a number of things due to the
16:01war.
16:01And you can't solve that by pouring more money into the economy without creating even greater disruption.
16:09That doesn't sound like it's out of control.
16:11It sounds like a temporary condition.
16:13No, and I think the market, the stock market anyway, is seeing through that.
16:18Even though the market has been hit this past week pretty hard, the S&P 500 is less than 2
16:25% below its all-time high of 10 days ago.
16:31So these are very short-term stock market moves, I think.
16:35The underlying trend, and we've said this all along, is that we're going to continue to have a bull market
16:40in the last half of the year.
16:42My short-term stock market momentum model reflects the fact that there's been a lot of lowering of the upward
16:50momentum.
16:51But we're still basically in a positive situation when we look at it over a full week or seven days.
16:58Okay, there's been an erosion, a limited, I think, amount of our standard of living.
17:07The erosion has been very small on a year-over-year basis.
17:12It's less than 1%.
17:13If we look at it over the past six months, since the oil prices have gone up and the inflation's
17:19gone up,
17:19we're talking about maybe a 1% annual rate of erosion of workers' incomes.
17:25So the truth is, yes, living standards are going down.
17:30And that looks terrible, Gary, for our forecast that we're having a golden age of economic prosperity.
17:37I mean, it's not being felt by people out there with their wages.
17:41They're looking at things and they're wondering, you know, is this the golden age?
17:45I mean, our living standards are going down, albeit modestly.
17:49And certainly from the standpoint of workers, it doesn't look like a golden age at this point.
17:54But it's all related to the war on Iran.
17:56And if that were to end, the golden age would become far more apparent.
18:02Are there energy prices would go down, as you and I have discussed?
18:06They'd go down very, very rapidly, especially from the $100 rise.
18:09I mean, they would collapse down from that level.
18:11I think they're going to go back down into the 50s.
18:15But the point is, energy prices go down, the cost of everything goes down,
18:20and profits and people's incomes will go up.
18:26Next, our question for the week, guys.
18:30Who are you rooting for in Washington, D.C. this weekend, this Saturday, tomorrow?
18:36The New Zealand All Blacks or the South African Springboks?
18:42What the hell are you talking about, Gary?
18:45No, either.
18:47Isaac, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
18:50I Googled it.
18:51I AI'd it before I got on the call.
18:53AI'd it.
18:54That's the new thing now.
18:55Okay, so who are you going to root for?
18:57It's a rugby match, I guess?
18:59Well, it's the two best rugby teams in the world today.
19:04And this is the fourth of their series of four matches,
19:08which is ending up in Washington, D.C.
19:11And our own board member, Carlos Legaspi, is out visiting.
19:18He's going to the match.
19:21And, you know, we had some plans for doing a call tomorrow, which we canceled.
19:27I canceled.
19:28I moved it to another week because of Rosh Hashanah, which is obviously religious.
19:34And I said to Carlos that, you know, so you're going to a semi-religious event.
19:41He said, no, it's deeply religious.
19:44He played rugby all around the country.
19:46And that's – so you guys didn't know, huh?
19:49I don't have a dog in the fight, but I do know a good friend of mine once told me
19:52when good people, strong people lock arms like they do in a rugby match,
19:59they can become unstoppable.
20:01Oh, that's absolutely true.
20:03That really is a good illusion.
20:07Two people who lock arms and then hit a scrum can move 20 people if they're working together.
20:16It's an amazing thing.
20:18Anyway, guys, be well.
20:21Stay safe.
20:22Let's not forget what happened 25 years ago.
20:26And God bless America.
20:49Let's not forget what happened 25 years ago.
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