This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 14th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Scott Linscombe is kicking himself, still, three years later,

for not buying a car in mid-2020. And the car market for buyers has gotten considerably

worse since then but he's finally ready to talk about it his utter failure to

time the car market and provide some details about how the market has changed and how the Fed seem intent on goosing demand and thus prices going forward.

This is not a comfortable subject for you Scott and it's not a

comfortable subject for me either because in early 2020 I had numerous opportunities to buy an extremely inexpensive car.

Yeah. Fleets like Enterprise and other car rental places were just liquidating fleets because they needed to. They needed cash. People were not going out, renting cars and going from one place to another and so if you

wouldn't mind characterized from then to now.

Oh it's been I share your depression, Caleb,

because I was in a very similar boat.

I even test drove some cars in, I think, April of 2020.

And then sadly, I passed. And now. April of

20 20 and then sadly I passed and now I'm regretting it because of course there was a total collapse in

demand for automobiles during the early peak lockdown era of the pandemic.

So March, April, May of 2020.

Everyone was stuck in his or her home.

No one was selling cars, no one was driving cars.

And that, of course, with cars, you have a big inventory, you have a giant lot full of new and used cars, you have, as you mentioned, rental car companies with nobody renting cars. And so there was this brief period where it really

looked like the auto industry was kind of

very good for us consumers.

...