{"id":338338,"date":"2020-02-27T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T21:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=338338"},"modified":"2020-02-28T16:21:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T21:21:23","slug":"apple-and-the-market-selloff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2020\/02\/27\/apple-and-the-market-selloff\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple, China and the Market Sell-Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Here is Vinny, formally from Queens, now in Wilmington, North Carolina. Vinny, welcome back, sir. Great to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega prayers and mega dittos to you and your family. Rush, in my opinion this is about — in the long run — the economy. Wall Street is down over 10% now, and now manufacturers are saying that since they are possibly having to drastically slow production or outright shut down production for foreseeable future, this will now affect consumers in a real negative way and in numerous ways as well as the obvious 401(k)s and 457s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I mean, how many trillions of dollars have been lost in the last three days because of this hyperactivity by the media? The Democrats will run on a failing or faulty economy under Trump. This is my prediction. Carville was right in \u201992 when he said, “It\u2019s the economy, Stupid,” and so it is now. The economy has been the number-one issue for Americans in regards to Trump\u2019s reelection, and it is this that the Democrats know that they have to defeat.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Vinny?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Let me interrupt and ask you a question here: Do you think American businesses are panicking and responding to the media prematurely, that there\u2019s no reason for this stock sell-off, there\u2019s no reason for these people to slow down manufacturing? Why are they doing it?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, I think they\u2019re panicking, because what I\u2019ve always been told is the number-one thing that the markets fear is uncertainty, and there\u2019s a lot of uncertainty. And this sell-off, yeah, it is going to be some of it, of course, but it\u2019s incredible. We have 60 cases in the United States — 60, okay — and we\u2019ve lost trillions upon trillions of dollars in the stock market — I don\u2019t know — over 60 cases. I know there are other things going on, but, yeah, I do think there\u2019s a lot of panic. I do.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. I understand. But let me give you one example, Vinny. I\u2019m gonna use Apple since I know a lot about it. Apple has been responsible for much of the uptick in the market. Apple has gone through the roof. Apple is way beyond where any analyst expected their stock price to be — and they have plummeted. The reason they have plummeted is because everything they make is in China. Everything is assembled in China, and it\u2019s not gonna be assembled. They\u2019re gonna… They may not have any products this year.<\/p>\n

These are the stories.<\/p>\n

“If they do have product, it may be way delayed, and it may be very little in quantity and number.” So the results that the market\u2019s having with Apple are somewhat genuine because whereas we only have 60 cases here, there are almost 50,000 in China right in the center of the manufacturing regions where all of the factories that manufacture and assemble Apple products are, and they\u2019re not running anywhere near full capacity. So that\u2019s one instance where it has nothing to do with what\u2019s happening in America. It has to with what\u2019s happening on the ground in China. So then you have to start asking questions.<\/p>\n

“Okay, well (chuckles), how did this start in China?”<\/p>\n

“What\u2019s the real reason behind it?”<\/p>\n

“Why don\u2019t they get to the bottom of it?”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unending, unanswerable questions.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Look, I don\u2019t want to be guilty of what I\u2019m accusing others of. I want to go through this Apple business a little bit more deliberately than I did. I had a minute and a half to make the point. I want to take a little bit more time on it, because Apple\u2019s trying to find ways around the circumstances that they\u2019re dealing with. But the reason I want to do it is our previous caller — a well-known guy, Vinny from Queens, now in Wilmington, North Carolina, escaping taxes — said that he believed that American businesses and investors are panicking.<\/p>\n

Based on there\u2019s only 60 cases of coronavirus known right now in America, that there\u2019s no reason for this massive sell-off and that there\u2019s no reason for the economy slowing down as it might other than panic. And the panic, he says, is derived from the way the media\u2019s reporting. Now, folks, there is no question that this is politicized. The left politicizes everything. The left wants to get rid of Trump like they\u2019d want to get rid of any Republican president, but they hate Trump with a purple passion beyond the hatred they harbor for Republicans in general.<\/p>\n

So anything that comes up that may hurt Trump, they\u2019re going to hype, they\u2019re going to weaponize, they\u2019re going to expand — and they are doing it. To them, if the market loses 10 or 15% in a correction? Fine! Fine! Trump shouldn\u2019t have had it up this high in the first place. If the economy falls off? Fine! If that\u2019s what it takes to get Democrats elected? Fine! Because that\u2019s all the media is the adjunct to the Democrat Party. So while… (sigh) Look, panic is panic, and people are gonna react the way they do. Not all of it is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s why I cited the example of Apple for him. Now, Apple\u2019s an American corporation, and they have been going great gangbusters in the stock market and everywhere else. They are the best-run company in the world right now, according to Warren Buffett. Their stock price has gone through the roof like every other aspect of their business has. Their stock price was trading way above where most analysts predicted that it would be. Then the coronavirus hits Wuhan, China. Now, most of Apple\u2019s products are assembled in China.<\/p>\n

Some are assembled in Taiwan, some are assembled in Brazil, and some are assembled in Vietnam, some in India. But the vast majority of Apple\u2019s products — the iPhone and iPads, all the computers — are assembled in China. The factories are… (sigh) As far as the Chinese geography is concerned, the factories are within ground zero of the coronavirus. Those factories were closed for the Chinese New Year, and then after the Chinese New Year, the Chinese government kept them closed because of the effort to contain the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that these factories are just now beginning to open, but they\u2019re nowhere near full capacity. Not even half full. Foxconn, the primary owner of these factories, has been offering all kinds of incentives to get workers to return. But people are afraid. They\u2019re afraid to go back in massive public areas because of this disease. So they\u2019re having trouble. So Apple has issued new guidance. Apple issued guidance telling investors, “Hey, look, our second quarter here…” The first calendar quarter of 2010 is their second fiscal calendar quarter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gonna be way, way down. They\u2019ve had to revise earnings and profits way down because there is a stoppage on the manufacture of current products — and, you know, the new iPhone comes out in September. But it is now that Apple engineers… Do you know that Apple spends $150 million a year flying employees to and from China? Every day… Every day, there are 50 Apple employees going to or from China. Every day! (interruption) Nope. They spend it on United and then they spend it on some of the airlines.<\/p>\n

Now, that travel is not happening.<\/p>\n

What the travel is for is Apple\u2019s engineers at this time of year are heading over to China — the factories — to get them tooled up and to run test manufacturing on the new iPhone, which will not be released until September. They can\u2019t do that yet. It may well be that there\u2019s not any travel going on to China right now, because who can be sure that they\u2019ll be safe if they go there? Now, Apple is trying to accommodate this by moving some production out of China to Taiwan, to Vietnam, and they\u2019re gonna do everything they can.<\/p>\n

My only point in bringing this up is they\u2019ll find a way to deal with it, and whatever is due to hit the market in September, it will hit the market. It may be in low volume. You may have trouble finding it, but they\u2019ll get it released on time. The point is: Apple isn\u2019t panicking. Now, the American stock market being down, Apple\u2019s a big part of it. Apple\u2019s got real problems, as does any other tech firm that has its products assembled in China. There isn\u2019t much going on over there. They\u2019re doing everything they can to get people back to work and get these factories up and running.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But nobody thinks the coronavirus in China has peaked. Some think it has. Some think the number of cases is now on the low end. But you know what they\u2019ve discovered? They\u2019ve discovered that people that had the virus and recovered from it are getting it again. Some people in as many as 14 days — in China — are getting it again after having supposedly recovered from it. If that\u2019s true, that\u2019s kind of, you know, a new thing for people to be worried about. Now, my only point in bringing this up is not to create any further panic about Apple.<\/p>\n

I want to do something. They\u2019re working as best they can to overcome these obstacles. But the fact is that it\u2019s not panic that is causing the Apple stock price to drop. Apple themselves have told investors that their production is way down, and they\u2019re not gonna make what their estimates were for the quarter, and it\u2019s because of the virus. So there\u2019s no panic there. Now, there may be some panic. I\u2019m sure there is in some quarters. Doesn\u2019t matter. It is what it is.<\/p>\n

The market is down almost 10%. That\u2019s correction period, and it doesn\u2019t look like there\u2019s any end in sight to it. But there will be. At some point, it\u2019s gonna bottom out — and a year from now people are gonna be shooting themselves for not buying stocks at the prices they\u2019re available at today. It\u2019s the nature of things. The nature of things is change and cycle. Nothing is ever the end. There\u2019s no ultimate doom here. There\u2019s just…<\/p>\n

We human beings have to adapt.<\/p>\n

We are unique in our ability to adapt to all circumstances that we encounter.<\/p>\n

At any stage of human existence on this planet, from Adam and Eve on, humans have had to adapt to environmental changes that they couldn\u2019t control, to enemies that they didn\u2019t know they had \u2019til they showed up. Humans had to learn how to adapt to drought and they had to learn how to adapt to flood, especially in the early days when they couldn\u2019t be predicted. But, even now, when we have so much more knowledge and so much more ability to predict upcoming calamities, still, nobody saw this. So we\u2019re in a massive period of adapting to it.<\/p>\n

How we adapt is going to be challenging because there are people attempting to promote a panic. There are people attempting to say that the government in charge doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing. They want you to get scared. I think the way I would look at that, if I were you, is look at what this administration has fixed and done inside of just three years. You want an administration that didn\u2019t know what it was doing when it came to matters of the economy, when it came to matters of prosperity? Take a look at the eight years of Obama.<\/p>\n

Now, Obama was romanticized \u2019cause the media loved him. Everybody thinks Obama appointed an Ebola czar. You know, ladies and gentlemen, czars are something you find in totalitarian regimes. Czars have oligarchal or authoritative control over things. We don\u2019t have czars in the United States. The Russians, the Soviets had czars, but we don\u2019t. Now, Obama did, and everybody made a big deal out of the fact that Obama had an Ebola czar. He didn\u2019t have an Ebola czar! The guy he appointed to deal with Ebola was not a medical person.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He was a lawyer. He was a lawyer for Al Gore. His name was Ron Klain. He had no health care experience whatsoever. Everybody\u2019s saying, “Obama had a health czar. Obama had an Ebola czar. Obama was far more competent than Trump.” Try this. Mike Pence just announced the appointment of a lead researcher, the AIDS expert at the State Department, a woman, is joining Pence and Trump\u2019s association of medical people to deal with this.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you what I saw today during my show prep. You know, I read my tech blogs all the time, and there\u2019s a bunch of tech blogs that are populated by mostly gay people. They hate Pence. They despise Pence \u2019cause they think Pence was anti-gay people and didn\u2019t work hard enough to fix HIV and AIDS-related health cases when he was governor of Indiana. They hate him. They hate him. They think he\u2019s anti-gay.<\/p>\n

They think this is the worst thing that can happen, Mike Pence doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. He hates gay people, say these tech blogs. Just literally insane stuff. So Pence goes out today and his first big hire, other than those that we saw yesterday at the press conference, the AIDS expert at the State Department.<\/p>\n

And the reason for that is we needed to act fast. You know, HIV, nobody had seen it before. Brand-new, popped out of nowhere. Tried to get a handle on it quickly. You remember, if you were alive then, Reagan didn\u2019t care. That\u2019s why AIDS spread, HIV, because Reagan didn\u2019t care. It was absurd.<\/p>\n

They tried to say the same thing about Pence. So now he\u2019s gone out and hired the number one AIDS researcher and expert at the State Department to join the team, which is a really responsible and smart hire because some people think there\u2019s some similarities in the behavior of the coronavirus and AIDS. And it may be, we don\u2019t know. But I think you ought to have a lot of confidence in the people that are look at this now and not believe the media trying to tell you that the people in charge here don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

The people in charge have fixed so much already that was wrong with this country after eight years of Obama. We had people that did not believe, folks, in the growth of the U.S. economy. You\u2019ve forgotten maybe. but the Obama administration was telling everybody there\u2019s a new era of decline and they were the ones to manage it, that the days of America\u2019s economy continually growing were over. Obama told us this.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d go out to New Hampshire, go out to Michigan, Indiana, tell people their jobs weren\u2019t coming back. During the 2016 campaign Trump would say they are coming back. Obama\u2019d go out and say, what\u2019s he gonna do? Wave a magic wand? How\u2019s he gonna bring \u2019em back? Trump bought \u2019em back. It can be done. The U.S. economy is growing and expanding. It may have enough strength to withstand what it\u2019s gonna get hit with the coronavirus, is how strong it is.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it\u2019s gonna be hurt. It\u2019s gonna be hurt by people — let\u2019s say that your family had intended to travel to San Francisco this summer on a vacation, but now you\u2019re not gonna go because of coronavirus. The economy is gonna lose your trip to San Francisco. And you\u2019re not gonna go twice to make up for the one you lost. You may not go at all now. But if you do go, you\u2019re not gonna go twice to make up for the trip that\u2019s not gonna happen.<\/p>\n

So the economy\u2019s gonna lose your trip to San Francisco. The economy\u2019s gonna lose things like this where people are not going to do what they had planned to do that they\u2019re not gonna do two times or more, so the loss will not be made up. That\u2019s how the economy\u2019s gonna be hurt, in the tourism area, and maybe even purchases. We just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\"\"But we have to adapt to it. And the best way to adapt to it is without any panic and to try to keep all the politics out of this, which the Democrats, because it\u2019s an election year, and the media are attempting to make everything political, and they love the panic. And they\u2019re stoking it. And it\u2019s just like I always say, if there\u2019s gonna be a recession just make up your mind not to participate in it. You don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a conformist. You don\u2019t have to go along with the crowd if you don\u2019t want to. Be an individual. Be industrious. Be creative. Find ways to not have to participate in this if it\u2019s gonna be bad. You can do it. People do it all the time. In a downward economy, you\u2019ll note not everybody goes down, not everybody suffers. Some people prosper in a down economy. How is that? They find how to do it and work it and do it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about how much do you want to conform versus how much do you want to be an individual, stand up for yourself, and just not automatically follow the herd. You follow the herd, you\u2019re gonna get lost. When there\u2019s a herd of anything going on you can\u2019t spot the individuals in it. And you certainly aren\u2019t in control of anything if you\u2019re in the middle of a herd.<\/p>\n

So try to maintain control of as much as you can of your life, be skeptical about this panic-driven stuff that you are hearing. Ask yourself a question, “Okay. Of the 60 people that have the coronavirus in America, how many are in the hospital?” How many have died? What\u2019s the first thing you\u2019re gonna do if you come down with the disease? If you get the flu, what do you do? If you get a cold or any kind of a respiratory virus, what do you do?<\/p>\n

Well, if you don\u2019t think you\u2019re gonna die the first thing you do is not go to the hospital. You go somewhere, you try to get treated, you don\u2019t go to work, you stay home, you keep yourself sequestered from others so you don\u2019t infect them. The same thing that happens with this. But what you see on TV, pictures out of China, the only pictures you see are people in hazmat suits treating patients lying in hospital beds, and so you think that\u2019s what happens to everybody that comes down with the disease.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not telling you — let me check something real quick here before I have to go to the break. Come on. Come on. Of the 82 and a half thousand cases, there are 33,000 people that have recovered from it. And they\u2019re not telling you how many people have recovered. They\u2019re making it look like, they\u2019re making it sound like nobody recovers. You get this, you\u2019re dead. You\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: And we are back. Speaking of which, folks, Tim Cook from Apple, we have a sound bite here. He was on the Fox Business Network<\/a>, an interview with Cavuto: Coast to Coast that they\u2019re gonna air tomorrow, but they got one clip they\u2019re using to promote it. And here\u2019s Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, talking about Apple\u2019s factories and the coronavirus.<\/p>\n