Newman takes on recent moves from Devin Nunes, scarcities and shortages, and more

Yahoo! Finance's Rick Newman talks five things to watch in 2022, supply chain entanglement, and recent moves from politicians.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- All right, a lot of action going on in Washington DC. Let's bring in Rick Newman. And Rick, it was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's song, "Say La Vie," that may best describe what's going on with Devin Nunes, right?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, yeah. He's leaving his seat as an elected member of Congress in the house from California to become the CEO of this new Trump technology group. And it actually might make sense for him. I mean, he's one of Trump's loyalist defenders in the House and he actually is in a district that is changing. It's becoming more liberal. And he is believed to face a tough reelection fight.

So he may be getting out of that House race so that he doesn't lose. And signing on to Trump's company just as it is about to hit the public markets in a couple of months or two. Worth pointing out, Devin Nunes has no business experience, yet he's becoming CEO of this company.

And his social media history is rather spotty as well. Some people may recall that there's a parody account of Devin Nunes called Devin Cow, @Devin Cow. He tried to have this parody site shut down, he lost that lawsuit. And then he encouraged all of his followers to go on to Parler, the conservative site, that would, I guess, would be a competitor to Trump's social network if it ever gets up and running. So this is going to be interesting.

- Rick, switching gears just a bit. We're less than a month away from 2022, and I know that you've been watching several key themes for investors and for the broader American public to keep an eye on next year. I've been tracking Wall Street economic outlook so far for 2022, and many of them are saying to expect slowing economic activity, but also decelerating inflation.

And Goldman Sachs economists just recently slashed their outlook for US economic growth last week in light of the Omicron variant to now expect real GDP growth of 3.8% next year, down from their 4.2% prediction previously. But I'm wondering, as you take a look at some of these big themes, what are the five factors and potential surprises you think could emerge next year?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, on that topic, I mean, I think it is fair to expect that we're going to have a pretty good economy 12 months from now, barring some kind of disaster. But what we'll be thinking about that we didn't foresee, I think we're not only going to see slowing inflation, I think some of these shortages are actually going to become surpluses. And, at some point, there could even be a glut of things like computer consoles, game consoles, and automobiles, and appliances, and things that are scarce now.

I mean, everybody who sells these things is trying to get these into their stores or showrooms as fast as they can. They're accelerating orders and things like that. At some point, this stuff might come flowing in.

Another thing I'm looking ahead to is this abortion debate at the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court overturns or curtails Roe V Wade, this is going to be a political earthquake and it's going to be one of the biggest stories of 2022 with many, many second and third order effects. I've got some others I could go through, but people can also find my list of surprises for 2022 on the website at Yahoo Finance.

- Well some people may cut their conscience to fit today's fashions. President Biden's nominee to be Comptroller of the Currency is stepping down. What's behind this, Rick?

RICK NEWMAN: This has been a controversial. Nominee Omarova is her name. She's an academic. She actually worked in the George W. Biden administration in the Treasury Department there, so she has worked for a Republican administration. But the history here is she was actually born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the USSR and she grew up in the Soviet Union and was educated there and came to the United States in 1991.

She is a US citizen now, but just simply because of the fact that she came from the Soviet Union, there were a couple of Republicans who argue that she might be a communist as if over all these decades, somehow the old Communist Party from the USSR is going to sneak an operative into the Biden administration.

It's honestly ridiculous. She would have been a fairly tough regulator, progressives liked her, but I think this would have required some Republican votes for her to get nominated. And I think Republicans just wanted to-- I just think they just wanted to win one against Biden it. Was actually pretty nasty. So Biden today said he had accepted her resignation for the post, and I presume she will go back to academia.