Shaun Newman Podcast - #760 - Tom Luongo & Dave Collum

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Tom is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats n’ Guns podcast. Dave is professor of organic chemistry at Cornell. Beyond academia, Collum has gained attention for his annual "Year in Review" essays where he offers a satirical, comedic, and thought provoking perspective on world events, politics, and markets. We discuss Syria, Trump, the markets and Jay-Z. Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Clothing Link: ⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Brett Olin. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. You're listening to the Sean Duman podcast. Welcome on the podcast, folks.

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It's a win, win, win. I'm staring at the notes. I'm like, hey, aye, yay. Wednesday. Hump day. It's Hump Day today. Caleb Taves, Renegade Acres. I'm sitting in Calgary right now,

and Caleb Taves, Renegade Acres is a community spotlight. So we're always putting the spotlight on some different things happening within our community. And the big one coming up is Cornerstone Forum, 2025 here in Calgary. I'm sitting in Calgary right now. I was over at the windport yesterday looking at the venue,

and working on the trade show. We're going to have details about that, hopefully coming up in the coming weeks, and at latest, the beginning of the new year, we're going to be announcing a lot of stuff. And looking forward to that, yeah, it's going to be super cool. Tom Longo, Alex Kraner, Chuck Pradne,

Kaelin for, Matt, Ere, Chase Barber, and more coming very soon. We got guest hosts, including Chris Sims and Tom Bodrovich. So the Cornerstone Forum is going to be a very, very, very cool. thing happening in Calgary. I hope you'll attend and I hope to see it there and working on a couple things with hotels right now. That's been that's been taking up my time trying to find a way to get us all a decent deal to stay near the wind sport and you know put on some things that you guys

want to be a part of. So that's what I'm doing here in Calgary having some interesting chats. That's for sure. The deer in steer butchery it is well all you lovely hunters out there if you're if you bagging animal. I've been seeing different animals, you know, that you've grabbed, that you've bagged, I don't know, that you put down, I don't know, the word. Either way, make sure you take it in and get it all

diced up into your freezer and look no further than the butcheress over at the deer and steer. That's Amber. Give her a call, 780870-80700. Substack, it's free to subscribe to. Yes, I've been all over the map the last couple weeks. I've been saying this a lot lately. I'm probably just going to write about it.

you know, when I was in the sports world, you know, like interviewing all the sports guys, the Stanley Cups Award in June, and there's some, you know, trade deadline, you know, free agency, the Stanley Cup, et cetera. There's just busy times. One thing about being in the political world and staring at elections and different things like that is October into November, even in December. It's just been busy. And, yeah, you want to see some of the hecticness of my life.

Head on over to Substack. It's free to subscribe to. Obviously, there's a paid portion if you want to see some cool insights in what's happening in the SMP world. Well, Lava, if you came along for the ride. And if you're listening or watching this on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. If you're watching on X, specifically X, make sure to give it a retweet, right?

You're watching, hit that retweet button, and let's get this to a few more eyes and ears. All right, let's get on to that. Tale of the tape. The first is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist, whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold, Goats, and Guns podcast. The second is a professor of organic chemistry at Cornell. I'm talking about Tom Luongo and Dave Collum.

So buckle up, here we go. This is great. This is great. I don't even need an intro. Dave, take it away. I take a week off and I'm lost, and it reminds me of how. the average Joe, who just kind of collecting little tidbits on the fly, has no chance of keeping up with what's going out in the world.

Not as snowball. I take a week off and I'm lost. Yeah. I know. I took part of the weekend off. So just for giving an example. Saturday. Last Saturday was my wife's, not this past Saturday,

but Saturday before that was my wife's birthday. But we were all hung over from Thanksgiving. And we were supposed to take it to St. Augustine for the, the day and just give her the day. The family, we go walk through some art galleries, I take out to dinner. If she finds something beautiful, I'll buy it for her, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's like, we wake up Saturday morning. She's like, I feel like ass. I don't want to go. So how about next Saturday? So that was this past Saturday. I'm like literally turning my phone off so that I don't do anything for the day. And I am literally getting like pinged all day by my

patronage. Dude, where are you? What's going on? I'm like, I know. FYI one, I reserved the right to go off the clock. I don't work 365 for 24. 365, 724. So, fuck off. I'm setting boundaries. It's my wife's birthday. Piss off.

But I'm like, oh, God damn it. The one day that I, you know, take off is the one day that I need to be like trying to get myself re-immersed and things. Yeah, I know. And then, you know, you take a few hours off and you go, you find yourself saying, who the fuck is peanut the squirrel? Right. Well, what's really hilarious, Dave, you know, you guys, I don't know, for my market report that I do every Wednesday and Sunday for the patrons, the first slide is three talking points and a meme, right? And for literally the month after, for the next eight or nine, up until this week, it's been a different picture with everybody saying, you really should have killed that fucking squirrel.

And so it's like, it's been hilarious. It's just like, I just keep recycling the same text. For a while, I don't need to make a new tax. I just need to change the subject. It's hilarious. I've been writing furiously, and I said that no squirrel has done more to underscore the evils and the overreach of government since Rocky beat the Russians. Exactly.

Okay. So let's talk. So Syria is a mess. Before we get into Syria, I just wanted to say, Tom. because you're both talking about leaving for a week and then things happening while you're, you know, you're going.

If you recall, Tom, because you were part of it, I was on, I take July, I slow it down, I go on family holidays, we don't try and do any podcasting. I was sitting in Idaho and the president got shot.

And my wife looked at me and I must have been twitching like, I'm like, I got to go. And I started podcasting seriously. I'm like, of course, on your days off. You're like,

you know, like, because one of the things, gents, that I certainly get on this side is when you have to, you know, you're going to make some time for family and, and, and, uh, unwinding a bit. And, and, and yet when the president gets shot, maybe not when the squirrel gets killed. Um, you know, you got to hop right back in, but that's, that's funny. Anyways, Syria, Tom, carry on.

Well, no, Sean, your, your, your point is well taken. And, you know, we're in the acceleration phase of all of us. So it's really, really difficult to, to, to, you know, when you need to get a break so that you can recharge so that you can keep yourself sharp, right? And from the moment, the, the, the, the thing started happening in Syria. I'm like, I'm not going to weigh in on this. And the other side of this, of course, is that I used to be really good about Syria. Like, I used to be Tom Longgo, who knew a lot about Syria. I'm not that, I, you know, as this was unfold. I'm not that guy anymore. I wrote a ton of years myself. When they were, when they were faking nerve gas attacks and things like that, right? White helmets were, were, were jihadists who were putting on white helmets and trying to look

like good guys and stuff. I was all this, all these literally British siops, right? And, and I really did cut my teeth on Syria geopolitically as how I, like, you know, really up my chops, right? And then it wasn't the story for four years. And as always, you go to where the story is. And the story for the last, really the last four years is the monetary policy,

U.S. domestic internal policy and, and, and, you know, the return of Trump and all this stuff and how that interfaces with European politics and the Russian Ukraine war. So you're like, you take your eye off the ball in Syria and all of a sudden you realize you don't know anything. And now you have to like get back up to speed. So I find myself all week long listening to podcasts and and reading articles from different people and whatnot. Have you tracked down Scott Horton's take on it yet? No, I haven't. What's got on my to-do list. My to-do list right now is not even being formed because I simply don't have time. Right. So what I would say this is an AI image of me. I'm actually writing right now.

Of course you are. So, um, so what I think, so I'm not going to spin a scenario as to what I think is going on because I don't know what's going on. But I can tell you there's at least three or four scenarios that could be going on. And there's probably all of them. So let's start with the basics. Who was behind it? Clearly, Erdogan. and Netanyahu. Why did Assad walk away after, you know, and let everybody in without basically a shot fire?

Well, because there's all these overlapping arguments about how I think Alex Mercuris did a great introductory video about all the dominant narratives that are out there about, you know, Assad, let the army slip and, you know, the sanctions, throttling the country and this, that, and everything else.

All those are contributory, but they're not explanatory. And I agree with Alex's conclusion on that, by the way. Alex, if you're listening. So, but I think the big thing here is that Assad had an opportunity to really accept Russia's help four or five years ago to stabilize Syria and start rebuilding it. And he said no. And he kept playing the game of trying to balance all the powers around them, the Arabs versus Erdogan

and his amnity against Erdogan and Turkey and all the stuff. And it wound up in the end being his downfall. So I heard numerous stories of... He said no, because he thought that would be his downfall if he said yes. Well, I think it's that he was cozing back up to the Arabs, to the Arab League and getting himself back into the Arab League. He was also coasing back. And potentially to keep the United States from bombing the shit out of him. Well, there's that, but it's, you know, the Russians made him, apparently made him a very good offer that we wouldn't, that we wouldn't have been able to bomb them against.

Like, let's not kid ourselves. So Assad refused to commit to the Russians. So the Russians refused ultimately to commit to him, right? By keeping his hands tied with, you know, rebuffing Israeli aerial attacks on. So we have that side of it. we also have the other we also have the side of this that Putin is not trying to antagonize the Israelis which is wrongly interpreted by the fringe you know crazy anti-zionists who think that that Putin actually works for them which is nonsense he Putin always understood that if he went I've heard this like argument like you would not believe that Putin is actually working for

the British and the Zionists like by not doing what by not like it's it's it's it's it's it's it's Kitsko posting. It's pure anti-Jewsburg. I'm not qualified to know, but it sounds like it's out there on the fringe. It's really dumb. You know, Reagan's arms for hostages crap was out there on the fringe until it became true. So, okay. So I don't, I don't buy that at all. What I do buy is that, that Putin has some, he has two things mitigating his, his support in Syria. The first is that, He's got a large Russian Jewish population in Israel, that he is in effect trying to protect.

The second is that he knows that if he goes too far in upsetting the balance of power in the region, that at some point the Americans are going to do something about it. I think he was waiting out the Biden administration in order to get to a point where Trump could come to power and they could start crafting some form of way out of this whole mess. In the midst of this, I think the best way to look at Erdogan and Turkey was, by one of my patrons this morning is that he's literally willing to to cut deals with everybody and renege on them be truly non-agreem capable because he doesn't believe them to be a real because as an Islamist he feels it's his you know it's his duty and and and perfectly within his

ethos to make deals with people he doesn't respect and aren't real people and then renege on them and so he did this to Putin multiple times he's done this Yeah, like sort of like everybody, right? So so but that I think is the between that and Erdogan's massive ambitions to and massive ego to be the sultan and be the leader of, you know, the Sunni world and all that and be the new editor. That explains a lot of his motivations. Netanyahu clearly wants to go on heights. He clearly wants to expand everyone. Erdogan. I never know how to do I hate the guys I call him Erdogan even though he's supposed to be named we're supposed to call him Erdogan now I presume that includes sign off by the united states right

well I what I would say about this is that Erdogan plays the game very well sometimes he plays the game for the united states and sometimes he plays the game for the russes would he have bombed Syria without the U.S giving him the non did he bomb Syria or did he allow his or did he allow his I thought he did No, no, we're bombing Syria. No, I knew someone. Now that make, now here's the thing. That makes perfect sense.

So because ultimately, we're cleaning up our mess. And then we put Erdogan and Netanyahu's mess in charge in Damascus while we clean up our mess behind the scenes. The goal here is the mess we're cleaning up. We're cleaning up the remains of ISIS and and all and and everything else there. and then leaving a weak government in that's going to bulk and I that effectively is going to bulk in I Syria. Okay, I have a, I have a thing in my head as to how this is going to play out. Let's kind of go to the end game and then we'll and then we'll back and then we'll and then

we'll kind of backfill some of this stuff because it's hard because again, I don't have answers here, Dave. I have a feeling. So what I think is happening here is the following. Like climbing the ropes in gym class, that kind of feeling? Yeah. Yes. So what I think is actually happening here as we get towards Trump, right, is in order, we have an operating principle that we know is true.

This is that the globalists want to leave Trump with wars he can't extricate himself from. Poisoned pills that he cannot extricate himself from. Both the British remnant want this and the EU want this, right? because they don't want Trump to undermine the great globalist project, even if they're not, even if those two factions don't necessarily, you know, agree on who gets to lead the post-war order, that they are committed to we have to get to that point where we can fight about it. So that means bringing the United States involved in wars that they don't want to be in,

bleeding us white, all of that stuff. binding Trump down and trying to delay until 2028 when they can try and put their guy back and power again here in the U.S. I think it's a I think it's a plan doomed to failure by the way, but I think that that's their plan. Now that's on one front. On the other front, you have the United States under Trump wanting to get out of the region. You've got Putin is overextended and needs to make a deal over and we have now forked the situation where in order for there to be peace in Ukraine of one form or another, Putin has to give something up. And that's something is his nominal control over Syria, okay, his influence in Syria. So you trade Syria for a favorable

outcome in Ukraine. Putin was never going to get a base, a naval base south of the Dardanelles, political influence and maintain political influence in Syria, which allows Iran and on everybody else to continue to attack and weaken Israel and get half of Ukraine. That's the right back that. He was never going to get all three of those. Is this the motivation of the Ukraine war by NATO? What's that? Is the whole Ukraine war about cutting this deal with Putin to get him the hell out of Syria?

I think you have it backwards, but I think they were both always on the, I think Putin moved into Syria to slow down. the plans in Ukraine. Okay. Because remember one predates the other. The EU accession agreement and the coup against the Unukovych. The Mobia strip from hell where nothing predates anything, right? It just keeps it looking around.

But let's like trying to, let's confine this to when the operation against Syria began, which is really in 2011, right? So by thinking it from it, thinking about it from that perspective. Now, was the 20, once the 2011 was that was that I can't remember the date. That's when the Arab Spring really started under Obama. Arab Spring. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Okay.

So, and so now you have. So in order to get the coalition of the willing into Syria in the first place, everybody had to be paid off. Let's keep that model in mind. Erdogan gets in Lib and the, and the northern strip along and it expands his border to the south down to Aleppo. and al-Bav and all the way across. That's what he wanted in order to create the buffer zone against the Kurdish troops in the Kurdish forces in eastern Syria and Iraq. You've got in Iran, he gets that and he's going to get gas pipeline transit fees.

Because the original plan, of course, was to open up the North Pars gas field to bringing pipelines into Europe out of the North Pars via Qatar and through Saudi Arabia. And there were two pipelines. cross into Israel. Those two things are still an effect on the table. And they're the Gibbs now being used to craft a new plan for how to get out of this scenario. That's so in 2014, 2011 through 2014, that was the plan. Now, think about the situation for Russia in 2014. You knew that Ukraine was going to be a problem going forward and that the EU was eventually going to try and take control

of the Ukrainian pipeline. The pipelines coming across Ukraine. That was the whole point of going, of breaking, of getting rid of Yanukovych, right? So they were trying to isolate, they were trying to get rid of Russian gas coming into Europe and replace it with gas coming out of the Arabian Peninsula,

out of the northern part of the Virgin Gulf, right? And what about the U.S.? I remember Condoleezza Rice waxing philosophically about how they should buy their gas from us? Yeah, well, that's again, that's that there, Neocons were in charge in this scenario. So this is exactly what they wanted. The British want that because it stars Russia of everything.

You get, you get to move into Ukraine and take that and then you can pressure Moscow. This is their, remember, their plan is always to break Russia up and steal all the resources. So everybody has their Gibbs there. Now, in order to get that coalition of the willing on the table, you've got to kick Syria out of the Arably. You've got to get the Saudis. You've got to get the Saudis something. you've got to get the Qatari something, which means by extension, you're going to give the British something. You've got to make Israel happy because they're going to get cheap energy off of this as well, as with a pipeline going through their area.

And they can't get the East Med pipeline off the ground because the East Med pipeline is an economic boondoggle that will never make money. So all of that was the background. So Putin had to move into Syria in 2015 to stop this until he had developed other. relationships east power of Siberia Nord Stream 2 originally and then all the other things that he's doing to unite Central Asia and stitch it together with pipelines and nuclear power plants and then it's why he got South Stream. He gets why he got Turk stream through after re brand by moving South Stream into Turkey as opposed to across across the Black Sea into Bulgaria. Remember that's all this is this is all there. So now we're in 2024.

Russia has much more developed relationships economically with the rest of Asia. So their need to stop these pipelines isn't as strong. So it makes sense to me at this moment in time that Russia can pull out of Syria at this moment, if need be. And trade Syria for quote unquote winning in Ukraine. And that's the trade that's made with Trump. I think they think that's the framework of the deal he can make with Trump. I was talking to Michael Ferris yesterday. And Michael kept saying, well, you know, what deal is Putin going to take?

And I said, we're going to give them all of Ukraine. We're going to pretend like we cut some deal that looks good. Putin will play along and pretend like he didn't get as much as he wanted. And we'll go back to where we were before the Ukraine war where. Well, I don't think he'll get anything east of the Nepi River. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think Putin wants that. I think he wants to landlock romped Ukraine. I don't think the word get.

Get is a loose term. Okay. And that is he needs to get control. Yes. Not ownership. Right. Right. So what most people who put their Ukrainian flag on their Twitter feed don't seem to

understand is that is the existential risk of losing Ukraine, right? I mean, the minute you understand that, you go, well, no wonder the war in Ukraine started. This is unbelievably stupid. And by the way, you know, I've said so many times, Putin looks like the most grounded leader in the world to me. I get that his patience has been extraordinary. I would have released the nukes on us before that. Well, that's been the plan all along, right? It was this has been, well, the fault of the plan of the neocons.

So, and this is a- Neocons. Are they powerful or are they a dying, anachronistic breed? I'm not sure. Let's see what happens if Trump makes it into office on January 20th. So you're still into the- Oh, I'm still not, until it's assigned in Dundeele, and he's in the Oval Office on January 21st.

He has had a story pierced with lettuceillin. All bets are off. So, but let's assume, but assuming that, and I think Putin's playing for that, I agree with you that. I hope so. So the neocons have always operationally, every one of their of their gambits or their forays or their adventures have always been predicated in terms of Putin, have always been predicated on the following precept, which is that if we embarrass him politically, it will lead to these outcomes. But they're thinking in terms of what it would do in Western countries. Like when you put pressure on an American president and embarrass him, he's going to react like this.

Or if you put pressure on a French president, he's going to act like that because they have a much lower threshold for embarrassment than Putin does. Okay. So they don't understand the level of support that he actually, he actually have. Putin and Trump are on the same page. They have, they have, they have, they have no embarrassment gene. Mm-hmm. Well, Putin, Putin, you could embarrass him in a way where he'd say, okay, now you're going to pay.

Right. I mean, Trump, I've never, Trump is a narcissist who doesn't care what people think. My brain, my brain does, does, does, does, you know, rolls around in my skull when I think about the paradox of the Trump narcissist. Yeah. And it's a very important point. Trump has no shame. I don't know that he's,

the more I watch Trump, the less I think of him as a narcissist and much and more of it is just a kind of insecure. He's very insecure. I think he was a narcissist when he was younger. Oh, yeah, absolutely. One is I think Trump has matured a lot. Yes, he has.

He really has. I asked my wife this question and since she's not a big Trump fan, it was hard to get an honest answer. But I think Trump physically looks better now. Like they've done something with his hair, his face. He used to have this look where you go, there's a German phrase, which I can't pronounce, but it translates to a face in need of a fist. And I've got it.

It's one of those snarky words that you don't, you don't lose track of my product somewhere. And he doesn't look that way to me now. And I don't know if that's my opinion that's changed or if somehow they're cutting back in the whole orange hair thing and maybe they're letting him age. I don't know. But he looks stately to me now. Yeah, he really does, doesn't they? Did you notice that? Is that something that sort of caught your conscious mind?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. He no longer looks like an S&L skit now to me. Yes. no he does he does he looks like he does look like he does look like he does look like a credible president no not only that he looks like a credible mob boss that's in charge okay let's let's let's let's remind ourselves of what we're dealing with here what's the difference between those two not much okay we have don trump leone and everybody's been bowing to kiss the ring of don tromp leone it's been

hilarious um so the so i think that you know there's a that that there's a that they There's a framework here. And I hesitate to call any of this a plan. I think it's all just a series of reactions. Some people are competent. Some people are incompetent. Some people are just pressing their advantages. What's that?

Competent? Come on. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's income. There's a little bit of incompetence here. But for the first time in a long time, the CIA actually pulled off a, I think, a pretty credible operation, which was to bribe the Syrian army to stand down. Wouldn't a foreign national be looking at the outcome of this election and say, You know, as much as Trump scares me, Harris would have been a disaster.

Yes. I got, you know, they're going to try to neuter Trump because that's what they do for a living. Yes. But Harris scared the shit out of me. Of course. And here's the problem. I've thought about this a lot. Imagine the Cuban missile crisis.

Plays that exactly as it played out, but somehow you pull Kennedy out of the room. This is not my way of St. Kennedy was a rock star. What Kennedy was in that room was the guy who is sitting there going, if I fuck this up, history is going to plant it right on the top of my fucking head. Now, you take Kennedy, you ignore Kennedy, and you say, what's going on around them? You got a bunch of anonymous voices saying, Ray, Cuba, do this, do that, do this. What we were saved by was a guy who's saying, the buck stops at the top.

Harris looked to me as somebody who's even worse than Biden because she was both cognizant and a puppet and an ideologue. And that actually scares me more than anything else. So as a group of people, you know, watching what's happening in the United States, I think it's, I think where Dave was going here is that they're looking at, oh, my God, we actually have somebody halfway rational entering the White House and somebody we could actually begin to make some

credible moves with and for and possibly against, but at least we know what the range of outcomes will be, right? And that's the case. Then the America's enemies have to accelerate their plans to try and bind the United States down. And the people who are who are favorably disposed towards getting the United States out of their backyard and, you know, willing to cut deals with the United States, if we're willing to be rational, are looking to, are going to look to put pressure on these points, these make these pressure points occur in order to make that decision easy for Trump. Trump's tweet the other day was, I think, the big, was the big lynch pin.

you know, through some red meat through the, what's, which tweet said, the one where he said, you know, Assad's been removed and, you know,

this is what's going on. And Russia's leaving Syria where they never should have been in the first place. And, you know, 600,000 troops have been killed in Ukraine and they have to, that's all red meat to the frigging neocons into the, but the important part of that tweet is always the last part,

which is all in bold, all in, you know, where he shouts it to the world, but this is not our fight. Syria was never our friend. This is not our fight. And we need to stay out of it.

which is his way of saying it's a message to the neocons. This is why it's very difficult for me to answer Day's question about whether or not the neocons are ascendant or, you know, in in desperation mode. That Trump's sweet the other day about, you know, that this was a message to the neocons. You're not in control of anything. I'm in control of the situation. We're going to pull out. And then J.D. Vance comes out the next two days later and says the exact same thing in response to Josh Rogan going, Syria's free and

you know and like all all the what did Trump say what did Trump say did you not see the tweet he said the other day he said you know right after

okay so Trump's tweet from the other day is really really instructive and I don't quite I don't have it up I can probably go find it real quick I'll look for it Tom how many days ago was it

it was on Saturday I do I believe it was Saturday afternoon now look about 2000 tweets back yeah It's actually on his Twitter account as well as on his true social account, by the way. And I think it might even be in my Twitter stream because I'm sure I retweeted it at some point.

But what he said was, okay, Assad is gone. Russia's pulling out of Syria where they should have never been in the first place. They're overstretched, having lost 600,000 troops in Ukraine, which is nonsense. But that's all red meat to the neocons. And the second half of it is, but no matter what goes on here, Syria is to be left for Syrians to work out. Assad is gone. Syria was never our friend.

This is to be left. This is their problem. In all caps, this is their problem. It is not our fight. And we should not get involved in this at all. Can you steal man? Can you steal man the case for the neocons? Because they just look like nothing but trouble to me.

Can you steal man the, okay, in the world that we live in, this is why the... No, I can't. No, I cannot. They are literally a Trotskyite force to create permanent revolution for... That's what I believe. I believe that these people are people fucking not Trotskyites that will not stop until we get the real communist revolution.

I actually never thought of them as Trotskyites, but that's a good point. I have stated that I believe U.S. foreign policy can be summarized as, never let any country in the Middle East get strong. Well, that's a very British foreign policy. Right, right. That's the look, as soon as you stick your head up too high, you're going to get it blown off. Well, it's part of that,

but it's actually all encompassing of old McKinder-esque British foreign policy about keeping Russia bound down in border wars and all the rest of the stuff. But it's very, very, very, very, much a there's like the the people who have been promulgating this were all trotskyites go back to the 1950s go back to you know go back to go back to go back to is this like going back to foucault and guys like that no i'm going back into like irving crystal and potentially even i'm even we're even beginning to wonder whether james burnham was one of these people eventually figured out what was going

on. There's the Trotskyite roots of the neo-conservatives as they move from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and back again. They don't care. These people are locusts. They just want to stay in power. And when they're thrown out of the powerful party, the board, they've thrown out of the powerful party, which they're being thrown out of the Republican Party by Trump. They all moved to the Democratic Party. Okay. They all back Kamala Harris. No different than when Tomp Paul came onto the scene, and they were both embedded deeply in both parties. And you saw Bill Crystal and Hillary Clinton both on MSPMSNBC denouncing Ron Paul as an isolation. So if you had to pick, neocom top dogs.

So the problem is you never know who's just a talking head and the spokesperson in a front. It's like Clout Schwab, right? He's not calling any shots. I don't know what he gets, but he's not calling any shot. No, the neocons, who are the top dog neocons in your opinion? Who would you say if there's if there's guys who really? wield unbelievable power we don't top three sir we never see this those people don't those people don't those people don't have Wikipedia pages i are you're not everybody we everybody we interact with is the

reflection of they're the lieutenants right they're the pointy-haired wrong they are the kjps of of the neocons right right do you they are tom do you want to see this tweet sure got here so there's the tweet move have suddenly taken over numerous cities i've all taken over numerous i'll read it out loud opposition fighters in syria and an unprecedented move have totally taken over numerous cities and highly coordinated offensive and are now on the outskirts of damascus this is written before assad fell preparing to make a very big move towards taking out of sad russia because they are so tied up in ukraine and with the loss of they are of over 600 000 soldiers seems incapable of stopping the little this literal march through syria a country they have protected for years

this is of course nonsense um this is where former president obama refused the honors commitment of protecting the red line in the sand and all hell broke out with russia stepping in now they are there like possibly assad himself being forced out and may actually be the best thing that can happen to them they were never much of a benefit in syria for russia other than to make obama look really stupid in any event syria is a mess but it is not our friend and the united states should have nothing to do with it this is not our fight let it play out do not get involved, exclamation points all the way down. Yeah, that's not just a tweet.

That is way past the tweet. That is a policy statement of a president who's not yet president. Absolutely. He didn't write that either. I don't know who's in charge of writing that shit these days, but he didn't write that. So I think that that tweet is, indicative of a lot of things it opens with red meats to the political intel the

the the political um harpies within the u.s it's a it's a it's it's it's red meat to the Lindsey Graham set and the rest of them that to acknowledge all of their talking points about how Russia is so weak and that they've been effective in taking these and doing this stuff but it's also not our fight and we're not going to get involved in it this is a message to the neocons it's a message to net in yahoo It's a message to Erdogan. It's a message to Vladimir Putin. We're not going to get involved.

We're going to stay out of this. And if anything, we're going to leave if need be. So Russia pulls out. Trump says, I'm going to pull out. We'll let Syria hang. And then we can now finally deal with the reality that Syria was never a real fucking country anyway. Because Syria was a was a synthetic.

There's not, there's a Syria. But it's not the one that, it's not the Syria. It's the British empire growing lines. Right. It is all back, it goes back to Sykes Peacott in 1913, creating all of this mess such that at any point in time, the fucking British could walk into the region with a $500, 500 pound bill strapped at their fucking ass and gin up a fucking sectarian war, which is what they've been doing for the last 110 fucking years. So you deal with the arbitrary, the ridiculous. arbitrary political borders that is the modern Syria. And you let it play out that it

balkanizes along ethnic lines. And you might actually wind up with less bloodshed in the long run than anybody thinks. Because if the big powers pull out, if Russia stops backing Syria and Iran, Assad's gone. So that takes care of that problem. And the and the United States stops backing Israel and Turkey. Guess what? They all have the fight amongst themselves without the, without the bodyguards behind them. Now all of a sudden, everybody's a lot less interested in going to a fucking war with each other. Because the losses are too high. Vinny and Guido are no longer in the game, right?

Don Trump Leonie is telling Don Putin, Don Putin, Putinsky, hey, why don't we work something out here? Yeah, you pull out, we pull out, let's let the tribes fight. Right. Let them fight, let them figure it out. Let Syria become. And I think Assad's, I think, Again, I'm going to go back to what Alexander McCarras said. You're making me euphoric again, Tom.

Wait. Well, I wish euphoric. Don't let's not, let's not, you know, let's not start sucking each other's dicks, you know, yet. I didn't say that, Tom, just for the record. Well, you want to be out of, that line for Pulpiction has been, has been tweeted at me like a half dozen times in the last couple of days. But let's, but let's think about this now in terms of, of, oh, God. So we deal with that part of it. And then how do you, how do you get everybody to go on board with this?

Well, you, you, and then Alex Craneer was on, on capital cause yesterday, the day before, talking about he just feels like this is some kind of trap. Like all of a sudden, the Syrian army just walks away, Assad walks out. The Russians say, yeah. And then the Iran, then the Israelis and the Turks move in, put their people in charge. and now they have to deal with this mess. And they were expecting, I think Netanyahu was expecting the United States to come in. And on the other side, I think Turkey was like going to be willing to try and play all their games with, you know, refugees and money and this and that and everything else. And I, you want my honest opinion.

No, no. The big guys pull out. I'll hold back on that idea. If the big guys pull out, heavy lies the crown, folks. You got Syria. You won. I know. And now you got, and, like, but in order to get a lot of people on board with any potential

positive outcome here, you have to revitalize the pipelines coming out of North Pars. Because the Qataris, which are basically a proxy for the British, get their new pipeline coming out of the north, coming out of there. Oh, by the way, BP just announced this morning that they're exiting all renewable. meaning solar and wind and all that crap. Oh, I wrote a lot about that this year. That's that's, that's, that's, that game's ending. The game's over, right?

But it's important that it came out of VP. Like, that's really important. The rift is going to continue, but the, but the, but the plot line is faltering it from every direction, including the efficacy of the, of the, the sources, as well as people. You know, when, when, when, Climate change got politicized. On the one hand, it garbles up the story because it's politicized, but on the other hand,

it made it a legitimate talking point instead of a no one would ever disagree with this narrative, right? And so now all of a sudden people for political reasons are jumping into the debate and finding out that that story's crap. And as a consequence, being told you're going to have to buy a fucking electric car that doesn't work and burns tires and blows up in your girlfriend. garage and show like that. That story is starting to falter. And the EV market is starting to collapse, I believe. It is. It's already collapsed. And so in all the car companies, and I'll be

not, let me put it this way. It's not done. No, it's not. But the writing on the, the writing on the wall for me about the whole EV story was the sixth generation Prius. Tell me about it. That Toyota released in 2022. And it was and there was no all electric. Oh, and they backed away from EV like they ran. They were the first ones to back out. And when Toyota, the most powerful car manufacturer in the fucking world and the most technologically advanced car maker in the entire world says we're not doing an all electric

Prius. Their flagship virtue signaling car. And they put out literally a pocket rocket that I would buy as if I wanted a midlife crisis car, I'd buy a new Prius. There are 200 horsepower. No, let me ask you. Is it your opinion that the hybrids, that the hybrids really do represent a jump forward? They're not part of the grift.

They're a legitimate. I think they are. That's my understanding. Yeah, I think the hybrid. I don't think they need subsidies. I don't think they need. I think they are, they are wealth creation. Yeah.

No, I think they are because they're useful. They're useful across the entire car segment. I drove in the truck segment by them. by the way, guys. I bought an F1. I got an F-150. I rented a car. And I rented an economy car because why the fuck would I rent something more expensive?

And they upgraded me because they didn't have one to an F-150. And I'm going, that's a big fucking upgrade, right? Right. It had something like a 900-mile range. That's outlandish. Yeah. Yeah. The hybrid version of it?

Sure. Because like, once you get the hybrid- moving like it's not you know the dynamic coefficient of friction takes over versus the sata coefficient of friction and all of a sudden right still 900 mile range that's something something or dick i remember it was an outlandish i look at the dashboard and i go that must be a metric system or something there's something or 900 kilometer range right yeah 900 kilometer range i'm like okay well i mean that's that it still be good that would still be good but i don't well i mean if you put if you strap a 40 gallon gas tank on a Ford F 150 hybrid, you can get 900 miles where, because you've already got 500 miles

worth of gasoline on the frigging thing. You know, 40 gallon tank at 18 miles of the gallon or 50 miles of the gallon. You've already, you've now got, and they put 40 gallon gas tanks in these things. I mean, that was one of the things I really wanted when I was specking out like a RAM 1500. I want the 33 gallon gas tank. God damn it. But, you know, you know, I have different views. I want to sit on a car that's not in a massive depreciation mode. So I am happy to drive a 4,000 dollar beater, knowing that my downside is $4,000. Chans, am I, am I wrong in like... Yes, you're wrong.

Thanks, Dave. To me, like, I don't know if we're in the middle of the hurricane, like the eye of the storm, or if we've exited the storm, or if we're about to exit the storm, or what? But, like, it just seems like Donald Trump is going to get inaugurated on January 20th. And things are settling down with Russia. Ukraine. Maybe they're not, but that's the way it seems the narrative or the talking points seem to be going. Yes, the euphoric word you said. I'm like, yeah. Like, I feel like a lot of people are like, are things actually going to turn to the good side here? Here's what I'll tell you is coming

and it's a guarantee in my opinion. And that is Trump is inheriting a mess that he can clean up and therefore help. And I did you read Elon Musk? biography it's phenomenal it might be biased as shit but the one thing you get from it the take home lesson for the contemporary listener right now is there is nobody more qualified than Elon Musk to shred government there's nobody more qualified than Elon to do that he buys twitter and fires 90% of staff nobody does that he did it they Twitter got better right he He'd face a $1.5 million bill for a refrigeration unit out of Boeing for his rock. And he'd say, fuck that.

And he'd go down to Walmart and buy a couple of window units and cobbled them together and say, that ought to do it. Right. There is no one who knows how to cut costs like Elon. I hope to hell they give them superpowers. I hope Ramoswami's not a hoser and he helps them. That would be. I'm convinced on Vivek.

And I'll tell you why. It's because I've listened to him talk about the specifics of the legal, of how, legally how to deal with these things and he's got order of operations on how to get this shit done that I haven't even thought of. So the other thing that turned out to be. And that really impressed me. That really impressed me. Perfectly time is that Supreme Court decision on the Chevron deference case.

Not only Chevron, but Jarcusy and Jarcusy. Don't forget. Tell me about jarcusy. Talk me about Jerkcy. is the is the is the is the is the one where the that was the that was drag whose name was dragged through the mud and then subjected to the to the SEC star chamber court right and so it's the one what it's the it's the it's the judgment that says administrative that the that the three letter agencies cannot you know um accuse and then try in an administrative court

So that's Chevron Deverettor 2.0 then. Those two are absolutely joined at the hill. They're absolutely linked. It means what the Supreme Court said was, no, you have to go to a normal trial by jury, SEC, and try this man for real. So for those who are listening, the Chevron deference case was a case in 1938, where they basically ruled in a way that said that if the law didn't specifically prohibit something or if it was ambiguous,

administrators could do whatever the fuck they wanted. It's a Supreme Court then ruled that now unconstitutional, meaning, meaning that almost every administrative rule out there, which can include the IRS and all sorts of things. Yes. Could be unconstitutional. Yes. No, not only.

Almost everyone could be. And I do believe that the Chevron deference was 1984, not 1938, but I may be wrong about that. That's what when I, when I looked. Okay. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that 18,000 cases. Numbers are transposed. Yeah, maybe.

83, 83, 83, or something like that. 3838, right? Yeah, okay. So it's close. Like, what's important is not when, but how and why. What's really interesting about Vivek. 1984. Thank you.

Was it 84? It was. It says the Chevron. I thought it was earlier in that. Chevron defense counsel. decision-basedly stating ambiguous or leaves an administration gap 1984

1984 so what's important here is that what Vivek said publicly on Twitter is not only is Chevron not only is Chevron unconstitutional but that means we don't have to wait the Supreme Court has told us flat out these rules are unconstitutional

and it is our duty to enforce the Supreme that they're unconstitutional meaning all of them are null and void today and not have to go through the challenge and be overturned on a case by case basis he went fucking said all of them are invalid as of fucking today as of as of June so well the world well the world shits their adult diapers over roe v wade the the the Supreme Court cases of our lifetime went sort of unnoticed no I was I said Chevron was the most consequential Supreme Court decision of the 20th. You're not a normal person. And I know I've not been talking about. I agree. Neither one of you was a normal person.

Somebody break that down for me so I can understand it. I'm trying to catch up to what the hell you two are talking about right now. I'm like, I haven't had the moment. So basically it was ruled that administrative state that was started by Woodrow Wilson, exacerbated by FDR, had taken to doing things like pass. rules that they could prosecute people with and send them to prison for. And the Supreme Court ruled that that 84 case that gave them that kind of firepower is unconstitutional after all.

So in a very rare case of reversing a previous case, which they tend not to do, they seem to reverse that. And so now when the IRS says, you owe us money, and if you don't pay us, you're going to go to prison, that may not be constitutional, things like that. Ultimately, what it did was the Chevron deference said, if Congress writes a law that is vague, then the agency charged with implementing that law can declare best practices and therefore set a rule that has the weight of legislative law. So what you have is, like the War Powers Act, delegated the Congress's constitutional

power to wage, to declare war, and the president is supposed to wage it, the War Powers Act said, well, no, we're passing it. We're going to give that judgment to the president. The Chevron Debrin gave that same basic power. of Congress saying, well, we don't want to legislate. So we don't want to legislate these things. We want to leave it to the, we want to leave it to our, we want to leave it to the executive branch,

administrative agencies, three-letter agencies, to set the rules and then that and that being in that carried a force of law. And that was complete. It's a BTA. It's the DECA, it's the SEC. It's all. It's the entire administrative state is now potential. It's the deal.

It's the department. Department of Education is a Department of Energy. It's why Joe Biden can go out there and say, we're going to change. The Department of Energy is going to change the rules on whether or not you can have a, or the Federal Trade Commission says you, we're going to get rid of, we're going to ban light bulbs. We're going to ban, um, toilets that actually flush.

We're going to ban your gas stoves. We're going to ban this. We're going to ban this. We're going to ban that. It's all bullshit technocracy. It's all Davos, folks, all the way down. I feel like I'm warped back to when I was in college and I'm sitting there and I'm listening to the professor.

tell me something and it just isn't sinking in it. So what I'm hearing is, is like, I'm just going to pick on the environment policies right now. If you don't hit a certain environmental policy, there is a way that administratively, they could penalize you and eventually send you to jail. And I'm just being a bit extreme,

but not that much people. No, that's exactly correct. You're not being extreme. That's exactly correct. And what you're saying is this takes out them at the knees. Like, no, you can't do that. You can't put something in administratively saying that people will,

go to jail for this when that is actually not constitutionally. Yes. What it means is that Congress can no longer write a vague law in they cannot write a vague law that says protect the environment and then delegate protecting the environment via all the rules of the EPA. No, they have to specify what the what the, what the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. and arsenic will be on a national basis. They no longer can delegate that to the EPA. The power and the responsibility back to Congress away from the administrative state. So they have dinner.

If you want this stuff it's done, it's got to be done legislatively. I saw a seminar by a libertarian from, he might have been Heritage Institute. I think his name was Switzky. I hope I've got that close. Hopefully he's not listening and his wife and a bunch of people. And he mentioned the Chevron deference case in, passing. Yeah. And after as I said, you mentioned it in passing. And I think it's most important case in our lifetime. He said, oh, absolutely. I said, so now what's happening? He says, now we're

waiting. He's kind of saying now, now we're waiting for the bombs to start going off. Right. And then his wife, here's the second part of this dinner, his wife works for a not-for-profit that oversees 600 other not-for-profits who do disaster relief, speaking of government disasters. And these not-for-profits, they go in and they'll tarp up houses and Katrina and shit like that. They'll help. She had nothing good to say about FEMA. Now, I've written about FEMA and what a disaster it is and what a catastrophe it is and how they should be sent packing their shit.

And they, they, the people, basically FEMA is filled with people who have no competence, none. They think they're saving the world because they're too fucking stupid to realize they're the problem. They are a $29 billion year budget, which again, Ferris said to me, I say, but that's, that's a drop in the bucket. I go, but Arab Spring was one guy lighting himself on fire. Let's give it a chance. Okay, wait, but $29 billion worth of the budget. Okay. So that's a drop in the bucket.

but the amount of damage it does to the entire economy because it $29 billion, it has a $2 trillion effect on the goddamn economy because now we have to deal with all these fucking rules and we have to deal with all this shit and the company and it destroys small businesses because these rules lay disproportionately. All taxes are regressive, folks. What do you mean by regressive is that they hit lower income earners harder than they hit or yeah then they hit um they hit upper end the commerce because you're looking at the marginal cost of the tax okay great example by the way is like car industry where they have to test cars by

crashing them small car company can't afford it right large car companies can absorb it yes the large companies that's just a lot of complicated regulations because it keeps the small companies unable to compete so it creates barriers to entry which reinforces monops which reinforces effectively cartel-style-esque or oligopolis, not monopolies or oligopolis. We don't have a monopoly in car manufacturing in the United States. We have three. Oh, fuck you.

We should have 20. What also means, for example, if you are working in some small startup and you invent the latest, greatest drug, by definition, you have to sell it to Pfizer or Merck because you cannot possibly, you cannot negotiate the minefield. to get the FDA. Yeah, of the FDA. So it's just, so it's, it's a classic example of regular, a barrier entry, reinforcing

oligopolis all through the economy, which then they're moats to the big guys. Yeah, the moats are the big guys. And then at the end of the day and then Warren Buffett goes out and says, only invest in things that have moats. Well, he's the biggest fucking welfare queen on a goddamn planet because he helps write the moats. I take it you know, fuck him. Warren.

It's Warren Buffett. Like, you know, it's like, Warren Buffett in his moat theories. By the way, you know, those moats were written by you, fuckhead. I wrote it. I wrote a takedown of Warren years ago, probably 19, probably 2010. And I wrote this takedown only to find out that I had been scooped by 18 years by Michael Lewis, in which I basically said the Warren was a big ass hoser. And Lewis wrote this one called the.

take down the temptation of St. Warren. Right. Oh, wow. I wrote the temptation. I've entitled my when I found his, the temptation of St. Warren 2.0. And Warren, Warren is a world-class stock jobber. He's the best, if possibly Druck and Miller batter conceivably. But he likes to walk around in a bathrobe looking like he's crazy and harmless. And he's not.

He is anything but. Yeah. Now, it's fascinating strongly. this is what they're most afraid of because you can you can the the guys who are in charge of those are now fully awake to the level of insanity and this is why I keep saying oh by the way they can cut true to two trillion dollars in the budget tomorrow because the Congress legislates or let's let's you're Canadian so let's I have to back it up for you and I don't mean that as a pejorative like no no there are many other there are many other areas in

which i will use canadian as majority but not in this particular context let's get over let's get down to the separation of powers of the united hockey packs in the head yeah a couple of you know well i've had a couple of those dave i'm not going to lie so yeah so but so to a lot of people they don't understand the the extent to which the powers of the federal government are truly separated constitutionally. Congress legislates and appropriates the money and goes out and figures out how to get the money. And then the executive branch is to implement and spend the money. But if the executive branch and the legislative branch has no ability to tell the executive branch how to spend the money. And they can freeze it. They can say, I don't want to spend this money. This money is bullshit.

There's a name for that. What's it called? There's an actual name for that. Yeah, I don't know the actual name for it. I don't remember. There is a name for it where the president can say okay fine you just gave you just you just you just voted you know a trillion dollars to uh the inflation reduction act like several that there's a good one and millions hundreds of billions for inflation reduction and the president can just say no yeah the money just sits in a bank count waiting to be waiting to be spent it's not spent now when you have when you have a so when you have a president this is a final point when you have a president in league with congress to to to to create a particular agenda that on that goes that circumvents the the the separation of powers you

have what we have today we're walking into a moment in time where congress is going to try and make the executive branch do dance to its tune and the executive branch is like now here's where i started to say here's where the valley of death lies in front of us not behind us and that is Trump is walking into a mess that he can clean up. But the markets are currently 200% over historical valuation by my best metrics. Okay. Which means that we're looking at to regress to the historical mean, a 60 to 70% correction, presuming it doesn't do damage.

If it does damage, that thing could go much, much further, which, by the way, as I like to say to people who say, oh, that could never happen. I go, there has never been a market in the history of markets, in the history of civilized world that didn't eventually go from overvalued to undervalued. It's never occurred. And as a consequence, it will happen. We don't know when. Trump inherits that.

Now, here's the problem. We are in a euphoric market top. But if you were to go on on the street and ask people how euphoric are you feeling, the answer would be, fuck, no. The answer would be, I want to wring someone's neck. I want to shoot some CEO of some health care company. The answer would be, I want to go riot. I want to go, I've had enough.

My bananas cost too goddamn much in the store. If this is the temperament of the American people at the top, what's it going to look like at the bottom? Well, here's the counter. Here's the counter to that argument at this point. It all depends on how Trump manages the conversion. What I'm seeing, what I think is going to happen here is you're going to have the deflation. impulse of cutting $2 trillion from the budget. Powell is going to continue to shrink the Fed's balance sheet in order to try and get

rid of the leverage within the balance sheet and to try and drain the euro dollar, the offshore euro dollar markets, which by the way is working just beautiful. On the other side of that, he's going to have to, we're going to have, so what we're, what we're seeing is a global correction of credit asset based, uh, credit assets, credit based assets are going to deflate. We're going to have another round of commodity cost cost, cost, cost, inflation, but we're going to have the money that used to go to Washington funnel into funnel from the from the the the funnel up. What I mean by that is if Powell cuts interest rates here, it's more than the market is projecting

than they the cut. And so we get back to a normally slope up, upwardly sloping yield curve, right? But short, you know, 3% on the low end, 5% on the high end on the long end. Then the banks can start to lend profitably against a 210 spread and we can actually start and we get rid of all the regulation that's binding that's caught that's adding cost to everything you have this kind of deflation and inflation on price of these assets um competing against each other the reason we'll have commodity cost push inflation in the short term is all the fucking supply chains were a mess we can't get the things needed to where they need to go because of the a new round of credit expansion to empower small businesses because now they're they don't have to deal with Chevron anymore to

to deal with, you know, all of that stuff is going to. So what we're dealing with is an 18 year, 18 month, I think the two year dollar bull market and reorganization of valuations. But we're going to start to see a- You can't knock out 200% over valuation that way. No, I don't know. I think you just described 15 years from now. Oh, I'm not arguing with you.

No, but you said it's 18 months to two years. Well, no, I think there's a two. I think the value of that stands, but between. us and that euphoric. I don't know. I don't believe that this I don't believe we have a euphoric stock market. I believe we have a massive capital in wave coming from the fact that we've been draining the offshore dollar markets. I don't think this is a euphoric market. I think this is a market that is overvalued because everybody else's market, everybody else overseas is trying to figure out of fucking put their capital. The price of the market, it's euphoric based on people's

temperament. It's not. Right. But again, as long as you're, what you're going to see is wage and inflation growth, you actually are going to see weight, you should see wages start to, to outpace inflation growth. And it's, we're going to, and that will, and that will, and that, and that will that will that will that will be inflationary time. No, no, no, no, no. You can't, you can't grow wages without growing the inflation in the current climate. I just said that, Dave. You're going to, you said that wage growth would exceed inflation. Wage growth will become the inflation. Yeah. Well, that's effectively what I'm saying. Yes. So it won't exceed inflation. Well, it may exceed inflation, depending on what we do with the regulatory state, we have no idea what it's going to look like when we massively change the way the economy actually handles capital.

We don't have any clue. What we have is our past, and our past is that we handle capital really poorly. I think the timescales are not short. I think you are describing the other side of some really disastrous period. maybe I don't know but I think that but I but in the short term because we're draining offshore because there's money coming in from offshore just I think the that will make that will that will mitigate some of the that will mitigate some of the reorganization and then the big question from there is when when the dollar when the dollar peaks and the stock

market's peak alongside of them that's when we're going to see the correction but but I think we're going to see that i think we're going to see dows 60 000 and then a correct fact to fit about down to 30 but by that point you're just going to take it to more over value i think it goes more overvalued because of because of the capital in flight and we'll get it's more overvalued we'll give all of that and the last 10 years back at some point which is my valley of death i look i they they they they pump these fucking markets full of full of money that in you know at zero the zero bound and then covid like they pump these markets up there's nothing you can know about that. So now you have to go back to 1981. Oh, I know what does. But let's but,

but the real real acceleration started into you know, 2009 through 2000, you know, starting at the 2009, 2010 with QE and zero bound rates and I owe I OER and all the rest of it. Like let's like that market hit. Market hit historical average value but not lower in 2009. The market that that bear market that bull market launched off of a a historical normal price. Yeah. It should not have. There was a halving in its future and they cut it off at the past. Eventually, this will, right now, the market is priced.

The Schiller P.E.'s trading at 38. I know. The market is priced to return 3%. That will break insurance companies. That will break investment portfolios. That will break the system. I'm not saying that. I think, I think PDAs are going to, Dave, I think PDAs are going to, I think PDAs have to come down.

I'm not arguing with you, but I think we're going to see, I think, I think we're going to see, I think it's not going to be, I think there's a path through that it's not fully catastrophic until we're on the other side of a bill, a big dollar bull wave. And then all the money to float in and support it all this is going to flow out. But in the short, but in the meantime, if we cut the spending and the cut the regulations to allow for actual honest to God growth, real growth, not fake growth. We have an overinvestment in shit. We have an overinvestment of Marxism, purple hair dye, fucking nose rings and all of this shit. And what we really need is an overinvestment and real thing. We have to move the structure of production away from 100th order goods back to fourth and fifth order goods.

There's a fascinating plot that gets inadequate treatment. And it's a plot that shows the returns on capital intensive industries. And the returns on capital, unintensive industries, aka Twitter, TikTok, you name it, right, that sort of thing. And they're night and day. That is the evidence that capital non-intensive industries, which are basically not creating fucking wealth. Right. You and I are saying the exact same thing in a different way. That's right.

But the problem is that the problem is if you want to get out of this, you're kind of saying we're going to block and tackle. our way out, right? We're going to grow the economy. We're going to find a way to create wealth. Let's say the GDP, legitimate GDP, which I think is not legitimate because the inflation correction is wrong. The legitimate GDP runs at 2.5%, which is what, which is higher than the GDP of the 20th century. Now, if you think the 20th century was a bad century, that's fine, but I think you're dreaming. If the GDP grows at 2.5%, it will take us 45 years to grow out of. of this overvaluation. Well, again, it all depends on how.

That's catastrophic. Well, yeah. At current collateral prices. The collateral of the debt that's out there is all undervalued. Bitcoin's undervalued. Gold is undervalued. All the collateral is undervalued. But real estate's undervalued.

No, it's all undervalued. Gold is easily undervalued by four or five times relative to the monetary. Well, that's, I'm like, 35, 40% gold. So I'm hoping you're right. But I know I'm right. Like, but gold is one of those things. I think you, there's there are ways of skinning this cat in such a way that that, that, uh, that re-capitalize. You're going to recapitalize at higher prices, Dave, is what I'm arguing. And such that you don't have a inflation. I know that's what we call inflation. I didn't say we weren't going to have inflation, Dave. I just don't, they just don't think that we're going to have a 60% stock market

crash because I don't. Oh, and nominally. Maybe not. Right. That's what I'm saying. In real terms, absolutely. Absolutely. But here's the problem. Here's the problem.

So that's the railing cry of the, oh, we'll just inflay our way out of it. Right now, our unfunded liabilities are crudely speaking $2 million per taxpayer. Now, I don't know about you. I haven't budgeted for that, right? People will say, oh, we'll inflate our way out. They go, okay, so they will take away $2 million of your spending power. I haven't budgeted for that either. It's the same fucking thing.

Okay. So well, the gist is there's no, this is not like Sandra Bullock. But we can get rid of, we can get rid of, we can get rid of, we can get rid of a lot of unfunded liabilities, though, Dave. Like, let's, let's, let's, let's fire 30%. Okay, let's look at this as a national balance sheet problem. I've done this calculation. I've done this, this presentation before. Let's talk about it from the point of view. You're an investor, you're a potential investor. You've got a billion dollars in a family and a family office over in Europe or the United States or whatever. you're looking at the unfunded liabilities to the United States. And that's all based on projections of how we're going to pay for these useless government employees that should be that that's just UBI. We have UBI at like 90, 90% of the government or 85% of the government is basically on the fucking doll.

Now, think about those people that are hanging on. They've already got their 20 in. They're 40, 50 years old, 52 years old. They already got their 20 in, but they're not going to leave because why would they? Because they're getting paid more than they would get on their pension. So from an unfunded liability's perspective, Medicare, healthcare, social security and everything else, we're looking at having to pay for these people for the next 32 years

at ever-inflating prices. Now, we turn to them and we go, you know what? Come back to the office or come back to the office. And they all go, you know what? No, I'm going to take my retirement now. But we're going to give you two-year severance pay. We just cut the unfunded liabilities from 32 years to two years. And they're on the hook to deal with everything else.

And now we know their pension's not going to grow. we know their Medicare costs. Can you cut Social Security or Medicare? Can you cut Social Security or Medicare? In effect, we are cutting Social Security and Medicare in that respect, especially if we deregulate that, that, the, the, the, the insurance industry where Medicare costs aren't spiraling out of control at five times the rate of the CPI, which is where all the Lunded liabilities are.

It's all, it's all, it's all bullshit. It's all. So think of it that way. You get rid of, you get rid of that. And that's a big chunk of, the unfunded, the quote unquote unfunded liabilities. You start, you start enforcing, um, price rationality and pricing in the billing system and, and in health care. What percent? You all of a sudden change the, the, the whole picture of this. You don't have to kill the fucking boomers, which is Davos's plan. Let's kill everybody off with the, what percent of the

what percentage of the unfunded Medicare and Social Security liabilities would that cut in your opinion? What percentage? I don't know what that number is, but I know it's enough to it, I know it's enough to, to entice the money that's sitting on the sidelines, the investable capital is sitting on the sidelines going, yeah, I'm willing to invest in a country that has, that has, you know, it's like a country, it's like a company that's going through a bad reorganization. What do they do? They cram down the existing bondholders. They cram down the existing shareholders. They force them to get 90% hair cut in their invested capital. And they say, but here's our plan for the future and our cash flow. And here's the new and here are the new bonds. And a lot of people and a lot of people are cram down

are not going to buy in and a lot of new people are going to buy it that's what companies can do but that's not politics politics can't do that it can if you have the exact an executive branch that refuses that says we're not spending the money this way and what trump and what trump has to do is I know what Trump has to do is build a cabinet and a plan that is durable and generational to outlive his second term. And if you look at this cabinet, his cabinet is filled with rising political rock stars in their 40s and their 50s. They're our age.

I understand all this. Who are brawlers. And who are brawlers and warriors and fighters. And they're not. Well, this is my old fucking boomers who have been gritted, who have been, who grifted, off of the the hollowing out of the united states balance sheet we don't have the a group of people coming in but if you don't if you if you take away the boomer's ability to hollow out the balance sheet there will be chaos there's i'm not saying there's not going to be chaos i'm not saying that it's

going to be easy i just wanted i am not saying that it's not going to be difficult i am not saying that this is rosy that it's going to be easy this is going to be fucking hard all i know is i even want some Pyrrhic victories. Again, Michael Farris, we were talking about, I said, Pyrrhic victories. You go, what good are they? And I go, I feel better. Just win some finally. Right. I said, light yourself on fire in Tunisia. Do something, right? Win. Consumer, did you see the consumer confidence numbers the other day? Yeah, those are short-turn numbers. I don't pay attention. Well, wait, that's fine. I understand that, but it's, there's something changed. Like, I'm not a Keynesian, but animal spirits is not an un-

is not a, um, is not a thing that isn't real. If, if people have a better idea about the future and are going to be given the opportunity to do, to actually have a future by not having to comply with all of this, the regulation is the key. The regulation is the drive is the main driver of the inflation. And it's been done on purpose. It's been policy to add friction to the. economy to slow it down. The consumer, the problem is, this all works fine if you wash out the

profound fake wealth first. Sure. And you're going to, and you're going to wipe out and you're going to wipe some of that. And you're going to wipe out some of that. And you're going to wipe out the froth on the upper end on all this. There's a tulip bubble in this, in this part of this I know. And there's an, and there's an unbelievable opportunities in other areas of the economy. And but the consumer right now doesn't have the money to get animal spirits. And, and if you give them credit, they will just be in worse shape. So they, they really, we, we have to respect. It was interesting. It was talking about unlocking the 36 trillion dollars worth of how, worth of housing equity that we have in the country. You got to do that. What do you mean? Well, how do you unlock? Go ahead. Go ahead. How do you unlock that?

Do you unlock that? And one of the things that's been bandied around behind the scenes, I've been talking to some people who are close to the transition team on this. And one of the things you, and Besant was talking about this the other day. So I'm not like, I ain't talking out my ass here is you allow, the government is going to have to step in and offer a positive yield spread on that. It's going to have to offer to the people a positive yield spread on their current. on their current scenario, on their current housing scenario.

What I mean by that is, like, I know, for example, right, like, I'm going to give you my example on this. I'm thinking, I'm in the process of selling this house and building a house up in Tennessee, and I'm going to probably float a mortgage on it, and it's probably going to be so much $6.5.7%. But am I going to take the money from the house sale and use it as a down payment and then only carry like a $50,000 or $80,000 mortgage? No, what I'm going to do in my cash flow scenario is I'm going to take the most of the money from now.

I'm going to float the note and I'm going to go get four and a half percent in the treasury market and I'm only going to pay 2% of my mortgage. Okay. Because I take the money from my house and I invested in treasuries at four and a half percent and I have a six and a half percent mortgage. And now I've got this thing. You're only paying two percent. I'm only paying net two percent on this. Okay. This is a lot of people are doing this day.

this is how a lot of this stuff has been done. What if we, we, we subsidize that, and this is where. So that's exactly the opposite of what I did in 99. In 99, I got a lot of cash from exiting the market. Right. The first thing I did is I paid off my mortgage because it was returning, it returned nine and a half percent. Sure.

By paying off that mortgage. You're saying you want to own a treasury at four or something. Well, I mean, you know. Instead of not having a debt at six something. Well, I'm just saying that in your turn, having it at a six-something, it seems like a 2% loss to me. Well, it is, but it's also I get to buy with other people's money. Are you willing to build a house for two? I'm just saying, look, if I want to do this, I can do this and I only pay 2%.

If I'm willing to pay 2% for that on that net note so that I can pay the note down, I'm going to double tap the note. No, you're not to only paying 2%. You're missing opportunity costs of the 4.5%. Possibly. But what I'm saying is take that scenario. Take that scenario, Dave, and flip it so that it's a positive 50 basis points. Positive 50 basis point spread.

I don't know how to do that. I don't know what you're getting going to do. That's, I think, what percent is talking about doing. And I think there are ways of getting that done. I don't know. I'm not going to go any farther than that because now I have to like start craft. I have to start crafting financial assets and a trade that I don't understand. You're taking out a six and a half, seven percent dead.

And using some of that to get a four and a half percent return. It doesn't make sense to me. In order to preserve the liquid capital, because the liquid capital that I own at four and a half percent is opposed to trying to rebuild that, say, in this case, $300,000, I have the $300,000. It's making me 4%. I'm paying out of cash flow. Who cares? If I'm willing to pay 2% on that, and if I pay down the mortgage at double the rate, I'm paying the thing off in 12 years anyway, I get to keep the money and pay the thing on. I can get that note down to, I can get that note down to 4% effective yield easily.

You know what I love being on this side sitting up in the northern, two hours east of the edge of the world as it is, watching two boys go back and forth, both this is Larry's. I want it before I get you guys out of here, Dave, if I don't ask you these questions, I know it's going to be another month.

They just, and this is a complete, hard left turn. They just implicated Jay-Z and the P. Diddy thing. I just wanted to know your thoughts on that. I've got several questions. I got several related to. Jay-Z is a Satanist.

I can prove it. He is a Satanist. So that boy is in trouble. That boy's got real problems. He is way darker than just to purve. He has satanic cult connections. The funniest part of the P. Diddy story is going to be if. P. Diddy, who we know knows every black entertainment.

on the planet, right? He knows every last one. Denzo Washington apparently flipped him off, said, fuck you, I'm out of here. So he's in the clear. The rest are still unknowns. LeBron James is in huge trouble. LeBron has fingerprints all over the P. Diddy story. There's going to be many of them. If the story doesn't break out, it means they were even able to shut down that catastrophe, which was compared to Epstein, a very loose operation. So this thing ought to bust open. Now, the most entertaining thought I have on P. Diddy is that if he knows every black entertainer, he certainly knows Montel Williams. And Montel Williams dated Kamala Harris. So that connects Kamala Harris up with P. Diddy. That would be fun. That would be, I want to see a videotape of Kamala Harris

getting it up the ass at a P. Diddy party. That's what I want to see. Now, here's the story about Kamala. Kamala is an idiosyncratic personality, right? She flips from various voices, right? She goes Jamaican. She goes black. She goes whatever. I've always thought she's just very playful. But Candice Owens started chasing down Kamala's origin story. And I thought it was a you ain't black. And I'm going, why are you burning capital wasting your time on you ain't black. It didn't work on Obama. None of us care because of Obama was a good president, which I don't have a big problem with Obama, even though I know there's a lot of super criticism, but it didn't feel bad when he was president to me. But I don't care if he came

from Kenya. You know, the presidents were getting from the United States, you're suckass. So let's go to Kenya to get one. Now, turns out that's not what Candace was chasing. She started showing pictures saying, see this picture of her with her. aunt that's not her aunt see this picture with her uncle that's not her uncle and then it finally kind of burst out that where canis was going is that kamala is a product of mk ultra now oh my god really right right now i'm on a podcast with consular and i can't remember maybe ferris statistically is probably Ferris. And Consular says, oh, I had a podcast the other day with Elizabeth Nixon spelled N-I-C-K-S-O-N. And she was something like the head of Time Magazine, European Division.

This was not a trivial person in the journalism world. And she was head of the U.S. Life Magazine Division. I mean, this woman was big gonads. And in the middle of this podcast, counselor says, she starts talking about Nixon's mother was a victim of MK. Ultra in a sanitarium in Canada. And without any further prompting, I said, oh, yeah, associated with McGill University. He goes, how do you know that? Right. So Jim, as you may or may not know, there's some of these conspiracies that Jim is slowly sort of wading into because he hated conspiracies when I knew them 20 years ago, right? And he really just didn't like him, thought they were crazy and stuff like that. Hades come to terms of the fact that they're all turning out to be true.

Right. So then he was shocked by this still. And so I went back and listened to Nixon's podcast. And Nixon's talking along about some shit. All of a sudden she says, I found out my mother was, and I'm going to get back to Kamala. She says, I'm going to find out, I found out my mother was a victim of him. Okay, Alter, they torture you, they brainwash you, they do all sorts of shit. She was in this asylum in Canada, which we think of Canada as one big asylum anyway. So it's not complicated. And then also she says, I took off three years to study this from her job. And she says, it's a very serious problem.

And then she says, Kamala Harris has all the traits of an M.K. Ultra victim. And I agree with her. But this is coming from a person who's not nuts. So then what happens? Well, then post, then you saw her when her teleprompter went down and, and she could not talk. And she kept repeating the same phrase, oh, no, she was like a robot that just, it was short-circuiting and was just doing this, you know, it's like some sci-fi movie or something. It's like the, it's like the old Robin Williams joke about Reagan. Oh, he's an animatronic and there's the puppet master.

You moved them too far. Like, oh, no. So then Nixon, Nixon says she can't tap into. her intellect she has no ability to tap into her intellect and i thought about that what it's saying is there's something her brain is not connecting with what she in theory should be able to do and this is the fragmented personality problem of the mk ultra victims they have all these different personalities to handle all these different like like you have multiple personalities one deals with the beatings one deals with the rapes one deals with the you name it right so then then then um

that's over then come but commanding Paula had done that post-election video where she looked like she'd be sent through a tumble dry cycle. And she, you know, people said she looked shit-faced. She certainly looked disheveled. She looked like she was wasted. I thought maybe they slowed the video down a little to make her look bad or something like that. Right. But someone filmed that and put that out there for a reason.

And I don't know what it is. And then guess who just dumped his wife, Emhoff. Yep. Emhoff, the election's over, Emhoff dumps his wife. What was his role? Do you wonder if maybe they said, okay, she didn't get elected,

your job here's done, I'm out. Right. Right, the happy couple is all of a sudden a week and a half after the election now heading for divorce court? Yep. What the fuck is that all about?

Unless Emhoff was her handler. Exactly. Exactly. This is an interesting story, in it. Yeah, that is an interesting story. Second thing I'm picking up from smart guys who don't go down these paths normally is that the CEO shooting is not what it appears to be.

Now, I don't have a beat on what it is, but someone like Walter Kern, for example, who I think is really, really good, is out there saying this is a combination of state craft and AI. But he's being cryptic out there. And he's saying it is being thrown at us for us to argue about. Trump. Whatever. I don't know.

But there's many people who are saying, and then they've arrested this guy who just does not look like a candidate for being an assassin. The guy's origin story makes him look like a fucking rock star boy scout. happy, go lucky, easy, successful guy, kind of like John Sullivan, the guy, the Antifa guy who filmed Ashley Babbitt getting shot. You say, oh, John Sullivan, Antifa kept saying on Twitter years earlier,

don't trust this guy who's a Fed, right? And then he also gets to film Ashley Babbitt, and there he is with Ray Epps talking to him. And then you find out that John Sullivan, now here's his origin story. And tell me if he's Anteastern. Tifa or a Fed. He was a nationally ranked cyclist. Antifa is populated with people who have nothing better. Nationally ranked cyclists join the FBI. Yes. But when you say things like Antifa or

a Fed in my in my brain. What's the difference? Like, you know what's the difference? Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, I hate to. I agree. Now, here's the. So, So in my writing, I said, look, if you think the world is this simple. One point, I actually have a conspiracy scale. So in Michael Shermer's book, which I read to be fair to the other side, I was repulsed by his book. I thought, okay, give him a shot. I found his book to be appallingly bad. But there was a scale in there to evaluate the quality of a conspiracy theory in terms of

how robust it is. And there's a checklist. And you go down and you score and you go, oh, that rank seven. That's a pretty good theory, right? That sort of thing. Of course, Shermer turns it into a scale of how nuts you are,

which is a whole different few of things. So down here, you're not nuts. Up here, you're totally nuts. And I created my own conspiracy scale. I listed 30, I haven't published it yet, but you'll see it. I listed 30 narratives. and I asked the people reading it to with a post to keep track of their score.

Zero if you don't buy it or you don't even know about it. One, if you look at it and you go, oh, boy, I'm kind of worried that one might be right. And then two is if it's a yupp or hell yeah answer, right? So I started out 9-11 was an inside job, right? Just go right to the hoop. And I do 30 of these. One of them is that got me the funniest fucking laugh in the New Orleans investment conference is that Lindsey Graham is the love child of Nancy Pelosi and peanut the squirrel.

That's the test for someone being insane. Then at the end, I rank you based on how nuts you are. And I scored out of 60 possible points, I scored a 41 myself. Now, what I also did is I used AI. I don't write with AI. If people want to read AI, they should just go do their own AI, right? They don't need me. But a couple of times I used A&I, and I always explicitly say, this came from an AI search, just to be fair. And I used AI and said, give me the top 30 conspiracy theories. And it's very useful for things like that. And it's like a Wikipedia page without the CIA getting involved and fucking it all up, which is, by the way, what happens with Wikipedia.

Right. Right. Or it is as much. The CIA is not involved as much. As much. exactly and so i made sure i hit most of the good ones too so i just use it as a filter and but i wrote you know the the uh the uh god i put in so i put in some i can't remember but you get the idea and uh you just i need to see the day dave i need to see the list too i'm like to see where my

what i would score on that if you'd like remind me remind me in an email or dm or something and i'll send you the list keep it to yourself because it's we got to make this a thing dave Column, you know, Dave Columnies. I want to be, I want to know what I want to know what my DCCI score is. My Dave column. Yes, that's exactly right. We're making this a thing. Hashtag DCCI.

Here's the thing I did with AI that was interesting. I went on Twitter and I said, I said, I said, let's crowdsource this. Provide a nonfiction book that you found transformational to your thinking. And I said, now, you can put the Bible if you want, but you're wasting your vote. Don't give me that crap. Give me something that the people, that's a legitimate honest attempt to answer this question. And all of a sudden, I had 1,700 answers. So what I did was I went to Grock and I said, in the following tweet,

I asked for nonfiction popular, transformational nonfiction books. which ones were the most popular and Grock gave me the top 10 based on interactions and things like that. And what were the top 10? I mean, obviously, do you know, do you remember them all? One of them was unbroken, which was about, you know, that, that guy in the camp. I remember that because I read it. There were two that I had read out of about maybe six or seven, I guess it was. And then there were some others. I can't remember. But, but again, those will be available. But I was just going to post that here's here's the link go to the list if you wish. Then I go and I said there's got to be a way to do this with AI.

And then I said, well, fuck Dave. You can do it with AI. And so just two days ago, I did the AI version of it. And I don't know if it got it right, but there were books I've never seen. A couple of them were I've never seen that. And so it was if I had to answer that question, interestingly enough, I had to answer that question. the most recent nonfiction book that I read, which is Richard Poe's How the British Invented Communism

and blamed it on the Jews, that changed the way I view the world. It's that good. And then I would probably, yeah, how the British invented communism and blamed it on the Jews. It's insane. It's very quick.

It's like 150 pages. And then, you know, 1984. before. Sorry. Although, as I've stated, there are times where I'm shopping the nonfiction shelf

and I'm pretty convinced that they they've shelved a book wrong. I think for me, I would also put like, I'd put the road to serpdom and I put them, I would, I would start there. These are like books that really fundamentally...

Like, for example, Jonathan Turley's, The indispensable right, I think, is a brilliant book. So the beauty of 1700 answers is you really got a lot of buckshot. Okay. The one I'm, you know, when you bring up MK. Ultra right now, Dave, the one I'm just about done is Chaos by Tom O'Neill talking about Charles Mansfield. So I read Chaos thinking I was nuts. And then I started to run into smart people who also said it was great.

And I'm going, holy fuck. I thought I was Actually, I'll add another one to that list In terms of how it transformed the way I think about things Especially as a chemist is Richard Wrangham's catching fire How cooking made us human Huge Tom Golds, the Deep Hot Biosphere

Like huge chain Do you buy Gold's story? Yeah, I do Interesting, Dumberg kind of signed off on it this year Finally And a guy named I think Murray stall for from horizon kinetics signed off. I thought it had been dealt with.

Yeah. Yeah. By oil companies by by by by those invested in the and the biotic theory of oil of course um jens. Yeah. I'm going to have I have I have to run soon because I got another Yeah. Jens. I pre I appreciate you you you coming on and doing this. Dave as always it's great to it's great to see you you've gone in the hibernation you don't need you don't need me for the rest of this but I have to go You didn't need me to start it either for that matter. So, I mean, if you guys need to run, that's, if you want to keep going, you go ahead. Well, I mean, why don't we, why don't we wrap it up? And why don't I just schedule it again?

And schedule it after the new year. After the end of the new year. Yes, yes. And we'll make sure we put plenty of time in there. And maybe we'll have Consular on two. Counselor was just on with, with Tom as well. The three of you can, because the McGill thing, where are you guys?

Where were you guys together? Did I miss one? Did I miss a Kierigar one? I think you did. No, I did one with with with with with with with Sean. Yeah, we did one we did one. We did one a couple weeks ago on on on here. What what Sean does is that he invites guys like you and Jim onto the show.

And then at the last moment he says, Tom, do you have time to come on? And I'm like, yes, I do. He did that he did that this morning at like nine o'clock. And then last one we did with counselor is the same thing. It was hilarious. I'm like, okay. He really hooked my skate with a stick on that one, didn't he? I just like to keep you guys guessing and moving and everything else.

Listen, you guys talk all the time on different things. I'm like, I've been waiting to put you two together. You know, here's what's weird. Here's what's weird. You really get the sense of the closed loop of the system. Yeah. Because of all these names that come up. In theory, our Venn diagrams should have trouble overlapping because it's such a huge world.

And in practice, in practice, you mentioned Alex Craneer, who I've been in a Zoom group with for probably four years now, right? Right. And the name just keep coming up and I'm going, holy fuck, there's this, there's this grand circle of about 500 people. Yeah. And which the information is flowing around and, and I don't know if that means we're in an echo chamber or what. No, I would, I actually think it's more of a, I think it's more of an informal hive mind. Because I learn a lot of an echo chamber, right? Well, it can be.

It depends on how we look at each and how we approach each other. Like I come into every one of these talks. You know, I have what I want to talk about. But I'm always fascinated to see the way you're going to approach things. And the same thing with Jim. And then we just let the conversation go to where it is. And whenever I talk to Alex, I'm usually, I'm trying to challenge him. He's trying to challenge me.

We're never really quite sure what we're going to talk about. And what it allows for is for us to, you know, bounce ideas off each other. And, you know, Dave, every time you and I talk and I, and I go off on one of my flights of fancy, you're like, but, but, but, but, and then you want more data and you want more. And that's great. Don't get me wrong. I, I appreciate the challenge. I absolutely do because it's, it's, it's important to do that kind of thing. So that's not an echo chamber. Well, podcasts, by the way, are the analog of a, of a comedian doing comedy clubs. Where, where, where you are basically testing out your material.

to try to figure out where the weakness of it is. And so if you have the right host, you have the right, you know, co-guessed or whatever, then all of a sudden you say, you know, maybe I got to think that one through a little more. Geez, I didn't know London was important, you know. Right. Of course. Like, you know, whatever.

I mean, every, you know, I mean, I've done a lot of these. I'm dead serious when I say I've done a lot of these where I've been on the other side of it. And having, you know, either the host or the other person I'm doing the podcast with, bring up a point that I had no way. Without mentioning names, you got invited to do a podcast that I expressed some concern over and you walked from. Was that for a reason or you just didn't? Remember last week? Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to name names. I don't want to name. I just every once in a while, I'm like, there's two things. One, I think five-way conversations are a little much. I actually, I love doing the thing with you and Jim on Tommy Carrigan's podcast. But every once in a while, I like to do a three, you know, a conversation with just you and I. pre and four is fine right yeah and then anything above that i'm like yeah you know what i don't need to be a part of this one and you know no i didn't know nothing specific one i really didn't know

the other guy and i just thought the whole the whole thing would be okay um when you turn this off shot i'll tell you who it was sure so well i appreciate yeah i appreciate you guys hopping on and doing this i'm gonna let tom get out of here tom give me one sec before we we hop off but thanks guys for for doing this and uh we'll do it again in the new year we'll make sure i i scheduled out probably properly. I've never done a podcast with Alex Kraner for the record. Well, we'll bring Alex on next time. Done. Alex, somewhere you're listening. We'll bring them.