Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/8/26: Trump To Run Venezuelan Oil Forever, Trump Iran Bombing Likely, Blackstone Stock Craters

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump says he will run Venezuelan oil forever, Trump Iran bombing likely, Blackstone stock craters after home investment ban.   Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi?s=20    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you,

please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Turning now to Venezuela some major comments from the Secretary of Energy about indefinitely running Venezuela's oil companies. He was confronted on it on Capitol Hill. Here's what he had to say. Narrative in Venezuela that you are stealing our way.

I have not heard that narrative. I've seen celebrations in the street, Libre Venezuela out. I think people are thrilled they've lived under between Chavez and Maduro, 26 years in a brutal dictatorship that's only devastated that country and hurt the whole hemisphere. So I've not heard that narrative at all. And of course, if it's that narrative's out there, it's untrue. We're just controlling the flow of revenues from their oil. We're just controlling the flow of revenue from their oil.

Also, we're not taking over the celebration thing too. Yeah. Yeah. In Miami's sure. Yeah. That's right. because you know people i i got an email why did you guys care so much about the celebrations i'm like because i know how this stuff works is that it goes into people oh didn't you see the video of people

in buenos ayres or whatever we're in miami and dera it's like yeah uh on the streets of venezuela very very different it's like armed dudes who are going trying to round up anybody who actually did celebrate that's right and then a lot of people who are actively angry that this all happened so little bit different. Yeah, people's phones are getting checked by like, you know, armed militias to see if they sent any text message that was supportive of Maduro being kidnapped. So, yeah. So, you know, not great to be in the opposition there right now.

Totally. Let's put the next one up here because this is the actual story is about the, quote, control indefinitely from the secretary of energy. He says that after the United States will sell Venezuelan oil, after completing sales of the crude, currently accumulating that are currently in storage, it will then be a deposited into accounts controlled by the Venezuelan government, which will then flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people. Instead of the oil being blockaded, we're going to let the oil flow to U.S. refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but those have to

be done by the U.S. government. We're going to market the crude, first this backed up stored oil, and then definitely going forward, sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace. I mean, arguably, that is the most important and direct, effectively nationalization of the entire Venezuelan oil industry. Trump is saying for now that the Venezuelans have basically agreed to this. They haven't confirmed any of it per se. And it may work, you know, in the interim with the stored up amount of oil and the limited amount of capacity.

The big question is going to be, I mean, and I think this is one where, look, it is possible, but are the Venezuelan people just really going to take? take this? Like, it just seems very unlikely, if you look at the entire history of colonization and of everything, that unless, that they're not only in control, but they're getting a pretty significant amount of revenue, that this is not going to be a longstanding arrangement. And reportedly, you know, yesterday Trump sat for some four-hour interview with the New York Times. He said we could stay there for years down in Venezuela, setting up, by the way, no democratic transition, more likely kind of solidification of the current Maduro regime.

under Delci Rodriguez and the security apparatus, so that means more repression. But yeah, it just seems so completely untenable. You're only in power for three more years. He even acknowledged it's going to take years to build out the oil infrastructure of the country to even marginally increase it from its very low production of where it is right now.

And then you just have the general instability of trying to run this country by proxy, you know, from Washington. And yes, you know, the immediate, sanctions relief, it will be a boon to the Venezuelan economy immediately because sanctions have what, I mean, ultimately would crush their oil industry and crush them. So maybe they will be okay with it. But more broadly, I mean, you know, you are literally looking at a lifting the sanction and a nationalization of their entire oil industry and selling it going forward. Just historically, again, most countries just don't sit there and take it. I mean, would you take it?

Would I take it? I probably wouldn't. And most people wouldn't either. There's a reason why this kind of direct colonization went out of fashion, and it's not because the, you know, great powers decided out of the goodness of their hearts that this wasn't something that they wanted to do anymore. They couldn't afford it. There was too much local resistance. And so they moved to a more modern technology of colonization where it's like, okay, well, we'll use these other financial levers, especially the United States of America, which set up all of this, you know, post-war financial infrastructure and the international institutions to benefit us. So it was like, oh, we can get all the benefits of the extraction. without having to own all of the, like, local tumult and deal with these uprisings, et cetera. So, in effect, we're going back to this, like, very retrograde technology, which is completely outdated.

And I think Trump really believes that because he did this one successful, like, strike and kidnapping operation, that now he's just going to be able to very easily control all of Venezuela. and that just seems insane. I mean, that seems like a complete and utter fantasy. The world does not work in this very simple way. You think just because you did this one action, that's going to be enough to compel the behavior of this state indefinitely, not to mention, you know, then there's the other piece of this too, which is any oil company that, you know, is being offered the chance to go into Venezuela.

They're asking the government for guarantees and for financing, taxpayer financing for the buildout that would be required because the infrastructure is so degraded, because it would take so, you know, such a significant amount of investment billions and billions of dollars over years to bring significant Venezuela pumping capacity back online. So there's just a lot of pitfalls here. A lot of pitfalls and a lot of questions. I mean, the other question is there were reports that they wanted to, whatever revenue is brought in, they don't want to put it in the U.S. treasury. They want to hold it in private bank accounts that Trump can deny that. That Trump can control. Well, they sort of, they actually didn't directly deny it. But that, you know,

so who has control over that? Again, like, there seems to be this fantasy that we, the American people are going to own this. We are going to benefit directly. And, you know, it's possible there's some reduction of prices at the pump or something. But this is largely for the benefit of elites. This is like, you know, a seizure for the benefit of like ExxonMobil and Pulsinger and Sitco and whoever else stands, you know, at the top of the chain to really benefit from this. And for some of those companies as well, they're not even sure that they want to get involved with that they're going to directly benefit too. The key point is, and I saw this today, is that oil companies who are expected to meet at the White House tomorrow are like, we need a multi-year guarantee, multi-year guarantee. and that foreign policy won't change, which you can't expect that from the current administration because that literally doesn't. In fact, you can't really expect that from any administration unless

Congress literally were to declare that we are going to finance this operation indefinitely. You know, I was thinking about this in kind of the interesting way. One of the reasons that one of the things that usually happens when you explicitly decide you need to be an empire, like we did after World War II, well what do you need to run an empire you need a permanent bureaucracy by definition it's called the state department the cia uh the defense department you need a vast array of people who don't change this is what happened in the british empire you know the government may change liberal or conservative but the empire itself was always explicitly managed it's just that the governance departments at the very very top would occasionally change hands but the build out of that bureaucracy and of that deep state of what

we've long, I think, left and now right, are kind of united against, is the very idea of a permanent bureaucracy, which works against the interest of its people, which wants to enrich itself, which wants to run faraway lands into metal, ultimately. That is kind of entrenching the very thing that Trump originally was running against the idea of the swamp and of the deep state. And that's why one of the reasons that arch nationalists in the past were deeply skeptical of colonization, They used to say we can have a republic or we can have an empire, but you can't have both because what they were watching was the very way that the aristocracy in Britain would use the empire to solidify its control over the domestic population and to run it and to

enrich it for itself. And I think that that is ultimately one of the reasons why the way that we would traditionally run empire, like you're saying, you know, look, you know, to deny we're an empire is ridiculous, obviously, with foreign outposts and preferential trade deals or, you know, international norms, which are totally fake and only enforced to the benefit of the U.S. It's not just about that per se. It was an acknowledgement, as you just said, of being able to try and to do this in a different way, while though retaining kind of the unelected bureaucratic class.

And I think looking at this, it's going to solidify more of this idea where the Secretary of Energy is now trying to, of our energy is trying to manage the Venezuelan oil supply. And in general, all this leads to is more enmeshment and more problems. So, for example, when the Venezuelan or when the oil companies, the U.S. oil companies say, we need to a guarantee of the safety of our people. Well, who's going to do that? It's not going to be the Venezuelan military. It would have to be the U.S. military. Or let's say initially it is the Venezuelan military. But then something happens. Not exactly the most competent folks, right? They just allow their president to be kidnapped, literally. and the most secure person in the country.

So if they can't even defend them, and if you're an oil company, would you really want to trust those people? Well, that would lead perhaps to a U.S. person having to come. And that's exactly how the chain reaction goes. You know, I was thinking about Juan David Rojas, and he talked about Vietnam. And something everybody forgets about Vietnam,

and this is what the Pentagon Papers actually showed, is it started under the Truman administration. Like it became a multi-administration, multi-decade-long boondoggle before 500,000 troops just show up. Remember, it only starts with a few advisors. It starts with allowing a coup. It's exactly the chain reaction where it can take a decade, maybe even two, before these things start to materialize.

And that's what we originally had learned, I think, through Iraq and Afghanistan. But we're right back to where we started. We defeated Iraq in three weeks with Shokana. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was trying to run the country. And even if you'd wanted to, quote, take the oil. You know, there are a lot of different ways that it could have gone bad, even in the initial kind of Trumpian view of occupation and of trying to run something for literally years to come, which he's declaring right now. Yeah. And that was actually crazy comments that he made to Joe Scarborough recently. He's like, well, the problem with Iraq was that we didn't take the oil.

Well, he said that for the day one. Not that, no, but not that the problem was we went in at all. I mean, now he's like, yeah, it was all good, except we just didn't take the oil. It's like, what part of this do you think went well? I mean, we're still dealing with the fallout of the fallout of. having created ISIS and, you know, we've got the ISIS guy and charges here, whatever. But to bolster your point, let's put B3 up on the screen. Trump is now saying he wants a $1.5 trillion military budget. $1.5 trillion. Okay, he just became the first president ever to get a trillion dollar military budget,

and that is an insane, extraordinary number far beyond what any other country in the world spends on their military. now he wants to up that by 50%. Just to put this in perspective, you guys remember build back better and all of the like social welfare programs, all that that entailed, that was going to add to the deficit like $400 billion over a decade. We're talking about $1.5 trillion. So your type, like the amount of tax dollars shifted into the military and that apparatus. I mean, that tells you everything about what his focus is. the way he wants to run the whole world.

Like, this is how he wants to operate. And so it's also what, I mean, listen, the hypocrisy thing is just like, you can't even make it up. Here they are talking about fraud. Meanwhile, this agency, of course, never passes an audit. Cannot account for 61% of their own assets. Okay, so much fraud and, you know, extortion throughout the defense department. Not to mention, last year at this time, we were ramping up into Doge and Elon was about

to run around with the chains. Oh, my God, we got to cut the debt. We got to cut the deficit. it, not when it comes to, you know, waging random wars around the world for resource extraction. Yeah, the $1.5 trillion is just so insane. It's insane. Yeah, and this is, I've always said this. Money does not, in fact, with the Defense Department, the more money, the less good that we actually seem to be.

True. Like, we become more hyper inefficient, more precise. I talked a lot about this yesterday in our show. we become this like F1 race car, which can just spend to spend, instead of focusing on things like the B17, things that are just easy, cheap to roll, but with vast production and scale that you can just pump off of the assembly line. That's how you win a war. Ammo, exactly, drone.

Like, you just roll it. And that is the literal opposite. And this is also, you know, to my bureaucracy point, to effectively and properly spend $1.5 trillion which would be double what we were spending just two years ago, imagine the level of competence and staff that that would require to be able to come in and to be able to do that. And again, you would have to do this over a two-year period as long as you're in office. And I guess potentially if your vice president wins the election, that that person could do it as well.

But like, this is exactly the problem. This is how you get not just runaway spending, but you get corruption. And yes, stock buybacks and executive compensation, which we'll talk about here in a little bit that they're trying to crack down on is great. But the very idea that money equals more is the problem, in my opinion. Like everything should always be, here is what we actually need. Sometimes you need more. Sometimes it's actually about the supplier. It's about the prime contractors.

It's about the industrial base. It's about lacking certain types of rare earth minerals or others that you may need in order to produce something. the question should come from necessity, not from the top line number, because now everybody in Congress is just going to salivate over this and turn it into even more of some, you know, hyper, exactly. And it's like, look, we all ridiculed, remember, with Ukraine, the Ukraine bill, they're like, well, we're not sending it to Ukraine. We're sending it here, and then we're going to send the weapons to Ukraine. So actually, it'll be good for everyone here. It's like, well, it usually doesn't work out that way, as you, you know, and yes, setting executive compensation at five million. Good, I guess. Seems like too much money to me, but all right, $5 million to anybody who's running a defense contract or a middle manager at a defense contracting company. But more importantly, I mean, just, you know, what I took away from this is repeating the follies of empire.

Like, these things fell apart, usually for a reason. And maybe it was inevitable. I mean, I remember I was on Lex Freeman once. He's like, well, the American Empire fall. And I was like, well, you know, a long enough timeline, the survivor rate for everything. Yeah. Yeah, the survival rate for everything drops to zero, as they famously said in Fight Club. But for this one, you can see that this explicit Oil Bureau, Venezuela, it repeats the very same problems that have always bedeviled people who try to do this.

And, you know, the better option from the beginning just seems to have been make a deal with Maduro and buy it from them. And then we don't have to run it, be responsible, and now have to threaten to kill or. This is the modern way of extraction. You know, that's the way it's done, right? Threaten. And he'll make a deal, which he wanted to. And Paul Singer won't get his payoff, you know. He'll be able to get his Venezuelan oil into his sitco refineries.

You don't have to do this whole thing. And now you break it, you own it. Okay, Trita Parsi is standing by. Let's get to it. All right, guys, to talk more about geopolitics, especially with regard to the U.S. and Iran. We are joined by Dr. Trita Parsi, who, of course, is the executive. Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Politics and a friend of the show,

probably a fan of the show too, but I meant to say friend of the show. Definitely. It was great to see you. It was great to see you as well. So let's go ahead and start with this truth from President Trump threatening Iran where there are ongoing protests and this does tie into the very lengthy discussion, Sagar and I had at the beginning of the show about ICE. He says if Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. So, you know, how serious do you take these threats? How serious do you think the Iranian government takes these sorts of threats?

I think the Iranian government would be extremely mistaken if it didn't take it seriously that both the United States and Israel are likely to strike Iran. I think, you know, we've spoken about this before as well. The Israelis did not finish the job from their standpoint in June, even though Trump said that he had obliterated the program, it was never just about the program. So the Israelis are very much likely to go forward. But I think the result of the December meeting that Netanyahu had with Trump is not only that they got a green light, it seems like Trump actually was convinced to take the lead on this, or at least take a big part of it, which is unlike what happened in the summer, in which initially the U.S. had a defensive role in terms of shooting down Iranian missiles,

but then later on stepped in more further. into the war itself by taking out the Iranian Fordo plan. But this time around, it looks as if he has been convinced just looking at who he's hanging out with, he's on the airplane with Lindsey Graham, et cetera, using that language, opposing with hats of make Iran great again, it would be a mistake for the Iranians not to take this very seriously, I would say. Dr. Parsi, I'm curious here. One of the things that has come out is Trump's own infatuation with the Midnight Hammer

operation and now with the successful rendition of Nicholas Moose. Maduro, how does that play into his expectation or what the Israelis are telling him about possible action against Iran versus the reality of what something like that would look like? I think what has happened here is that Trump is quite surprise and quite euphoric about the success, the military aspect of Venezuela. And that has now skewed his risk assessment of what other operations that may be tremendously different and far more difficult, mindful of the fact that isn't a completely different geography, what that may be. But I think he looks as if he is now thinking that, well, this was easy. Why don't we do more of it? In fact, he said, why don't we do

more of it? And I think in combination with the fact that you are seeing a very determined campaign to portray the Iranians as weak as possible to then convince him, this is not going to be difficult. You just need to do a little push. The regime will fall, et cetera. I think it's important to recognize that Trump doesn't seem to have a real commitment to oppose war or to oppose regime change. He has a real commitment to things that he thinks are costly and complicated and won't make him look good. But if you can convince him that the war will be easy, if you can convince him that regime change will be easy, then I don't think he has a tremendous amount of resistance. And I think what we've seen in the last two weeks or so is a very significant campaign to make it

look as easy as possible in order to get Trump in on it himself. Some of the analysis I've seen Dr. Parsi directly does connect the strike in kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela and the takeover of Venezuelan oil with potential war with Iran, because the idea being, okay, well, then we'll have control of more oil reserves. We don't have to worry if there are implications in terms of the oil trade regionally in the Middle East. Do you read it that way? Do you think that is part of the calculus for why we did this insane thing in Venezuela? I think oil is a huge part of the calculation here. I don't think it is for this reason.

Getting Venezuelan oil, which is a very different kind of oil than what the Iranians have, requires a completely different type of refineries, et cetera, you know, you're not going to be able to just stabilize the oil markets because you have Venezuelan oil pumping. First of all, it's going to take quite some time for that to be able to really get on the market. So I don't think there is... You think Trump knows that, though? Well, that's a different question. It's a very, very different question.

But I do think that oil does have a central role in the calculation behind Venezuela. This is, as I understand, their reasoning, which is that this gives the United States greater control over the oil markets down the road, not immediately, and that is a critical thing they believe in terms of competition with China. Now, setting aside the complete illegality of it, the complete immorality of it, as well as relying on a very best-case scenario reading of this, because it's one thing to do. do a military operation, it's a completely different thing to make sure that this actually works out in the long run. Remember, Iraq looked as a success up until August of 2003, when they blew up

the UN building during, in the middle of that press conference that was being held and the insurrection really started. Up until that point, there was euphoria. And everyone thought, oh, this is so successful. And you had mission accomplished. Same thing with Afghanistan. Same thing with Libya. We're still in that initial phase. Well, what day eight or so, making judgments on that, which I do fear the administration is making, particularly Trump himself, is a huge mistake. Dr. Parsley, one of the things I've seen move from Israel is a line about the Iranian nuclear program. They're now turning it into talk of ICBMs. I know that that was very important at the December meeting. Could you just explain that a little bit to the audience, the moving of

the goalpost to try and get the bombing of Iran to restart? Yeah, I think it's a very important question, Sagar, because it also shows that this at the end of the day was not ultimately about the nuclear program. The nuclear program is a very important part of it, but what it ultimately is about is the balance in the region. And the ability of Iran or any country in the region that Israel deems hostile, in the case of Iran, of course it is, and their ability to deter Israel, to challenge Israel's domination, challenge or minimize or reduce Israel's maneuverability. that a nuclear program, a latent nuclear leverage that the Iranians had or an actual nuclear weapons program obviously would be a challenge to it.

But that's not the only thing. Also, if the Iranians have missiles that actually can reach Israel and are effective enough to be able to penetrate Israel's defense shields, that too is a limitation to Israel's domination in the region. And that gets to the core of the matter here. It is not about security for Israel. It's about securing Israel's dominance. not actual security, but dominance.

But that's because the Israelis believe that they can only have security through dominance, not through balance, not through coexistence, not through the management of threat with others. And the ultimate logic of that means, in order for Israel to feel safe in the region, it needs to have total security, and everyone else needs to have total insecurity vis-à-vis Israel.

That's part of the reason you're also now seeing tensions between Israel and Turkey, because Turkey is getting closer to what Israel now is caving out it's a sphere of influence. Now, if the Israelis want to pursue this type of approach, which ultimately is not going to be successful in my view, that's one thing. But to have the United States pay for it and have the United States be the backstop for it is a completely different proposition. And that's then coming back to over here. What kind of decision do we make? Do we want to be the funders and the support system for an Israeli project of hegemony

in the region? What's in it for the U.S.? Do you think, first of all, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the protests, how widespread, what are the core issues? And then do you think that that has also helped to persuade Trump that, oh, it would be easy to just topple this regime in Iran? First of all, I think absolutely had had a huge impact on it because of the imagery. I mean, this is not a president that has necessarily moved that much by intelligence briefings, but the imagery. And I think that's part of the reason also we're seeing that the protests are continuing. They're actually not particularly large. Historically speaking, this is nothing compared to 2009. This is still smaller than 2017.

definitely smaller than 2022 as well. They are important. They're not insignificant in any way, shape, of form, but they're not at that level in which, you know, this talk that seems to be the buzz in the media that seems to be like, oh, the regime is on the verge of collapse, et cetera. I'm not seeing, I'm speaking to folks every day inside of Iran, ordinary people as well as journalists and others that are plugged in. That is not the sense I'm getting. They're all talking about it. They're all seeing it. They oftentimes are in support of a lot of the different demands, undoubtedly, I mean, this is a deeply, deeply unpopular regime. It was triggered by the currency crisis, which is very much connected to the sanctions

because the Iranians don't have access to their own funds. But it quickly went beyond that. But it is not in the major cities. It is in smaller places. It is not in huge numbers. But nevertheless, it does provide imagery that gives the impression that's something, particularly if you're only looking at that imagery, you think that something much bigger is happening.

And I think that has been a very deliberate strategy on the end of some people who want to push Trump in this direction to use that in order to tell him, look, this is going to be so easy. And Lindsey Graham going over to him with a hat that says make you on great again and he's posing with it. I'm not so sure that this is really thought through from Trump's. It seems to be very thought through from those who want to take advantage of the protest. Well, sir, that was very enlightening. Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Turning now to homes, actually a very good action here being taken by the president.

We'll see if it's stakes. Let's put it up there on the screen. Donald Trump's saying, for a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American dream. It was the reward for working hard doing the right thing. But now, because of record high inflation, blah, blah, blah, the American dream is increasingly out of reach. It is for that reason. And much more, I'm immediately taking steps to ban institutional investors from buying more single family homes. And I will be calling on Congress to copy. modify it. People live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss this topic, including further housing and affordability proposals and more at my speech in Davos in the next two weeks. Maybe not the venue that I would choose, but the policy I will take. The policy I will take. As I understand it, actually, this was a policy project that was very near and dear to Charlie Kirk's heart. And now as the president and his team are gearing up for the midterms, they understand that they have an affordability problem on their hands. This is the type of executive order that they want to make public. You will note, as he said, that he hopes that Congress

codifies it. We can put the next one up on the screen. Senator Josh Holly had said that, quote, this is a terrific idea long overdue. I will gladly introduce this bill in the Senate. And what's kind of interesting is that the Trump administration knows it has a problem on their hands economically. They know that inflation, housing, many of these other things are hurting them at the potential ballot box for 2026, but also just the general minds of people. People understand very deeply that housing is like a major barrier for them and to their ability to have the American dream. Part of the reason why I think that there has been so much consternation around this idea of these large private equity companies or large like corporations owning and

managing so much housing stock because it does make you feel like a slave, you know, to a bigger economic system. So at the very least, you know, want to give credit where it's due, you know, hopefully it does become policy. But I do think, you know, at a smaller level, like this, this is also a victory for shows like ours and for a lot of other people on the internet. You and I talked about this on our very first or first week, I believe, of breaking points. Wow. So almost five years ago at this time. Just to give people an idea. of like, this has been at the center,

I think the forefront of online politics, things like this, things like stock buybacks. And I do think the audience and others, you know, you guys are the ones who deserve credit because you made it into a thing. And now it's bubbled it's up all the way to the White House. So I think it, I actually think it's a good story. If Trump just did stuff like this,

he would have like a 70% of money. Like, I don't know about 90% right, but 70% just because of partisanship, but he would be wildly popular. I mean, it's, the thing is I don't think the American people expect you to, like, have a magic wand and fix everything. And look, is this going to fix everything? No, in housing market, no. But at least it gives a sense of, like, I am focused on this. I am not just making Venezuela great again. I am doing Netanyahu's bidding and, like,

thinking of bombing 10 other countries. I actually, I hear your concerns, and I'm doing something and something that, you know, a wealthy, powerful interest in this country are not going to be happy about. So look, all the caveats will see what happens. If it comes to, you know, he can't do it really through an executive order. It would have to go through Congress. You're going to have lots of lobbying from a lot of well-heeled institutions that will be, you know, funneling money to a bunch of Republicans in particular since they're in control, but plenty of Democrats do, to make sure that this never happens. So there's still a long way to go before we get this. But, you know, the idea, yes, let's do it. And look, I don't want to understand.

Because there's a lot of like, oh, you know, I think overall permanent capital only owns like 1% of the housing stock, et cetera. But if you look at D4, there are certain places in the country where there's been a concentrated effort and it has had a real impact. So put D4 up on the screen, guys, this is the map. You can see actually Florida is one of the hotspots for this sort of buying up of housing. So you can see areas in the country where it's fairly concentrated active. And the thing is when you have these large institutional investors come in, they can pay in all cash. And they can just come in and it's like not a hassle. And so even if they're not outbidding you, they're able to do this with such ease and with cash up front that it's very appealing for a lot of sellers.

So you will no longer have that particular entity competing with you in the housing market if, if this all actually comes to pass. That's right. Let's put the next one up there on the screen, D5 about the stock hit, you know, Blackstone took a huge. huge hit their 9% drop immediately with this announcement. This is exactly, you know, what I would like to see. And, you know, to bolster your point, it's very disingenuous to just for people say, oh, only 1%. It's like, guys, it also matters by population where people live, how it shapes the market. By the way, keep in mind, that graphic you put up was only people who own a hundred single family homes, a hundred. So if you own, you know, even 20, I mean, think about what a large

landlord that you already are you're rolling in it from that point forward so it is totally you know belies the point and it's very obvious housing has been a play for a lot of these from small to giant private equity uh giants you know that they've been getting involved in Griffin actually found a good one as well can we put d3 up there on the screen what you can see in front of you is it's not just uh it's single family homes but nine percent of residential land and it's well understood that land and the connection to the housing market is deeply connected, not only in terms of speculation, but literally the ability to buy. And what you can see in front of you are so many different localities, which have a significant population, especially in the city of New York. I mean, these are very

populous places, a lot of places in Florida, some of the growing areas there in the United States. So I think that the people, because I've seen quite a bit of YIMBY critique of this, there's like an abundance kind of idea that actually it's a good thing for more. housing stock and or for more for more money to be involved in housing but like this has always been my critique of that movement is it belies individuality americanness pursuit of the american dream uh and of that ability to attain wealth it's not just a place where you park your bag you know put your bags it's a place where you raise your children and it also gives you at least a bit of a you know lift into being able to attain some level of wealth and potential forced savings and

accumulation over a long period of your life, which is ultimately why the house in and of itself is such an important financial asset. It's not just, you don't invest in it or buy one simply, you know, just because you have to have a place to live. You have to have one, and it's a forced savings mechanism, which over a period of time can appreciate marginally that you own equity in that can then propel you to a next or a different step, potentially if you want to pass it on to your children or any of that. So I do think it is very, very important. Good policy. Hope it actually becomes a thing. So, too. And I like the sentiment that people live in houses, not corporations. And if we can get that ethos, you know, that's a real start in terms of sort of, you know, really focusing on what houses are supposed to be about. They're not just for financial speculation. It's supposed to be about, you know, people actually living there. So we'll give them credit on this one. Let's do the defense contractor one quickly just because I think it's interesting. D2. Can we put that up there on the screen, guys? This was a truth that the president put out. He said, all executive payments.

packages in the defense industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how these companies are delivering vital equipment. He is saying there no executive should be allowed to make in the excess of $5 million, which is as high as it sounds, is a mere fraction of what they are making now. Additionally, maintenance repair equipment once sold is far too slow. It must be immediately enhanced. As president, I am demanding maintenance be spot on and on time. Therefore, I will not permit dividends or stock buybacks for defense companies until such time as these are rectified. Likewise, for salaries and executive compensations, military equipment is not being made fast enough. So, you know, look, I think this is, you know, banning stock buybacks

for defense companies, capping their salary. We'll remember the outrage, Crystal, during the Great Recession when Wall Street gave all of its guys bonuses immediately after bailouts. Like you said, if you could just do stuff like this, it would be great. It really would. Yeah, absolutely. And not up the defense budget. to $1.5 trillion, which is another thing that he proposed. We'll probably put that in. Unfortunately, their stocks did surge because of that and not and did not take a hit as a result of this.

Yeah, $1.5 trillion. I'm more skeptical of this one just because, first of all, there's no way in hell Congress would pass something like that. Not a chance. Defense industry has Congress on lock. And number two, you know, okay, maybe direct compensation is $5 million. What about the stock packages, which is where they make most of their money? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see on this one. All right, guys, we broke a record for our A block, and it was like an hour and a half.

So we're not going to, we're not going to feel, but I think it was important to go deep on that one and evaluate all the angles. And I hope you guys appreciated that. And we're going to move the stuff we were going to do in the latter half of the show. You'll just have to wait for it in the Friday show. That's right. That's very excited to talk about Tony DeCobo. So he is not at all sad that we didn't get to CBS. I wanted to do it. So now he gets to do it. And that's fine. Let's everybody. everybody hope and pray that this norovirus doesn't continue to make its way through my body. Thoughts and prayers, thogger. Thoughts and prayers. Yeah, thank you to everybody for watching the show. You know, look, I'm very thankful to be able to do it in times like this. I know it's very difficult, but I do think it's important. And I'll tell you this, you're definitely not going to see this

anywhere else, okay? Which is all just blathering propaganda at other people react videos to not actually talking to somebody who you disagree with. So I'm grateful to be able to do it with you today crystal i wish it could have been there in studio and thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you all later this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human