is as backed up as the west coast is. we in fact took a tour of the port of oakland where i am standing and back in april to see how they were sort of considering the future. and let me just try to put it in perspective for you. i want you to listen to the executive director at the port of oakland who at that timewise staring down the barrel of what he knew was an incredible crush coming his way. have a listen. we are busier than ever, and the pandemic has changed peoples habits in terms of buying stuff. repairing their home, getting more furnishing, appliances, so all of that stuff is coming through the port of oakland for this region and we re see a boom of people buying and shipping through asia to the port of oakland. so just to talk about what exactly that then means here on the ground, if you think about the port of oakland, you know, since then they basically like so many california ports they
of course the pandemic has just complicated all of that. the pandemic itself has just really made things a jumbled mess. i ll also throw into the mix demand. we ve all been stuck at home more or less, and we ve been buying stuff, all kinds of stuff, everything from appliances, computer equipment, furniture, clothing, toys, you name it, we ve been buying it. the demand is as strong as it s been by order of magnitude. you got all this stuff coming through the pipe and the pipe is being disrupted by the pandemic, and that results in this jumbled mess. then it s an intricate set of relationships, you know, from the factory to the truck to the port to the container ship to the port to the truck to the warehouse. there s a lot of stuff going on. you explained how it s all interconnected. inflation is also another issue. this morning we learned the inflation rate of the last 12 months is 5.4% now. that s the highest rate since
to peel high prices not only when they are buying steak and hoarding toilet paper but also when they are trying to provide harris: we cannot go back to hoarding toilet paper. emily: when people feel the supply being threatened, they panic. if people see empty shelves in stores so they start buying stuff but the bill will come after christmas. inflation will hit even higher and then the bill for all this multitrillion dollar spending, that s going to hit and when that lag hits we are going to be in a compounded recession. i hate to say it, but mark my words. harris: you often write about 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time you re right but we just don t know it yet. [laughter] i m telling the truth. so brian when you talk about empty shelves for all the reasons that kennedy gave, i m also looking at the really big spike in crime. there s one guy here in new york city that just faced 46 charges of just this year alone of shoplifting, not to give anybody the excuse to go
a lot of this was brought up earlier, infrastructure. there is a bill in washington right now by both parties to improve roads, rail, and that will put a lot of people to work. so if they could just pass that bill and we can start to get our infrastructure in shape, this won t happen next year. but if we don t do that, we will go through the same problem again next year and maybe even worse. be to explain for folks at home because i don t fully understand this myself. we had shortages the height of covid but coming out of the back and now. how did it get to be this bad, worse than the height of the pandemic? well, during the height of the pandemic come everybody was going for a certain kind of product. you know paper towels, pp, hand sanitizer and those things but now everybody is going for everything. because people aren t traveling as much and not going out to dinner as much or to movies or to the bowling alley, they have some extra capital. they are buying stuff.
and these are things we have been talking about. the reason inflation is so high right now is because of supply and demand. because of covid and other things. people are buying stuff. whatever is available it seems like people are buying it as soon as they can. but, also, the government has flooded the economy with some dollars, that s why we are at a jimmy carter era high when it comes to inflation. but then you go down the list. and you look at, you know, immigration is there. on that list. and so is crime. there is i have lent crime. number three right there. 81%. let me show you an image from yesterday on the streets of new york city. this is broad daylight. 145 in the after. we are on 6th avenue but over at 7th avenue near 148th street that gunman is opening fire in broad daylight. obviously chasing that person down. a little unusual that they are wearing a ski mask. a lot of people are wearing