The End of an Iconic American Brand

And what it means for your investment strategy

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo.

Hey, I'm happy to tell you about a new program I just launched. It's the Certificate in Blockchain and Digital Assets for investors, consumers and students. It's an online self-paced course with a world class faculty including Scott Stornetta, the co-inventor of blockchain technology and Anders Brownworth from the Boston Federal Reserve and MIT. This course gives you the knowledge and the skills you need to understand blockchain and digital assets. It's just $249. You can learn all about it at DACFP.com.

And for sure, crypto is booming and Tupperware is dying. Tupperware has announced that they may not be able to stay in business. Its stock is down 50%. Its bonds are trading $0.52 on the dollar. The company's sales fell 18% last year. It's kind of shocking, isn't it, For those of us who grew up with Tupperware. The company sells its products in 70 countries. The sales force traditionally housewives who pitched the products to friends at Tupperware parties. The company was founded back in 1946. Earl Tupper was a chemist, and he invented a plastic container that has an airtight lid. When the product was first introduced, Time magazine raved about it. House Beautiful magazine marveled about it, but sales were initially low because Tupper was selling the product in stores. 

Women shopping in those stores didn't really quite get it. So Earl Tupper hired Brownie Wise. She started selling the products at hostess parties in the late 1940s, and she was able to have women hear that distinctive burping sound when you seal the lid. She flipped it upside down to prove that it didn't leak, and she even dropped it on the floor to prove that the product was unbreakable. And by 1951, Tupperware abandoned store sales and brownie wise began running the sales force. Three years later, she became the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week magazine. And she also made Tupperware a lifestyle brand. Women wanted help in the kitchen, but they also wanted careers.

But back then, doors were locked. You know, if you were a woman, you could be a nurse, a teacher, a secretary. That was largely about it. But suddenly women could have a new job as a career hosting Tupperware parties, and they could do it around their own schedules. Well, by the peak in 2007, there were 2 million people around the world, most of them women selling Tupperware in 70 countries, the number one sales country, Indonesia. But women today in most countries have so many other options for careers. Who needs to be a sales rep? Hosting parties on weeknights for commission? And it's not just the US where women have so many other career options. 

Tupperware has been forced to close its operations in England and Ireland, the Netherlands, Israel and New Zealand. And so they are once again selling their products in stores but against massive competition. And so the company is facing bankruptcy and closure. It's the end of an era. One of the biggest brands for 75 years is about to be no more.

And this is why you need to pay attention to your investments. What are the companies that you're investing in? You need to make sure your investments, your ETFs and mutual funds, your portfolios are filled with the businesses of the future and not the past. And that's why you now know why I talk about crypto. And in fact, this is also why I talk about Global X ETFs. They have 103 ETFs and they are all highly specialized. Global X doesn't have any generic bond funds or money market funds. They don't have any S&P 500 index funds. Instead, Global X has a lineup that spans disruptive technology, equity, income, commodities, digital assets and a lot more. And they offer this not just with ETFs but also separately managed accounts (SMAs), which are really popular with financial advisors as well as private funds for accredited investors and institutional investments for endowments and pension funds.

Global ETFs is part of the Mirae Asset Financial Group, based in South Korea with 12,000 employees and 51 offices and nearly half $1 trillion in assets under management. Global X ETFs include lithium and battery technology, robotics and AI, Cybersecurity, FinTech, genomics and biotechnology, social media, telemedicine, cannabis, clean water, wind energy, solar. And they offer investments in companies that are based in Greece, Norway, Germany, Argentina, Nigeria, China, Colombia, Pakistan, Portugal and Vietnam. They've got funds investing in copper miners, uranium, silver, gold. And if you want to invest for income, they have 27 income focused covered call ETFs, preferred stock ETF and, dividend ETFs. Global X even has seven ETFs focused on minimizing risk. And one of my favorite themes, of course, is crypto. Global X has two crypto ETFs. I started today by telling you about the certificate in blockchain and digital assets for investors, consumers and students. The Global X crypto ETFs are certainly worth looking at.

You need to learn about all this. In the 1960s, your grandmother needed to learn about Tupperware. Today, in the 2020s, you need to learn about disruptive technologies, including crypto. Get all the knowledge you need from my certificate in blockchain and digital assets at DACFP.com and learn more about Global X ETFs at Global X ETFs and by talking with your financial advisor.

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Exclusive Interview: Syndicated Columnist Cal Thomas 

Tap into the cultural wisdom from Cal’s commentaries on America for 50 years 

Ric Edelman: You're listening to the Truth About Your Future. I'm very happy to bring on to this program one of the most popular syndicated columnists in the United States, Cal Thomas. Cal, how long have we known each other? 30 years? More? Yeah, something like that. 

Cal Thomas: Yeah. Ever since you got me out of a passbook savings account into real investments. 

Ric Edelman: Well, I'll take. I'll take the blame for that. Cal, of course, has been a journalist for more than 50 years participating in our social, political and religious conversations. Cal, unlike other pundits writing in the political world, he has always called on both political parties to take the high road and to honor our civic and religious ideals. You can learn more about Cal at Cal thomas.com. Cal, you've written yet another book, A Watchman in the Night, which is what you have seen over 50 years of reporting in America. We're going to talk about that. In a summary Cal, what have you learned after writing about America for half a century? 

Cal Thomas: I've learned Ric that human nature doesn't change. You can change hairstyles, clothing styles, modes of transportation. You can even change political leadership. And the one thing that never changes is human nature. When I was growing up in suburban Washington, I was taught some eternal principles and they included inspiration, followed by motivation, followed by perspiration improves any life. Now we have flipped that into envy, greed and entitlement. I live in Florida now, and during open enrollment season for Medicare last December, there were ads running all over Florida television stations and they had four common words: benefit, free, entitlement and deserve. Now, think about that for a moment. All of these are self-directed. They require no motivation on your part. And think with a $31 trillion debt now and an interest on that debt greater than the GDP of many nations, we are approaching an economic catastrophe. No other nation has been able to survive that kind of debt. And it's not just debt, you know, I presume a certain standard that always works. There are economic standards which you know about. There are moral standards. We seem to be removing the guardrails that have protected us for the entire length of our country so far. And there are foreign policy standards that seem to be violated now as we see increasing challenges in the world from China, Iran, terrorist groups and others. So this has always been my standard and I measure events domestic and international by those standards. And that's what's been the foundation of my column for nearly 40 years now. 

Ric Edelman: But it's not just those observations as strongly as you express them and as eloquently as you do it, you do so in a way that is compelling reading. Do you think you memorize and display a lot of song lyrics in your work? You sometimes use them in your columns. Talk about your affinity for show business and well. 

Cal Thomas: Yeah, when I started out, I wanted to be in show business. Now the news has become show business, so I've arrived. I think people who write songs express all sorts of things that reach the heart and the mind. I just wrote about some of these disturbances in Chicago for a column, and I said the new mayor elect of Chicago was excusing or seemed to be excusing some of this outrage behavior by teenagers rioting in the streets and destroying property and shooting other people. And I said it reminds me of a line from West Side Story, “Hey, we're depraved on account of we're deprived.” So I think those kinds of lyrics and even love songs kind of make the point that I want to make in a less strident way. 

Ric Edelman: I hope some of the folks you love to quote are the people from show business who you you've had an opportunity to meet. I mean, we've known each other for decades and we've gone to dinner many times. And you've regaled me with so many stories of the incredible celebrities you've had the opportunity to get to know. 

Cal Thomas: Well, most celebrities basically have low self-esteem. And so when you praise them and quote from some of their work, you bring them into your orbit. I remember one time I had a show on Fox and Olympia Dukakis was going to be my guest. She didn't really like Fox, but her nephew worked there. So for his sake, she would come in and do the interview. So she's walking down the hall with kind of a stiff look on her face and said, “Olympia, I'm so glad to see you.” I'd seen her play the night before. She and her husband were playing in a Greek tragedy. I said, “You know what my favorite line is from the movie Moonstruck.” She said, “What?” I said, “Well, you're having dinner at another table. And then you move over to this guy who has just thrown a glass of water into one of his students face, and he walks you home and he says, May I come in?” And you say, “No.” And he says, “Why not?” And you say, “Because I'm a married woman and I know who I am.” Well, right then she starts laughing and was a tremendous guest. I've known one of my dearest friends, Marvin Hamlisch, of course, the Pulitzer Prize winner for A Chorus Line, and he was a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand and wrote so many great songs the way we were so many. And Barbara Cook, a tremendous singer. I don't know, I just have fallen into this and still love show business. People think they're very, very talented. I admire their talent, and I've been fortunate enough to meet a number of them over the years. People ask me, your favorite interview. They're expecting a president or something. I said, “No, no. My favorite interview is Julie Andrews. I stalked her for 40 years before she finally gave in to an interview. And you could still see it on YouTube. “

Ric Edelman: And she is probably my favorite as well, having grown up with, of course, everybody's favorite movie, Mary Poppins. And yet you have a photo in the book of you and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. 

Cal Thomas: I met them on the eve of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1999. They were both had some health issues. Dale had had a stroke and was in a wheelchair, and her daughter told me that she might not be able to come out but had lunch with both of them. And she got up out of her wheelchair outside and have this fabulous picture with the two of them. And he just regaled me with all kinds of stories about filming those Westerns and also got to meet Gene Autry once, had breakfast with him. And I said, “Let me let me ask you about whose idea was it to put those guns on the bridle of champion your horse?” Well, he said, “Boy, here's a fan. You know, he really knows me.” I said, “By the way, what ever happened to Champion?” And he said, “Well, when Champion died, I called Roy Rogers and asked him what he had done with Trigger when he died.” And he said, “Well, I stuffed him and put him in my museum.” He said, “How much did it cost?” And he told him. He said, “Hell no, bury the SOB.” Well, you know, he was owner of the LA Angels. He had diamonds on his sunglasses. The guy was not on food stamps. 

Ric Edelman: And it's that element, Cal, that I find that makes you really very different from others who write in the political space. You humanize these stories and examples and you make us all remember, as you said, at the end of the day, it all comes down to human nature. You've got a lot of liberal friends. Let's face it, you're one of the most conservative columnists in the field, but you've got a lot of liberal friends. And in a day when liberals and conservatives are pretty much at each other's throats with an unbelievable name calling, rather than standing side by side, just aligning exclusively on the conservative element, you recognize we're all fellow Americans. How did you do that? How do you manage to acknowledge that the other guys aren't evil just because they're the other guys? 

Cal Thomas: Well, I think you have to get to know people. You know, we're all members of tribes now, and we're defined by labels. And so many people don't get to know other people from another political worldview. They don't know about their families, their struggles, how they came to their point of view. Bob Beckel, the late Bob Beckel, one of my dearest friends, and I wrote a column for USA Today for ten years called Common Ground, and we wrote a book by the same title. Bob used to say, I've now written more books than I've read. And we'd go out on the we'd go out on the lecture circuit and we would kind of debate and we'd say, Well, you know, that's a good point. I think I could agree with that. And he would say the same to me. And then at the end, I would say, now Bob is not on the other side. Can we get rid of the other side business? Bob is my friend, my fellow American. Both our dads were in World War Two. They weren't fighting for or against Franklin Roosevelt. They were fighting to maintain an American ideal. America has always been an idea in search of the ideal. And then we'd hug each other and people would be crying and all that kind of stuff. But this is how I became friends with Ted Kennedy. I never denounced him. I would critique some of his policies, but I would never denounce him. Now we're into a period where if you don't like somebody's political view, they're evil. They're destroying America. Trump has taken this name calling to a new low level, I'm sorry to say. And DeSantis is getting into it. And it's just not productive. It doesn't produce results. It may produce votes among some people, but it doesn't solve any problems. And if you have that attitude to a fellow American, then I think you can reach their heart and soul a lot better than denouncing them. 

Ric Edelman: And I think this is why, because of everything you've just said, there are liberals and Democrats as well as conservatives endorsing your new book, A Watchman in the Night. Normally, you have only Republicans endorsing Republican written books and Democrats endorsing Democrat written books. But you cross the aisle. And it's that crossing of the aisle that used to be so much more common than today. I remember a story you shared with me that I'd like you to repeat here for everybody's benefit. One of the conclusions you reached as to why there is so much vindictiveness and so much opposition left versus right, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative, that didn't really exist in the past. And the story you shared with me was the fact that the reason there wasn't as much divisiveness in the past is because they knew each other. Whereas today, Republicans and Democrats in Congress don't know each other because they don't socialize the way they used to. 

Cal Thomas: Exactly right, Ric and that's been a real problem in Washington. When I was growing up, there were these great party givers, and they would invite people, Republicans and Democrats, all kinds to talk over the shrimp bowl, as one of them told me. And it's pretty tough to denounce somebody you just had dinner with or you've gotten to know their spouse or their kids or whatever. And the media feel feed a lot of this. I'll tell you a quick story. Some years ago, I was invited to be on Good Morning America on ABC, and usually by 6:00 at night, the booker calls and gives you your transportation information. I hadn't been called that particular night, and so I called her and I said, “Hey, what gives?” She said, “Oh, I'm glad you called back. We've decided to go with somebody else.” I said, “Why is that?” She said, “Well, we wanted somebody a little edgier.” So the media feed this kind of thing. They say they want compromise. They say they want civility, but they have on the bomb throwers from each side. And so you hear things like, you're ruining America. No, you're ruining America. Well, you're a secular humanist commie. Well, you're a right-wing Bible thumping bigot. And the host says… “And we'll be back with more civil discussion after these messages…” It's just not real life. It's not how real people live their lives. It's sort of like wrestling. It's fake, but people go out and see it anyway. 

Ric Edelman: You know, I used to be on CNN pretty often, and shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency, I was scheduled to go on the air on a given news story. Whenever there's a financial story, I would often be called. I was scheduled to be on the air and the producer called me a day before the show, as usual, to talk about the upcoming bit and what we're going to talk about and so on. And in this particular case, the producer said, and tell me the angle of this story regarding President Trump. And I said, “There is no angle. This is a financial story. This is about what's going on in the marketplace. It's got nothing to do with President Trump. I mean, he hasn't said anything on it. There's no policy issue. There's no connection between this story and Donald Trump.” And the producer said then we can't have you on the air because if it doesn't involve Donald Trump, we aren't covering it. And I've had that that kind of experience very often. I don't mean to solely cite CNN, but in great many areas as you're describing, if it isn't creating a turmoil or a conflict which is often rooted in politics, we don't want to cover it because that's not news. And I remember similarly after during the O.J. Simpson trial, which was riveting the nation, I was giving a speech at the National Association of Broadcasters, and that was the week that the jury verdict was going to come in. And we were hanging around offstage, and I was talking with a bunch of talk radio talk show hosts, and they were all commiserating the fact that the trial was about to come to an end. And I made the comment, thank goodness, I'm just so fed up with the O.J. Simpson trial. That's the only news there's been in America for the last 18 months. It'd be so good to get back to normal news. And they all told me I was crazy because their ratings had gone through the roof and they were lamenting the end of the trial because it meant the end of a news cycle. 

Cal Thomas: Yeah, well, this is what the recent Dominion versus Fox News lawsuit was about. Memos were discovered during discovery showed that the CEO of Fox said we can't report the truth, basically because we're going to lose so many viewers and lose ratings. And that means lose money. And that's where we are in so much of the media today. There's a talk show host friend of mine who says the greatest power the media have is the power to ignore the stuff they don't cover. They don't cover civility. They don't cover common ground. They don't people they don't cover people reaching out across the aisle. I wrote a column recently about a speech Ronald Reagan made in 1986 at Boston College honoring Tip O'Neill, then the speaker of the House, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. He said the nicest things about him called him my “fellow American, my friend”. Nobody could make a speech like that and get elected today. You go back and look at this and you say, how in the world? And yet Reagan won twice, the second time with a major landslide, 49 states. Why can't we get that back now? People say they yearn for it, but yearning for it and actually achieving it are two different things.  

Ric Edelman: And so with that in mind, I want to turn to some of the pages of your book, your brand-new book, A Watchman in the Night; 50 Years of Reporting on America by Cal Thomas. I'm just going to go through a couple of excerpts and I want you to comment on these. You made a comment. You said the following, “I wrote about a letter I had received from a Virginia woman who was concerned about what her 13-year-old daughter was being taught in the public school. The sex education classes were mixed, she said, and parents were not notified about them.” Now you're writing about something that happened decades ago, and it sounds like something you could have said yesterday. 

Cal Thomas: It could because it's still going on. Unfortunately, a lot of people use are using the public schools and the universities to advance a singular point of view without parental knowledge or consent. In the case of the public schools. I went on in that column, as I recall, to say, look, why don't you pull your kid out if and a lot of them are, especially since COVID, you know, people have discovered homeschooling. They've discovered what is really being taught in the school. And it's not just the gender and sex issues. It's a look at our history from a prism that American has always been racist and sexist and these other things. So I think we don't send our military to Russia or China to be trained. We train them in America with American weapons and American strategy and American values. But too many people send their kids, in my view, into schools which are antithetical to their beliefs and wonder why they come out believing something different than when they went in. So I think this is a way to do this. 37 states now have school choice at various levels. I think it should be national. It's kind of ironic to me that some of my friends on the left who are pro-choice when it comes to abortion are anti-choice when it comes to education for those fortunate enough to have been born. So I think you can't have it both ways. If choice is good for one, why not for the other? 

Ric Edelman: And what I find fascinating is that the conversation has been largely unchanged in Washington.

Cal Thomas: That's right. Because here's the key. If you understand this about Congress - Ric you especially, you understand everything about Washington. If you solve a problem, you no longer have the issue. And everybody knows about Social Security and Medicare. Everybody knows the figures are there for anybody to look at. In ten years I've read Social Security is going to be bankrupt and there'll be two choices reduce benefits or raise taxes or both. But the politicians won't touch it. The Democrats want the issue, and the Republicans are scared to death that they'll have another ad like the Democrats ran some years ago when Paul Ryan was the speaker of the House and gave a decent proposal for reforming Social Security. And Medicare wasn't perfect, but it was a good starting point. And they did a commercial of a Paul Ryan lookalike actor pushing Granny in a wheelchair over a cliff. Now, that's not a serious response to a serious proposal, but that's what you get in Washington these days.

Ric Edelman: What I find so fascinating about your book, Cal, is that it is not only a walk down memory lane - you begin each chapter each year with what was going on and what were the major news stories of the era - but you provide a context to it as well with your commentary about those news events. And I can't help but contrast what you were saying then to where we are today. Let me let me share an excerpt from what you said regarding 1993. You said, “I attended a gathering in Washington of successful black Americans called Black Expo USA. I wrote a lament that the media coverage so often focused on young black criminals and black victims of crime. It appeared I was the only journalist who showed up at the event. There was nothing on the evening news. This, I said, was its own type of racism.”

Cal Thomas: Yeah, this was a meeting in Washington of black entrepreneurs, successful men and women who had businesses. They had started on their own or picked up as an inheritance from their parents. They were well dressed or, as Joe Biden said about Obama, “they were clean and articulate”. That was a little humor there. Don't write me and then call me a racist, please. And it was an amazing thing. But as I said, there was no media coverage. And I said in that column, apparently the media care more about dead blacks in the streets than successful blacks on their feet. Nice little turn of phrase there. And it's terrible. And it is its own form of racism. Matter of fact, I called a meeting of the general managers of the local Washington, DC stations and I said, “Look, I'm a native of this town. I was born here. I grew up here. I'm old enough to remember when segregation still existed in Washington, DC. Okay, You have a responsibility to promote some positive stories about black people. All you do is cover stories about guns and violence and poverty and deaths in the street and all that. That's not a complete profile. I'm not saying you shouldn't cover those stories, but you need to balance it with something else.” This is one of the reasons people in the Washington suburbs and now other places now have gated communities and have firearms and all these other things because they're living in fear. A lot of this is promoted in the media.

Ric Edelman: And that seems to be something that is a trend that has been persisting for a very long time. And you mentioned that it is largely down to human nature, but I have to remain hopeful that we can break this chain somehow, someway. 

Cal Thomas: Well, I think it starts with each of us. You know, you mentioned a minute ago about the people who endorsed my book. One of my new great friends is Henry Louis Gates Jr of Harvard. Skip Gates has done these tremendous series Finding Your Roots on PBS on African American lives. And one of the things he did, you know, he does these DNA tests to help trace the slave ancestors of a particular individual. And so he decided to do a DNA test on himself. And he found that he was 60% Irish. I said, Skip, you don't look Irish. He's black. And this is the whole thing. We're all mixed up in the great gene pool of life. There may be purebred dogs, but there are no purebred humans. So to hate somebody else for their race, for their faith, for their politics is really hating yourself. It's nonproductive. It's anti-productive. So I was happy to have his wonderful endorsement. And then on the other side, I got Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune. Now, you can't get better than those two. 

Ric Edelman: That's Cal Thomas, who has just written his newest book, A Watchman in the Night What I've Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America. It's always great to spend time with you, my friend. Thanks for being with us. 

Cal Thomas: Thank you, Ric. Love to Jean.